In Praise of Leithart

In my first pass on James K.A. Smith’s Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, I recognized that he did not want to give way to the full-throttled relativism of postmodernism. He said some promising things early in the book, but, as I mentioned, by the end it was clear that his approach was not going to cut it. Before getting to why it cannot work, here are a few more promising things that he said.

He has an appealing distaste for spiritual individualism run amok. “To them I want to suggest that, quite unlike the anti-institutional mentality of postmodern ‘spirituality,’ it is actually a robust, vibrant, liturgical church that speaks meaning in and to a postmodern world” (p. 11). Note the phrase “speak meaning to.” This is precisely our task, provided we really do it.

He describes his project this way:

“It is this aspect of the emerging church that D.A. Carson criticizes so harshly regarding questions of truth and objective knowledge. But as I noted in chapter 2, I am trying to sketch a third way between radical, albeit religious, skepticism and Carson’s confidence in objectivity. This third, Augustinian way affirms the possibility and reality of knowledge but rejects the modern notion of objectivity. It is, we might say, a confessional realism” (pp. 119-120).

Full disclosure here. Apart from describing this as a split-the-difference tertium quid, this sounds really good to me. Who could be against an Augustinian confessional realism? Well, Smith, as it turns out. Earlier in the book, he described Carson’s marshalling of biblical passages on true and truth an “epic adventure in missing the point” (p. 74). I will show why this is not the case shortly, but let me spend a few moments showing why I think Smith is shuffling on modernity’s carpet, holding his hat in his hand.

“Lyotard relativizes (secular) philosophy’s claim to autonomy and so grants the legitimacy of a philosophy that grounds itself in Christian faith” (p. 73).

But why do we need Lyotard to grant us anything? Did we not have preachers before the rise of pomo philosophy, men who were ordained to proclaim that Jesus is Lord and Savior to all nations? Smith is far too concerned with academic respectability. Now that Lyotard has laughed at modernist pretensions, we may come out of our caves. But why were we not laughing at those same pretension before Lyotard was born? Further, we don’t need a philosophy that grounds its own limited self in anything. We need a proclamation that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth, and that all things cohere in Him alone. The ability to do this depends on faith alone, and not on any developments (or lack thereof) in philosophy.

“In this way the playing field is leveled, and new opportunities to voice a Christian philosophy are created” (p. 73).

The playing field is leveled? And we now get to play on it? But who maintains that field? Who cuts the grass? Who hires the refs? Who owns the stadium? Who rakes in the ticket receipts? My contention is that Christians need to stop being content with playing on a level playing field, and start proclaiming that Jesus Christ took the title to the stadium away from the devil two thousand years ago.

“The exclusion of faith from the public square is a modern agenda; postmodernity should signal new opportunities for Christian witness in the broad marketplace of ideas” (p. 73).

I see. Exclusion of faith from the public square is a modern idea, but the very idea of a “broad marketplace of ideas” isn’t? As Christians present their witness in this marketplace of ideas, does that witness include the fact that Jesus Christ bought and paid for that marketplace with His own blood, and that it all belongs to Him now? If Christians agree with this, then they are Constantinians. If they do not, then they are modernists. They want a nice, secular somebody in the mold of J.S. Mill to run the show for us. Some secular liberal maintains the place so that we can have a robust discussion with the Rastafarians. So they want one kind of modernity to protect us from another kind of modernity.

As I mentioned before, Smith is very concerned that we not abuse our new place at the table by trying to impose anything “on a pluralist culture” (p. 73). Lest there be any mistake, Smith identifies this kind of faux pas “as a Constantinian agenda” (p. 74).

This is just the timid approach to modernity and postmodernity that Leithart dismantles in Against Christianity, which is one of the finest books I have ever read. Last night I went back and reread the concluding chapter “For Constantine,” which was just as fantastic as it was the previous two times.

Smith is glad that Lyotard cleared a space for us so that we can talk to others from within our own interpretive community. And if they voluntarily join us, great. But this voluntarism, this marketplace of ideas, this give and take about ultimate things, is modernity with the mask off. Against all this, Leithart speaks prophetically. Because he is opposed to idolatry, and not just Cartesian idolatry, he advances the necessity of Christendom. Allow me.

“The Church is not, however, simply a counterculture. She has been given the subversive mission of converting whatever culture she finds herself in” (AC, p. 123).

“On the contrary, opposition to Christendom arises from adherence to Christianity. Those who are hostile to Christendom are still in the grip of modernity. Renouncing Christianity thus entails embracing Christendom” (p. 124).

“By the Middle Ages, this ‘urban renewal’ program had advanced considerably. Intellectual life was devoted to unraveling the mysteries of God’s Word and seeking to name the world, all the world, through the Word” (p. 127).

“The Church imposed its discipline on warlords and kings, forcing the powers that be to conduct themselves in more humanely, that is, in a more Christlike, fashion” (p. 127).

“Oliver O’Donovan has argued that Constantinian Christians were not attempting to promote the kingdom of Christ by worldly means. On the contrary, they believed that ‘those who held power became subject to the rule of Christ'” (p. 128).

“Those who deny this possibility [of Christian politics, outside the polity of the Church], the pessimists, have assumed Christianity, and therefore are still modernists, despite their fulminations against modernity” (p. 133).

“It should make clear that politics can be shaped to the gospel and that the kingdoms of this world have and will, more and more, become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ” (p. 135).

“The introduction of the Church into any city means that the city has a challenger within its walls. This necessarily forces political change, ultimately of constitutional dimensions” (p. 136).

“But a suspicion about ‘society as such’ and the inherently ‘coercive’ nature of consensus also rules out the possibility of the Church” (p. 137).

“Opposition to Christendom often takes the form, positively, of a ‘voluntary’ conception of the Church” (p. 139).

“Reducing the Church in this way [to voluntarism] is a capitulation to modernity and is Christianity in the purest form” p. 138).

“When the Church arrives, there will be clashes that force constitutional changes, unless, as Robert Jenson has said in a different context, we have forgotten ourselves. Too often we have done precisely that. Suppose we don’t forget ourselves, and the powers attack us. What then?” (p.139).

Indeed, what then? A second Christendom will not be without its martyrs.

Modernity formed a club for discussion, and laid down the rules for discourse. Postmodernity does not present a challenge to the existence of the club, or to the club rules. Postmodernity is a mere changing of the subject under discussion and that is all. Until postmodernity challenges the secular state, the secular marketplace of ideas, the secular basis of law, postmodernity is just another turn in the conversation. And until the Christians who appreciatively read the pomos learn to challenge modernity in its seat of power, they are just playing word games.

But any such challenge must be made in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of lords and King of kings, and it be mounted from the Church, and not in a seminar discussion group somewhere. In short, until evangelical postmodernists are willing to be accused of being theonomic ayatollahs, they remain entrenched in the modern system. Such an accusation would be a slander, but it is the slander that faithful Christians must incur.

But Smith is not about to go there. Smith says that a “properly postmodern theology will be dogmatic, not skeptical. This is not to advocate a return to an uncritical fundamentalism or the triumphalist stance of the Religious Right” (p. 123). Now if Smith is wary of the religous right because they press their ideas as just another pressure group, then I am with him completely. But I suspect this is not the case. At the same time, I have some sympathy with the religious right. They want to “do something” about the legalization of homosexual marriage and the constititional dismemberment of unborn children. Modernists (Smith included) have taken away the Constantinian option from such believing Christians — where the Church speaks to the unbelieving culture as the Church, and tells that culture that God told Moses on Mt. Sinai that murder and sodomy were prohibited. As it is, the religious right is reduced to reminding Karl Rove just how many evangelicals turned out in the last election in Ohio. This is not a prophetic voice — it is mere lobbying. In the grip of modernity, Christians try to make their voice heard in the “broad marketplace of ideas” in the same way that other vendors do. Smith wants it to stay this way, but he wants conservative Christians to stop hawking their wares in the political realm, restricting themselves apparently to the robust discussions of academia and coffeehouses.

Jesus Christ is Lord of all, Lord of heaven and earth. We did not need Lyotard’s blessing before telling the nations that they have an obligation to kiss the Son, lest He be angry and they perish in the way. This is why Carson’s assemblage of all the texts that speak of truth, knowledge, etc. were not an epic adventure in missing the point. The common assumption among pomos is that Cartesian objectivity is the only kind of objectivity there can be. And if you argue for objectivity, you must be a closet Cartesian. And if we reject Descartes (which I have done, lo, these many years ago), then we must have abandoned objectivity — but this is false, and, as a Puritan would have said, “followeth no way.” Carson’s verses do not require that we “keep Descartes.” But they do prohibit any abandonment of Descartes that lands us in a bowl of subjective mush. That is what is happening here. Even though Smith wants to speak with robust confidence, he wants to do so within the Church, where everyone is already disposed to agree. And he wants to speak to discussion partners outside, who are willing to play by Lyotard’s new rules, and have a little give and take. But does Smith want to approach Herod, or Clinton, or Barny Franks, or any other horny pol and say, “It is not lawful for you to have her/him/it”?

Just use the tone check. Cartesian rationalists, to the extent that they speak with confidence, sound far more like the biblical writers than do the evangelical pomos. This is an idolatrous counterfeit, but, as counterfeits go, their bills are at least green and have numbers in the corners. Pomo approximations of biblical language keep using pink paper, and instead of Andrew Jackson we see the clear visage of Xena, Warrior Princess.

A chasm therefore separates Leithart’s critique of modernity and the critique offered by Smith (and the men who blurbed him). The usual suspects show up on the back cover (McLaren, Raschke, Webber, Westphal), and in the footnotes (McLaren, Middleton, Walsh). This whole project is as epistemically muddled as it gets. Hard postmodernists are really hypermodernists. Soft postmodernists are confused modernists. This latter category includes, in spades, the confused modernists who think that this rising confusion represents some kind of dawning hope for the Church.

Peter Leithart is a friend of mine, and a valued colleague (both at NSA and within the CREC). Against Christianity is a stupendous book, a prophetic and profound work. But I have more than once seen (in books, on web sites, and in person) instances of confused and confusing people who try to lump him in with those thinkers who only want Christianity to get its two weeks in Modernity Inc.’s time share condominiums. Just like the contract promised us. And during our two weeks there, we get to hang up whatever postmodern or emergent pictures we want, so long as the mortgage payment to Modernity, Inc. gets in the mail on time.

I am tired of reading books by professed evangelicals who want us to abandon the brunette hooker for the blonde hooker, and who want us to call this switch a form of repentance. The central problem (hookerism) is autonomy, which is any attempt to do or organize anything apart from the authority of Christ. The problem is not Cartesian rationalism, but autonomy. Cartesian rationalism is just one example of that autonomy, but there are many others — not just reason, but also experience, choices, sentiments, and social and political structures. The only way to challenge autonomy in all its forms is to proclaim the Lordship of Jesus and the Christian Church as the new polis established by Him that will bring about the glorious redemption of human history (meaning a constitutional restructuring), which will amount to the transformation of the City of Man into the City of God. World without end, and amen.