220 - Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World

Postmodern Theology:
Christian Faith in a Pluralist World
Edited by Frederic B. Burnham
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989. 117 pp. $16.95. (pb)

This book, which is helpful for both theologians and pastors, arose out of a conference on "The Church in a Postmodern Age," which was organized to respond to issues raised by George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age.

In the introduction, Frederic Burnham, Director of the Trinity Institute, which sponsored the conference, lays out the points on which Lindbeck and the rest of the contributors agree: the postmodern age is one in which the cultural hegemony of science has been broken, and the resulting pluralism allows biblical language and categories to be recovered. Beyond this, the book itself is pluralistic, with the various contributors understanding the postmodern age quite differently and accordingly responding diversely to Lindbeck's proposals, most of which are nicely summarized in his chapter.

Robert Bellah agrees with Lindbeck that postmodernity's epistemological relativism, according to which science is simply one language game among many, allows us to take Christian language seriously again, and that Christian faithfulness is our first task. But he believes that it is also important to retrieve the language of citizenship, to become multilingual and therefore genuinely pluralistic, and even to learn to speak the languages of other religions, becoming enriched thereby.

Sandra Schneiders asks not whether the Bible's cultural-linguistic hegemony can be recovered, but (1) whether the Bible can again be interpreted in a religiously satisfying way, (2) whether the problem of its oppressive use can be solved, and (3) whether it can function as a revelatory medium for postmodern people, given its oppressive patriarchal content. She believes postmodern and liberation hermeneutics are solving the first two problems, but that the third remains.

Rowan Williams also holds that the Christian task cannot be simply to recover the biblical narrative within the church. Besides the problematic nature of much of the biblical message, the salvific nature of this message cannot be communicated apart from engagement with the concrete issues of the day. The church must speak transformative judgment and act in solidarity with Spirit-inspired movements resisting the chief obstacles to the Reign of God.

Whereas Lindbeck thinks epistemological relativism provides a sufficient opening for recovering biblical language and imagination, accordingly downplaying the importance of belief and therefore apologetics, both James Miller and Diogenes Allen see the transcendence of scientism as important primarily as an opening for recovering, with the aid of philosophy, a Christian worldview. Miller, after summarizing well

222 - Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World

the change from the premodern to the modern worldview (which is characterized by dualisms, including that between religion and science), sketches a postmodern worldview based on the emergence of a postmodern science, then suggests some implications for a postmodern theology. Diogenes Allen, whose contribution has been developed more fully in Christian Belief in a Postmodern World, convincingly portrays the postmodern world as one in which Christianity is again relevant to the questions of both cosmic and moral order.

Although it is not discussed by any of the authors, an underlying reason for the demurrers from or at least additions to Lindbeck's view by the others seems to be their rejection, at least implicitly, of his linguistic totalism, according to which our experience is totally structured by the language of our community. They are thereby able to assume "points of contact" between the church and other communities, whether scientific, artistic, moral-political, or religious. In spite of this book's pluralism, it is united on the need for the church to recover and proclaim its own deepest values over against modernity's consumerism, oppressiveness, and infatuation with power. Also, unlike most books arising from conferences, the term "uneven" need not be used. All the essays are strong.

David Ray Griffin
School of Theology at Claremont
Claremont, California