Postmodernism (Part 2)
[Editor's Note: This segment of the discussion on Postmodernism begins with a look at how postmodernists explain their theory.]
Expanding somewhat on this "Its-all-a-matter-of-how-you-look-at-it" idea was Stanley Fish, who performed an experiment with his college students. Carson introduces him as follows and then describes the deception he used:
A variation of deconstruction theory is found in the writings of Stanley Fish, whose work, unlike Derrida's, attempts to reflect theoretical points in the form of his exposition, has the virtue of being readable.
One morning he was teaching two courses in the same classroom…. Toward the end of the class period, Fish wrote on the blackboard the last names of authors he was assigning the class to read:
Jacobs-Rosenbaum
Levin
Thorne
Hayes
Ohman (?)
For those in this interpretive community (i.e., the students of this class), the assignment was clear enough: they were to read the essays by Levin, Thorne, Hayes, and Ohmann in the book edited by Jacobs and Rosenbaum….
The students who entered for the second period were studying seventeenth-century religious poetry…. Fish told the students of this class, this new interpretive community, that what he had written on the board was a poem not unlike those they had been studying. He asked them to interpret it.
The students immediately became quite ingenious in seeing a common thread between all those names and "interpreting" a meaning. Fish concludes: "Interpretation is not the art of construing but the art of construction. Interpreters do not decode poems, they make them." [If interpretation is the art of construction, why is the process called deconstructionism? The text is deconstructed in that it no longer has any objective meaning (even if the author may have had one); the reader is then free to construct any meaning he fancies.]
Deconstructionism, therefore, is the postmodern paradigm. Words do not necessarily mean what we think they mean. Texts do not necessarily say what it seems obvious to most people that they are saying. "The reader must first understand that language is inherently ambiguous and self-contradictory." "In Derrida's scheme for the deconstructionist, language is a social construct with no fixed "meaning outside the text, nor in the text."
Tippens (from his Christian Scholarship Conference paper) also offers a definition:
Truth is always captured in a dynamic temporality, not in a static substantiality. In deconstructionism there is no self-evident or absolute ground of knowledge. Language becomes slippery, meanings undecidable, words and signs play freely in the mind but never lead to a settled or unequivocal meaning….
Deconstructionism is maddening, but is worth considering. It makes one acutely aware of the multiple messages lurking within the (apparently) simple communication.
In other words, Truth is only truth for the moment; it cannot remain truth from even one generation to the next, let alone from one millennium to the next. Is it not interesting, however, that slippery words are used to define the concept?
The application of deconstructionism to Bible study is frightening. Not only can we no longer say that a verse means what it says and says what it means to avoid irresponsible exegesis, we cannot conclude anything about a passage of Scripture. Even the wildest version of a familiar passage must be accepted.
The prodigal son is no longer a profound story of repentance and forgiveness; it is about a missionary to South Africa who became so destitute that he had to return home to his skinflint father, who refused to give him any more money for his work. The older brother was unhappy at his return because now it would be his turn to go, and he was happier staying at home. One might wonder what kind of drugs someone was using to elicit such a fanciful interpretation.
In the old days, all that a false teacher would have had to do is say that the verb wasted just meant "spent" and that riotous should actually be frugal. He only sinned by taking too much upon himself and not investing the money more wisely.
But now a false teacher need not even do that. He can assert, "This is what the text means to me." If someone objects to the interpretation based on the fact that the prodigal "wasted his substance with riotous living," the deconstructionist will just shake his head, and say: "Your problem is that you think there is only one interpretation of a text that is right. It is the case, however, that truth is not objective and that there can be contradictory elements in a story."
In other words, there is no Truth to find in any text—even a Bible text. The text is interpreted by the way each reader looks at it. We all are a product of our life experiences, and we are going to bring different ideas to the text with us, which will color our interpretation. There is no right or wrong "interpretation"; all are equally valid (unless you are taking a literature test).
The deconstructionist approach is constructed upon faulty premises, some of which are challenged below.
1. The fact that some things are ambiguous does not prove that everything is ambiguous—any more than the existence of some absolutes proves that everything is absolute. How many people have trouble understanding, "Thou shalt not steal"—especially when it applies to what they own (Ex. 20:15)?
2. The more information that is supplied, the less ambiguity results. What if one of the people sitting at table with the number 6 on the paper asked, "Which is the top, and which is the bottom of the page?" Then, no matter which side of the table each person was sitting on, they could both conclude, "The number is 6, or the number is 9."
3. Misleading information causes misinterpretation. When Professor Fish misinformed his class that they were looking at the words of a poem, he violated truth and created a false context which would insure a false interpretation—just as in a Western when someone changes the signpost, and the victim takes a trail that leads to a canyon instead of the town.
4. Deconstructionism assumes that the author of a text had no specific message to communicate, or (even if he did) we cannot know it. It is possible that a poet or an artist can be deliberately abstract; ambiguity might be the message. If such is the case, however, and we discern that ambiguity was the message, then have we not interpreted things correctly?
5. Deconstructionism assumes that no authors want to be understood, or that they are capable of being understood. But if we understand language sufficiently to have understood that last point, we have denied our own proposition.
6. As it pertains to the Scriptures, do we really want to affirm that God communicated to His creation knowing that they would be unable to understand Him? Since God created us and gave us the gift of language, it would be preposterous to imagine that He is incapable of speaking so as to be understood. [This point may seem irrelevant since both the modernist and the postmodernist generally reject God, but it may have some influence on those in the church enamored with Postmodernism.]
7. Does not every writer and painter have a "message," a point to communicate? If not, why labor so diligently to bring into existence that which is meaningless? When someone scribbles non-sensical gibberish on paper, we usually refer to that individual as insane.
What Is Reality?
The New Age philosophy is: "Create your own reality." That philosophy, essentially, is precisely the theory behind postmodernism and deconstructionism. Children pick up on this philosophy very early. If one such fledgling artist draws a figure and is told it is a good circle, the tot might reply, "It's not a circle; it's a square." The parent calmly explains the difference, affirming once more that it is not a square. The child insists, "It is to me." Adults studying the Bible have not really improved on this childish approach to matters; they have only upgraded their vocabulary when they say, "That's your interpretation."
In the postmodern world there is no right or wrong. Reality matters not; it has been replaced by perception. Consider the following story.
Walter Truett Anderson tells the joke of three umpires having a beer after a baseball game. One says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and I call 'em the way they are." Another responds, "There's balls and there's strikes, and I call 'em the way I see 'em." The third says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and they ain't nothin' until I call 'em."
The third umpire represents the postmodernist: It doesn't matter whether a pitch IS a ball or a strike; however he interprets it is all that matters. He may not realize it, but this philosophy can only be correct if the tenets of Modernism (secular humanism) are correct. If God does not exist, then perception can become reality. But if God exists, reality remains unaffected by perception.
If, for example, a person argues, "The Biblical description of hell as a place of continual torment does not fit my concept of a loving God; so, I refuse to accept such an idea," the fact remains that his "perception" does not affect the reality revealed in the Scriptures one iota. God is not about to say, "Because some Christians, as well as most non-Christians, have rejected the truth concerning hell, I will alter reality to fit their perception." God has revealed reality. It does not depend upon our approval or correct perception for its existence. If every person on earth were to reject that teaching or any subsequent doctrine explaining how to be saved from such condemnation, it would not change a thing.
Twelve jurors perceived that O. J. Simpson was innocent of murder. The majority of Americans perceive that he is guilty. Neither perception makes him guilty or innocent. He either actually committed the murders, or he in reality did not. Nobody's perception can change reality; we either judge correctly or incorrectly. If our perception is wrong, a guilty man goes free, or an innocent man is put to death. But while the consequences of our perception are profound, they still do not change reality.
"That's small consolation to the dead, innocent man—to know that society's perception was wrong; how much comfort is reality?" If God exists, there is great comfort, for though he lost his physical life for a crime he did not commit, God will judge him innocent of it because in reality he did not do it. As an extra bonus God will judge the coward who committed the crime and let someone else be punished for it. But the postmodernist rejects the existence of God. Therefore, to him perception equals reality. Like the postmodern umpire, they "ain't nothin'" till he "calls 'em."