Gianni Criveller （柯毅霖）
A Historical Review of the Concept of Revelation
FIRST PART The Postmodern Condition
An Introduction to Postmodernism
'Postmodern' means different things to different people1, so that it is difficult to define. More than a clear-cut movement of thought, postmodern can be defined as a 'mood', an 'atmosphere', in which different strategies or approaches coexist and overlap2. The postmodern world is composed of a number of self-meaning-generating agencies, without horizontal or vertical order, which do not claim supracommunal authority. Postmodern thought is then irrevocably and irreducibly pluralistic, complex, contradictory and destabilizing. Therefore, the word 'bewilderment' (spaesamento)3 has been used to describe the condition of the postmodern person. 'Fragmentation' is another term often connected with the postmodern condition, and certainly is one of its key characteristics.
The use of the term 'postmodernism' may be traced back to as early as the 1880s, when it was used by the British artist John Watkins Chapman. In 1917 Rudolf Pannwitz again used this term.4 In the 1930s the term was employed to describe the major historical transition already under way and the latest developments in the arts in reaction to modernism. The use of 'posts', as in post-impressionism (1880s) and post-industrial (1914-22), developed steadily in the 1960s, when the 'posts' were multiplied: post-structuralism; post-anthropological, post-metaphysical, post-rationalistic, post-ideologies, post-Marxism, post-Christianity etc... These 'posts' were used to designate the radical changes that were taking place first of all in architecture, and subsequently in the various arts, in literature, social thought, economics, science, philosophy and religion. The concept of postmodernism gained widespread attention as a broader cultural phenomenon in the 1970s.
According to Charles Jencks, the most influential authority on architectural postmodernism, Postmodernism was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972, at 3:32 p.m.5 The Pruitt-Igoe housing project was more than a landmark of modern architecture, it was a symbol that epitomized "modernity itself in its goal of employing technology to create a utopian society for the benefit of all."6 The government, however, could not prevent the buildings from being vandalized and could not renovate the project, in spite of much effort and the millions of dollars put into the plan. In an era of symbols, the razing of the housing project symbolizes the death of modernism and birth of post-modernism.
In this article I distinguish between postmodernism and postmodernity. The first is the intellectual development that, as the name obviously indicates, goes beyond modernism. Post-modernity indicates the historical phase that succeeds the age universally called 'modernity.' 'Postmodern' is a general term that, in my presentation, comprises both the concept of postmodernism and of postmodernity.
Modern and Postmodern
If postmodern is defined in relation to the modern, we should first define what 'modern' means. But this task would take too much of our time here. While I take the complex notion of modernity as understood, I simply summarize some of its content as follows. 'Modern' means: 1. The absolutization of human reason as the only and supreme subject of knowledge; the modern subject is self-grounded and self-understanding, the principle of totality; 2. The emancipation of the individual from any constraint which limits his/her supreme freedom and dignity, or, in other words, modernity is the process in which the ultimate liberation of the human being unfolds; 3. Opposition to tradition and to the church as the chief enemies of emancipation and freedom; 4. Nationalism and statism as the sovereign regulative principles of human existence and co-existence; 5. Unlimited trust in science, economic and technological expansion, industrialism.
Postmodernism is described not by what it is, but what it is not: it is not modern. What does 'it is not modern' mean? Is the postmodern a result of modernism? Or is it the aftermath of modernism? Or the afterbirth of modernism? Is postmodernism a development of modernism? Or its denial? Or the rejection of modernism, or its surrogate? Is it a form of late-modernism? Is postmodernism all these things together?
Postmodernism may find it uncomfortable to define itself negatively in reference to modernism. If modern (from Latin modo: just now, presently) means what is happening now, then it will be, by definition, modern until the end of history. But modernism, like the Pruitt-Igoe project, is falling apart and unable to meet the challenges of a new epoch. Modernism, addicted to the defensive-conservative illusion that nothing will transcend itself, is finally waning.7 What is waning is the presumption, implied in the very word 'modernism', that modernity is the definitive emancipation of the human condition and an irreversible process. There is no choice, until a more suitable term is found, but to call such a phenomenon post-modernism, since whatever outlasts modernity is, by linguistic definition, postmodern. At the same time postmodernism expresses a cry of protest against the pretence of modernism to be the ultimate category of the human spirit and of history.
The Postmodern Condition
The Postmodern Condition by French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard is the title of a short book which appeared in 1979 and which put postmodernism into the arena of philosophical debate.8 Postmodernity is characterized, according to Lyotard, by incredulity toward metanarratives, the grand narratives of history. The 'great stories' of progress were based on the modern postulate that history is moving toward a positive end, as indicated by the emancipation of the various political movements. After Lyotard, others have tried to describe the features of the unfolding of postmodern society and the complexity of the postmodern condition. The contemporary world is still in the turmoil of the transition, unable to propose a new project. From the status quo into which modern history had fallen, the postmodern is still in a fluxus quo, in the process of deconstructing history, its determinateness and finality. The status quo of modernity, imbued with historical determinateness and finality,9 generated the various totalitarian ideologies and political tyrannies.
With the dissolution of history and its linear meaning, we entered into a society saturated with communication, in which the mass media play a decisive role. The uninterrupted flux of information seems to make society more complex, confused, chaotic and oscillating. Society seems now made to the measure of the mass media, history has disappeared: what remains is spectacle. We live in 'hyperreality',10 where everything is in excess of itself, piles of images that represent nothing but themselves, in which reality and truth have become irrelevant. The generalized communication and proliferation of images generates, by means of disorientation,11 a multicultural and pluralist world. An infinite number of other possibilities of existence become part of our daily experience, so that 'otherness' is realized before our own eyes. "To live in this pluralistic world means to experience freedom as continual oscillation between belonging and disorientation."12 According to Gianni Vattimo it is exactly from these characteristics of chaos and oscillation that the hope for a society finally human derives.13
Postmodern Arts
As has been mentioned above, architecture played a pivotal role in the affirmation of the postmodern mentality. The postmodern architects' harsh criticism of modern architecture set an intellectual trend which many exponents of other artistic, cultural and scientific disciplines would soon follow. Postmodern architects advocated not simply a change of direction, but "a refusal, a rapture, a renouncement" of modern architecture, whose "main article was precisely an annihilation of tradition, the obligatory renewal, the theology for the new, (...) the perpetual invention of and search for the new at all costs".14 Postmodern architects denounce the dogmas of functionalism, anti-traditionalism and technologism, which reduce Modern Architecture to being an accomplice of bureaucracy and totalitarianism. Thomas Oden15 has offered an illuminating scheme to summarize the characteristics of the transition from modern to postmodern architecture, as described by postmodern architects, especially Jencks. The scheme is basically applicable to other arts which have made the transition to the postmodern: Music, Painting, Literature, Theater, Photography, Film, Television, Dance, Fashion etc...16The scheme corresponds surprisingly to the transitions being experienced in other fields, including theology.
Modern Architecture Postmodern Architecture
Utopian popular
Idealist pluralist
Zeitgeist (spirit of the time) traditional
Purist eclectic
Anti-ornamental ornamental
Anti-representational representational
Anti-metaphor pro-metaphor
Anti-historical memory pro-historical memory
Anti-humor pro-humor
Anti-symbolic pro-symbolic
Postmodern arts, however, do not escape the decadent and nihilistic inclination of postmodernity. On a critical note, Fred Lawrence accuses postmodern artistic trends of having reached the reductio ad absurdum of Romantic expressionism. Postmodern art promotes "promiscuity in styles and codes, mixing parody, pastiche, irony, and playfulness, and insisting on the absence of depth and the paradoxical importance of superficiality."17
Postmodern Science
Even science, whose ultimate power to explain and solve all problems was one of the strongest beliefs and fundamental pillars of modernity, is under severe criticism. People realize that science cannot be the only language to describe reality. Life becomes meaningful and beautiful thanks to values, ideas, hopes and aims that go beyond the achievements of science. Moreover the postmoderns question whether science and technology are, instead of being the solution to every human problem, the principal danger to humanity. Scientific and technological development has been poisonous to humanity, generating a worsening of the quality of life, uncontrolled genetic engineering, weapons of mass destruction, resource imbalances and shortages, environmental damage that has reached the point of no return. A growing number of people and groups call for a return to nature and a rejection of modern science since the very possibility of a future on the planet has been endangered. Ever larger groups of naturalists repudiate the modernist project of employing science as the instrument for making human beings "the masters and possessors of nature" (Descartes). 18They accuse the scientists of practicing terrorism against defenseless nature, the experts and technologists of being the modern inquisitors of the authoritarian rule of science and technology.19 Ecology has become the 'ideology' of many postmoderns, who no longer dream about the future earth, the fruit of the progress, but rather lament the earth of the 'good old days,' when it was still uncontaminated by human manipulation. In the postmodern age, conservation is preferred to change, the green colour of nature is preferred to the red colour of revolution. If people in the sixties believed in a better future (see the New Frontier of Kennedy), people in the nineties believe that, thanks to the impending nuclear and ecological menaces, there might be no future at all. The science that should have liberated humanity created the means to destroy it, and the technology that should have humanized nature, devastated it.
One of the claims of postmodernist scientists is that modern Western scientific knowledge is culturally influenced, that is, it is not purely objective. The entire world picture described by modern physics, such as the view that time is linear or the belief that reality is purely physical, is a culturally specific way of looking at reality.20 Philosophers of science are now claiming that many indigenous knowledge systems, such as those of the Australian Yolngu Aborigines, the Yoruba of Nigeria or the Native American Blackfeet, include a genuine alternative scientific understanding of the world.21 This being the case, "science turns out to be a term as multifaceted and problematic as religion" affirms philosopher of science Margaret Wertheim.22
The quantum theory offers a radical new way of understanding the nature of reality, which according to its supporters, often baffles and bemuses mainstream modern scientists.23 Quantum physics challenges the materialistic vision of the world, formulating the theory that everything we perceive and experience is not pieces of matter but living energy, emitted in nonlinear waves or particles. Einstein called this non-continuous emission of energy packets quanta. According to the scientists who developed this theory, the nature of the quantum (particle-wave) is indeterminate, undefinable, and they postulated the phenomenon of the 'wave packet', wherein the subatomic particles are neither particles nor waves. The wave packet defies precise measurement, so that uncertainty and probability are the qualities of this deeper quantum level. The wave function can simultaneously offer several different possibilities, but when observation has been made, only one of these possibilities materializes. The perception of reality can be described as a set of relationships, so that the observer will always influence the process of observing and the object observed. In quantum theory there is no such thing as objective reality. On the contrary, the observer becomes not only part of the process, but he or she brings about what is being observed. We are in a participatory universe, and, according to some of the advocates of quantum theory (the so-called School of Copenhagen), we create our own reality, we are the masters of creation. Other quantum 'scientists' recently overcame the concept of humans as creators of the universe, which still postulates a dualism between observer and being observed, and expanded 'wholistic consciousness.' Everything is interpreted according to a complex model of giving and receiving, observing and being observed, so that the concept of relationship becomes central in the co-creative process of the universe, in which humans are not masters but participators.24 The modern scientific model of cause and effect and determinism is severely rebuffed by 'postmodern' quantum theory.
The Philosophy of Postmodernism
Some authors, like Hugh J. Silverman, Gregory B. Smith and F. F. Centore, think that postmodernism is not simply the refusal to accept modernist principles and perspectives; it is rather its straightforward extension,25 its extreme result, "the latest and most intense form of modern self-dissatisfaction",26 a distorted form of hyper-modernism.27 Other theoreticians define this time as 'late-modernity', or modernity which has come to reflect on itself.28 Among them Jesus Ballesteros, Robert Spaemann and Alejandro Llano especially distinguish the concepts of postmodernity from late-modernity.29 While the first term indicates a genuine epochal turn, the second refers to the attempt of powerful political and cultural centers to delay the death of the Enlightenment and of the subsequent ideologies. According to them (Ballesteros, Spaemann and Llano), thinkers like Rorty, Derrida, Deluze, Foucault, Vattimo, Borges, Habermas and Apel are not postmodern but rather late-modern. In the same line of thought, Gianfranco Morra notes that both modernity and postmodernity are atheist, and as a consequence he states that postmodernity is not a new era, not after-modernity, but rather modernity of the after, modernity in its dissolving and nihilistic phase.30
If the line of demarcation between modernism and postmodernism is not well defined for the theoreticians mentioned above, such a line is much clearer for other authors, like Todd Gitlin, who claims that "postmodernism is more than a buzzword or an esthetic (...). It is a way of seeing, a view of the human spirit and an attitude toward political as well as cultural possibilities."31 Thomas Oden salutes postmodernism as the liberator from oppressive modernism, which is the mother of all modern disasters and sufferings. The Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce, who anticipated the collapse of Marxism when it was still glorified by the mainstream culture, defines modernity as the age of 'catastrophe,' in its literal meaning of 'turning upside down.' The thesis that Del Noce calls the 'heterogenesis of the ends' (eterogenesi dei fini) states that the ends of modernity produced results which were the exact opposite of the original intentions.32 The totalitarian ideologies that aimed to liberate human beings from religions turned themselves into 'secular religions.' The evils and horrors that followed are there for everyone to see.
My assumption in this study is that postmodernism has brought the modernist philosophical hegemony to a close. Postmodernism reveals the outcome of the 'parable' of modernity. The modern emancipated adult reason, which was at once the agent and the aim of modernity, finds itself in a grave crisis.
Where modernism asserts centering, focusing and continuity, postmodernism is fragmented, de-centered, discontinuous, multiple, dispersed, without identity and unity.33 "Contemporary postmodernism is fundamentally a sign of disintegration, of transition, of waning faith in the modern ideas of Reason and Progress,"34 the heritage of the Enlightenment. The modern confidence about the subject's ability to dominate and change the world has vanished, and no other 'strong thoughts' seem to be available. This disintegration characterizes this age with irrationalism, anxiety and lost hope. Such a condition was powerfully anticipated by (pre post-?) modern authors when they described these as times of 'dis-aster' -without guiding stars- (Maurice Blanchot), 'the lands of sunset', from which 'gods have fled' (Martin Heidegger), where 'everything is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance' (Jean-Paul Sartre).35 This nihilistic stance provides an explanation of the attitude of indifference and avoidance. In the age of generalized communication, in the society of the mass media and fiction, the postmoderns live in a world of abstractions, where the concrete world withdraws and triviality reigns. Gianfranco Morra calls it the culture of the 'fourth man.'36 After the man of the Greek culture, the man of Christianity, the man of Modernity, the 'fourth man' is the man of consumerism, of the mass-media, of the esthetic. The fourth man does not reject religion, science and philosophy, but rather considers them linguistic games of knowledge without real consistency. Milan Kundera seems to have captured such a situation with the striking phrase 'the unbearable lightness of being', the title of his successful (postmodern?) novel.37
The postmodern respond to this 'condition' by adopting a defensive posture, an attitude of detachment, a nihilistic stance. The crisis of modern reason shows itself mainly in the shape of a 'collapse of meaning': whereas enlightened reason had clear and obvious solutions worked out within the context of an all-comprehensive and transparent meaning, postmodern thinking rediscovers the dark recalcitrance of life with respect to any ideal clarification. The outcome of modern reason's crisis is a farewell to security, a reinstatement of death, the abandoning of any basis, in order to voyage towards the unknown, towards nothingness, even finally liberation from the lure of a meaning.38
Three principal postmodern philosophers, Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty, develop their thought in the footsteps of their modern philosophical mentors: respectively Friedrick Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and John Dewey, whose thought leads directly to contemporary skepticism. Foucault, echoing Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God, declares the 'end of man', which follows the eclipse of man as a ground of thought. Derrida's deconstruction, in opposition to and overcoming structuralism, takes place since differance will never disappear wherever there 'is' something. In such a way the texts are liberated from any ontological foundation, from any concept of embodied meaning derived by western logocentrism. Deconstruction points toward that which philosophy is unable to say. Rorty's neo-pragmatism, elaborated around the concepts of contingency and irony, constitutes a postmodern development of Dewey's thought. 'Ironic' is the person who does not take anything too seriously, not even him/herself, since he or she is too conscious of the linguistic contingency of all affirmations.39
Postmodern thinkers, like their modern precursors, have rejected the modern reigning epistemological principle of the 'correspondence' between language and the world it represents. Consequently postmodern people have given up the search for universal and objective truth. "They are convinced that there is nothing more to find than a host of conflicting interpretations or an infinity of linguistically created worlds."40 The denial of the 'ontological' God as the extreme consequence of the rejection of the 'correspondence theory' was anticipated by Nietzsche: "Alas, I fear we still believe in God because we still believe in grammar."41 The Italian postmodern philosopher, Gianni Vattimo, proposes the adoption of a 'weak thought,' (pensiero debole) against all the unjustified and outdated pretences of the 'strong thoughts.'42 'Weak thought,' which I would call the 'philosophical heart of postmodernism' taking over from the failure of enlightened identity, seems to result in an utter collapse, in a permanent fall into the void. A weak thought can be defined as the position that one holds valid as long as it is useful here and now. Such a position might not be good for another person, it might not be good for tomorrow. The postmodernists deliver no message, bear no truth, bring no revelation, and do not speak for those who remain in silence. While modern ideologies were revolutionary, weak thought represents something that is not worth fighting for, since it is not valid for others, not something that one wants or should impose on others. We have entered into the age of the 'ontology of decline,' as another Italian philosopher, Pier Angelo Rovatti, put it. This decline is best described in the successful 'postmodern' novel of Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose: "the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make the truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from the insane passion for the truth."43 Eco here gives what is possibly the best description of the 'ironic individual' of Richard Rorty.
Postmodernity as the Post-ideological Era
According to Arnold Toynbee, postmodernity is the fourth and last phase of Western history: postmodernity is the name given to the epoch that succeeded modernity. As mentioned above, postmodernity overcomes the status quo into which modernity has fallen: if modernity means what is happening now, then it will be modern until the end of time. Francis Fukuyama reaches the epitome of the thesis that there is nothing beyond modernity with his theory of the 'End of History'.44 With the collapse of Marxist communism, liberal capitalism has achieved a global victory, signaling nothing less than the end of history. But postmodern thinkers refuse to take modernity as the final expression of history, as the ultimate, irreversible, untranscendable stage of historical progress.45 They reject the notion that we have arrived at the inevitable end of history. But they also reject, especially with Lyotard, the 'metanarratives,' the dogma that states that history is linear, unitary and progresses toward its destined end.46
If postmodernism was born in St Louis on July 15th 1972, postmodernity was born 17 years later, in Berlin, on November 9, 1989. The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the collapse of the last ideology still dominating Europe. This date signaled the end of the 'short century', which started with the First World War (1914). Postmodernity means very much post-Marxism, as the book of the (post-) Marxist sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (1992), is meant to demonstrate. The collapse of communism in 1989 is actually the end of modernity "because what collapsed was the most decisive attempt to make modernity work; and it failed. It failed as blatantly as the attempt was blatant."47 The crisis of ideologies was the inevitable consequence of the crisis of modern reason. The 'short century' witnessed both the triumph and the collapse of the political ideologies, in 1945 the demise of the Right, in 1989 that of the Left.
The post-ideological outcome of postmodernity highlights the rejection of the Hegelian program of totality and the Marxist ideological attempt to reduce reality to Hegelian idealism, suppressing contradictions and difference as the residue of negativiness. The crisis of modern ideologies is rooted exactly in the presumption of the absoluteness of the will to power of the subjects who endowed themselves with the historical mission of synthesizing the ideal and the real: emancipated reason, emancipated ideology, emancipated party and state. The program of forcing the ideal to be real inevitably ended up in the violent totalitarianism of a party which claimed to combine in itself society, the state and knowledge. The ideological pre-comprehension of the real in the name of the programmed ideal produced new totalities, which we have already described above as 'secular religions.' They proved to be extremely costly, in human as well as in social and ecological terms.
1. Bauman, Z. (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge, p. vii.
2. Tosolini, T. (1998) Postmodernity and Mission, offprint of a lecture given by the author in Arriccia (Rome), p. 1.
3. Mucci, G. (1997) Il Postmoderno e la Compagnia della Cultura Cristiana. La Civilta Cattolica II, p. 236.
4. Appignanesi, R. and Garatt, C. (1995) Postmodernism for Beginners. Cambridge: Icon Books, p. 3.
5. Jenks, C. (1984) The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. London: Academy Editions, p. 9.
6. Grenz, S. J. (1996) A Primer on Postmodernism. Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge U. K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, p. 11.
7. Oden, T. C. (1990) Agenda for Theology. After Modernity...What? Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, p. 76.
8. Lyotard, J. F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
9. Tracy, D. (1994) On Naming the Present. God, Hermeneutics and Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, pp. 14-15.
10. Baudrillard, J. (1988) Simulacra and Simulation. In M. Poster (ed.), Selected Writings. Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 170.
11. Vattimo, G. (1992) The Transparent Society. Trans. David Webb. Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 8.
12. Ibid., p. 10.
13. Ibid., pp. 4-11.
14. Portoghesi, P. (1982) After Modern Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, p. 7.
15. Oden. Agenda for Theology, p. 73.
16. Silverman, H. J. (1990) Postmodernism - Philosophy and the Arts. New York and London: Routledge.
17. Lawrence, F. (1993) The Fragility of Consciousness: Lonergan and the Postmodern Concern for the Other. Theological Studies 54, p. 55.
18. Ibid., pp. 57-58.
19. Messori, V. (1992) Pensare La Storia. Milano: Edizioni Paoline, p. 396. Mucci, G. (1997) L'Assenza di Dio nel Postmoderno. La Civilta Cattolica XI, pp. 544-545.
20. Wertheim, M. (1999) The Odd Couple. The Sciences, March/April, p. 42.
21. Ibid. p. 43.
22. Ibid.
23. 'O Murchu, D. (1998) Qantum Theology. Spiritual Implication of the New Physics. New York: Crossroad, p. 27.
24. For this presentation of quantum theory I referred to ibid., pp. 27-36 and Wentzel Van Huyssteen, J. (1998) Duet or Duel, Theology and Science in a Postmodern World. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinitarian Press International, pp. 58-68.
25. Smith, G. B. (1996) Nietzche, Heidegger, and the Transition to Postmodernity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 6.
26. Ibid. p. 8.
27. Centore, F. F. (1991) Being and Becoming, A Critique of Post-Modernism. New York / Westport, Connecticut / London: Greenwood Press, p. xii.
28. Junker-Kenny, M. (1999) Church, Modernity and Postmodernity. Concilium 1, pp. 94-95.
29. Mucci, G. (1997) La Postmodernita Buona. La Civilta Cattolica I, pp. 435-443.
30. Morra, G. (1994) Dio nella Filosofia Post-moderna. Studi Cattolici 38, pp. 620-626.
31. Gitlin, T. (1988) Hip-Deep in Post-modernism (Book Review). New York Times November 6. Quoted by Silverman, H. J. The Philosophy of Postmodernism. In Silverman, Postmodernism - Philosophy and the Arts, p. 8.
32. Del Noce, A. (1978) Il Suicidio della Rivoluzione. Milano: Jaca Book. Quoted by Messori, Pensare La Storia, pp. 661-671.
33. Silverman, The Philosophy of Postmodernism, p. 5.
34. Smith, Nietzche, Heidegger, and the Transition to Postmodernity, p. 8.
35. See Tosolini, Postmodernity and Mission, p. 19.
36. Morra, G. (1996) Il Quarto Uomo. Postmodernita o Crisi della Modernita? Roma: Armando, pp. 11-23.
37. Ibid. p. 10.
38. Forte, B. (1997) Speaking of God in Post-modern Europe. Religion and Culture 2, pp. 210-211.
39. Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
40. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, p. 163.
41. Quoted by MacKenna, J. (1997) Derrida, Death, and Forgiveness. First Things 71, p. 34.
42. Vattimo, G. (1983) Il Pensiero Debole. Milano: Feltrinelli.
43. Eco, U. (1984) The Name of the Rose. Trans. W. Weaver. Picador, p. 491.
44. Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Basic Books.
45. Oden, Agenda for Theology after Modernity, p. 76.
46. Vattimo, G. (1988) The End of Modernity. Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture. Trans. John R. Snyder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 7-13.
47. Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity, p. 222. See also Blanquart, P. (1992) 'Post-Marxism and Post-Modernity': What is the Church's Presence? Concilium. 6, pp. 115-123.
SECOND PART Postmodernism and Christianity
Long-standing Catholic Criticism of Modernity
Catholicism and Reformed Christianity had a very different relationship with modernity. Protestantism, in a very important sense, maintained close ties with modernity. The Reformation and the modern age were born about the same time from the same intellectual premises, for example, the anti-traditional and anti-authority attitude which favoured the primacy of subjectivity. Hegel affirmed that Protestant Christianity is the religion of modernity because it is also the religion of freedom.48 Modernity and Evangelism, although not always in agreement (as in the cases of Pietism, of Karl Barth's criticism of Liberal Theology, and of evangelical opposition to secularism), were partners and friends in the shaping of the modern world. Liberal Theology and the demythologization of Rudolf Bultmann are examples of theological expressions of modernism.
If Reformed Christianity was considered capable of integration into the modern world, Catholicism was, on the contrary, often reviled as anti-modern and reactionary. According to a model often called 'intransigent Catholicism', the Catholic Church is generally believed to have condemned and rejected modernity, at least until Vatican Council II.49
I would just mention three major clashes of the Catholic Church with modernity: the Galileo Galilei case (1615-1640), the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (1864) and the fierce anti-modernist campaign of Pius X (1901-1914). An attentive study of the three cases will reveal that some of the pronouncements of Catholic authorities correspond closely to the post-modern critique of modernism I summarily illustrated above.
Although Church theologians erred in their formal condemnation of Galileo's scientific opinions (a condemnation that was merely temporary - donec corrigatur - until it is corrected), they were right to refuse to turn a mere hypothesis into a fact to be accepted uncritically, even at the cost of rejecting the then common interpretation of the Scriptures. The famous sentence about the meaning of the Bible, which is about how to go to Heaven and not about how heaven goes, comes not from Galileo, but from Cardinal Baronio. What Galileo was asked by remarkable scholars like Bellarmine and Baronio was, in the first instance, not to renounce his theories, but simply to hold them as hypotheses, since in those days they could not be considered otherwise. It well known, in fact, that the only evidence that Galileo was able to produce (the cause of the tides) was wrong, while his opponents were right. Galileo tried also to impose a vision of nature based on mathematical principles, so that the inner workings of nature can be expressed only in mathematical language. Anything which was not to be expressed mathematically was considered secondary, subjective or non-existent. This approach, which can be considered the origin of modern scientific arrogance, is, in fact, the denial of the possibility of natural philosophy and theology.
Pius IX effectively denounced the totalitarism of the 'order of reason' in the Syllabus, possibly the earliest and most fully articulated anti-modern document. Among the modern errors he included the assertion that "human reason is the principal norm by which man can and must attain knowledge of all truths of any kind whatsoever" (No. 4). In propositions No. 28-38 Pius IX denounces the totalitarianism of the state, considered by modernists as the origin and font of all rights (No. 39), to which the Church should submit herself and give up her legitimate rights. Among the rights the state reserves for itself are: to give permission to bishops to promulgate apostolic letters (No. 28); the establishment of national Churches independent of the Roman Pontiff (No. 37); to fix the method of studies used in seminaries (No. 46); to prevent bishops and faithful from communicating with the Pope (No. 49); to present, install and depose bishops (No. 50-51); to permit admission to solemn religious vows (No. 52). One cannot but notice that contemporary 'modern' totalitarianisms are imposing the same arbitrary restrictions on the Church.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries modernism developed within the Catholic Church, prompting a forceful reaction from Pius X, who called modernism 'the synthesis of all heresies' in two documents issued in 1907 (Lamentabili and Pascendi). Influenced by Kantianism, which advocated the subjective nature of natural knowledge and the unknowableness of God by natural reason, the modernists considered religion a matter of 'feelings', of personal and collective experience, a 'motion of the heart' not expressible intellectually. As a consequence some extreme modernists denied revelation in favor of immanentism, the authority of the magisterium of the Church and the divinity of Jesus. They also reduced Scripture to literature and the Church to a sociological institution undermining the credibility of the Christian faith as supported by historical documentation and miracles.
The three major episodes of anti-modernist polemics, which show that time proves that going against the current is not necessarily a sign that one is reactionary or obtuse, can be considered an anticipation of the collapse of modern thought. Defenders of the Catholic Church do not, however, rejoice at the intellectual victory over modernism. No one has any illusions that the postmodern condition will necessarily bring success to Catholicism.
Post-Modernity and Post-Christianity
The present religious situation in Europe and North America is often described as secular, where many people no longer believe, and therefore are defined as post-Christians.50 Post-Christianity is an expression to describe a 'secular' status in which Christianity is losing its central role in shaping the lives of the people. Although the majority is baptized, only a minority retains meaningful ties with the traditional Churches. Most people live their lives independently of the Christian faith and the teachings of the Churches they (used to) belong to. The churches have become extraneous to them. Someone has noticed a 'submerged schism', particularly within the Catholic Church: a significant number among those still practicing, silently (or in a few cases openly), distance themselves from doctrines and moral obligations required by the ecclesiastical authorities. The estrangement of Christian faith from the world is the outcome of modern positivism, which reduced religion to the degraded sphere of the emotions and feelings. Religion was considered by modern critical reason pre-, extra-, or anti-scientific, something unworthy of the emancipated and adult subject. The only admissible authorities were those of science and of the avant-guard party, the necessary instrument that would transform the (ideological) ideal into (political) reality. In the modern era religions and churches have become superfluous.
The post-Christian situation is however a not an unfamiliar one for the Church. Throughout the two thousand years of its existence, the Church has often experienced the dolorous passage of peoples and nations from the Christian faith to other beliefs. Christian communities founded by Paul himself, some of the Churches of the Fathers or great saints like Augustine, have almost disappeared. Syria was the first and a glorious Christian nation, which sent missionaries to the entire East and as far as China, but the number of Christians has been drastically reduced there. The diminishing of Christianity in one place does not mean a crisis of Christianity as such. In fact, history shows that when Christianity was losing somewhere, it was gaining elsewhere. This is very much in evidence today as well.
The significance of the departure of Western people from the traditional Christian denominations should not, however, be overestimated. These Churches show signs of crisis, but are far from near total collapse. In several cases they are holding their ground, if not advancing.51 Powerful evidence can be found in the Catholic Church. Never in history has a Pope attracted such worldwide attention and respect, or drawn such vast crowds of people from various nations, races, languages, cultures, and even religious beliefs as the present Pope John Paul II. Never has a Pope exercised such an indirect but profound influence on the unfolding of secular events. From being a victim of political pressure and even oppression in past centuries the Pope has, in the last few decades, acquired probably the highest moral and independent authority on the planet.
The postmodern condition is not, by any means, a post-religious age. Quite the contrary, postmodernity is witnessing the resurgence of the religious sense, which was thought to be dead along with the proclamation of the death of God. In the sixties, radical theologians such as William Hamilton, Thomas J. Altizer and Harvey Cox had developed the theology of the 'death of God' and of the 'secular city.' These theologians were prophesying the 'eclipse of the sacred' following the lead of the Marxists. But the decline of religion did not come about. On the contrary, while Marxism is dead, there is a growing expansion of religious practice. But the religious revival is not necessarily a Christian revival or even the return of God within the human horizon. The powerful spread of the religious spirit can be classified under various categories: 1. Neo-fundamentalist Christianity; 2. Neo-Orientalism; 3. Various forms of human potential movements and forms of trans-personal psychology influenced by both Oriental and Christian fundamentalist religious thought. In such a context the New Age movement has a special influence and relevance. The New Age movement can be considered the religious expression of Postmodernity. I will dedicate another study to this theme.
Postmodern Theological Challenges
The debate on modernity and post-modernity that is characterizing the end of this century has an immediate relevance to the fate of Christianity in the contemporary world. In fact, the debate is not only sociological, philosophical or historical: it has become a theological one. The fragmentation of postmodernism has been experienced through the fragmentation of the 'religious' science of theology. In the last three decades, starting from the Second Vatican Council in the case of the Catholic Church, much of the theological development seems to lack a common ground. The significance of theology as comprehensive discourse on the faith of the Church, once guaranteed by the uniformity of the neo-thomist treatises, has been lost. We have witnessed instead the bringing forth of a large number of theologies of the 'of' type', of the particular, of the fragment. For instance, the theology of Secularism, of Religions, of Liberation, of Inculturation, of Interreligious Dialogue, of Feminism, of the Environment, of Ecology, of Creation, etc...
Perusing the immense output of contemporary theologians, one is puzzled by the method and the research object of some of them. It seems, in fact, that much of this enterprise is not properly theo-logy (discourse on God) any longer, but rather an exaltation of modern or postmodern themes, to which theological discourse should readily adapt itself. What really matters to a number of contemporary theologians is not faithfulness to the sources and nature of theological discourse, but rather the reinterpretation of postmodern phenomena in a somewhat vague religious mode. The variegated and scattered status of theological research might hint at the existence of a post-modern condition in Christianity. The conflict between a number of (postmodern?) theologians and the ecclesiastical authorities might give a glimpse of the complexity and disunity of the postmodern (post-Christian?) condition of the Church.
A very recent example of what I am referring to here is the work of Diarmuid , Quantum Theology, in which the quantum theory of physics is exalted as one of the most ingenious scientific discoveries of our times. Fr. elevates this theory into a 'theological norm' and emphatically declares that theology has no choice but to submit to it. The resemblance of 'theological invitation' to the New Age religious program is quite startling: "Bring all the reserves you can of imagination, intuition, creativity, and your capacity to marvel. And please bring along your wild (wo)man, your deep feminine part, your hurt child, your wounded parent, and, above all your flamboyant artist."52 The 'theological implications' illustrated by , which are as old as Gnosticism, would need to be analyzed in a separate study devoted to New Age and Christianity. Here I anticipate just few of them:53
-God and the divine (terms used indifferently and sparingly because these are just human constructs) are described as creative energy.
-In the divine-human unfolding of co-creation, light and shadow always intermingle. Quantum theology seeks to outgrow all dualisms, especially that of good against evil.
-Each religion is a particular crystallization of divine revelation. Revelation is ongoing process that cannot be subsumed under any religion.
-The doctrine of the Trinity is a human attempt to describe God's fundamental relational nature.
-Sin is a destructive collusion between people and systems. The major sin of our time is specieism, the assumption that humans are the ultimate form of life under God and are entitled to lord it over the rest of creation.
-We live in a world without beginning and end. Our dead ones are all around us, living within a different plane of existence.
-Resurrection/reincarnation are not facts, but mental/spiritual constructs.
-Theology no longer belongs to Christianity; it has become an agent for global transformation.
If 'O Murchu can be described as a post-modern post-Christian New Age type of theologian, there are 'conservative' theologians who see in postmodernism a chance to reinstate evangelical orthodoxy. Thomas Oden salutes with enthusiasm postmodernity as a liberator from deceptive modernity, mother of all evils, including liberal theology. According to Oden evangelical orthodoxy is finally vindicated by postmodernism as the only way forward. His proposed postmodern orthodoxy is contiguous to the countercultural resistance to modernity expressed by Reformation orthodoxy, the Counter Reformation and Pietism. He accuses the postmodern philosophers who do not even take into consideration his proposal (postmodernism = pre-modern orthodoxy) to be, in fact, 'ultra-modernist', guilty of the same arrogance as modernity.54
Mark C. Taylor, who is a philosopher, professor of religion and humanities and theologian, attempted a Postmodern A/theology, as he calls it.55 Taylor elaborates the theological implications of the principal philosophical tenets of postmodernism: the Death of God, the Disappearance of the Self, the End of History, the crisis of the authority of the Bible (the Closure of the Book).56 But he especially tried to develop a decontructive theology based on Derrida's literary critical theory of deconstruction. Taylor exposes the faults of the totalizing structures of truth of modern philosophical projects, and explores their remains. From this perspective of 'otherness' offered by the deconstructing mode, Taylor reconsiders errant notions. In a subsequent article, The End(s) of Theology57 Taylor takes issue with the development of theology in the 20th century, which has been wavering between divine transcendence, carried to extremes, according to Taylor, by Karl Barth and divine immanence, carried to extremes by Thomas Altizer. In response to this dilemma Taylor again proposes a deconstructing mode which keeps "open to a difference we cannot control and another we can never master."58 Such a mode can be thought of if there is a 'nondialectical third that lies between the dialectic of either/or and both/and' transcendence and immanence. "Might this third be neither transcendent nor immanent? Does this neither/nor open the time-space of a different difference and another other - a difference and an other that not merely invert but actually subvert the polarities of Western philosophical and theological reaction."59 One notices here how Derrida's deconstruction program has acquired a theological dignity.
Other theologians perceive postmodernism as an opportunity to renovate the preaching of the gospel, and to reaffirm the apologetic function of theology. Among them, Stanley Grenz has a quite optimistic approach to postmodernism, which is perceived as an opportunity to Christians to present the gospel in a post-individualistic, post-rationalistic, post-dualistic and post-neoticentric fashion. Consequently Grenz advocates a preaching of the gospel communitarianism, the intellectual dimension of human experience, the holistic vision of the human being in relation, and the attainment of inner wisdom.60
Paul Lakeland investigates how to reaffirm Christian identity in the fragmented age of Postmodernity. Taking up three key philosophical issues of postmodern thought; subjectivity, relativism and otherness, Lakeland examines how to speak of God, church and Christ in such a context. He resumes the apologetic discourse as the way in which theological tradition and the postmodern world should meet. The initiative for this meeting lies in the Church's irrenounceable mission. The language to be used should be that of the postmodern world, such as the concepts of otherness and difference, which the Church should therefore assume in its evangelization of the 'postmodern'.
Lesslie Newbigin, who is, together with David Bosch, the most important Protestant missiologist, is the first of a series of theologians who look on postmodernism not with contempt, but certainly with apprehension. Newbigin is concerned with the collapse of divine authority in the postmodern vacuum and proposes, as a response, all four aspects of authority: the Bible, tradition, reason and experience.61 The four must be kept together if one wishes to avoid the kind of abusive authority that postmodern thought rejects. Experience alone, without the discernment of the other three, can validate any religious behavior. Reason when considered autonomous excludes diversity and wholeness and becomes a tyranny as modern reason has proved. Tradition must be rooted in Scripture if it does not want to wander away, while Scripture must be read into the living experience of the Body of Christ led by the Holy Spirit, otherwise it will become a dead and oppressive letter.62
The problem of the authority of the Bible as the Word of God in a postmodern age is also a theme debated by Terence Fretheim and Karlfried Froehlich.63 Fretheim notices that in the postmodern context the authority of the Bible suffers along with the crisis of authority of the culture, the churches and the academy. At the end of a lengthy piece of reasoning Fretheim affirms that in the postmodern context the Church cannot demonstrate the authority of the Bible, but can call people to enter into living communities where the Word of God is thought and lived. Only then, affirms Fretheim, will the Bible be seen as having an authority worthy of our attention. In his response Froehlich defends the Bible as the Word of God, questioning the legitimacy of the postmodern hermeneutic attack on the authority of the Bible. Froehlich concedes that the Bible might have became an embarrassment for the postmoderns, so that they would prefer to emigrate into women-church, New Age communities and other hosts who promise more access to the Spirit who is obscured in the Book. But for his part, Froehlich would still consider it a privilege to struggle with the instrument that God has chosen to initiate an eternal dialogue for our benefit.
A serious dialogue with postmodernism, without any ingenuous submissions or prejudicial rejection, is offered in the theological reasoning of David Tracy. According to Tracy, Christian theology in the postmodern era is challenged to take seriously the category of 'present', definable as interruptive eschatological time before the living God.64 The message of the gospel is not modern, anti-modern or post-modern, but rather the healing and transformative message of justice and liberation for historical subjects living in the concrete present. The postmodern era is the time in which Christian theology must listen to the voices of the 'others.' Otherness and difference are two features of the postmodern condition, and are two challenges both promising and threatening the growth of Christian theology. The promise resides in the necessity of having progressive theologies which meet the challenges of the pluralistic world. The threat is that the postmodern Christian generation might sever itself from the resources of tradition, from their identity and from the incarnational and sacramental forms of Christian life. Tracy also invites the Church to reevaluate a mystical and apophatic approach as a suitable one to understand and present Christianity in the postmodern age.65
Mark Kline Taylor, a Liberation theologian in dialogue with North American cultural challenges, identifies three major traits in postmodern thought, from which he delineates a theological trilemma. Acknowledgment of one's own tradition, celebrations of plurality, and resistance to domination are three elements which must stay together in postmodern theologizing. Tradition alone might turn into traditionalism; plurality alone might turn into nihilism; resistance to dominance alone might fail to actualize, or turn into another domination.66 One notes that this approach is similar, although independently developed, to that of Newbigin described above.
Jonathan Wilson67 argues that fragmentation is the distinctive characteristic of postmodernism and a difficult challenge to the Church and her mission. In fact, the postmodern forces are so radical that the Church herself runs the risk of being changed. Together with John Hall,68 Wilbert Shenk69 and Alan Roxburgh,70 Wilson calls for a new monasticism, as a time of dis-engagement and re-forming. The purpose is not an exit from the world but an authentic re-engagement. The unification of the 'daily common life' principle and monastic element is the proposal of Pierangelo Sequeri for a spirituality in the postmodern age.71 Sequeri suggests that monasticism should overcome the gnostic temptation of separation from the world, while the Christian 'daily common life' should be one of evangelical radicalism. Frankly, I find the proposal of Sequeri, illustrated after a long and difficult elaboration, quite disappointing. I wonder when was Christian monasticism polluted with gnosticism, did Sequeri ever hear of the 'ora et labora' of Benedict? Is the vocation to evangelical radicalism in the daily life of non-consecrated Christians a discovery of our age?
Jack A. Bonsor asserts that the postmodern perspective can help towards stressing the historical character of Christian truth.72 According to Bonsor, who developed his reasoning from the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the postmodern point of view helps theologians to make a more modest claim about how much we know. It also reminds us "that the divine Word spoken into history remains a mystery, a mystery only history can disclose."73 The long and exacting study of Bonsor is meant to respond to Thomas Guarino (see below) and to the 1989 document of the International Theological Commission On the Interpretation of Dogmas.
Tiziano Tosolini analyzes the challenges of postmodernism from a missiological point of view.74 The 'nomadic' nature of postmodernism "allows the world to speak for itself, to give voice to specific demands, to liberate diversity, singularity and multiplicity"75 against the presumption of the grand theories. The postmodern context gives the church the framework to meet the other in his/her otherness and uniqueness. Quoting St. Paul (1 Cor 9:19-27) Tosolini proposes the "evangelization of the fragment": "it is by sharing the 'nomadic' journey without certanties and reassurance, without preconceived answers and ready-made solutions, that we come to appreciate unexpected solidarities and gratuitous expressions of love."76 But, reaffirms Tosolini, the Word of God, which is essentially love, is not dispelled in the fragment, the Word retains its capacity for judgment, criticism and liberation.
Fred Lawrence, in a long and exacting study, finds that the thought of Bernard Lonergan shares many of the deepest concerns of postmodernism.77 Lawrence claims that the radical decentering of the modern subject carried out by postmodern philosophers has to be taken seriously by Christian theology. These deconstructivist strategies offer to Christianity an opportunity to display concern, respect and love for the 'other:' the other of nature, of fellow human beings, and of God. Similar views are expressed by Maureen Junker-Kenny, who re-interprets the notions of 'difference' (Derrida) and 'alterity' (Lyotard) in the light of the paradoxical message of the gospel.78
David Bosch, the author of the 'summa missiologica' Transforming Mission, illustrates his concerns with mission in the postmodern context in two of his writings: chapter 10 (The Emergence of a Postmodern Paradigm) of Transforming Mission79 and Believing in The Future.80 Postmodernity is a time of crisis, without sense of past or future and is not interested in the classic grand ideologies. The programmed society is run under the direction of teams of technocrats. Various forms of Christianity ambiguously cohabit with such a context, often camouflaged under harmless forms of civil religion, in which the moral imperative is overridden by relativism and indiscriminateness.81
A severe criticism of postmodernism has also been launched by J. Buttom. According to him postmodernism is still in line with modernism, "as rebellion against rebellion is still rebellion, as an attack on the constraint of grammar must still be written in grammatical sentences, as a skeptical argument against the structures of rationality must still be put rationally."82 Moreover, the postmodern critique of modernity tends to reject rationality instead of surpassing it. Christians, however, should not come to the help of a modernity that is bankrupt and which despises them anyway. Buttom sees in the postmodern theoretical deconstruction of modern anti-Christian assumptions a vindication of the rightness of Christian thought, although Christian postmodern views come to radically different conclusions. The postmodern critique has reopened the debate on several basic questions. For instance, the very possibility of knowledge without God and the question of truth that rests on a faith that has itself been the object of attack in modern times. Postmodernism reopens also the problem that, when God is denied, what remains is the will of power and consequently that "every attempt to call something true or beautiful or good is actually an attempt to compel other people to agree."83 Thomas Guarino also rejects the idea that postmodernism, with its emphasis on the historicity of knowledge, can in any way serve Christian theology, which is based on foundational points offered by revelation. Postmodern hermeneutical theories are therefore inconsistent with Christianity's truth claim.84
Gustavo Gutierez is quite plain in denouncing the progressivist theologies of the postmodernity. The points of departure of Liberation Theology and postmodernism are not the same; they are, in fact, contradictory. The postmodern world is not the real world of the suffering and oppression of the poor, from which the Theology of Liberation moves. "To speak of 'the postmodern world' is a superficial response and of little help."85
Very critical is the approach of the Italian theologian Bruno Forte. He harbors no illusions about postmodernism, and proves to be as critical of postmodernity as he is of modernity. According to Forte, the loss of meaning, which stems from the crisis of the totalizing answers of modem reason, is carried forward in postmodern thought on waves of refusal and increasingly becomes a loss of the desire even to put the question of meaning. What is in dispute is not so much the answer as the very legitimacy of the questioning. Indifference or disinterest in even asking about meaning, rather than the actual lack of a meaning, seems to be the 'mortal illness' that pervades Western societies at the end of this millennium.
Forte declares that "when a strong, ideological foundation, all-inclusive and reassuring, collapses and gives way to a complete absence of critical foundations, the result is no less vast and total. (...) The future once again loses its obscurity: it will be a continuation of the present, a perpetuation of weakness, a free fall simply prolonged. 'Weak thought' deduces the future from the present in an equally totalitarian way as 'strong thought' identifies real history and the ideal world. It is incapable of any wonder or of any receptiveness to the new, and insofar as it remains incapable of these, manifests the same totalizing presumption as ideological reason."86
Forte affirms that the new and non-deducible traits of the future call, then, for a different kind of thinking, one which is able to leave behind the prisons of ideology, but is also alert enough not to fall into the trap of its own nihilist reversal. To open oneself up to such a way of thinking involves relying on the very newness of the future. Theological thought - in so far as it assumes a reason open precisely to things both last ('eschata') and new ('novissima') and is rooted in the 'memoria futuri', grounded in the promise of God's revelation - could present itself with a surprising actuality and could exercise a strong critical reserve in relation to the crisis of modernity and its nihilist results. The crisis of modem reason and the weakness of post-modem 'decadence' challenge theology to think of a God who is beyond all closed horizons of completeness as the only possible alternative to the triumph of nothingness. God beyond God, or - more precisely - God beyond the God ideologically captured and beyond the negative God of nihilism.87
Theology as a 'new thinking,' open to the non-programmed and non-deducible newness of the future is the thought that can break the impasse of critical reason. The question of the future gives new vigor to all aspects of theological investigation and invites it to tackle what overcomes both strong and weak reason. Karl Barth, continues Forte, must be credited with having rediscovered the eschatological content of Christian faith in all its objectivity: against the presumptions of liberal theology. The ultimate source of the absolute primacy of the eschatological element - against the totalizing presumptions of ideological reason - lies in the transcendent God, in his being the living God, not reducible to the limits of the investigating human subject. Christianity is completely and in every dimension eschatological, insofar as it has to do in every way with the ungraspable sovereignty of the God of revelation, who communicates himself to humankind under the form of promise and of hope. God's self-communication breaks the closed horizon of idealistic totality as well as of every possible triumphant nothingness. God is the wholly Other, standing over against the human subject and not reducible to it. Ideological reason captures the divine within its own limits. Theological thought keeps the mind and the heart open to listen to the Word of the living God.88
So the present time is marked by the dialectical tension between the "already" revealed, and the "not yet" accomplished, of God's work in history. Therefore, the meaning which theology offers is neither a tranquillizing certitude nor an illusory possession, but challenge and trust, struggle and contemplation, watchfulness and hope. To think of God between critical reason and the crisis of reason means to exercise a kind of 'docta spes,' a new thought open through continuous self-transcendence to God's eschatological self-communication.89
Postmodern and the Everlasting Good News of the Gospel
I have analyzed above a range of theological reactions to postmodernism. From a total submission of theology to the 'postmodern-new age' scientific theory of 'O Murchu to a rejection of post-modernity by Forte who, in the name of the irreducibly eschatological reserve, accuses postmodernism of being as ideological as modernism since it (postmodernism) deduces the (impossibility of) the future from the (nothingness of) the present. 'O Murchu' s redundant enthusiasm for the 'scientific discoveries' of quantum physics reminds us a little of Galileo's case, when a scientific hypothesis was assumed to be an obvious fact to which biblical hermeneutics and theology had to pay devout respect. Even more startling, and frankly upsetting, is the total disregard for 'theological method', for the specific statute of theological discourse. 'O Murchu's theology has nothing to do with the sources of any Christian theology, the faith of the people of God as witnessed in the Bible and Tradition. Theology is not a participation in the mission of the community of Christ, but rather an exploratory journey into the vast postmodern lands of the New Age. What matters is not loyalty to the Christian faith received in the Church while struggling to make it intelligible (and not necessarily acceptable) to our fellow women and men, which I still believe is the only reason why one should bother to do theology, but rather to dissolve exhaustively any Christian intimations into the eternal flux of energies.
While I agree with Forte's exacting and dense theological critique of postmodernism in the name of the future of God, I would also dare to assume the hypothesis that postmodernism is not only hyper-modernism, but an epochal turn with challenges and opportunities. Strong thoughts that seemed to have conquered the masses of the world have indeed been finally wiped away. Postmodernity, declaring the end of ideological certainties, is looking for new directions. Theology is called to renew the effort to meet the quest for new directions. The climate seems favorable for speaking about God without defensiveness and self-consciousness, and for escaping the modern dogma that politics is the fundamental category to which religion has to submit.90 Postmodernism seems to allow more cultural room for Christianity than the rationalistic tyranny of modernism. "Postmodernism unmasks problems that modernism tried to hide, but postmodernism can by no mean solve them."91 We should try to approach postmodernism without ingenuousness and submissive devotion, always keeping in mind that the task of theology is not to satisfy the spirit of the times, but rather the ever-challenging apologetic effort to make faith understandable. The mission of theology is to be missionary theology. If postmodern relativism and nihilism are unacceptable by Christian theology, still the questions raised need to be engaged. Christian theology should explore a path that "takes relativity seriously, without being relativistic; and takes the absurdity and apparently random and chaotic dimensions of our world experience fully seriously without capitulating to nihilism in any form."92 In fact, in a time of distrust of human rationality, Christian theology is called to reaffirm the positive capability of human thought to contrast irrationality and nihilism. Christian thought does not condemn human rationality (as postmodernism does), but rather the pretension of (modern) rationality, which arrogated the right to be the only foundation of knowledge and value, becoming then omnipervasive and totalitarian.
A path on which Christian theologians might be willing to venture is to rethink the category of Christian faith as a mystery. In modern times theology has spent much energy on the task of defending and demonstrating the credibility of the Christian faith to a culture that glorifies reason and science. Therefore theology has often privileged the intellectual approach and rational argumentation to appeal to the reasonableness of Christian tenets in order to answer modern challenges. The excessive emphasis on the 'ontological' idea of God led to Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God. The postmodern context calls Christian theology to go beyond a rationalistic presentation of Christian doctrine. The understanding of Christian faith as mystery might become a category of dialogue with postmodern thought.
While Christian tradition has always attested to the doctrine of the incomprehensible God who comes to us as a mystery, in the context of modern challenges there was the danger of regarding the mystery of God as something that can be understood through the objective doctrine taught by the Church; there was the tendency to subject God to systematization. But reason does not have all the answers. Rason itself wants to remain reasonable, acknowledges its limits, and opens itself to the transcendent dimension. The effort that is required here is the same for any person in the world, no matter where or when he or she lives: to investigate the mystery by using reason, and to accept a mystery that goes beyond the capacity of human understanding and explanation. Mystery is a complex concept. It must be perceived not simply as something profound and difficult, but also as a fascinating religious experience that leads into a new dimension of living: a life of faith. The perception of mystery both attracts the person to the religious sense of life and transcends his or her terrestrial horizons.
Theology in the postmodern age can assume the characteristics already mentioned by Oden: popular, pluralist, traditional, eclectic, spiritual, ornamental, representational, pro-metaphor, pro-historical memory, pro-symbolic. A presentation of Christian faith as mystery can meet the quest for values and meanings beyond the critical reason and strong ideologies. Postmodern criticism of logocentrism (Derrida) might help Christian theology to re-discover non-rationalistic, parabolic approaches to the reality as was initiated in the tradition of the negative theology. The inapprehension of God was emphasized in this century especially by Karl Barth: "God's hiddenness tells us that God does not belong to the object which we can always subjugate to the process of our viewing, conceiving, and expressing."93
Postmodern theology might be more attentive to dimensions, values and meanings neglected by modernity: beauty, freedom, happiness, spirituality, symbolism, harmony, suffering, death and destiny. It is time to re-discover the value of religious sense and experience, in particular the contemplative and joyful aspect of the life of faith; the profound significance of signs, symbols, rites and celebrations, which point to beyond-rational realities; the rich humanity of popular expressions of faith; Christian existence as communitarian existence; the basic human need of belonging and participation; the source of traditions and tradition; the preciousness of enthusiasm and charisma. Again, while modernity built on concepts like unity, agreement, universalism and reason, postmodern theology might elaborate on concepts like difference and others, dissent and plurality.
Postmodernism fills up the void left by the failure of modernity and replaces the narrative of the death of God with a spectacular resurgence of a vast, confused, syncretistic religious spirit. The 'weak thought' gave way to various irrational forms of religiosity, from the mythic-magic to the astral and signic-symbolic of the horoscope. But there is no cause for celebration for an attentive Christian. In fact, most of the postmodern religious revival has post-Christian characteristics. Here lies one of the most serious challenges of postmodern thought: to reduce Christianity to a gnosis, where the salvation of Christ is transformed into the mysterious almost occult and gnostic-like process of elevating the human mind. This is the basic post-Christian answer to postmodern thought offered by the variegated nebula of the New Age and the new religions. Christian faith will always remain something before, and more than an answer to, human needs. Christian faith is an unexpected, overabundant, and gratuitous grace from above, which transcends and subverts human expectations and questions and is accepted by the free obedience of human beings.
The gospel announced with frankness by Christians can never be reduced merely to being an answer that gives meaning to a generation that has lost it; it eschews imprisonment into systems, ideological or anti-ideological; it always challenges the darkness of nihilism. The gospel reaffirms its gratuity, its novelty, its capacity for wonder and surprise. As consequence, the theologies of the postmodern era should never reduce the Christian faith to the filling up of the void of the postmodern condition and of the lonely hearts of contemporary men and women. Christian faith should never be reduced to psychologism, the empowerment of human capacity, the radicalization and extension of the human spirit.
Theologizing in a postmodern context might require reflection upon the meaning but also on the ambiguity of religion. A distinction between theological faith and religious phenomena might be helpful in delineating the limits and denouncing the mystification and abuses of religion. In this respect the contribution of the Theology of the Cross and the Liberation Theology remain very precious.
The theology of the Cross, the bulwark of Christology and the most paradoxical of all theologies, will always function as the critical standpoint which distinguishes religious ambiguity and deception from true faith. The cross, on which Jesus hung as an enemy of religion and political powers, transcends any religious particularity, at the same time attracting, judging and cleansing them. In the postmodern debate the distinction between religion and faith might assume a new light and relevance. This distinction might in fact help theology to engage challenges from postmodern intimations such as 'difference', 'otherness,' 'alterity.' As some authors mentioned above have already noticed, there is room here for the paradoxical and radical message of the gospel. Some interpreters have proposed that Christianity is the religion 'of the departure from religion.'94
The Theology of the Cross remains the most radical critical challenge to the postmodern-New Age atmosphere which overemphasizes the beauty of nature, the harmonious order of the universe, the human logos and wisdom. But nature can be cruel, and the Cross on which Jesus was abandoned by friends and felt abandoned by God Himself, is a very disharmonious drama. On the Cross human abilities, wisdom, expectations and performances are contradicted, confused and denied rather then affirmed. The Cross of Jesus will never be domesticated into ontological or grand narrative schemes. We cannot elaborate the conception of God and the idea of history of salvation from a standpoint different from that of Calvary. Jesus has identified himself with the victims of evil, with those who are relegated to the 'reverse side of history.' On this point, the Theology of the Cross might find common ground with the postmodern opposition to ideological metanarratives.
The postmodern gnostic religious atmosphere, where individual emotional welfare is paramount, runs the risk of resulting in a bourgeois exercise of harmonization, solipsism and selfishness. The Theology of the Cross and the Liberation Theology provoke us to reject any presumptuous 'end of history,' which might sound absurd and a mockery to those who are victims of history, poverty and oppression. I mentioned above the missionary character of any Christian theology. The ultimate task of theology is not making the Christian faith acceptable whatever the cost. The Christian message of the Cross and Liberation will always be a scandal and foolishness, even in the postmodern world, as it was in ancient and in modern times.
The parable of modernity shows that systems of thought, historical phases and phenomena pass, but the Gospel always remains good news, ever fascinating women and men with its simple yet demanding message. The Gospel keeps, as ever, its freshness and novelty, attracting new disciples of Jesus generation after generation. The gospel of Jesus is very much alive in the world. This is a simple phenomenological consideration. But it is also a consideration of faith. The Gospel that the Church has transmitted and does not cease to proclaim, is coming from afar, and has resisted all sorts of human upheavals. In an age that declares the end of the metanarrative of history, the central message of the Gospel is Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and for ever. The witness of the Gospel has survived the declaration of the death of God, the death of man, and will survive the death of history, of truth, reason, morality and reality. Believers "will even survive the death of postmodernism,"95 when it comes.
In fact, the very same assumption that history must be classified and divided into periods is a modernist dogma that a genuine postmodernist should reject. It was modernism which created the notion of 'the middle ages,' arrogantly attaching a sinister connotation to them. The theology of history, which moves from the Christian notion of 'history of salvation', has become central since Irenaeus, who introduced the distinction between the history of humankind and the history of Salvation. A postmodern theology of history should be elaborated beyond arbitrary and artificial divisions of the history of humankind typical of modernity.
A theology of history from the standpoint of the Cross rejects any facile optimism about the progress of humanity. Jesus himself seemed to be anti-metanarrative: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on Earth? (Luke, 18:8). Not a few theologians claim that it is not possible to narrate the 'great stories' of the theology of history after Auschwitz. The concept of the 'history of salvation' might be re-elaborated also in the light of the fact that many people have only recently adhered to the biblical faith while glorious ancient churches, as I mentioned earlier, have been reduce to 'little flocks.' Most of the theology of history and mission up to the XVI century was elaborated according the theory of 'mission accomplished,' that Christianity and the world were one and the same.
The theology of history should underline a profound unity of humankind, a unity which certainly is not given by a succession of successes and does not produce uniformity. It is a unity generated, first of all, by the Trinitarian origin of the dialogue between God and humanity. As consequences, the very trans-epocal and trans-national presence of the universal church among women and men of time and space can be understood as a notable symbol of the Trinitarian origin of our salvation. Against the counter-positions of modernity and the fragmentation of postmodernity, the universal Church, spread through history and throughout the globe, is a symbol of deep unity and conciliation. In the midst of the diversities in the history of humankind, the Church stands out as "a sign of contradiction confounding the pretensions of modernists and postmodernists alike."96 Moreover, if the story of modernism and postmodernism is, generally speaking, a phenomenon of Western societies, the Christian Gospel has proved, for two thousand years, to be of universal significance. People of every culture and language on the planet have been able to accept the Christian message, a sign of freshness and newness lasting for 2000 years. Christian faith is by no means at the mercy of the development of Western civilization. Christianity preceded and will outlive the various developments of Western history.
48. See Principles of the Philosophy of Right, § 124 and 185, quoted by Jeanrond W. G. (1992) Between Praxis and Theory: Theology in a Crisis over Orientation. Concilium 6, p. 109. Freedom, in the Hegelian context, means essentially emancipation.
49. For this discussion see Poulat, E. (1992) Catholicism and Modernity: A Process of Mutual Exclusion. Concilium 6, pp. 10-16.
50. For this debate see Milbank, J. (1992) The End of Enlightenment: Post-Modern or Post-Secular. Concilium 6, pp. 39-47.
51. This point is well illustrated by Italian sociologist Garelli, F. (1996) Forza della Religione e Debolezza della Fede. Bologna: Il Mulino.
52. 'O Murchu, Quantum Theology, p. 5.
53. Ibid., pp. 197-203.
54. Oden, After Modernity...What?, pp. 76-77.
55. Taylor, M. C. (1984) Erring. A Postmodern A/Theology. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
56. See also previous work by Taylor, M. C. (1982) Deconstructing Theology. New York: Crossroad and Scholar Press.
57. Taylor, M. C. (1991) The End(s) of Theology. In S. Davaney (ed.), Theology and the End of Modernity. Philadelphia, PA: Trinity University Press.
58. Taylor, The End(s) of Theology, p. 242.
59. Ibid.
60. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, pp. 161-174.
61. Newbigin, L. (1996) Truth and Authority in Modernity. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International.
62. Lee Hertig, P. and Y. (1999) "The Christian Mission and Modern Culture" Trinity Press International Series. Missiology: An International Review 2, pp. 261-262.
63. Fretheim, T. E and Froehlich, K. (1998) The Bible as the Word of God In a Postmodern Age. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
64. Tracy, On Naming the Present, pp. 18-19.
65. Ibid., p. 10.
66. Taylor, M. K. (1990) Remembering Esperanza, A Cultural-Political Theology for North American Praxis. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, pp. 23-45.
67. Wilson, J. R. (1997) Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International.
68. Hall D. J. (1997) The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International.
69. Shenk, W. R. (1995) Write the Vision: The Church Renewed. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International.
70. Roxburgh, A. J. (1997) The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Limitality. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International.
71. Sequeri, P. (1998) La Spiritualita nel Postmoderno. Il Regno-Attualita 18, pp. 637-643.
72. Bonsor, J. A. (1994) History, Dogma, and Nature: further Reflections on Postmodernism and Theology. Theological Studies 55, pp. 295-313.
73. Ibid. p. 297.
74. Tosolini's thought is expanded in his book, (1997) To Speak of God in the Twilight. Toward a Theology of Mission in the Postmodern World. Leominster: GraceWing.
75. Tosolini, Postmodernity and Mission, p. 18.
76. Ibid.
77. Lawrence, The Fragility of Consciousness, pp. 55-94.
78. Junker-Kenny, Church, Modernity and Postmodernity, pp. 93-99.
79. David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission, Paradigm Shift in Theology of Mission, Orbis Book, Maryknoll, NY, 1991, pp. 349-367.
80. Bosch, D. J. (1995) Believing in The Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International.
81. Lee Hertig, "The Christian Mission and Modern Culture", pp. 266-267.
82. Bottum, J. (1994) Christians and Postmoderns. First Things 40, p. 28.
83. Ibid. p. 31.
84. Guarino, T. (1993) Between Foundationalism and Nihilism: Is Phronesis the Via Media for Theology? Theological Studies 54, pp. 37-54.
85. Gutierrez, G. (1988) The Power of the Poor in History. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, p. 213.
86. Forte, Speaking God in Post-modern Europe, p. 212.
87. Ibid., pp. 212-213.
88. Ibid., pp. 213-222.
89. Ibid.
90. Bottum, Christians and Postmoderns, p. 31.
91. McClay, W. M (1994) After Modernity, What? Book Review of Veith, G. E. Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture. First Things 12, p. 55.
92. Lawrence, The Fragility of Consciousness, p. 56.
93. Quoted by McKenna, Derrida, Death, and Forgiveness, p. 35.
94. See Geffre C. and Jossua, J. P. (1992) Towards a Theological Interpretation of Modernity. Concilium 6, p. viii.
95. Himmelfarb, G. (1992) Tradition and Creativity in the Writing of History. First Thing 11, p. 36.
96. MacClay, After Modernity, What?, p. 55.
Conclusions
After re-reading this study of mine I realize that it is very 'fragmented,' in a perfect postmodern fashion! I recognize that not all the questions which I have gradually opened were later developed. In the first part, I pointed to some major elements in art, science, culture, philosophy and history of such a complex and variegated phenomenon as postmodernism. In the second part I tried to exemplify conflicts between Catholicism and Modernism, conflicts that are relevant to the postmodern debate. Then followed an ample presentation of different theological approaches, which range from enthusiastic acceptance of postmodern tenets to a severe criticism of them. Then I added some personal provisory and disorganized intimations, hoping that some readers, or I myself, will be able in future to formulate a more organic reflection on postmodernism and Christianity.
As conclusions I will just try to summarize aspects of my thought in two points.
1. Postmodernity, like everything worldly, is an ambivalent phenomenon, presenting positive and negative aspects. The positive aspect is the overcoming of the arrogant pretensions of modern reason, science and ideologies. The negative aspect of postmodernism is its resemblance, under too many aspects, to a late-modern phenomena, the logical outcome of the premises of modernism. This is noticeable especially in the inclination toward decadence, nihilism and death of the late/post-modern generation.
2. Postmodernity both challenges and is challenged by Christianity. Postmodernity challenges Christianity with its pluralism and relativism, a pluralism and relativism which are not only of fact, but also of right, before the state, culture and society. Christianity cannot be accredited as the true religion in the public forum. The existence or not of God are considered equally indifferent options, which enjoy the same irrelevant plausibility in the pluralistic and relativistic postmodern condition. Rational discourse about the existence of God does not appeal to the postmodern man and woman. In such a context Christianity is challenged to re-discover the weakness of its faith 'from the Cross,' its defenseless proclamation of the paradoxical gospel of liberation and to contemplate God who gratuitously comes to us as mystery.
At the same time Christianity challenges postmodern dark pessimism with the joy of its enduring good news, which is timeless and boundary-less. Christian theology is called to renovate its apologetic mission to announce a refreshing and joyful message which is rational but not only rational, which is spiritual but also historical and concrete, which meets the deep aspirations of human heart, but also provokes, subverts and challenges them.