Christianity in Postmodern World
A Prayer of Postmodern believer
Father of Heaven, you fill the heavens and the earth. Where are you? I agree with Augustine that we are created for thee, and can only find rest in thee, but where are you? There are many opinions and God-talk today, and all of them sound true. How can a poor and limited creature such as me can even think of the very infinite nature of you. I admit that I am bounded by the very background I grown up. I try to think of thee but it turns out became idol, because you are greater than the greatest I can conceit of. Even the very image of thee within me are distorted and polluted by sin. Lord, please teach me thy way so that I may know thee. Let me affirm that you alone are truth and all men are liars. In Jesus' Name. Amen.
Is Any Objective Truth?
Nowadays, our society is or is going in the direction of plurality. As the technology improve and information abundance, available choices are much more than before. Generally speaking, we accept people make their own choice provided that his choice does not harm others. However, plurality is different from Pluralism. Plurality is a phenomenon but Pluralism is a philosophy. On the nutshell, Pluralism denies the existence of objective truth. Even some of Pluralists recognize there may be objective truth(s), however, at least on experimental level we cannot perceive it and grape it with certainty.
In Trigg's words: "Pluralism is not just the acknowledgement of plurality. Pluralism must be precisely the view that questions the assumption of the inferiority of other religions. It can even rejoice in diversity and see the value of having alternative insights. Yet this is to assume that one religion does not have the monopoly of truth."1
Limit of culture and relative historicism
After 20th century, we enter an age of information, we have much more channels to meet people of difference cultures. As a result, we are much conscious about culture, and generally speaking, we accept that we are mode by the culture we growth up, and there is no culture was intrinsic better than others, because every culture has its own beautiful and drawback. What we thought was objective truth under modernism, become relative under postmodernism. For example, the concept of history is changed. At past, we thought history was an objective fact. All historians had to do was finding out the fact and reconstruct the past events. Now, we realize that even history is not a static objective fact, it is an interpreted picture. So the reconstructed result is based on the perspective of interpretation, because there are no pure fact in the world, all are culture bounded interpreted. Moreover, we can never arrive objective truth any more, since "If there is no point outside history and culture where we may stand to make judgements about the validity of a viewpoint within a culture and history and no point from which to make judgements between viewpoints stemming from different cultures and histories, then there is no way of arriving at truth other than a truth which is relative and subject to the specific historical and cultural limitations of each setting."2
In the realm of religion, at past people thought that religion was an objective revealed propositional truth, but now, Pluralists proclaim that every religion are culture bounded and they are mingling truth and false, good and bad. Therefore, the only heresy is to declare that others are heresy and he is the monopoly of truth. "Religions contain seeds of truth, not on the basis of what they are as religions proper, but on the basis of what they are as expressions of the universal human consciousness of God. ... Religions are seen as an inherent part of human experience and culture."3
In replying about threat, we must ask, is Christianity only culture product of the time? The answer is definitely not, Christianity grew and flourished in a pluralistic setting and in a world facing serious injustice. Yet in that setting the proclamation and the content of the Good News was conveyed in absolute and universal terms. In conclusion, Christianity grew up against its contemporary cultural tide, and it claims that revelation is its objective basis. Then the other question is, in general -- can objective truth communicate? in particular - Is it possible God reveals himself in a written book, Bible?
Limit of Language
Nowadays, the linkage between language and reality are under fury attacked by contemporary linguistics. Under modernism, hermeneutic is a tool of digging out author's intention. However, under postmodernism, some linguistics suggested that author's intentions are no longer available for readers. Therefore a new philosophy of hermeneutics raised.
New Hermeneutics
First, new hermeneutic argue that word is only a signifier, which is different from signified, i.e. reality. So, what a word signifies, then, depends on its place in the total language system, i.e., in its structural position. Moreover, not only is all meaning bound up irretrievably with the knower, rather than with the text, but words themselves never have a referent other than other words... Hence, language cannot in the nature of the case refer to objective reality. Texts are intrinsically incapable of conveying objective truth about some object reality: they keep referring to other texts, and these, too, are in the hands of the interpreters.4
As a result, under deconstruction theory, the central focus of understanding is destroyed, and becomes "a nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions come into play" and meaning is found in the free association of selective words and ideas within the text.5
In addition, Fish even pointed out that the interpretive communities also play an important role in making the meaning of a text. "It is interpretive communities, rather than either the text or the reader, that produce meanings and are responsible for the emergence of formal features."6
Consequently, new hermeneutic insist that the only 'meaning' is what the subject 'sees' or 'understands.' And "the text ... becomes a hermeneutical aid in the understanding of present experience"7 In conclusion, language is a map to reality but not reality itself. Therefore truth is not propositions and cannot communicate objectivity.
Critic of new Hermeneutics
The are some positive contributions of new hermeneutics in interpreting text, e.g. it raise the awareness presupposition during interpretation, it makes distinctions between interpretation and text. However, there are several crucial weaknesses:
First, the understanding is doubtless never absolutely exhaustive and perfect, but that does not mean the only alternative is to dissociate text from speaker. There is a confusion of comprehensive and apprehensive among the new hermeneutic. As everyday experience supports that we need not have perfect and complete knowledge about the 'author intent' in order to have effective communication.
Second, in practice, deconstructionists implicitly link their own texts with their own intentions.8 Totally disjointing 'author intent' and 'text meaning' is infeasible in real life.
Third, texts themselves normally contain many signals and hints as to how they are to be interpreted, and many of these are mastered as people learn to read. In Long's words: "... encounters with Scripture itself have built up in the community of faith the expectation of Scripture's special character, rather than the other way around.... the expectation derived from the history of the community's previous engagement with the Bible."9
Forth, although author's context and reader's context may have little in common, Gadamer's idea of 'distanciation' and 'fusion of horizons' could help us to understanding the process of interpretation. "If all the cultural 'baggage' of a text is likened to one horizon, and all the cultural 'baggage' of a reader is likened to another horizon, it is possible for the reader progressively to distance himself from his own horizon as he reads himself into the text, and thus finally so to 'fuse' his own horizon of understanding with that of the text that some accurate transfer of information is possible."10
Fifth, a community may have many things in common among members, however this does not mean that every one in the community grows at exactly the same rate, or is equally submissive to the norms of the community, or is restricted from pushing back the established frontiers of the community. Therefore the influences of community in the process of interpretation cannot be overstated.
Sixth, from Christian perspective, an omniscient God who accommodates himself to talk in human languages introduces an important element. God not only knows perfectly and in advance what wrong interpretations mortals with assign his words, he also knows that some later mortals will see true connections (meanings) in the complex of this words that the earlier mortals through whom he first spoke those words may not have seen.
Seventh, Sin is not a prominent factor in contemporary discussion of epistemology. Actually, sin critically influences our perception in the process of interpretation.
In conclusion, Postmodernism defines itself most clearly in terms of what it isn't and that inevitably means a critique of the past. It has nowhere to go for it has no vision of transcendent reality pulling us onward.11
Religion Pluralism
Knowing and Being of Religion
One important area of discussing religion pluralism is the epistemology of religious knowledge. The validity of acquiring true religious knowledge determines the success or fail of religion pluralism.
In Kant's philosophy, human consciousness begins to be not only the key for discovering reality, but the source of reality itself. He split between noumenal and phenomenal reality.
John Hick, one of key promoter of religion pluralism in America, he adopted Kant's epistemology and argued that if all we can have are concepts of reality, what is the sense of trying to envisage the nature of reality as it is in itself? Hence, "all mythic language must be interpreted. For such mythic language, its truth lies not on its literal surface, but within its ever changing historical and personal meaning."12 And the 'ever changing historical and personal meaning' is not the reality itself, it just is a pointer to reality.
The center of religion, for Hick, is not doctrine but personal transformation. Hence, though doctrines of the various religions might seem to contradict, when properly viewed as life-expressing truths they often do not. They simply express the diverse ways people from different cultures react to the reality they encounter.
It is as if the difference between Christian faith and other faiths consists only in the order of knowing, some faiths articulating better than others; but in the order of being the same reality exists for all religions. Religion is significant because it transforms human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness.
There are many weaknesses of above pluralists' claims:
First, if we split noumenal and phenomenal, all we know is only about reality but nothing is reality then we can said nothing about the reality. As a result, the promise of religion that based on the claim linked with reality, can be substitute by any other else. As Wittenstein said: "A nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said."13
Second, on the one hand, Hick deems that differences in belief are ultimately unimportant for salvation, while, on the other, he uses the notion of a common salvific process to affirm the validity of the different belief. That is logically impossible.14
Third, belief cannot be separated from a conception of truth. Yet once it is suggested that such truth is unobtainable, it must logically be impossible to go on believing.
Appeal to Mysticism
As Postmodernism points out the limitation of human, pluralists appeal to mysticism as the reality of religion. In Trigg's words : "In the case of religion, it is clamed that we confront a reality that outstrips our understanding. We are bounded by the limits placed on all humans. We have finite minds and are trying to grasp what appears to be infinite."15
It is mystery beyond all forms, exceeding our grasp of it. In other words, the 'infinity' and 'ineffability' of God or mystery demands religious pluralism and forbids any one religion from having the 'only' or 'final' word.16
Hence, all the characteristics of religion are subsumed under the religion of the concrete spirit which cannot be equated with any particular religion, not even Christianity.17
Regarding above mysticism claims, there are following weaknesses:
First, there is confusion between what is true and what is exhaustively known. The nature of ontology and epistemology is different. We cannot comprehensive know something, do not mean we can know nothing. More, what we partially know can still be true regarding to the reality.
Second, Pluralists try to argue that although different religions appear differently, they are pointing to the same reality. But, they don't realize that Pluralism not as the simple opposite of uniformity, but as the contrary of unity. If there is one reality, truth should have a universal appeal. What is true should be shared, and a lack of unity of belief necessarily implies error or ignorance on the part of some or all.
Third, the very attempt to deny all expressions about God is an expression about God. One cannot draw the limits of language and thought unless he has transcended those very limits he would draw. It is self-defeating to express the contention that the inexpressible cannot be expressed. Moreover, language (thought) and reality cannot be mutually exclusive, for every attempt to completely separate them implies some interaction or commerce between them.18
Forth, the whence of religious truth is rooted in religious experience but the warrant for claiming truth for this is something else. No experience is self-interpreting. Experience must need an interpretative framework to support its meaning. When verifying the interpretative framework, we must draw the conclusion of some religion is false.
Fifth, the pluralists are typically prepared to make fewer judgements about the truth of a particular religion than are others. The point is however, that some judgements are inevitably still being made. There could be no reason for exclusion unless there was a prior conviction that religion was somehow correct in wishing to invoke the transcendent. The pluralist can never escape making judgements of truth. It is just a question of which judgements are to be made. Hence, pluralists' arguing basis is same as exclusivism, both setup their own criteria for arriving conclusions.
Sixth, the conclusion of a genuine and thoroughgoing stress on mystery in the terms suggested would seem inevitably to lead to silence - 'whereof we cannot know, thereof we must be silent' and even to solipsism.19
Great Justice
Another reason of promoting religious pluralism is the crisis of world's situation. Therefore, some suggested that the task of "economic, political and nuclear liberation is too big a job for any one nation, culture or religion. A worldwide liberation movement needs a worldwide inter-religious dialogue."20 There is need to make religion secondary to the practical concerns of liberation. Religious pluralism here blends with deliberately undoctrinal Christianity.
However, before promoting inter-religious dialogue, following question we must ask:
What is the nature of religion? What if the greatest human need is to know Christ? Is justice the greatest perceived need or prescribed need? If the latter, then from what moral point of view is the judgement and prescription made? How is justice to be defined?
If we abandon the doctrine of religion, where is the reference point of defining justice. In fact, not all religions agree make justice is their first priority.
Inclusivism
Responding to the religion pluralism, some theologians proposed inclusivism to solve the dilemma. They claim that "The grace of Christ communicated by God through other religions, both pre-Christian and non-Christian, is determined by the final cause of God's universal salvific will in the incarnation of Christ."21 One of famous inclusivist Karl Rahner, who proposed that since Jesus' atoning, salvific work is objective, God can apply the result of Jesus' work to all human beings, even to those who have never heard of Jesus and his death or have never acknowledged his lordship, they are anonymous Christians. And "the anonymous Christianity received through other religions find their fulfillment in the explicit Christianity of the missionary Church."22
Christ and his cross manifests symbolically at least the pinnacle and true meaning of religion, the whole meaning of Logos which otherwise appears fragmentarily in other religions. Moltmann said that "We can only think of Christ inclusively. Anyone who thinks of Christ exclusively, no for other people but against them, has not understood the Reconciler of the world."23
However, inclusivists proposal cannot solve the dilemma with pluralists. Firstly, inclusivists still need to back to exclusivists' criteria for defending the distinctiveness of the locus of its own religion. Secondly, as Hans Kung noted that they are "diminishing the reality of Christianity merely to save an infallible formula, making the Church equivalent to the world, Christendom to humanity..."24
Furthermore, although inclusivists claim the 'Cosmic Christ' presence in other religion, 'Christ' is so divorced from the historical Jesus that the term can be given almost any content one wishes. Thus what texts are interpreted to say is intentionally distanced from authorial intent.25
Exclusivism
Lastly only the exclusivism gained its ground to be verified. For Christianity, following locus about revelation is the basis for excluding others. If we have to falsity Christianity, we must falsity them.
First, Salvation comes only through the true revelation of God.
Second, "Because of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, Christianity is the locus of true religion. In the event of Jesus Christ God uniquely reveals the truth and provides the means by which we can be reconciled with God... even Christians must realize the inadequacy of their own religion when viewed outside of grace and revelation."26
Criteria of judging religion
Last, we can follow Yandell suggested guidelines to judgement the validity of Christianity.
End Notes
1 Roger Trigg, Rationality and Religion, p. 53
2 E.David Cook, One God, One Lord, p. 239-240 (Truth, Mystery and Justice)
3 Cathollic Teaching on Non-Christian Religions at the Second Vatican Council, p. 59
4 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. p. 280
5 D.A. Carson, The Gagging God, p.72-74
6 Stanley Fish, Is there a text in this Class?, p. 14
7 G. Ebeling, Word and Faith, p. 33
8 John M. Ellis, Against Deconstruction, p. 12-13
9 Thomas G. Long, Preaching and the Literary Form of the Bible, p.29
10 D.A. Carson, p.127
11 ibid, p.136
12 J. Hick & P.F. Knitter (Edd), The Myth of Christian Uniqueness
13 Wittenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #304
14 Gavin D' Costa, John Hick and Religious Pluralism: Yet another revolution, p.12-13
15 Roger Trigg, Rationality and Religion, p.52
16 P.F. Knitter, Toward a Liberation Theology of Religions, Preface x.
17 Paul Tillich, The future of religions, p. 87
18 Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics, p.23
19 E.David Cook, One God, One Lord, p.245 (Truth, Mystery and Justice)
20 P.F. Knitter, Toward a Liberation Theology of Religions, p.180
21 Theological Investigations, XVII (London, 1981) 43-6 ('Jesus Christ in the non-Christian Religions')
22 Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations,V
23 Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, p.276
24 Hans Kung, On Being a Christian, p.97-8
25 D.A. Carson, p.44
26 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatic
27 Keith E. Yandell, Religious Studies, 8 (June 1974): 185-86 (Religious Experience and Rational Appraisal)