Postmodernism Is Triumphalism

James K.A. Smith recently made a good start in reviewing Greg Boyd’s book on Christians in politics. Justin Taylor had linked to it, and here it is. The book reviewed was The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church. The review seemed promising, and Smith scored some good …

Just So Many Millions of Ghosts

First, a recap of a basic argument against postmodernity. For all the talk about being in a postmodern era, the basic infrastructure of modernity (liberal democracy with its neutral public square) is retained. In the seminar room called modernity, some who call themselves postmodernists have come to believe that they can change the room they …

High Zwinglianism

In his chapter “Against Sacraments,” Peter Leithart quotes Mike Featherstone, who pointed out that postmodernism “moved beyond individualism with a communal feeling being generated,” which is good, but did so in a way in which people “come together in temporary emotional communities” (AC, p. 74), which is entirely inadequate. To this Leithart observes, “The postmodern …

Guess You Kinda Had To Have Been There

Merold Westphal has another essay in this book entitled “Laughing at Hegel.” I read the whole thing. “Christmas Humpheys says, ‘There is more honest ‘belly laughter’ in a Zen monastery than surely in any other religious institution on earth’ — and the faithful chant before Maitreya, the Messianic Buddha whose avatar is a clown: When …

If We Had Some Cheese

Westfold argues that Derrida is some kind of a natural law theorist. We can ascertain this from the title of chapter 11, “Derrida As Natural Law Theorist.” Westfold draws a distinction between logical positivists and postmodernists, a distinction that he considers important. The logical positivists said of their own position that it destroyed all ethics …

Fooba Fooba Fooba

In another essay, Westphal is concerned to deal with the ready identification of postmodernism with various political absolutisms, particularly fascism and communism. In “Deconstruction and Christian Cultural Theory,” Westphal argues that such an assimilation is based on a gross misreading of Derrida and Foucault in particular. “So it is that the temptation to lump postmodernism …

Pray for Christendom

In 1998, I co-wrote a book with Doug Jones entitled Angels in the Architecture. The subtitle was “A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth,” and at the center of that vision was a robust rejection of modernity. The book begins with the question, “Modernity or medievalism?” (p. 17). To wit: “Medieval Protestantism is not a call …