Colson on Post-modernism

I’m so tired of reading about “post-modernism,” at least from post-modernists. Chuck Colson’s exchange of open letters with Brian McLaren was interesting though. You can read the whole thing on McLaren’s website. I ran across it a few months before I started blogging, but it is so memorable that I wanted to post some excerpts here. What I remember is how grounded and impressive Colson’s reply was in contrast to McLaren’s meandering, nearly inscrutable prose.

In response to the “we’ll never agree because everything is subjective so what’s the point” argument:

I must say at the outset that the four points you stated in your opening paragraph as to why you normally wouldn’t try to respond to a piece like mine smack of postmodern despair. We should not say it’s “fruitless to even try to dialogue” or that people can’t understand things and it doesn’t make any difference. In my view misunderstandings matter greatly because there are consequences to ideas. As has been true from the time of the Greeks till today, vigorous healthy debate is vital as all of us search for truth.

In response to the “divisiveness is bad” argument:

I think of the Reformation as a case in point. That was certainly a divisive religious debate. It even led to religious wars and in some ways had a very negative impact upon the witness of the Christian church at the time. But look at what has come out of it. The Reformation has produced religious reformation. Until the Reformation nobody read the Bible. Now it is universally and widely read.

* * *

On the cultural front, the effect of the Reformation has been nothing less than revolutionary. Do not forget that the Protestant work ethic, exported to this country, fueled the great Industrial Revolution. We should all be mindful of and grateful for the Reformation’s impact on politics; the whole doctrine of sphere sovereignty had huge political ramifications, as did the book Lex Rex and its influence on the rule of law. Remember, too, Calvin was a great advocate of a republican form of government.

* * *

So I do not agree that religious debate, discussions over opinions right and wrong, don’t matter. They do. Profoundly so.

On the dangerous nihilistic implications of postmodernism:

Let me clarify also what I believe can be said about postmodernity and postmodernism which you seem to think people have difficulty understanding. In one way, of course, they do, because vacuums are never easily described. But the fact is that postmodernity is not something to argue about or engage in passionate debate for. Postmodernity simply means that we have emerged, for better or worse, from the modern era and we are in whatever comes after it (which I would submit is largely an intellectual vacuum which leads to nihilism.)

The postmodern era was either ushered in by or reflected by a variety of movements, most of which have their origin in Europe; deconstruction, relativism, subjectivism, and existentialism (not an exhaustive list.) The powerful existential movement in Europe, which then swept the campuses of America in the 60’s, undermined the concept of reason and truth, which was of course central to the Enlightenment project. You could not have deconstructionism and at the same time any transcendent authority, or even guiding force of history. So postmodernity is simply a fact of history. It is an era which marks an end to the modern era.

* * *

It is not postmodernity I criticize—and particularly because there are some good things about it: in the Enlightenment reason stifled faith; it is postmodernism I object to, which is an attempt to make an ideological formulation out of those elements which contributed to the demise of the modern era.

Whenever a society lacks transcendent authority, it is going to be governed by whoever can obtain power – and there will be no restraints upon that person or party. The process is almost inevitable. Even democracies – and remember Franklin said democracy is a good thing if you can keep it – must have some overarching objective standards to support a rule of law; without that it will fall into chaos just like any other governing structure. If postmodernism succeeds in destroying transcendent authority, the inevitable consequences are anarchy and nihilism. But nihilism is a vacuum and all vacuums must be filled; so without the restraint of a higher law a tyrant can always be depended upon to step in to fill the power vacuum; and people always choose order over liberty.

On the need for understanding and reaching the post-modern mind:

I for one have a lot of sympathy for post moderns. They’re drifting. They don’t even know the questions they’re supposed to be asking let alone the answers. They’ve been anesthetized by a culture which emphasizes pleasure and personal autonomy. A generation raised on channel-surfing has lost the capacity for linear thinking and analytical reasoning.

And that is not a thing to be embraced, but resisted.

On the questionable pedigree of postmodern ideas and the value of restraining evil ideologies:

Surely you realize that some of the figures advancing leading postmodernist ideas have been Nazis. I think of course of Heidegger who was a member of the Nazi party (existentialism) and Paul de Man who was a Nazi sympathizer (deconstructionism), and Jacques Derrida who defended Nazi intellectuals. These men, among others, hated the West for its bourgeois capitalism, and saw an opportunity to challenge it first through the Nazi Socialist movement and when that failed, advanced their ideas on American campuses. These are men with an agenda, which includes gaining power for their ideas. Yes, to impose them.

Of course, the postmoderns are right in saying that looking over European history, those who have “a passionate commitment to a system of belief will be most willing not only to die for it but to kill for it.” But is it wrong to die for a noble cause—or to kill in a just war, restraining evil? The Greeks recognized courage as one of the four cardinal virtues – courage to defend justice. Where would we be if people did not have a wholehearted commitment to a system of belief like democracy, freedom, and liberty? We’d still be living under monarchs. The issue isn’t whether you’re willing to die for a particular system of belief – or in some way to kill for it. The problem is whether that system of belief is truth or a lie. In the case of fascism and communism, it was a utopian lie, predicated upon a number of ideas common to postmodernism.

On subjectivism:

Point four I think says that we’re all seeking, and that sometimes in the process of seeking we make claims that are later proven to be untrue. Trust me, in my own intellectual pursuits, I’ve changed my opinion on things many times when I’ve learned more about them. But you have to be very careful in the way you’re describing your position in point four that you don’t fall into the great philosophical trap of believing that reality is only a mater of what we see, that it has no objective standing on its own, that truth is in the eyes of the beholder, or that the only thing we can possibly know about something is what we see in it. It’s that line of reasoning that caused C.S. Lewis to write The Abolition of Man and particularly the wonderful essay “Men Without Chests.” Two current day Christian philosophers have written on this powerfully. One is Alvin Plantinga, the other Nick Wolterstorff at Yale.

On the unchanging nature of moral truth and Scripture:

Your point five is whether moral truths change over the years. No they do not. It has always been true that murder is considered evil. We may gain a more advanced understanding of the truth as we seek to discover it and our moral consensus or moral understanding may change, we may become better informed about what is moral with respect to particular issues as the slavery example you use demonstrates. But that doesn’t mean that the underlying truth about human dignity, for example, is changed. On this point, note that in the NIV, in 1 Timothy, Paul describes slave traders in the category with murderers and adulterers and perverts. He also set slaves free. Christians were in the vanguard of that movement. What we were doing was conforming society in a fallen world more closely to what are enduring, unchanging truths.

Certainly we cannot say that God’s revelation changes over the years. The Bible is true yesterday, today and forever. It’s God speaking and it of course is the ultimate source of moral truth.

On the overuse of emotion, image, and narrative in the Church at the expense of revelation and reason:

I do have concern that we are promoting in our churches “an image and emotion-driven message” when of course what we ought to be advancing revealed propositional truth. This generation has been largely raised on images. That’s one reason why postmodern people find the narrative so attractive. Now I recognize that we may use techniques, even some I don’t like, to get the attention of the postmodern. But we can’t assume their basic presuppositions. We’ve got to be guided by ours and lovingly and gently lead them to understand ours. Admittedly, this is very difficult because they have been deeply culturally ingrained and their natural capacities for reason and analysis impaired. But I refuse to submit to despair. I want us to press on. I want the church, for all her flaws, to clean herself up and be the bride of Christ, and I want us vigorously and lovingly defending truth.

And the blogger said, amen.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 24th, 2005 at 12:01 am and is filed under The Culture, The Left, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.