How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith: Questioning Truth in Language, Philosophy and Art

By Crystal Downing
Review by Iain D Campbell

Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006

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In an interview with the author, one of IVP’s editors, Gary Deddo, asked Crystal Downing about her motivation for the writing of this particular volume. Professor Downing replied that although many Christians have written on postmodernism, ‘my book seems to be the first to employ a style more consonant with postmodernism itself’ (IVP Academic Alert, 15.2, Spring 2006, p1).

That means that we have in this volume lots of anecdotal autobiography woven into a very thorough and detailed introduction to the discourse of postmodernism. Downing likes to talk of ‘situatedness’; for her, that is the essential ‘post-’ of postmodernism; while modernism tried to establish objectivity beyond personal context, postmodernism accommodates our personal situation and context.

Crystal Downing’s present academic situatedness is in Messiah College, Pennsylvania, where she is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies. More important is her personal situatedness; the first chapter of this book is entitled ‘Posting (My) Life – Biographical Backgrounds’; dipping into some of the stories of her personal history, Downing tells us that her early experience of the Bible impressed her with ‘both the power and the poverty of language’ (32). That one statement could summarise this whole book.

Her personal pilgrimage, as well as her later academic studies, led Downing to the realisation of key issues: that backdrop affects perception (42), that language gestures towards truth, never capturing it fully (46), that language is arbitrary and artificial (88). Her book is an exploration of how all of this can be so, and at the same time serve Christian faith.

Downing’s Christian faith is implicit throughout the book, and explicit in such statements as ‘I believe in the absolute truth of God and have committed my life to following God Incarnate, Jesus Christ’ (162). But she does have an axe to grind, and top of her agenda are those Christians who have dismissed postmodernism as a threat to such faith. In most cases, she suggests, they have simply misinterpreted postmodernism, or failed to realise that Jesus was a postmodern deconstructionist before his time.

Downing’s interest is in the Arts, and it is here, she argues, that postmodernism properly emerged. Downing has an interesting chapter on Modernism (chapter 2), in which she suggests that Modernism had its roots in Enlightenment ‘independence in reading’ and ‘perspective in art’ (59). Such intellectual autonomy is what led modernists confidently to speak of absolute truth and objective knowledge; the result was institutionalised agnosticism which had little room for faith at the table of knowledge. Downing’s perspective is that postmodernism allows for faith, precisely because it values background and perception.

Again, according to Downing, this view of reality developed in the arts, with books, paintings and songs being variously assessed not merely by their own inherent content, but from the differing perceptions of those who read, admired or sang them. For Downing this means that revelation can be part of the cultural discourse which validates our reading, admiring and singing. In a protracted discussion of the ‘antifoundational foundations of postmodernism’ (chapter 4), Downing compares this shift with the moving foundations of Californian skyscrapers which are able to keep a building upright in an earthquake not because the foundations stay firm, but precisely because they allow for movement.

Chapters 5 and 6 deal with specific postmodern thinkers. Not surprisingly, Jacques Derrida makes an early appearance, and Downing applies his deconstruction of binary opposites to the New Testament. Too much religious language has been expressed in terms of binary polarisation, Downing suggests, instead of recognising the deconstructionism of the New Testament itself; after all, she argues, ‘Jesus offered … deconstruction, destabilizing binaries that privileged male access to God over female, priest over publican, Jewish over Samaritan, law over grace’ (142). Had the later Reformers grasped this with the clarity of Martin Luther, the Anabaptists would never have been persecuted! In all this, Downing claims not to be turning the postmodern quest into a religious one; Derrida, she says, made it a religious quest from the outset.

To the challenge that all that this produces is relativism, Downing provides an answer in chapter 7. There are different kinds of relativism, she suggests, including one which she calls ‘building relativism’, that is, ‘a postmodern relativism that allows for absolute truth’ (198). Such a relativism is actually relational, she suggests; the Truth that sets us free is not the Truth of abstract religious concepts, but the Truth incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Downing’s discussion is by turns complex, fascinating, comprehensive and detailed. As an introduction to postmodernism it serves its readers well. But as I read it, several warning lights kept flashing. There was, for example, the emphasis on ‘interpretive communities’ in her discussion of the genius of postmodernism, and Downing’s endorsement of Stanley Fish’s assertion that ‘we must honor the truth claims of each community and, furthermore, encourage each community to stay committed to its version of the truth’ (91).

There was also Downing’s discussion of biblical inerrancy, a notion which, she suggests, ‘did not appear until the 1820s’ (106). Belief in inerrancy, according to Downing, is a hallmark of fundamentalism, and owes more ‘to the canons of scientism … than to orthodox faith’ (106). Presumably Downing believes her own book to be inerrant; I fail to see why she has difficulty applying that concept to God’s book.

The whole idea of ‘moving foundations’ also flagged up a warning. According to Downing, ‘Chrsit moved foundations when he healed on the Sabbath and rose from the dead’ (119). Downing wants moving foundations for her faith within the walls of the Bible, church tradition, reason and personal experience (119). I baulk at the suggestion that these are of equal ultimacy, and question whether Paul, who insisted that ‘no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ’ (1 Corinthians 3:11), could accept it either.

Another warning light flashed when Downing discussed the deconstruction of binaries. Jesus did this, she suggests: he took the old law/grace polarity and deconstructed it, so that there is now no male/female, no slave/freeperson, no Jew/Greek polarity in the kingdom. This unique Person, suggests Downing, ‘challenged easy distinctions between inside and outside, between the sheep and the goats’ (147). Well, actually this Person insists that he will, in fact, separate sheep from goats, and ultimately take his people into his Presence for ever, while banishing others to the outside.

Of course, the problem with deconstructing Downing is that the whole enterprise is impossible to legitimise or verify. I think Downing has made important points in this book, but we encounter a vicious circle when we try to critique other points. She can retort that in my criticisms I have misunderstood her. I can argue that the reader’s perspective is more important than the author’s. She can argue that I have misunderstood postmodernism. I can retort that that is a perfectly legitimate position.

Perhaps the devil is in the possessive pronoun of the title. This is a book about how Postmodernism serves (Crystal Downing’s) faith. I can’t say it did much to help mine; yes, I gained much understanding of the postmodern approach to everything, but my faith still comes back to the Jesus who is Truth outside of me, and whose teaching leads to an inerrant Bible and the ultimate binary of final judgement. While I agree with Professor Downing that to know Him is life eternal, I do not share her confidence in postmodern deconstructionism as a means to that end.