In The Delights and Dangers of Navigating the Postmodern Currents, Part I, Stephen Shields briefly described three strands of postmodern thought: the use of language and paradigms to frame reality, the way that paradigms can be manipulated to oppress and the critical role of communities in creating paradigms. Some Christian leaders have tended to view the postmodern turn as requiring a substantial re-engineering of Christian thought. Others view postmodernism as a pretension that "sets itself up against the knowledge of God" (2 Corinthians 10:5). Stephen suggests that traditionalists and revisionists have much to learn from each other and that a proper response to postmodernity goes beyond a mere thumbs up or a thumbs down. He suggests how conflict resolution principles can be applied to aid disputants to move the discussion forward in an irenic fashion that benefits all.

There are those whose infectious excitement over everything postmodern is limited to this: To understand postmodernity is to become Jew to Jew and Greek to Greek (1 Corinthians 9, NIV). It’s the enthusiasm of those who have been entranced by the compelling beauty of Jesus, those whose gratitude to God moves them, as Haddon Robinson has said, to do "everything short of sinning for the gospel of Christ." Postmodernism must be understood because we are trying to reach postmoderns. Without a doubt, that is a worthy - even a compelling - motive. But I would respectfully suggest that the church’s interest in postmodernism must be even more fully orbed.

The church’s careful and thorough attention to the task of engaging postmodernity should be motivated not only by a love for the postmoderns for whom Jesus died but also by a teachable humility that seeks to learn what she can from her critics.

The following comments are meant to be suggestive.

Consider the postmodern strand of thought dealing with the limitations of language and the mind’s ability to accurately conceptualize reality. We will spend most of our time here since its arguable that this strand is the basis for the other two that we will consider.

Derrida emphasizes the symbolic nature of language. As I write this I’m flying to Dallas, TX. But this thing I’m sitting in, this airplane, is not intrinsically "airplane." In Dutch it’s called "vliegmachine;" in Esperanto it’s called "aeroplano." "Airplane" is just the English symbol with which I’m familiar that represents this thing I’m depending on to get me safely to Dallas.

The symbolism of language is even more richly textured than this simple one-to-one correspondence between an individual word and a concept. For example, if you and I were talking on the telephone and I said, "Well, listen, I’m really glad you called," if you were from Southern Virginia - as I am - you would understand that I’m really saying, "Well, I’m now ready to complete this conversation so kindly begin your final pleasantries." Not only are my words individually symbolic but the way that I put them together is of itself symbolic in a way that transcends the mere individual words. And - of course - there’s the much referenced fact that the Eskimos have so very many words for snow. Their richer symbol system implies a deeper (pardon the pun!) understanding of the reality of snow and also implies that our grasp of reality is limited by the breadth of our symbol system. We cannot say, then, that it’s mere sophistry if Derrida were to suggest that the understanding of snow of a Southern American who grew up in the South is limited not only by the relative paucity of the white stuff in Danville, VA but also by the poverty of the distinct set of linguistic symbols pertaining to snow which he employs? If I began to live with the Eskimos, I would lack words to describe the experience and would similarly be limited in my comprehension of the subtleties and nuances of snow by that linguistic limitation.

Consider the paradigm. Paradigms are useful mental constructs. Their very utility is one of the reasons we resist changing our paradigms. But they are also limiting. Kuhn coined the term in discussing Galileo’s assertion that the earth orbited the Sun. This contradicted the ascendant Ptolemaic model which explained all the available data in a self-consistent way that presupposed the earth as the center of the solar system and the universe. Kuhn’s point is that scientific revolution - and the advance of scientific knowledge - occurs when old paradigms are challenged and new ones emerge.

Postmodern critics of Christianity claim that the severe limits of language and paradigm make nonsense any propositional statements about God or eternalities. Language and the human mind are simply inadequate to the task in the face of the Infinite.

While the biblicist would certainly demur on this point, he must nevertheless acknowledge that the concept of paradigm is reminiscent of a much older concept formulated over 19 centuries ago by the Apostle Paul. In his letter to the Christians in Rome, the apostle writes:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, 
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind

Romans 12:2a

The Christian is thusly challenged to constantly engage in what Peter Senge in his wonderful The Fifth Discipline calls "balancing advocacy with inquiry." We take positions (advocacy) because of the absolute utilitarian necessity of sometimes taking action on matters about which we do not always have complete certainty.

Yet we remain humble enough to be open to correction should a paradigm correction be suggested after we inquire for the reasons held by those who disagree (inquiry).

I respectfully suggest that the import of Paul’s words is that a relationship with the Transcendent requires constant paradigmatic adjustment! And the most endearing characteristic of someone who has thought deeply and reflectively about the limits of human language and paradigm is a teachable humility.

But, sadly, it is this humility that one simply does not sense in so much Christian theology, in so many Sunday morning messages, and in a plethora of Christian books. It is this lack of humility - this conveyed absolute certainty - in so many particulars of the panoply of Christian expression that may justify the postmodernity-inspired accusation that Christian theology has been inordinately influenced by the modern agenda. Intrinsic to modernity is the desire to organize and explicate all particulars. Man’s mind is considered capable of explaining and classifying all that can be known.

Recently I heard a popular Christian apologist - a man for whom I have enormous respect - fielding questions from a college audience. After someone asked how it was possible that Jesus - as God - could die, he declared that the answer was an easy one and went on to give a standard response delineating Jesus’ human and divine natures. As I was listening to this, I had to laugh. In my opinion, evacuating the death of the Divine Son of its mystery by such a formulaic response is reflective of a modern arbitrary certainty and hypercategorization. Postmodernity advocates - even celebrates - cognitive dissonance, which is nothing more than the analytical term for mystery. It is comfortable with leaving certain particulars unexplained. There are times when we should do the same.

Finite man is severely limited in his ability to comprehend Him Who is infinite. And lacking all data of the Divine, it should come as no shock that there would be divine antinomies - apparent contradictions. We should not be surprised when our investigations of the One Who created all things are stopped by the limits of our human minds. Modernity, on the other hand, inspires us to arbitrarily fill in the gaps.

I have a friend who has 9 children. Once one of his daughters disobeyed him and he decided that it was time to begin spanking her. (I trust that if you personally object to corporal punishment you’ll not miss my larger point!) He began to do so. Immediately he stopped. When he saw that she was terrorized - not scared, not merely afraid, but confusedly horrified - he stopped at once. She had no idea what was going on. This little girl was terrorized because she knew two things to be true: 1) Daddy loves me; and 2) Daddy is hurting me. And in her little world it was simply inconceivable that these two facts could co-exist. They comprised an antinomy. Of course, in her father’s mind his love and his discipline were entirely consistent. But consider: if such a difference divides the understanding of man and daughter - separated by scant decades - imagine the chasm between the comprehension of the One Who lives forever and the understanding of mere man. We should not be surprised and alarmed when we can’t reconcile all known facts about the One who is infinite.

But our modernity-influenced minds manufacture contorted theories that account for all the data, irrespective of the mental gymnastics our Ptolemaic constructs require. Or - worse - we increase our passionate rhetoric to supplement inadequate argumentation.

I rather respectfully suggest we do better to listen to our postmodern critics and display a willingness to live with data we cannot entirely reconcile. We must be comfortable with cognitive dissonance or - more to the point -to be able to embrace mystery. The mystery itself implies that we are dealing with the Other and not a mere anthropomorphic construction of our hopeful religious desires. That mystery should lead us to worship.

Scripture itself suggests data beyond our knowing. In Deuteronomy we read, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God" (29:29a, The New King James Version).

My suggestion - however - should not be taken as an interdiction of our natural desire to explore divine mysteries, for "to search out a matter is the glory of kings" (Proverbs 25:2b). But when God’s greatness is revealed by our inability to put all the pieces together "it is the glory of God to conceal a matter" (Proverbs 25:2a).

So while we can and must simultaneously explore and accept God’s mysteries, we mustn’t artificially explain every nook and cranny of God’s mysteries lest we seem to make Him entirely explicable and our formulation of him a mere human construct. Who could worship such a God?

We must acknowledge to our postmodern critics that in many ways we’ve lost a sense of God’s transcendence. We must agree that so many of our predictable Sunday morning services seem like business seminars rather than encounters with the Ineffable. We must confess that we’ve been addicted to the propositional, to the left-brain, to the logical and sequential. In these ways we’ve bought into the modern agenda. I’ll never forget hearing a seminary professor declare, "We do not train you to be pastors; we train you how to answer Bible questions." There is more to Christianity than this.

What is the appeal of the modern agenda to the Christian? At least part of its seduction is that if my Christianity is entirely a set of propositions, I can remain in control; I can put God in a box. In this way I retain independence because I’ve mastered God theoretically.

God - of course - will have nothing of it; He shall not be mastered; He shall break out of the box. But when we so constrain God in our minds, when we lose a sense of awe at His greatness and mystery, we inevitably become imbalanced even when we do propositionalize. We strain proposition so that it covers every exigency and every piece of data and even our propositionalizing is diminished in its accuracy and effectiveness.

Evidence that a failure to experience God limits our ability to explain him has recently come from a number of interesting sources.

The work of neurologist Antonio Damasio (Descartes Error) is suggestive of how a lack of appreciation of God’s transcendence and mystery inhibits evangelicals’ ability to even propositionalize about God with consistent balance, relevance, and possibly even accuracy.

All experiences that cannot be analyzed down to proposition (the purview of the what’s popularly called "the left brain") can only be ascertained by the emotions (or the "right brain"). My one year old Skye understands little of my interactions with her, but she readily grasps with her emotions whether she perceives my activity to be good (a hug) or bad (Daddy says, "No, Skye, don’t touch that!").

Similarly, when it comes to our comprehension of God, in many respects we are like children in our understanding. Because of the limitations of our mental capacity, and because of God’s infinity, it is impossible to contain our proper experience of him within the bounds of mere proposition.

Paul himself explores the limits of his language in striving to express the magnificent love of God when he prays that the Ephesian Christians "may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height - to know the love of Christ" (Ephesians 3:18,19a, NASB).

Of this abounding love, in his next phrase Paul plainly asserts the inadequacy of language - yes, even the human mind - to contain this love when he writes that it "passes knowledge" (3:19). We see another assertion of this inability of man’s mind to fully comprehend God when Paul writes of the "peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7, NASB). We can only detail so many aspects of our Father; we can only intuit the fullness of His Majesty.

The inadequacy of our words fill our hearts with the need to praise, to sing, to paint, to dance.

So the fullness of our understanding of God cannot come from what we can analyze alone. Our analysis brings our knowledge up to a point - then it is our intuition (or heart or "right brain" or that part of us that knows what it cannot quite put into words) that completes our understanding.

Antonio Damasio has discovered that those whose brains have been damaged in areas that feel emotion so that they are emotionally "flat" are similarly incapable of thinking properly in areas historically considered separate from emotions. This damage, then, is in the part of the brain that responds to external stimuli; it is in one portion of the mind that experiences.

Damasio’s patients are articulate, perform well on standardized intelligence tests, even do well on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - a standard instrument used to predict neurotic pathological behaviors. Yet they cannot keep spouses, cannot keep jobs, and in example after example Damasio illustrates how those who do not seem to feel emotion are incapable of prioritizing what is and is not important. They are constantly becoming lost in relatively unimportant tasks, such as filing or organizing their desk, to the detriment of much more pressing matters.

Could one argue that Evangelicalism has exercised a similar preoccupation with relatively unimportant matters when larger issues are at stake? Is it possible that our depreciation of God’s transcendent qualities - our failure to let ourselves be lost in his wonder, in His greatness, in His love - could it be that what we do not experience of God similarly influences us to misprioritize, to miss the big picture, to get lost in the details of His truth? Our relative inability - I know I’m making broad generalities here - but our relative inability to join as one in passionate worship of our Beautiful Savior has divided us from one another in areas such as ecclesiology, baptism, the details of salvation by grace through faith, etc. I’m not saying that these are unimportant issues unworthy of healthy debate. But when we agree on such things as Jesus’ divinity, salvation by grace through faith, the resurrection, etc., - even more - when we share in the experience of God’s love and grace, is it not a scandal that we allow lesser matters to separate us? I’m suggesting that our unwillingness to abandon ourselves to God’s relentless wooing - just like as a bride gives all of herself to her husband - inhibits us - just like Damasio’s patients - from being able to properly and appropriately propositionalize. And I’m suggesting that when we don’t connect with God with our "right brain" we tend to over-propositionalize Him in a way consistent with modernity’s agenda of making man the arbiter of all truth.

So we feel the need to dot every theological i and cross every propositional t. Our arguments sound strained; our voices rise in insecure polemic because we’ve erected a theological house of cards. The editors of Mars Hill Review have likened postmodernity’s rebuke of the church with the Babylonian’s captivity of Israel. And so we should consider: could God be using the postmodern agenda to correct an imbalance in evangelicalism brought on by modernity? Is God calling us back to a deeper appreciation of all that He is? And when we do this, is it possible our theology will become more accurate and our lives more balanced?

To be continued next month: Lessons "from" the church.

Stephen Shields is a Technology Manager with USA TODAY and the former Pastor for Cedar Ridge Communities at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, MD. He lives with his wife Bethany and three daughters - Michaela Siobhan, Skye Teresa, and Alia Noelle - in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. He graduated from Grace Theological Seminary with an M. Div. He can be contacted at stephen@shieldsplace.org and his website is http://www.shieldsplace.org.