Response to Postmodern Biblical Authority

Kurt Willems wrote an arti­cle on theooze.com regard­ing post­mod­ern bib­li­cal author­ity, this is some­thing of a response.

In his arti­cle, Willems exam­ines the decon­struc­tion­ist philoso­phies of Jacques Der­rida and Jean-Francois Lyotard and from this, attempts to show that within a post­mod­ern frame­work, the Bible can be viewed as author­i­ta­tive. Willems sug­gests we can claim an author­i­ta­tive view of the Bible as the Bible is not a meta-narrative in the mod­ern sense, but a col­lec­tion of smaller sto­ries.¹ “Post­mod­ernists are suspicious of meta-narratives, but highly value the ‘small sto­ries.’ Your story mat­ters; my story mat­ters. The mod­ern meta-narrative of progress has turned out to be a lie, but the ‘small sto­ries’ are what is real in daily life.²

Willems begins by dis­cussing Derrida’s famous phrase, “there is noth­ing out­side the text”.³ He explains this mantra with the words of James K.A. Smith:

“Thus, just before mak­ing his famous claim that ‘there is noth­ing out­side the text,’ Der­rida says that a read­ing or inter­pre­ta­tion “can­not legit­i­mately trans­gress the text toward some­thing other than it, toward a referent…or toward a sig­ni­fied out­side the text whose con­tent could take place, could have taken place out­side of lan­guage, that is to say, in the sense that we give here to that word, out­side of writ­ing in general’…Interpretation is not a series of hoops we jump through to even­tu­ally reach a realm of unmedi­ated expe­ri­ence where we don’t have to inter­pret any­more. Rather, inter­pre­ta­tion is an inescapable part of being human and expe­ri­enc­ing the world. So even this blue cup sit­ting on my table, from which I am drink­ing my cof­fee ‘first­hand,’ as it were, is still a mat­ter of inter­pre­ta­tion”.⁴

Expand­ing fur­ther on this I turn to Kevin J. Van­hoozer, “‘There is noth­ing out­side the text’ […] What Der­rida denies is that there is any pres­ence, any kind of being or deter­mi­nate real­ity out­side the play of signs. There is no orig­i­nal ground or ‘home’ of mean­ing, noth­ing beyond par­tic­u­lar and con­tin­gent lan­guage sys­tems, and there­fore noth­ing to keep mean­ing cen­tered, sta­ble, and deter­mi­nate”.⁵ On this point I agree with Willem, at least in his under­stand­ing of Der­rida (where so many have mis­un­der­stood Der­rida). This, how­ever, leads into my first dis­agree­ment with Willem.

From the above Willem asks, “as Chris­tians, do we really need to buy into objec­tivism? Is that not merely a phi­los­o­phy in the same way that decon­struc­tion is? It should not shake the believer from faith if objec­tive knowl­edge is chal­lenged in this way. The mod­ernist longs for some­thing that can­not be attained from a human per­spec­tive, absolute cer­tainty. Assur­ance that the Bible is author­i­ta­tive should not rest on objec­tive rea­son, but should come from a deep con­vic­tion from a rela­tion­ship to the Spirit of God.“⁶ As Chris­tians, yes, we really do need to ‘buy into’ objec­tivisim (even if, as Willem implies, it’s ‘only’ a com­pet­ing phi­los­o­phy; so what?). How­ever, not the sort of objec­tivism Willem and other post­mod­erns inac­cu­rately ascribe to mod­ernism. For you see, mod­ernism does not ‘long’ for absolute cer­tainty, or ‘omni­scient knowl­edge’. Rather, mod­ernism is con­tented with sub­stan­tial knowl­edge of a thing. Con­trary to Willem, I would sug­gest our assur­ance of Bib­li­cal author­ity should rest on both the intrin­sic wit­ness of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer as well as evi­dence, logic, ‘rea­son’. Reduc­ing the author­ity of the Bible to sim­ply the wit­ness of the Spirit will, in the words of William Lane Craig, reduce Chris­tian­ity, “to but another voice in a cacoph­ony of com­pet­ing voices, each shar­ing its own nar­ra­tive and none com­mend­ing itself as the objec­tive truth about real­ity…“⁷

Willem then sug­gests that, “In order to prop­erly inter­pret the texts we encounter, not only do we need to decon­struct the dom­i­nant inter­pre­tive struc­tures, but we also need to lis­ten to the voices that have been silenced by such author­i­tar­i­an­ism”.⁸ Willem turns to John Caputo, stu­dent of Derrida:

“Decon­struc­tion is orga­nized around the idea that things con­tain a kind of uncon­tain­able truth, that they con­tain what they can­not con­tain. Nobody has to come along and ‘decon­struct’ things. Things are auto-deconstructed by the ten­den­cies of their own inner truth. In a decon­struc­tion, the “other” is the one who tells the truth on the “same”; the other is the truth of the same, the truth that has been repressed and sup­pressed, omit­ted and mar­gin­al­ized, or some­times just plain mur­dered, like Jesus him­self…“⁹

From this Willem states:

“What if we sug­gested that the Bible rep­re­sents the story of a peo­ple who were the ‘other?’ The New Tes­ta­ment tells the story of a com­mu­nity of peo­ple whose mes­sage sub­verted the empire of the day: ‘Jesus is Lord and Cae­sar is not.’ The Roman Empire oppressed, per­se­cuted, and killed Chris­tians; but the voice of the other is still expe­ri­enced today via the Scrip­tures. The Roman meta-narrative was an oppres­sive force, but the church move­ment con­tin­ued to grow in spite of being the mar­gin­al­ized voice in the empire. Per­haps it could be said that from the per­spec­tive of decon­struc­tion, the Bible is author­i­ta­tive pre­cisely because it is the story of a peo­ple who auto-deconstructed Rome. If the Bible can be viewed as the procla­ma­tion of the “other,” then it is able to reveal the truth that has often been left in the mar­gins of mod­ernism.¹⁰

How­ever, this is patently unre­al­is­tic from within a post­mod­ern frame­work. Clearly, as it falls vic­tim to the per­spec­tivism per­vad­ing all of post­mod­ern thought. While the early Church may be thought of ‘the other’ in rela­tion to the Roman Empire, this is nei­ther author­i­ta­tive nor a time­less dis­tinc­tion. For, who is ‘the other’ now in rela­tion to the Chris­t­ian church? Willem fails in show­ing, as per his sug­ges­tion, the ‘oth­er­li­ness’ of the early church, ergo, the Bible (which, really, are two dif­fer­ent things).

Willems then turns his atten­tion to under­stand­ing Lyotar­dian meta­nar­ra­tives. Willems under­stand­ing of what a ‘meta-narrative’ is comes through William Stacy Johnson:

The “meta-narratives” of which Lyotard speaks are the grand, self legit­i­mat­ing inter­pre­tive frame­works accord­ing to which we mod­ern peo­ple seek to define our world as com­plete and whole. A meta-narrative is the omni­com­pe­tent ratio­nale accord­ing to which all indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tives are thought to find their larger mean­ing and pur­pose.¹¹

Work­ing from the foun­da­tion this inter­pre­ta­tive frame­work pro­vides, it can­not be asserted that the Bible is not a meta-narrative, even if it is a col­lec­tion of smaller sto­ries (isn’t one able to ‘decon­struct’ ‘big sto­ries’ into col­lec­tions of ‘smaller sto­ries’ any­way?). From the above it can­not be claimed that the Bible has any sort of post­mod­ern author­ity as the Bible pro­vides (or attempts to pro­vide) an ‘omni­com­pe­tent ratio­nale accord­ing to which all indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tives are thought to find their larger mean­ing and pur­pose”. Think of indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tives such as the life of Jesus, Moses, Isa­iah, Joshua, Abra­ham or the ‘every­day’ believer. The Bible would teach that these indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tives are part of a grander plan of God within which their mean­ing and pur­pose is held. One can­not sep­a­rate these indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tives from the meta­nar­ra­tive of the Bible.

Since, for Willems pur­poses, this sum­mary of Lyotar­dian meta-narratives is inad­e­quate, Willems turns again to Smith:

Accord­ing to Lyotard, meta-narrative describes a uniquely mod­ern sit­u­a­tion. They do not only con­tain “big sto­ries,” but it is the self legit­imiz­ing qual­ity by appeal­ing to a type of uni­ver­sal rea­son that makes a meta-narrative. Ancient tribal sto­ries tell “big sto­ries,” but these would not fall into Lyotard’s cat­e­gory, because they do not rely on mod­ern sci­en­tific knowl­edge to be con­sid­ered ratio­nal. Homer’s Odyssey is a good exam­ple of a “big story” that does not meet the cri­te­ria to be a meta-narrative. This is because this ancient story does not appeal to uni­ver­sal rea­son, but rather it is a story of procla­ma­tion that calls on faith.¹²

From the above two expla­na­tions of meta-narratives Willems declares, “In light of this expla­na­tion of meta-narratives, does the Bible fit into such a cat­e­gory? Is the Bible a meta-narrative in the mod­ern sense? The answer is clearly, no.“¹³ How­ever, is this really the case? It’s already been demon­strated how the first under­stand­ing of Lyotar­dian meta-narratives is inad­e­quate a foun­da­tion for Bib­li­cal author­ity, lets exam­ine also this sec­ond expla­na­tion of Lyotar­dian meta-narratives to see if it is equally inadequate.

I find the above from Smith to be an inac­cu­rate por­trayal of Lyotard (mis­un­der­stand­ing of Lyotard?).  Lyotard him­self stated:

Sim­pli­fy­ing to the extreme, I define post­mod­ern as incredulity toward meta­nar­ra­tives. This incredulity is undoubt­edly a prod­uct of progress in the sci­ences: but that progress in turn pre­sup­poses it. To the obso­les­cence of the meta­nar­ra­tive appa­ra­tus of legit­i­ma­tion cor­re­sponds, most notably, the cri­sis of meta­phys­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and of the uni­ver­sity insti­tu­tion which in the past relied on it. The nar­ra­tive func­tion is los­ing its func­tors, its great hero, its great dan­gers, its great voy­ages, its great goal. It is being dis­persed in clouds of nar­ra­tive lan­guage elements–narrative, but also deno­ta­tive, pre­scrip­tive, descrip­tive, and so on […] Where, after the meta­nar­ra­tives, can legit­i­macy reside?¹⁴

What is impor­tant to note from the above, as com­pared with Smith, is that Lyotard’s incredulity toward meta­nar­ra­tives is a ‘prod­uct of progress in the sci­ences’. Lyotard is not defin­ing meta­nar­ra­tives as rely­ing on ‘mod­ern sci­en­tific knowl­edge to be con­sid­ered ratio­nal’. In fact, with respect to the above, Lyotard pre­sup­poses a def­i­n­i­tion and under­stand­ing of meta­nar­ra­tive, like that pro­vided by John­son above.

Unfor­tu­nately, there are a few dif­fer­ent ways to define meta­nar­ra­tive. For instance, D.A. Car­son briefly describes meta­nar­ra­tive as, “a big story that claims to explain all of life, or that claims to be true for every­one”.¹⁵ Addi­tion­ally, we could also work with the def­i­n­i­tion pro­vided above by John­son. How­ever, for my own pur­poses I’ll define meta­nar­ra­tive as, “an abstract idea that is thought to be a com­pre­hen­sive expla­na­tion of his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge that claims to be true for every­one”. Some believe meta­nar­ra­tives are told sto­ries, oth­ers believe they are untold sto­ries. We’ll be assum­ing they are told stories.

From this, we can under­stand Lyotard as say­ing the fol­low­ing, “I define post­mod­ern as incredulity towards abstract ideas that are thought to be com­pre­hen­sive expla­na­tions of his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence of knowl­edge. This incredulity is undoubt­edly a prod­uct of progress in the sci­ence…”. What we do not find in the words of Lyotard is Smith’s claims that meta­nar­ra­tive nec­es­sar­ily relies on mod­ern sci­en­tific knowl­edge to be con­sid­ered ratio­nal. Fur­ther­more , Smith ignores the Bib­li­cal claim that faith is uni­ver­sal, evi­den­tial and ratio­nal, nec­es­sar­ily true for all peo­ples of all times.  This mis­un­der­stand­ing of Lyotard unfor­tu­nately, nec­es­sar­ily, under­mines the entirety of Willems sug­ges­tion. Fur­ther­more, to claim meta­nar­ra­tive requires a foun­da­tion on mod­ern sci­en­tific knowl­edge to be con­sid­ered ratio­nal is intrin­si­cally con­tra­dic­tory. Accord­ing to D.A. Carson:

Post­mod­ern epis­te­mol­ogy is pro­foundly sus­pi­cious of all foun­da­tion­al­ism; one could even say it is pas­sion­ately anti-foundationalist. It argues that all the “foun­da­tions” are not secure, because they are “self-evident” only within given cul­tures. In other words, the foun­da­tions are them­selves prod­ucts of finite human beings, so every­thing that is built on them is no more sta­ble than the foun­da­tions them­selves. There is no ulti­mate ful­crum on which the levers of knowl­edge can rest”.¹⁶

Ulti­mately, Willems sug­ges­tion suc­cumbs to the same clouded vision and wish­ful think­ing many post­mod­ernists accuse mod­ernists of.

“As was dis­cussed ear­lier, the New Tes­ta­ment church is not part of a meta-narrative, but is a move­ment of resis­tance against such. The Roman Empire oppressed the early Chris­tians with its power, but through weak­ness the church endured; and this is the procla­ma­tion that we read each time we open the Scrip­tures. Just as Homer’s Odyssey is a “big story” of procla­ma­tion, so also bib­li­cal author­ity is found in the story that is told, not in some form of sci­en­tific or uni­ver­sal rea­son”.¹⁷

Ignor­ing the appeal to what appears to be weak­ness the­ol­ogy, the above is sim­ply inco­her­ent in its log­i­cal out­work­ing. Whether we’re speak­ing of the Roman Empires meta­nar­ra­tive or the meta­nar­ra­tive of the early church (an anti-meta meta­nar­ra­tive?), we’re still dis­cussing meta­nar­ra­tive, the “other” or not. Thus, within a post­mod­ern frame­work there is no pos­si­bil­ity of Bib­li­cal author­ity, even less so for an author­ity that super­sedes soci­ety, cul­ture and time.

In clos­ing, Willem ends his arti­cle by say­ing, “God’s story is still unfold­ing today. We are invited to par­tic­i­pate in this story dur­ing an age of tran­si­tion towards post­mod­ernism. It is within our par­tic­i­pa­tion that the Bible becomes truly author­i­ta­tive. This will not always be an easy task and it may require some awk­ward moments along the way, but it is in these moments that we can re-imagine and imple­ment our place in the nar­ra­tive of God.“¹⁸

I would sug­gest that we decline the invi­ta­tion towards post­mod­ernism, a phi­los­o­phy which, upon deep inspec­tion, is (I believe) self-refuting and unten­able. There cer­tainly are some awk­ward moments along the way, espe­cially for cer­tain con­tem­pla­tions along the way, this is one such awk­ward moment. As is ulti­mately the case, the Bible, God, hold no author­ity within post­mod­ernist thought.

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