Gamera

No substance once again. From the man who never read any postmodern texts in his life.

spin

Self-stimulators don't deserve substance, just calling out. As to your ignorance about my reading materials, just lie there in your sty of contentment.

And would you care to answer the question?


spin

No Robots

Doesn't need to read it: he lives it, baby.

gurugeorge

But any access you had to whether the sun rose 10 years ago would also be in texts (or records of some sort) would it not?

Sometimes by virtue of authors' intention, and sometimes inadevertently, some old texts sometimes refer to physical events that either did or didn't happen. To find out whether they did or didn't happen is historical investigation; also, to find out what the authors of the texts intended is also a historical investigation (they either intended it or they didn't, although that can be more fuzzy, but that's simply because the mind's fairly fuzzy). Broaden the field to things other than texts and you add archaeology and other disciplines, but the aim is still to find out what happened.

Some people think that the NT texts refer to an entity who (whatever else they may have said about him) was a human being and lived 2,000 years ago, other people think they don't. That's the only issue of any importance, the rest of this postmodern stuff is just squid ink, same as postmodernism generally.

(By this I mean that postmodernism, in its beginnings, was simply a mid- to late-20th century attempt to "save the appearances" for Marxism, whose failure to scientifically predict anything had become painfully apparent to most thinking Leftist or Left-leaning academics roundabout the time of Khruschev's speech and Prague. IMNSHO the germ of what became Postmodernism was an attempt to keep a Marxian-style academic dialogue going in the teeth of disconfirmation of the scientific side of Marxism - i.e. a way for sundry Leftist or Left-leaning professors to justify their continued adherence to a way of analysis that had proved useless in predicting anything in the real world. The other path - renewal of fervour and modification of analysis - taken at the time was the "New Left". A similar pattern of disappointment and a search for alternatives happened early in the 20th century with the disappointments of Marxist theory at the time, and at that time the two paths taken by Leftist and Left-leaning intellectuals were Social Democracy on the one hand and Fascism on the other. Anyway, the fact that Postmodern styles of analysis should be cropping up in Christianity is quite fitting, as it's also a way to "save" Chrisitanity by bypassing the hard question of whether the whole thing was a load of bunk that has wasted millions of lives.)

gstafleu

So, is (literary) post-modernism a Christian initiative, or is it more general? Does anyone have a good web site that explains its concepts?

Going by what I've seen so far, it seems to me a form of (cultural) solipsism. Starting from Descartes' cogito ergo sum, it is not too difficult to take the step to "Since I'm the one doing the thinking, the only real thing is me." This then puts the concept of objective reality, so successfully put into practice by science, at a safe distance. Where solipsism does this for the individual, it seems to me that post modernism does it for a culture.

This would be especially attractive for Christians, given that science ("post Enlightenment catering," as the PMers would seem to have it) has made their literalism ("there really was a Jesus who...") hard to maintain. A form of cultural solipsism, where objective (i.e. using the scientific method) historicity is replaced with "a fallible portrait of Jesus that emerges from dialogue with the textual history" neatly navigates one around this difficulty.

This compares directly to the idea that the individual should have personal belief, should see Jesus as his personal savior (in some circles). By making religion personal--be it on the cultural or individual level--as opposed to objective (subject to post Enlightenment, scientific investigation), one removes it from the dangers of scientific investigation (I take it that this is what "historical criticism" represents), thus preserving Christian faith as something that isn't nonsensical at first (post Enlightenment) glance. In other words, it makes perfect religious sense, but not much scientific sense.

Gerard Stafleu

DCHindley

So,

Postmodernism is merely a Marxist plot to throw us off our guard?

Amazing!

DCH

gurugeorge

Who said anythying about "plot"? It's just a confluence of like-minded attempts at evasion from Left or Left-leaning thinkers who would prefer to appear to be right at any cost rather than actually be right at the cost of sometimes being wrong.

Postmodernism is just "saving appearances" for the type of pseudo-Hegelian analysis you find in Marx, allowing that kind of intellectual glass-bead game to be translated into a form in which modern academics can be rewarded for sheer verbiage by the yard rather than truth-discovery - as opposed to being kicked out on their asses for sheer uselesness and made to fend for themselves (along with the crowd of NT "scholars").

*GG stirs the pot and throws rocks at thread* :devil1:

Clivedurdle

Having been extremely well inculcated into post modernism by clearly left leaning intellectuals I would agree there is a strong correlation - although I suppose you could argue xianity invented post modernism and surrealism!

And you cannot have this sort of discussion without introducing Dali - wonderful post modern example this!

http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/...id=4&itemid=68

No Robots

I think you are bang on, Gerard. One of my left-leaning priest professors once wrote a paper an postmodernism and argued that its absolute subjectivity legitimizes belief in miracles.

You might be interested in D.G. Leahy's postmodernist theology. In the blurb for his book, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact, we read:

In the end, what is demonstrated is how faith in the Incarnation has had the radically surprising effect of perfectly incarnating thought itself, so that thought at the beginning of the third millennium--beyond both Hegel and Peirce--has become for the first time the very form of the essentially new world in which we live.

Leahy represents the extreme end of the phenomenon you are talking about, Gerard, wherein the man Christ is completely eclipsed by some kind of transcendental Christ-phenomenon. At this point, Christian religion becomes essentially indistinguishable from mythicism.

No Robots

I do love Dali, but look at what postmodernist theologian D.G. Leahy makes of him.