| Faith that refuses to be
relative
What is generally called “postmodernism” is a quest to contest meta-narratives, asserting difference and diversity instead. Contesting meta-narratives is not new. Most expressions of Protestant Reformation contested some form of church-state meta-narrative, even if some of these also endorsed new expressions of church-state identity. The impetus of Enlightenment was to contest any authoritative meta-narrative identified with an institutional or state sponsored church. Such church narratives were increasingly displaced by a rational meta-narrative in the eighteenth century, but not without Christian gospel having a pervasive impact through expressions of renewal, distinguishing between gospel and church formalism in articulation of distinctive Christian identity. Along with rationalism, a scientific meta-narrative assumed dominance, until in the nineteenth century, an emerging modern narrative of inexorable progress prevailed. By variously evolved discourses, postmodernism now contests this meta-narrative. While postmodernism can be a vague designation, it has an identifiable feature—to contest any claim to the status of meta-narrative. Yet invariably, humans adhere to some form of meta-narrative that promises to give coherent meaning to their lives. v By contrast to any received cultural or newly constructed meta-narrative, Christian faith gives testimony to a word otherwise. This testimony endorses human life but exposes meta-narratives as inadequate to the mortal horizon within which, each in anxiety and usually in tribes, seeks to secure a place under the sun—the beginning of Pascal’s coup d’état of the whole earth. While articulating a positive view of human life, the consistent disclosure of biblical apocalypse calls into question human meta-narratives, announcing their destructive hubris as demonstrative expressions of human sinfulness wrought from anxiety. Babel is the enduring symbol of human hubris anxiously seeking to construct a meta-narrative in a name that promises to secure humanity’s unity. Biblical apocalypse and postmodernism both contest meta-narratives and their presumption to speak for humanity. Postmodern discourses level meta-narratives to relative expressions of different cultural, moral and social values, with no one narrative able to claim distinction above any other. Christian testimony exposes human nakedness beyond any exposé of human life articulated within postmodern discourses. While Christians speak of human sinfulness, a postmodern perspective can only succumb to the numbing effects of not aspiring to any claim beyond a profusion of relative claims, each juxtaposed with others as so many tribal expressions of human existence. Postmodernism’s emphatic elevation of “the other”* excludes feasible critique of the attitudes or actions of any narrative. Yet postmodernism harbours an implicit meta-narrative—a tacit axiom that all narratives are acceptable, except narratives that are presumably not tolerant of other narratives. Tolerance within assertions that all narratives are relative is a surreptitious meta-narrative. Elevation of tolerance permits no distinctive imperative for human life beyond the celebration of discrete but relative tribal differences. Yet tribes divide over the perception, articulation and expression of their meta-narratives. Within any tribe, differences over a shared meta-narrative can be vicious, even as tolerance is extended to other meta-narratives—in the same way a lion respects an elephant but will kill the cubs of another lion. Tolerance may be the only plausible strategy to sustain a secular society in which diverse religious and non-religious people can participate as equals, but it is an inadequate response to the phenomenon of violence within intractable human differences. v The prevailing impetus of biblical testimony contests human meta-narratives, to offer a word otherwise that is not of human origin or relative among many narratives, even if it is expressed in familiar words and images for our hearing in diverse times and places. Christian gospel offers a sovereign story, otherwise than any of our own conjuring, expressed through the call of Abraham and God’s creativity in Isaac as the unique source of Israel’s existence and distinction, culminating in a messianic trajectory that is lived and articulated for all nations as life in Christ crucified and risen. By presenting the humility of God in Christ, any appeal to “God” as the supreme form of tribal meta-narrative is subverted by the gospel. If the meta-narrative appeal to theism is subverted, every lesser claim to meta-narrative status is called into question. Christian faith offers an enduring narrative in the paradox of complete self-giving that is also the triumph of triune life in love. This paradox offers an alternative approach to life that is not caught in the grip of tribal anxiety in living toward death but by trust in Christ as risen, finds life in being resourced to lose it for others. New Testament testimony articulates a unique possibility for humanity as the future of God becoming present in Jesus Christ. This is eschatology—the end in the midst of time—which is intrinsic to gospel narrative as unlike any meta-narrative. In testimony to the gospel, Christian faith calls every meta-narrative into question while offering humanity, by refusing meta-narratives, good news for meaningful existence in the midst of creation. Christian faith refuses definition by culture, religion, state or philosophy. It exceeds these, even if customs, rituals, legislation or ideals are deployed to define Christian faith as a form of tribal identity. Regardless of how venerable any such tribe has become and whatever respect it appears to command within society, these are surpassed in Christian identity. What Christian faith articulates is nothing like a cultural religious meta-narrative, of which Caiaphas is representative or a state meta-narrative, of which Pilate is representative. Any expression of Christian faith that seeks to secure eminence by its social and cultural alliances, has assumed the status of a civic meta-narrative instead. In a postmodern milieu, it will also be critiqued and levelled along with other such narratives. Intrinsic to any religious adherence is a belief that a particular meta-narrative is essential to human wholeness, dignity and destiny. Within a postmodern perspective, the phenomenon of religion consists of relative narratives, with no religion able to claim meta-narrative status for humanity. To assert an equivalence of religions in their diversity is the only feasible view to have within such a perspective. Where Christians, in apprehension of and in deference to the contemporary critique of meta-narratives, also regard Christian faith as relative, they can only offer other Christians self contempt and malaise in the guise of generalising imperatives to tolerance. Yet tolerance is not love; it does not love the unlovely. Tolerance can be reluctant recognition that smoulders with calculated indifference. Before the gospel, expressions of Christian faith that have become aligned with any status quo, including a tacit status quo of tolerant relativity, are called to hear a word otherwise. This is a source of veracity in testimony to grace—beyond the scope of human initiative or reduction of human yearning to a relative perspective among many perspectives. |
