Since most of American Vision’s criticism is aimed at postmodernism, I want to first of all point out something that most critics ignore for some reason or another, and that is the –ism nature of the system. Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish author and historian was one of the first writers to coin the concept of an –ism in that he observed that the “hopes and aspirations of people that took the form of ideas were often ossified into ideologies of –isms.” Such has become the system of postmodernism which is being attacked by so many critics today. It should be noted by both critics and proponents that postmodernism has in a sense become what its skeptic fathers and grandfathers, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and even Derrida wanted to avoid the most: a relatively objective means used to arrive to a conclusion, driven by rationality and modern certainty. It has been only recently that postmodern thinking has been synthesized into an –ism, mostly by its critics, all the while others continue to struggle to define and understand post-modernity as an evolutionary movement rather than another –ism-atic event in the world of philosophy or theology.

This struggle often manifests itself into outbursts or accusations of “relativism” or “liberalism” which are, as far as I am concerned, empty of any substance and a bit Johnny-come-lately in the world of theological and philosophical debate. As far back as Augustine, deconstruction has been a valuable tool for the Christian theologian. Folks like the French philosopher Jacques Derrida have dealt very successfully with those accusations and demonstrated how deconstruction (at least in the literary-philosophical sense) can lead to a much richer understanding of a text. In essence Derrida’s deconstruction processes suggested that the understanding of thought or belief (in the framework of philosophical of perhaps even theological criticism) should involve the “discovery, recognizance and understanding of the underlying—and unspoken and implicit—assumptions, ideas, and frameworks that form the basis for thought and belief.”

Derrida’s famous declaration “there is nothing outside the text” is little more than Luther’s “sola scriptura” credo, so in the most Biblical sense, Jacques Derrida should be a Christian’s best friend. While early Christian critics of Derrida were looking for reasons to present his deconstruction as being antithetical to Christianity, we can now better understand that “there is nothing outside of text” is a crucial part in the process and method of understanding in which “interpretation is everything.”[1]

This kind of methodology is very much unpalatable to the modern Christian, mostly because it requires the unfamiliar effort of defending long-established standards, and to the modern mind, something can only be true if it is known objectively, uniformly, and also universally by all people in all places at all times. This raises new questions regarding the interpreted status of the Gospel. John Owen observed this when he stated: “That Jesus Christ was crucified, is a proposition that any natural [i.e. unregenerate] man may understand and assent to, and be said to receive: and all the doctrines of the gospel may be taught in propositions and discourses, the sense and meaning of which a natural man may understand; but it is denied that he can receive the things themselves. For there is a wide difference between the mind’s receiving doctrines notionally, and receiving the things taught in the really.”[2]

In essence Owen is subscribing to a very non-traditional apologetic, in that the foundation proposition of Christianity, namely that Christ was crucified, needs in itself to be interpreted in order to become a reality; i.e. there is a difference between receiving doctrine “notionally” and receiving doctrine “really.”

If language and experience are then mere vehicles for a message that always has to be interpreted, how should we be affected as followers of Christ, especially when we espouse public theology or condemn (or damn) others for their theology or doctrine? The problem is therefore with the modern Christian who would insist on subscribing to the notion that “something can be true only if it can be known objectively” rather than allowing for a deconstructive method of interpretation which brings to light other possibilities.

A Mysterious Faith

But this modern framework for Christianity is creating major problems for the new generations and for non-western cultures in which objective and rational knowledge is not necessarily the root of all truth. In essence one could reason that modernism's quest to explain and understand the mysteries of all things in the Universe is rationalism at its best or humanism at its worst; modernism is then hardly compatible with traditional apologetics.

While critics of postmodernism often appeal to propositional truth as being the required context of everything, they glance over the mysterious aspect of their supposed Biblical and propositional truth. Defending Biblical truth, Eric Rauch quotes Gary DeMar: “When Genesis opens with the simple declaration “In the beginning God,” it does not argue for God’s existence; it assumes and asserts it. It is the grand presupposition of the creation narrative. In the believing worldview, the infinite, eternal, personal God absolutely exists and is the ground of all being.”[3]

Eric concludes that “We must begin where God begins. If the culture is skeptical of propositional truth, then that should only serve as a confirmation of where we need to begin.”[4] This conclusion again illustrates the problematic framework and assumptions under which modern Christianity operates. Is Eric willing to reject all other presuppositions and settle for just one, “God exists?” If so, why then criticize the postmodern Christians, since they all subscribe to this truth? If not, how are the other propositional truths founded on this very first truth? How did Eric’s modern Christianity for example conclude that slavery is immoral just because “God exists?” Furthermore, Eric thinks he understands the beginning because this beginning comes from God (since it is written in the Bible), yet he still has to intellectually interpret this beginning. Thus the propositional truth preached by Eric is not propositional truth at all; instead Eric is giving us his interpretation of the beginning. To Eric, the beginning of Genesis 1:1 is the beginning of God’s creation of the entire Universe; to a Jewish scholar, Genesis 1:1 is the beginning of God’s creative process regarding life on Earth.[5] To Eric, God possibly created the entire Universe several thousand years ago; to some Jewish scholars God created the Universe and the Earth a very long time ago and perhaps created human life just in the more recent history of the planet. To Eric, God simply created the universe; to a Jew, God used the Torah as the blueprint for the creation. To different people, the beginning of Genesis 1:1 means different things as a result of different interpretations. Clearly things are not as straightforward as Eric claims. My point is simply to show that Eric’s methodology is simply not working.

As you can see, this is how the lines between propositional truth and interpretation become blurry. And this is where the postmodern conversation becomes a valuable tool to be used in the interpretative process. Derrida’s postmodern proclamation “there is nothing outside the text” suddenly becomes quite important when deconstructing Genesis 1:1. If the text itself is the propositional truth and our reading of it is its interpretation, then both modern and postmodern Christians should try to find common and generous ground when interacting and discussing those topics. And simply discussing those topics does not mean rejecting them or somehow dishonoring the inerrancy of the Bible or the sovereignty of God.

Granted that postmodernism has its shortcomings, many modern Christians are rushing headlong to throw out the baby with the bathwater; it is becoming quite en vogue to jump on the “bash emergent/postmoderns” bandwagon. Another example of this is Eric’s condemnation of mystery and paradox which are often embraced by postmodern Christians. Quoting Franky Schaefer’s view of mystery as a reason for his conversion to Greek Orthodoxy, Eric concludes that mystery and truth cannot be compatible: “Like McLaren, Franky views paradox and mystery as a plus. In fact, this is the reason why he converted to the Orthodox church—absolutist certainty is so twentieth century. Schaeffer and McLaren are remaking Christianity in their own image, and then use it as a club against anyone who still believes in Truth.”[6]

If truth demands absolute certainty, then Christianity has much bigger problems to deal with than postmodernism. When my children ask me various questions about God, I find myself answering “I do not know” quite often. In the modern eyes that apparently makes me a bad father! The famed Romanian poet and philosopher Lucian Blaga illustrated the need for mystery in human life very well in the following poem:

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders[7]

Blaga noticed something that many Christians notice when they study the scriptures. It is the strange feeling that we often cannot express in a clear way: the more we study and try to learn about God, the less we seem to understand, and the bigger the mystery grows. The white light of the moon “does not diminish but increase the shimmering mystery of night.” Perhaps all of us have experienced this one way or another. We read and study the Bible, and as a result we experience a paradigm shift which reveals to us a new insight into the Scriptures while creating new mysteries to be explored and discovered. This was one of the results of my “conversion” to Preterism. As a result of understanding fulfilled prophecy, I now find myself reassessing other areas of my faith in light of what happened in AD 70.

In Romania older and wiser people often tell the young the story of a man’s quest to understand the rose and its mysteries. This man spends his entire life studying the intricate flower, taking apart each petal and studying them in details, trying to understand how the complex petals fit together, learning about the stem, the structure of the flower, the various colors and species of roses. Yet this entire quest to understand the mystery of the rose ends with this man’s sheer failure to simply admire the beautiful flower for what it truly is, smell it deeply, feel its soft and beautiful petals and share this beautiful flower with someone else.

As I wrote before, mysteries seem to be the greatest motivator for humans to do and accomplish great things: Why? Why climb the Everest? Why land on the Moon? Why explore the Unknown, whatever it may be? Because we can! Because God apparently created us with a spirit willing to explore the mysterious, learn from it and become better people and better Christians in the process.

When Eric Rauch concludes that “Despite “good” intentions, these postmodern Christians are actually hindering the progress of the very gospel that they claim to believe”[8] he fails to explain what this gospel really is or how exactly postmodernism hinders the Gospel. He also fails to clarify if this gospel is propositional truth or his interpretation of what the Bible says the Gospel is. Is Eric suggesting that it is the impersonal propositional truth that saves us from Death, or is a genuine relationship with God that saves us? Has God become just another mystery that can be solved by the modern mind, or is he a genuine person that feels, interacts, speaks and loves? After all, is God actually alive?

God is Dead

This is the (in) famous statement made by Friedrich Nietzsche in The Gay Science, a book published in 1882. Much has been made of this statement and to this day Christians avoid Nietzsche for daring to put those words on paper, but often the context is being ignored.

In The Gay Science Nietzsche is using the third person of a madman in order to tell the parable of God’s death at the hands of men. Telling the story of a madman looking for God in the morning with a lantern, in the marketplace, he writes:

“The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.”Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”[9]

And in a wonderful and masterful way, Nietzsche concludes in his parable that Churches have become as much the tombs of men as they are the tombs of God:

“It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”[10]

Nietzsche’s work illustrates as early as the 1800s that the certainties of the Enlightenment were misplaced and seemed to be at odds with the Christian faith. Unlike what critics suggest, Nietzsche did not literally believe God to be dead but he took on a provocative posture regarding modernism and progress; the madman’s discourse was in fact addressed to Atheists, not Christians and where others saw irreversible human progress offering us answers with certainty, Nietzsche saw the death of the divine; where the Enlightenment broke open the box of universal mysteries, Nietzsche saw humanism covered in the blood of God; and finally when the protagonist searched for God in the church, we finally understand that truly only a madman would try such a thing since modern churches have become little more than tombs or sepulchers for God where Christians do little more than offering an eternal requiem to God.

Rarely can we find a more masterful criticism of Christian-ism, which is Nietzsche’s portrayal of modern Christianity, the pre-packaged ideology and institutionalism that has little resemblance left of Christ’s message. The modernization of the Church has in Nietzsche’s eyes led to nothing short of God’s very death! Yes, God is dead…and modernism killed him! And as if the holy blood dripping from our hands is not bad enough, we continue to kill God every time we affirm ideological formulas over dynamic faith and impersonal creedalism over the enormous mystery of the spiritual surrounding us. To Nietzsche, skepticism was the only comfort to the terrifying tomb bearing the name of God: the church. To the postmodern Christian, mystery is the only comfort keeping God alive and safe from the certainties of modernism.

While Eric Rauch liberally (and strangely) associates New Atheism with the “resurrection of postmodernism,” he also strangely fails to connect the death of God with the rise of absolute certainty in the days of Darwin for example. Instead, Eric resorts to ad-hominem attacks against emerging Church proponents, using words like “religiosity” and suggesting that reading emerging church material would “lull brain cells to sleep.”[11] Yes, apparently modernism is not guilty of anything negative; only the new kid on the block, postmodernism, is responsible for the rebirth of Atheism. In essence, Eric is quite forward when he is suggesting that there is little or no merit to be found either in the emerging Church or postmodernism!

Yet it is only because of the insistence of modernism that the Church continues to offer theological and impersonal solutions to deep spiritual problems experienced by the contemporary generations. Modern Christianity has marketed itself as the solution to all mysteries and problems, when in fact it has very few practical answers to offer, and many ideological solutions available. According to Thomas Carlyle, only those heroes, the dynamic individuals can overcome the ideological formulas imposed by the society and can truly master their present and future; unlike Eric claims, the –isms formulated by these ideologies are holding back the Gospel, not postmodern thinking. Postmoder-ism has its flaws, while a postmodern posture has many benefits to offer.

Christian-ism has replaced Christianity, and modern Christians are holding on for dear life to creeds, ideologies and formulas, allowing interpretation to become propositional truth and looking down on all others who think, act and believe differently.

The solution is not holding on to modernism for dear life or blindly embracing everything postmodernism brings to the table; after all as I already mentioned, postmodern-ism has become just another –ism that needs to be overcome by the heroes of today, as Carlyle suggested. I believe that God wants us to practice discernment and carefully deconstruct the Scriptures in order to construct a better interpretation of who God is, how we can know him better, why he wants a relationship with us and how we can improve those relationships with him and with each other.

In almost every instance, when Jesus was asked direct questions about a certain issue he responded with a parable or a riddle, framed in such a way that it greatly appealed to the minds and the enigmatic desires of his audience. It is the story telling that motivates us to search, grow and not settle for the comfort of the –isms. The stories told by Christ can not and should not be ossified into “ideologies of –isms.” Rather they are meaningful in different ways to different people from different times and different cultures.

Rethinking modernism and some aspects of postmodernism can cause pain and anger on both sides; we often feel that the light we find in the Scriptures reveals as many mysteries as it uncovers anew. Eric is in his own right to question postmodernism, but he is appealing to modernism in order to do so. The irony of using a flawed system to analyze another flawed system is rich, and the analysis gives us little answers and does not compel me to go back to a modern way of thinking or a modern methodology, nor does it encourage me to embrace all things postmodern. Instead perhaps we can together acknowledge the errors of our own ways and look forward to a post-postmodern age where people like Eric and I can together look confidently to a future where our faith can be relevant, powerful and meaningful for all mankind.

[1] James K. A. Smith is making this case in “Whos Afraid of Postmodernism?”

[2] John Owen, Holy Spirit, p. 155

[3] Gary DeMar, Pushing the Antithesis: The Apologetic Methodology of Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2007), 49. Available March 2007.

[4] Eric Rauch, The Forbidden Tree of Postmodernism, http://americanvision.org/articlearchive2007/01-25-07.asp

[5] Several schools of thought within Judaism subscribe to the idea that God created the Earth and life on Earth out of pre-existing matter, therefore contradicting the ex-nihilo creation traditional taught by Christians.

[6] Eric Rauch, The Postmodern Resurrection, http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive2007/01-18-07.asp

[7] Lucian Blaga, I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders, translated by Andrei Codrescu. (Columbus, 1989), 3. The poem first appeared in Glasul Bucovinei (The voice of Bukovina) on January 16, 1919

[8] Eric Rauch, The Postmodern Resurrection, http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive2007/01-18-07.asp

[9] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.

[10] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.

[11] Eric Rauch, The Postmodern Resurrection, http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive2007/01-18-07.asp