Is Williams then a ‘postmodernist’? I am not sure that these terms have today the descriptive usefulness they once might have had. Certainly, Williams is determined to understand from within as much as possible, whereas old school modernist Maurice Wiles finally determines to stand over and against. However, as he insists, Williams is not a radical sceptic, just critically wary of epistemological claims that are a little too sanguine. In another respect, Williams is quite ‘postmodern’: throughout his work, he is acutely sensitive to the charge that theological language can be and has indeed been used in the service of power in a malevolent way. As child of the 60s he accepts that generation's suspicion of power and of language's role in the maintenance of power.
In a third sense, Williams shares the postmodern love of flux over fixity, of many over mono. He just loves staring into the Heraclitean fire...
3 comments:
I think I heard Rowan give a lecture on the telly once where he told us to understand our life and indeed all things in the light of the story of Jesus. Such an affirmation of a metanarrative seems the antithesis of postmodernism, or at least a gospel adapted to the postmodern predicament?
I think the latter somewhat: he rejects the absolute and final status of formal abstract propositions but does see the story of Jesus as 'foundational'. But: it is an unsettling and testing 'foundation' rather than a straightforward one. It isn't reducible to formal statements, or to a shorthand or tract. It is inexhaustible in its ability to produce more, to push us further and further. In this sense, he comes to a point where he posits something he just, well, believes, I think.
What exactly is the "Heraclitean Fire"?
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