Misunderstanding Postmodernism
Talking to several people at my church, and even at the seminary I attend, there seems to be persistent misunderstandings regarding postmodernism. This comes on both sides--from both people who are for postmodernism and against it--most frequently because most dont have the time to actually read postmodern philosophy, so most of the information they get is merely second or third hand caricatures which have grains of truth in them but are ultimately incorrect. Take for example the often made claim that Postmodernism is against "grand stories," or, sometimes referenced by the technical term, postmodernism is against "metanarratives." Jean-François Lyotard was one of the first to attempt a “definition” of postmodernity as “incredulity toward metanarratives [grand reçits, big stories],” in his now famous "Report on the Postmodern Condition." So the story goes, Postmodernism is against any big story that tries to explain the whole world, and instead the postmodern sensibility wants to reduce all stories to little stories which only try to explain aspects of the world.
Of course the Christian story seems to be the "big story" par excellence, and often this translates into a Christian suspicion that, should Lyotard's famous phrase be true, Christianity and postmodernism are quite natural enemies. This being the case, it is often asked, “How can postmodernity and Christianity possibly be harmonized?” According to James K.A. Smith and others like Merold Westphal, a harmonization is possibile, but first we must understand what Lyotard means by “metanarrative.” It is decidely not a suspicion against "big stories," which attempt to fit the whole world into them. In fact this is to miss the point so much that it is occasionally funny to me how many times this definition is reiterated on campus.
The incredulity that postmoderns exhibit toward “big stories,” does not involve a rejection of narratives, myths, or grand totalizing claims about the nature of reality. Rather, the problem with distinctively modern “metanarratives” as explicated by Lyotard in his work, The Postmodern Condition, is that they fail to acknowledge their own narrative nature. “Lyotard very specifically defines metanarratives as universal discourses of legitimation that mask their own particularity; that is, metanarratives deny their narrative ground even as they proceed on it as a basis... The problem with [modern] metanarratives is that they do not own up to their own mythic ground” (Smith, p. 69). In other words, the postmodern critique involves the proclamation that all knowledge is a narrative or myth of some sort, and the particular metanarratives that Lyotard identified and wished to discard were narratives that tried to ground the validity of the story in something other than a story--be it logic, empiricism, mathematics, Descartes "I think therefore I am," or what have you. Given this understanding of a distinctively modern metanarrative, Smith suggests that Christians ought to embrace Lyotard’s critique. As Smith explains, the reason that this harmonization is essentially consonant rather than dissonant is that the Christian faith (particularly the Dutch Reformed Tradition—but one might also cite Radical Orthodoxy here) does not claim to be legitimated by an appeal to “a universal, autonomous reason, but rather by an appeal to faith (or, to translate, myth or narrative),” postmodernism does not indicate a rejection of the Christian metanarrative but instead “represents a retrieval of a fundamentally Augustinian epistemology that is attentive to the structural necessity of faith preceding reason” (Smith, pp. 68, 72).
In other words this postmodern suspicion of metanarratives is something that should be embraced by Christians, and not viewed with suspicion. It frees us up and allows us to speak in faith of the very historical and contingent grounding of our beliefs in the historical and contingent coming of the God-man, and not aver to supposedly universal, rational foundations which legitimate themselves only by hiding their own origins as stories people tell. The qualification for metanarrative then is decidely not the scope of the story it tells, but is speaking about the way it is being told and in a way is speaking about faithfulness to tradition and to the gospel proclamation itself.
Of course the Christian story seems to be the "big story" par excellence, and often this translates into a Christian suspicion that, should Lyotard's famous phrase be true, Christianity and postmodernism are quite natural enemies. This being the case, it is often asked, “How can postmodernity and Christianity possibly be harmonized?” According to James K.A. Smith and others like Merold Westphal, a harmonization is possibile, but first we must understand what Lyotard means by “metanarrative.” It is decidely not a suspicion against "big stories," which attempt to fit the whole world into them. In fact this is to miss the point so much that it is occasionally funny to me how many times this definition is reiterated on campus.
The incredulity that postmoderns exhibit toward “big stories,” does not involve a rejection of narratives, myths, or grand totalizing claims about the nature of reality. Rather, the problem with distinctively modern “metanarratives” as explicated by Lyotard in his work, The Postmodern Condition, is that they fail to acknowledge their own narrative nature. “Lyotard very specifically defines metanarratives as universal discourses of legitimation that mask their own particularity; that is, metanarratives deny their narrative ground even as they proceed on it as a basis... The problem with [modern] metanarratives is that they do not own up to their own mythic ground” (Smith, p. 69). In other words, the postmodern critique involves the proclamation that all knowledge is a narrative or myth of some sort, and the particular metanarratives that Lyotard identified and wished to discard were narratives that tried to ground the validity of the story in something other than a story--be it logic, empiricism, mathematics, Descartes "I think therefore I am," or what have you. Given this understanding of a distinctively modern metanarrative, Smith suggests that Christians ought to embrace Lyotard’s critique. As Smith explains, the reason that this harmonization is essentially consonant rather than dissonant is that the Christian faith (particularly the Dutch Reformed Tradition—but one might also cite Radical Orthodoxy here) does not claim to be legitimated by an appeal to “a universal, autonomous reason, but rather by an appeal to faith (or, to translate, myth or narrative),” postmodernism does not indicate a rejection of the Christian metanarrative but instead “represents a retrieval of a fundamentally Augustinian epistemology that is attentive to the structural necessity of faith preceding reason” (Smith, pp. 68, 72).
In other words this postmodern suspicion of metanarratives is something that should be embraced by Christians, and not viewed with suspicion. It frees us up and allows us to speak in faith of the very historical and contingent grounding of our beliefs in the historical and contingent coming of the God-man, and not aver to supposedly universal, rational foundations which legitimate themselves only by hiding their own origins as stories people tell. The qualification for metanarrative then is decidely not the scope of the story it tells, but is speaking about the way it is being told and in a way is speaking about faithfulness to tradition and to the gospel proclamation itself.
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