Belief, Faith, and Postmodernism
Originally published in the Freedom (Winter 2019) issue
A mathematician reflects on the nature of belief and the postmodern critique of reason
What comes to mind when you hear the word “postmodernism”? Perhaps you think of slightly strange, unconventional, largely unintelligible art. Perhaps you think of the sorry state of the humanities in our universities. Or perhaps, if you’re a Christian, you think of postmodernism as the radical intellectual movement which seeks to deny all notions of “truth” and usher in an era of absolute relativism.
I have read several Christian authors in this latter category. Aware of the detrimental impact of absolute relativism, they repudiate all postmodern thought with the simple catch-22 of “how can postmodernism be universally true if there are no universal truths?” This caricature does little justice to postmodern thought, and it ignores a surprising reality: many aspects of postmodern thought are deeply valuable for the Christian faith. Postmodern thought offers a devastating critique of the hubris of the Enlightenment, science, and secular notions of ‘progress’, which are very much in line with traditional Christian thought. But more on that anon.
In this essay I will highlight a few valuable postmodern insights, such as its scathing rebuke of the Enlightenment obsession with pure rationality and “mere facts.” Far from being antagonistic to the life of faith, such insights are genuinely valuable and edifying for Christian self-understanding, thereby helping Christians to live more integrated and holistic lives. I will then contend briefly with the postmodern critique of Christianity, which claims that Christianity is yet another tool wielded to dominate and subjugate.
My Story
I am a mathematician by training and have always had a logical mind. Faced with an obstacle, my default modus operandi is to think it through systematically, and then having weighed up the options, to proceed methodically and thoughtfully.
And so, when the time came as an adolescent for me to start questioning my largely Christian upbringing, my natural inclination was to try and think it through logically.
I came across some apologetics resources and attended some talks. I heard about the evidence for the resurrection of Christ and the abundance of early Christian documents pointing to the reliability of the New Testament. I heard some philosophical arguments for God's existence, some of which were terrible and some reasonably convincing. Overall, I felt reassured that the faith I held was reasonable.
And thus, given all that I had heard, I wanted to formulate a concise, coherent set of logical arguments explaining why I held my Christian faith. I wanted to be able to start with my experience in the world and unquestionable axioms, and logically arrive at the conclusion that God was real, and that the Christian faith was true.
I eventually reached a point where I was reasonably happy with myself; I rested the brunt of my argument on the historicity of the resurrection – phenomena such as the empty tomb, post-Easter encounters with the risen Lord, and the fact that Christianity started in the first place. (Most messianic movements tend to fizzle out when their leader gets crucified.)
And so, I thought, my desire to come up with a purely rational basis for my faith was successful; I was happy with it and got on with my life.
However, in hindsight, I now see that my previous desire – to construct a purely rational basis for my faith – was fundamentally flawed.
I believe my previous approach was flawed for three main reasons:
1. This approach doesn’t work when trying to convince others of the reasonableness of the Christian faith.
2. This approach isn’t actually how our minds work when it comes to our fundamental beliefs.
3. The implicit underlying narrative – that rationality and reason are the final arbiters of Truth – is severely undermined by the postmodern movement.
1. Ineffectiveness in discourse
Firstly: an account of Christianity based purely on reason is ineffective in discourse with those of other beliefs.
I wonder if you have ever tried to convince a friend that Christianity is ‘true’ using historical evidence or philosophical arguments. If you have, you’ll know one thing for sure: it doesn’t work. For every piece of historical evidence you give me for the resurrection of Jesus, I can come up with an alternative explanation which is certainly more ‘plausible’ than a man rising from the dead. For every philosophical argument ‘proving’ God’s existence I can probably find a logical fallacy in there somewhere.
And even if you could win some such intellectual argument, and gave your interlocutor reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, they certainly would not be a Christian, which requires daily taking up one’s cross and not mere intellectual assent.
Fundamentally, the reason these intellectual arguments for Christianity cannot prevail is because of the second point: reason and rationality are not how we reach our fundamental beliefs.
2. The irrationality of the human mind
The thought processes we utilise for our deepest-held beliefs are profoundly irrational. In reality, when we make decisions – which car to buy; which apartment to move into; which school to go to – we don’t stack up pros and cons and ‘objectively’ weigh them up. We have some instinctive, visceral preference towards one option, and we use our reasoning faculty to retrospectively justify our instinctive decision.
This is precisely the case with our worldview positions. When I was younger, set on finding a rational justification for my faith, I was in a position where I already wanted to believe, and merely wanted to find evidence to justify my a priori decision.
I recently heard of a helpful analogy from the American psychologist and professor Jonathan Haidt. He argues that when it comes to beliefs, we are like men riding on elephants. The man atop the elephant represents our rational intellect, our thinking minds. The elephant he rides upon represents our deeper, non-rational selves. Intellectual arguments about faith then, are like trying to reason with the elephant rider. No matter how much you argue with the rider, unless the elephant is coming your way, they aren’t going to move an inch towards you. On the other hand, if you appeal to the elephant, the more fundamental, non-rational part, and you find that the elephant is inclined towards you, even the gentlest encouragement to the rider is enough to bring man and beast coming your way.
Anyone who says they looked at the evidence for Christianity and found it overwhelming will already have decided in their heart they want to believe.
And so, given rationality isn’t why I actually believed in the first place, formulating a purely rational basis for my faith now seems disingenuous at best.
3. Postmodernism and the insufficiency of pure rationality
Moreover, in addition to being ineffective in discourse as well as betraying how our minds actually work, a purely intellectual basis for the Christian faith fails to take into account the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment, which is worthy of Christians’ attention. Here I note my intellectual debt to The Passionate Intellect by Klassen and Zimmerman.[1]
The Enlightenment movement of the 17th-century sought to elevate Reason and Rationality as the firm foundation on which to build human knowledge, and thus all of reality. Freed from the shackles of religion and mysticism, science and reason were allowed to flourish. And flourish they did: all of the wondrous technology, medicine and comforts we enjoy today are products of the Enlightenment project. Elevating science and reason have produced buildings hundreds of meters tall and planes that fly faster than sound. Material poverty is decreasing at an astonishing rate globally and people are more connected than ever. The success of the Enlightenment project gave us a utopian Modernist vision for the future: because of advances of science and technology, we will one day achieve Heaven on Earth!
But at what cost?
The science and technology which brought cars and fridges also brought nuclear bombs and gas chambers. The industrialisation which brought us cheap phones and laptops has also given us the mass production of weapons and has exploited millions. The amazing connectedness of the internet has produced a generation addicted to social media and all of the insecurity, discontentment, and anxiety it brings.
The postmodern movement points out to us that this Modernist meta-narrative – that technology is the saviour of the human race – is a socially-constructed story which inevitably excludes other meta-narratives.
And thus, the desire of postmodernism isn’t a desire for complete relativism, but a firm commitment to recognise the other as fundamentally different than oneself.
The postmodern critique goes further than merely criticising the Enlightenment; it applies to all meta-narratives, including religious ones, and argues that they have all been used as tools of oppression. For the postmodernist, the ultimate vice is to try and apply your meta-narrative to someone else – be that the Western Enlightenment meta-narrative, or the Christian meta-narrative – doing so is nothing more than a masked attempt to dominate and subjugate someone else. You can see now the roots of the desire to be ‘tolerant’ and ‘inclusive’; the desire for equality among ethnicities, genders, identities...
So what about rationality and faith?
And so, what about my attempt to rationally justify my faith? The postmodern movement reminds me that this obsession with ‘objective evidence’ and the belief that rationality and reason are ultimate notions of Truth are themselves social constructs.
For the modernist, because of the split of science and faith, either something occurred ‘naturally’ or there was some supernatural intervention. The notion of God’s immanence, of his presence in and working through all things, especially ‘natural’ ones, has been lost to the modernist.
For the modernist, a given story either happened historically, factually, as described, or it’s false, a mere fabrication. The idea that there are other ways for stories to be ‘true’ aside from historically or factually true has been lost to the modernist. Indeed, I believe that the study of history itself should not be about merely “ascertaining what happened in the past”, but rather about learning about the past so that we can improve our future.
For the modernist, mathematics, science and technology are the pillars of human society, but art, literature, music and creative expression are merely things one does on the side. Creating beautiful art, poetry, or creative performance are fine for the privileged few, but certainly have no place at the table among the “serious” disciplines of the sciences.
These issues above are all side-effects when Enlightenment thought is applied to matters of life and faith.
So where do we go from here?
All of us are (grand-)children of the Enlightenment. The very air we have breathed growing up and the values we have subconsciously imbibed have all been influenced by Modernist thought. But I want us to wake up to the limitations of Modernity. To appreciate how it has vastly improved human life, but not to accept its eschatology (we will ultimately be saved by science and technology). Historically, despite its later splitting of science and faith, modernity itself was birthed from the Christian worldview: it was the Christian insistence on one God who created and sustained all, and who created us in His image which gave man the confidence to pursue science in the first place. (Nietzsche then exactly predicted that after the success of science, the tools of empiricism and rationality would then be ironically turned on Christianity itself, and the very worldview that birthed it would be judged and found wanting.)
What would it look like in practice to take these considerations into account? I realize that the foundation of my belief is no longer some philosophical argument or pure historical evidence - although those things are useful. I am no longer ashamed to say I am a follower of Jesus predominantly because I am drawn to him as described in the Gospels and the vision of humanity he envisaged (Matthew 5-7). I am a follower of Jesus because I have experienced his forgiveness and the peace that only he can give. I am a follower of Jesus because I want to be part of the New Creation which is coming, and spend my life working to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
Pushing against my instinctively over-logical nature challenges me that being a Christian isn’t about merely professing the right things, but living them out.[2] In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov the pious Alyosha finds himself unable to defend his Christian beliefs against his brother Ivan’s savage intellectual assault. Having admitted intellectual defeat, Alyosha rises and kisses Ivan. Genuine faith is more about actions than about ideas. I have argued that the postmodern movement gives us reason to push against the distorted meta-narrative of Modernism. But can Christianity itself survive the postmodern critique? Postmodernism attacks meta-narratives because they are wielded to force conformity and suppress those who dissent. Any given meta-narrative is merely a subjective, one-sided view of the world, thoroughly entrenched in a specific time and culture and therefore ultimately meaningless.
But what if there were a worldview which could counter those postmodern claims? A worldview that was fundamentally other-centered? What if there were a meta-narrative where victory was achieved not through conquest but through self-sacrifice and service? What if there were a worldview where the Mighty stoop down and wash the feet of those below? What if there were a worldview where the ultimate transcendent Other interacted with and through culture? What if there were a worldview which repeatedly, doggedly insisted that the poor and oppressed were to be treated fairly? What if there were a worldview where the blessed ones were not those with power, but those who were meek, mourning and broken? A worldview where the first are last, and the last first.
Let me end with some words of the Lord Jesus from Mark 10:
“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” [3]
[1] Normal Klassen & Jens Zimmermann, The Passionate Intellect (Ada, MI: Baker Academic), 2006.
[2] Matthew 7:15ff.
[3] Mark 10:43-45 NIV.