Despite the overt atheism of most of the leading postmodern thinkers, their concern for explicitly theological themes is obvious. Indeed, “fascination” would not be an inappropriate word to use.[1] Several theologians, for their part, have responded by a complete embrace of postmodern anti-logocentricism and espoused a postmodern via negativa, drawing on an aspect of the Christian tradition represented by Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart and others. Daniel Bulzan agrees that the postmodern and the apophatic are very similar.[2] Kevin Hart (an Australian!) ignores the protestations of Derrida himself and argues that negative theology is a form of deconstruction.[3] For him, only negative theology resists deconstruction. He writes:
Negative theology, properly understood, is that theology...which works at once inside and outside onto-theology, submitting its images of God to deconstruction.[4]
However, negative theology has been baptised via Greek thought about God in terms of attributes; and postmodernity has not freed itself from this mode of discourse. As Ingraffia points out, negative theology remains part of a Hellenist dialiectic with positive theology; and remains far from the biblical God who has revealed himself.[5] Bulzan, in response to Don Cupitt and Mark C. Taylor, points to the collapse of personal identity in the mystic and the postmodern; and the need for a properly biblical theology of language that would clarify its link with creation and ontology. Indeed, those theologians for whom postmodernity is a given are little more than Feuerbachian anthropologists for whom God is not even absconditus, but mortuus. Ward rightly complains that
The theological, stripped of any transcendence, becomes the incarnational to the point at which a Christian atheism emerges.[6]
It is merely an “atheism in vestments.”[7]
[1] G. Ward, “Theology and Postmodernism”, 435
[2] D.Bulzan, “Apophaticism, Postmodernism and Language: Two Similar Cases of Theological Imbalance” in Scottish Journal of Theology 50/3 (1997) 261-287
[3] K.Hart, op.cit., p.186
[4] ibid.
[5] B. Ingraffia, op.cit., p.226-7
[6] G.Ward, “Postmodern Theology” in D.F. Ford (ed.), The Modern Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd ed. 1997), p.591
[7] F.C.Bauerschmidt, “Aesthetics - The Theological Sublime” in J. Milbank et al (eds.), Radical Orthodoxy (London: Routledge, 1999), p.217
10 comments:
It takes a lot more than reaction to be revolutionary. Christian theologians who have jumped on the late modernism band wagon do seem to have fallen off at merely a different stage in Western thought.
it seems like atheistic postmodernism as a sensibilty is wedded to the same naturalistic roots as its parent modernism, trapped in the episteme of nihilistic immanence. as such it seems gutless, or maybe lacks the possibility, to push past this.
sad that some theologians are drinking the hemlock.
Having grown up in the suburbs, I feel pretentious when I use the word "sensibility". I use it anyway, because it's a good word and there's no real substitute for it. So please take this into account when I say the following:
trapped in the episteme of nihilistic immanence: what the [expletive deleted]?
I know what the words mean. But what do they add?
using the master's tools to pull down the master's house ;-)
sorry to tread on your suburban sensibilities bruce
I tread on them all the time myself, as mentioned, so I don't think an apology is necessary.
But if the house is going to fall down, I don't think that this is the way it will happen ...
hi again bruce. i think you've got a point about simplicity. yet in my reading and experience, there is something to be said about the appropriation of language of a particular "force" in order to subvert it. a bit like what Anita Desai and Wole Soyinka have done out of their colonial experiences.
Paul of the NT is an example of someone who uses imperial rhetoric for anti-imperial purposes.
i think that use the language forms of a colonising 'force' like postmodernism while driving it to its cliff-edge is still effective. but i understand your concerns.
sounds a little like what Ward, Milbank, Pickstock, Smith & co are trying to do against so-called postmodern theologians.
still, i dunno... any thoughts?
OK, some thoughts:
Clarity is a virtue, and so is simplicity. There can be a time and a place for sacrificing them: the use of technical language in appropriate settings is one such, but there one is (ideally) aiming for another kind of goal, namely precision. Jokes are another example; or flights of fancy; or poetry; or extended metaphors or other ways of playing with language.
But I don't see how the consistent use of impenetrable jargon, and impenetrable prose generally --- and even other academics level this charge against postmodernist writing --- can serve any respectable purpose. And this practice has brought subtlety, and any engagement with diffuse or complicated ideas, into great disrepute with plain-thinking people. So isn't it just bad as such, and to be avoided, even in "a good cause"?
Yes, I would say in Milbank's case in particular a lot of it is just bad writing. No, AWFUL writing. Remember, the pomo guys were being translated from the French!
yes i think I understand now where you're coming from. you aren't against the use of 'difficult' per se, just when it's mobilised for obscurity. it's a common criticism against pomo 'cultural studies' writing. (i seem to recall francis schaeffer criticising karl barth for the same reasons...)
still the use of certain words and word combinations, especially of the french/latin roots, do serve to communicate ideas that cannot be reduced to 'plain english'. e.g. "nihilism". maybe it's time to raise the level of "suburban discourse"?
but i take your point that the consistent, deliberate use of jargon does obscure. ironic thats it's the 'postmodernists' way of gaining cultural capital for themselves: selling out by trying to look technical like the scientists they deride.
Hello Michael,
I'm glad you found that old article of mine still useful... Since then I've seen another thing happening: Chistian theologians, conservative Christian theologians I should say, who, out of boredom or out of disenchantment with their conservative ecclesiastic context started playing postmodern intellectual and language games. From culturally relevant Christians, which they wanted to become, they really became "atheists in vestments"... So it's no joke!
Wishing you well with your thesis.
Daniel Bulzan
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