The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 68): Enter the Postmodernists–Jacques Derrida and Jean-Francois Lyotard

If you have grown up within Evangelicalism over the past few decades, the term “postmodernism” is probably somewhat of a boogeyman—the catch-all term that symbolizes moral relativism, subjectivism, and an all-out threat to the Christian faith and absolute truth. Now, it is true: in many ways, our current culture seems to be awash in moral relativism, and there seems to be a concentrated effort to obliterate any and all boundaries and standards of truth. And in many ways, postmodernism has been seen as being at the forefront of supposed assault on absolute truth.

Well, properly speaking, although there is a growing antagonism toward Christianity in some areas of the country, postmodernism, if properly understood, really isn’t about rebelling against organized religion at all. Or if I can put it another way: postmodernism isn’t a threat to biblical Christianity, but it does threaten the kind of Christianity that has unknowingly accepted a modern, Enlightenment worldview.

To the point: postmodernism is a reaction against the false sense of “scientific certainty” that academics since the 19^th century have championed. Modernism essentially said this: “Science and reason are the only means of attaining certainty and absolute, objective truth; religion and faith are childish fairy tales; we need to throw off religion and embrace a more scientific worldview so that humanity can march forever forward into continual progress.” It is the belief that it is possible to step away from the world and analyze it with complete objectivity—and that was the surest form of truth: cold, hard facts and analysis trumps emotional appeals and faith.

In my next two posts, I want to take my cue from James K.A. Smith’s book, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? and highlight three of the most prominent postmodern thinkers (Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Michael Foucault) in order to give a clear understanding of precisely what postmodern is, and why Christian shouldn’t be afraid of it.

To the point, what Smith shows that, at its core, postmodernism looks at the claims of modernism and its claims of absolute, objective certainty and truth, and cries, “That’s BS! Emperor Modernism has no clothes!” Smith does this by focusing on a catch phrase each thinker is most known for, then explaining what precisely what each thinker was saying.

Jacques Derrida: “There is Nothing Outside the Text”
The catch phrase Derrida is known for is, “There is nothing outside the text.” Many Christians mistakenly think that it is an attack on the real events recorded in the Bible. They think that Derrida is basically saying, “All there is, is stores on the page; there’s no way you can know for certain that those events ever really happened.”

And indeed, for the past 150-200 years, many academics and skeptics have said just that about the Bible. Part of the impetus for the rise of modern, historical-critical biblical scholarship was the belief that what was written in the Bible couldn’t really be true—after all the writers were biased, and therefore we can’t trust them to tell the truth. And so, as happened in “the quest for the historical Jesus,” scholars tried to use supposed scientific analysis to “get behind” the text in order to “find out what really happened.”

You see this in countless books today, as well as various shows on the History channel, where the set up will be something like this: “Well, the Bible says such and such, but what really happened? We’ve interviewed experts who will pull back the curtain on the biblical text and get at…who Jesus really was!” Or Bart Ehrman will write a book about how you can’t trust what is actually written in the Gospels, and that “this is what early Christianity really looked like.”

To be clear: that is the mindset that postmodernists like Derrida are attacking. Modernists view the text as a thick curtain they have to somehow get behind in order to see “the truth.” Derrida, though, says, “No, the text is the only window you have to that event—the text is the window and the lens to that world; it’s not an obstacle to it.” Or simply put: if you want to learn about Jesus, the biblical text is your only window to the man—there is nothing outside the text.

And as for the modernist accusation that you can’t trust a text (like the Bible) because the writer was biased and not objective, Derrida says, “News flash! Objectivity is a canard!” Derrida actually calls this “the myth of objectivity.” The fact is, no one is truly objective—we all view and interpret the world from our vantage point in the world, and therefore every point of view is subjective to an extent. This doesn’t mean truth doesn’t exist—but it does mean our perception of truth is limited to our subjective experience. Therefore, no one is able to arrive at purely objective and absolute truth, because no one is able to completely detach themselves from the world. And therefore, the modern notion that that is possible is simply not true.

Derrida, Christians, and the Bible
The reason why some Christians view Derrida as a threat to Christianity is because “modern” Christians have wrongly bought into the Enlightenment notion that all truth is purely objective and that interpretations skewer the “real truth.” You see this all the time in the arguments and writings of young earth creationism: they claim that Genesis 1-11 is “absolute truth” that doesn’t need to be interpreted, and that scientific theories about the age of the earth are “just assumptions and interpretations.” For them, as for far too many Christians, there is this wrong idea that “interpretation” equals “untruth” or “falsehood.”

But such a view is wrong. The fact is that Christians need to realize that the Gospel, indeed the entire Bible, is an interpretation of events. The writers were not trying to write “objective history.” Far from it. Yes, they were relating historical events, but they were interpreting them in order to show the meaning of those events, in light of God’s revelation. And so, we need to realize that the Bible does not give us “objective history.” It gives us the true and inspired interpretation of that history.

This is actually a good thing, for when view the Bible as some sort of objective manual that provides us “all the answers we need to know about life,” when we treat it as solely “absolute law” that simply orders us what to do, we tend to treat it as an idol, and God as nothing more than a pagan god we must tremble in fear and attempt to placate by “doing all the right things” so that we don’t get smushed like a bug when He gets angry.

If we view the Bible as cold, hard, objective truth that orders us around, then it becomes a lifeless and intimidating weapon a distant and angry God wields against us.

But if we realize that the Bible is the inspired, true interpretation of historical events that reveal to us the character of God, His purposes for mankind, His love, compassion, and justice—then the Bible opens a door into a country where we can meet and commune with the God who loves us. Good stories evoke imagination and questioning, and through that, relationships are formed and strengthened. And so, Christians need to ask questions, enter into dialogue with both God and others in the Church, get other Christians’ points of view, and become familiar with Christians throughout Church history who have wrestled with the truth of the Scriptures. It is in that kind of Christian dialogue that the Church, as the Church, can come to understand and proclaim the truth of the Gospel.

It is in that context that we can really understand Hebrews 4:12: “The Word of God is living and active,” for we realize that when we honestly dialogue with what has been revealed in the Scriptures, that the Word of God is not the Bible, but rather the living and resurrected Christ, speaking to us through the Holy Spirit.

Finally, there is one more thing for us to realize about the Bible. By interpreting past events in Israel’s history, the writers were, in fact, interpreting them in order to speak to their present day. The New Testament writers, for example, took various Old Testament passages that had an original context, and proceeded to re-interpret them in order to tell the story of Christ. When the New Testament writers claimed an Old Testament passage was “fulfilled” in Christ, they were not saying, “That prophet way back when predicted a certain fact would eventually happen, and now it has!” Rather, they were saying, “Look back to that passage in Isaiah that talked about that situation back then; well, this situation with Jesus is like that…but bigger!” And so, the writers established continuity with God’s revelatory word in the past, but they also infused it with new meaning, in the light of Christ.

In the same way, Christians today need to recontextualize the Scriptures to our current society that accurately reflects the truth of the Gospel. The Church, as the body of Christ in the 21^st Century, must faithfully speak the truth of the Gospel within the context of our current society. In doing so, the Church fulfills its prophetic calling to “be a light” to the world.

Skeptics may try to “get behind the text” to get to their supposed “real Jesus,” and sometimes Christians get sidetracked into trying to “prove” that Jesus did miracles, that the Hebrews passed through the Red Sea, etc. While certainly historical inquiry is a good thing (and there certainly is a lot to discover and learn about biblical history that does help illuminate the Bible), it’s easy to forget that what changes lives isn’t in the proving of facts; it’s in the interaction and dialogue with the Living Word revealed in Scripture.

Jean-Francois Lyotard: Postmodernism is Incredulity toward Metanarratives
Another postmodern thinker that raises suspicion among many Christians is Jean-Francois Lyotard, who is known for the phrase, “Postmodernism is incredulity toward metanarratives.” What does that mean? Simple: postmodernism is suspicious of the claims of any “big story” about history and humankind.  Therefore, it is assumed that what Lyotard is saying is that postmodernism rejects “big stories” like Christianity that attempt to provide an over-arching “metanarrative” of history and thus give meaning to a society. Thus, here is yet another example of how postmodernism runs contrary to Christianity.

Only it really doesn’t. For the kinds of “metanarratives” Lyotard has in mind are those “scientific stories” that claim to be the overarching story for everything by means of an appeal to “universal reason.” In other words, Lyotard is saying that modern science is hypocritical, in that it rejects narratives as a means of truth and meaning, but then uses a narrative story to legitimate its claims that autonomous scientific reason is the ultimate universal means of knowing truth.

We have seen this very thing in the posts covering the Enlightenment. From men like Voltaire and Rousseau, to the likes of Marx, Freud, and even the New Atheists, are guilty of this very thing: they claim science and universal reason provide meaning to society, but then they turn around, and weave unscientific stories in order to justify that claim. Rousseau told his own “Genesis myth;” Marx told the story of history as one of continual class struggle; Freud told the yarn about humanity slowly growing up from their infantile religious superstitions; the list can go on.

For some reason, in the modern world people have fallen for it. A person derides the “unscientific stories” of “religious fairytales,” claims that science and reason are the only means of acquiring meaning, and then turns around and tells an unscientific story to justify the claim that science and reason are the only means of acquiring meaning. It is the ultimate hypocrisy, and modern society has swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.

But as any clear-headed person can tell, the 20^th century, although the most scientific in history, was also the most brutal and bloody. Therefore, postmodernism simply is stating it has had enough of modernistic claims that science and reason are the only ways to gain understanding and meaning. Instead, postmodernism acknowledges that any truth claim (be it scientific or not) is ultimately rooted in a certain presuppositional paradigm that is untouched by “scientific autonomous reason.” In other words, scientific rationalism isn’t big enough; it requires a basis of faith…on something. In this respect, postmodernism acknowledges that everyone bases their worldview on some sort of faith commitment to something that science cannot address or touch.

For Christianity, this is a good thing. For, as James K.A. Smith states, “Lyotard…demonstrates that no philosophy—indeed, no knowledge—is untainted by prejudice or faith commitments. In this way the playing field is leveled, and new opportunities to voice a Christian philosophy are created” (73). What does this mean? Simple: There really is no “battle between faith and reason.” That is a “story” that many skeptics and Enlightenment thinkers have told for the past 200 years.

Facts only gain meaning within a context of something. That context requires some sort of over-arching story that makes sense of the world. The modern scientific metanarrative, though, has not played fair, for it claims it has nothing to do with unscientific stories. The fact is that human beings need stories to help make sense of the world, history, and yes, even science. Therefore, any story that claims it isn’t a story deserves incredulity.

Therefore, this should help Christians realize that the Church, at its heart, is a story-telling Church, rooted in the historical realities of the nation of Israel and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to be sure. But it’s not some sort of lab that spews forth scientific facts and numbers that try to “prove” the existence of God (or a global flood really happened, or there was a literal Adam and Eve).  People and organizations obsessively devoted to those things bear the resemblance more of the modern Enlightenment mentality than the mind of Christ.

The Church bears witness to God’s story as it plays out through history, and we are called to live out that over-arching story in our own lives and worship. The truth of the Christian story will change hearts and minds of people in the world; not facts and figures. Of course, facts and figures aren’t not important. We just need to realize that on their own, they don’t mean much.

Tomorrow, my concluding comments on postmodernism…