Just finished Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? by James K.A. Smith. In some ways this was a very helpful book, but at the center, the place where the door moves on the hinge, this door squeaks in as annoying and exasperating a way as all the others...
Who makes the laws? All law is imposed morality. Which morality is it? What standards are being reflected in the laws, and in the necessary violence imposed in the name of those laws? We are told ad nauseam that we have now been ushered into the postmodern era. Really? So, what is the standard of law? These laws impose on people, and for creatures, this is the standard of certainty -- not the amount of bombast a person might generate in a seminar room somewhere.
On the basis of our laws, we execute. We incarcerate. We fine. We seize property. We go to war. We decide to drop bombs or not. In the current set up, modernity makes all our laws, and so-called postmodern Christians have not really challenged modernity at all until they have challenged this. But to challenge the existing laws requires that you have an alternative, and if that alternative is not biblical, why do it? But if it is biblical, then you are some kind of theonomist, and an advocate of Christendom. This is why Leithart's assessment of this is a bull's eye. Those who want postmodernity in their discussion groups are just fooling around.
The Christian faith is a public faith. The Christian faith requires that all men everywhere abandon their idols in repentance and faith. The Christian faith requires Christendom. The Christian faith makes universal and binding claims. The Christian faith is genuinely robust. But the Christian faith has its modernist and hyper-modernist knock-offs, sects that believe their responsibility is to function within the structures (and strictures) created for them by modernity. And from this compromising accommodation with modernity, Smith (and the others like him) have not budged an inch.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Pretending To Leave Modernity Behind
Blog and Mablog of Douglas Wilson
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6 comments:
Question: When St. Paul implicitly accepted slavery, by asking slaves to be obedient to their masters, was he being too accomodative to this world?
I believe that you have a point in saying that the Christian faith must have a goal to change the structures of the world, but often comes the temptation to become accustomed to the world.
Yet, you often cannot change the structures of the world immediately, and the changing of structures comes from the transformation of the hearts, and is secondary to it.
Jesus did not change the roman laws. But he gave a meaning to the lives of all who met Him, even if they continued to live under the wicked laws.
The one truly important thing in the world is that we may all go to heaven. This is what we should be praying for and putting our efforts in.
Once we realize that, we will then be in a position to discover on one hand, how many people live a life so difficult that they have never experienced love, have no possibility to pray, that they suffer all sorts of injustice, etc... and on the other hand that Jesus is the hope that gives a meaning to all lives, in any situation, while He is also the motor of the change that we may achive while still on earth.
This is why I generally don't read Doug Wilson's blog. I have no idea how this bears any relation to Jamie Smith's book. Jamie would agree entirely that "The Christian faith is a public faith" and that the church must live in terms of that, bearing witness to the public world and the powers that rule it.
I really liked Smith's book. I don't embrace all of it (I think he goes too far in asserting the general inability of the fallen intellect to attain to truth), but I do think that he demonstrates that some of the biggest pomo philosophers and their concepts can be taken captive by Christianity and used against the errors of modernity.
I'm not sure how to reply to Wilson's comments... perhaps it's because (as Joel said) they don't address the text in question.
Some more comments on Wilson on Smith:
From Prosthesis, " Me on Wilson on Smith on Postmodernism"
From Joel Hunter at BHT, "A Reaction to Wilson"
From Kevin Johnson, "Someone Just Needs to Take away Douglas Wilson's Keyboard"
As always Chris, thanks for your comments. Joel thanks for the links and your friendship as well.
It's kind of an adventure in missing the point, as Kevin Johnson says in the link that Joel linked above. I don't think he knows at all what he's talking about. Similarly, Jamie Smith says on p. 74 of "Who's Afraid...?" book in a footnote that DA Carson's critique of Brian McLaren is an "adventure in missing the point."
Peace,
Eric
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