Doctrine and Truth After Modernity

Paul Lakeland is Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University, Connecticut. In his 1997 book, “Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age”, he explores a range of postmodern approaches to doctrines of God, Church and Christ.

He identifies three types of postmodern individual:

1. The product and consumer of popular postmodern culture.

2. Those who see modernism as the enemy.

3. Those who approach modernity and its critiques with a critical openness.

In terms of distinct approaches to postmodernism Lakeland identifies:

1. Radical Historicist Perspective

Rejection of theories of knowledge that involve traditional notion of subject at the centre.

Reason seen as a contextual and relative reality, rather than absolute or transcendental reality.

Examination of reason reveal dependence on something else, be it power relations or desire.

2. Postmodernism of Nostalgia

Neoconservative critique of modernism

3. Late Modernism

Commitment to unfinished character of project of modernity in a distinctly postmodern world.

When it comes to discussing doctrines of God, Church and Christ, Lakeland considers the responses of four groups of theologians.

Radical Postmodern - Post Christian
1. Mark C. Taylor, Thomas Altizer, Carol Christ, Sharon Welch - talk about importance of religion but discount the usefulness of the notion of God.

Radical Postmodern Christian
2. James Gustafson, Gordon Kaufman, Maurice Wiles - deeply critical of inherited understandings of God, use term ‘God’ in significantly different ways, expect a future for organised Christianity.

Late Moderns
3. David Tracey, Sallie McFague, Jurgen Moltmann, Peter Hodgson - draw on substantial elements of postmodern culture and thought but remain wedded to Biblical revelation.

Neoconservatives - Postliberals
4. George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, Ronald Thiemann, John Milbank - postliberal or neo-Augustinian standpoints use postmodern thought in tactical or pragmatic ways but resistant to wholesale dialogue with secular world.

Duncan

We didn’t really touch on the resurrection during the Intensive, but obviously its an area of Christian belief brought into sharp focus by modernity. I recently re-read an article by George Hunsinger published in the Scottish Journal of Theology in 2004, and entitled, “The Daybreak of the New Creation: Christ’s Resurrection in Recent Theology”. It sets out in a quite helpful way how various theologians in the modern era have combined historicity and transcendence in the accounts they have given of the resurrection. It’s a survey article and doesn’t actually break any new ground, but sets out the issues very clearly. It might be something you want to look at once your reading reports and essays are out of the way.

You can find it in the Scottish Journal of Theology 57 (2004), pp163-181. If you’re in Brisbane you can get it at the TTC library. If not, I’d be happy to organise to send a copy to you.

Geoff

I recently came across another of Kevin Vanhoozer’s editorial achievements.  It is the Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible.  Although the title suggests that it is perhaps oriented to biblical studies, this is only half the story.  It is actually a very broad-based theological dictionary, covering a vast range of classical and contemporary theological issues.  The point of the title, so it would seem, is to point out that all theological work is ultimately in the service of the intepretation of scripture.  So in addition to essays or shorter entires on such topics as revelation, creation, christology, hermeneutics, speech-act theory, imagination, critical realism, feminist intepretation, narrative theology, Asian Biblical Interpretation, Postmodernity and Biblical Intepretation there are also (often quite extended) essays on every book of the bible.

 Although I haven’t counted them, there must be around 300 different entries; the book is about 900 pages long.  It is a joint publication of both SPCK and Baker, so the content is not confined to any particular theological school, and neither are the 150+ contributors.

 I have already made considerable use of this book in my teaching this semester.  If the sorts of issues we explored in DTM in February have sparked your imagination, then I think you would appreciate the content, scope and tone of this book.

Full details:  Kevin J Vanhoozer (General Editor) Dictionary for Theological Intepretation of the Bible (London: SPCK; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic; 2005). 

ŠGeoff

Peter Taubner and I presented a reading report on feminism and postmodernist approaches to doctrine. We were given the challenge of presenting the insights of Mary McClintock Fulkerson as outlined in her chapter in the Cambridge Guide to Postmodern Theology, edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer.

Mary’s an academic theologian based at Duke Divinity School, Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. She’s known for her 1994 book, “Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology” in which she explores the complexity of recent studies on the experiences of women. Of particular interest to me were her reflections on the differences between Presbyterian and Pentecostal women. Her next book, “Traces of Redemption: Theology for Worldly Church”, will focus on doctrine of the church in light of racial diversity and differently abled.” She’s a minister with the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Not only is Mary an academic. She’s also a partner in the establishment of Third Reconstruction Institutes in which academics and grass roots activists continue the work of the civil rights movement in the United States.

As a class we were looking for ways in which Mary’s work critiques the limitations of modernism.

At the beginning McClintock Fulkerson makes it very clear that feminist theology began and continues with a liberation hermeneutic. In many ways feminism has been its own form of postmodernism. She recognises that the ‘mainstream’ of feminism has been dominated by white Euro-American middle class women and has overlooked or attempted to assimilate the voices of those calling themselves womanist (African American) and Mujerista (Hispanic). And then of course the voices of Asian Americans, women in Africa and Asia, the voices of lesbian feminists. McClintock Fulkerson is clear that she speaks as a white middle class academic woman.

Mary chooses three themes from postmodernism that resonate with the liberation hermeneutic of recent feminist theology:

1. Instability of the subject.

2. The Unsayable

3. Liberative Implications

Mary points out that early feminism, in its critique of male-dominated society, often called for or attempted to describe a ‘unified natural woman subject’. Likewise the choice of sexism as the primary sin has flattened the differences and oppressions linked with racism, class exploitation and heterosexism.

Postmodernist feminist theologians have critiqued the capacity for anyone to categorise and describe the experience of women without reference to broader experiences. Foucault’s poststructural work reminds us that signifying does not refer to a fixed, external reality. The experiences of both women and men continue to be transformed by relational experience.

Finally Mary refers to the growing edge of feminist theology as it engages with a vision of liberation that goes beyond gender and explores economic and political transformation.