When the enemy is at the gates besieging your city, swinging the battering ram, there are many things to dislike about what they are doing. But we would not usually think to describe the problem of the repeated thuds as “boring” and “repetitive.” It is the same way with this postmodern foolishness, but in some respects it is less like an invading army trying to get into the city, and rather like fog trying to get in. What will disperse the fog? What is the central confusion in what is being done here?
Grenz and Franke, after acknowledging that there are many different ways of reckoning postmodernism, and listing some of those variants, do allow that postmodernism has three key features (Beyond Foundationalism, p. 21). The first is stringent rejection of modernity, the second is that Band Aid remedies won’t do, and the third from some is a sketch of what life might look like down the road. The central element in the rejection of modernity is a rejection of epistemological foundationalism. “Above all, however, postmodern, chastened rationality entails the rejection of epistemological foundationalism . . . The goal of the foundationalist agenda is discovery of an approach to knowledge that will provide rational human beings with absolute, incontestable certainty regarding the truthfulness of their beliefs . . . These basic beliefs or first principles must be universal, objective, and discernible to any rational person” (p. 23). As a description of the epistemology of the rapidly croaking Enlightenment project, this is a decent description. But then comes the sleight of hand.
In the next paragraph, the claim is made that this “foundationalism” came to “dominate the discipline of theology.” It took two forms, for liberals and conservatives respectively. “Liberals constructed theology on the foundation of an unassailable religious experience, whereas conservatives looked to an error-free Bible as the incontrovertible foundation of their theology. In the postmoderrn context, however, foundationalism is in dramatic retreat, as its assertions about the objectivity, certainty, and universality of knowledge have come under withering critique” (pp. 23-24).
Speaking of withering critiques, let us proceed. The Cartesian attempt at knowledge that cannot be doubted was an autonomous attempt to “get at” indisputable foundations through autonomous means. The rationalist idolaters wanted to start with the self, and, having done so, they wanted objectivity, certain knowledge, and universal applications, and they wanted to get there without God. They wanted to start with the “centering self.” They wanted epistemological selfishness. The postmodernists want chastened selfishness, but not so chastened that it abandons the non-negotiable starting point of all forms of unbelief, which is the self.
Now postmodernism is little more that modernity’s nervous breakdown. Confident self-assurance has been replaced by whimpering selfishness. But faithful Christians, from the seventeenth century down, have fought the Enlightenment’s central demand that we use the centering self as the norm. We cannot have objectivity, certainty, and universality apart from the God who reveals Himself to us in Scripture. And with regard to the last of these, the demand for universality of knowledge for all rational observers, Christians denied this outright as displaying little awareness of the intellectual effects of sin. If God is gracious to an observer, and changes his heart, then he can have assurance of the objective truth of what he believes. But this knowledge is not accessible by all rational observers. The natural man does not discern the things of the spirit because they are spiritually discerned.
In short, confidence in the Bible as the infallible Word of God is not epistemological foundationalism tricked out with a few Bible verses. It has been and is a challenge to Enlightenment idolatry, and it remains a challenge to postmodern idolatries. An infinite triune God who speaks to us in His Scripture is one who radically decenters the self. This is what flips the Enlightenment project upside down, and it does the same for postmodern posturing. This is because the Self is the central idol of secular man. In the old Enlightenment days, the Self was up in front of the classroom, pompously lecturing, and these days, that Self has checked into therapy. But moving from self-centered bombast to self-centered whining is not repentance.
And then, hubris on steroids, these “chastened” postmodernists turn on the Christians who faithfully maintained (throughout the dark days of the Enlightenment) that God is the only one who can speak the ultimate word, and accuse them of being compromisers with idols. This provides a lesson for all of us. When the war is over, the Resistance fighters need to come out of the woods quickly because if they delay they will arrive in Paris only to discover themselves accused of collaboration by some Vichy weasels, who saw that it was time to switch sides again. And they always know how to time it just right. These accommodators, these post-vertebrates, are urging us to make our peace with the “next thing.” They were the same kind of people who were whooping up fornication with the Enlightenment, back when she was a younger and more attractive hooker.
This impudent move is designed to lure Christians away from their faith in the infallible Word of the holy and triune God, and to make the move look humble. The absolute God of heaven and earth has revealed His mind and will in human language, and so these people have quite a task in front of them. They have to persuade us that acting deaf when the triune God is speaking is actually a “chastened” and humble way to proceed. God tells Adam to stay away from the tree, and Adam walks over to it, whistling, telling himself that “to pretend that he, a finite creature, was capable of understanding, still less comprehending, this voice from the numinous realm — why, that would be the true arrogance. And gee, that fruit looks good. I believe I’ll have some.” Let us call it chastened disobedience.