Postmodernism and the Bible: Introduction

By this point, the word postmodernism has become so passe and has taken on such various different meanings that the very presence of the word in a title is almost enough to make you leave the room. Indeed, the writer or speaker usually goes on to give some vague definition for the word that is less than helpful. Take my definition, for example: postmodern means "after modernism." OK, great. What's modernism?

Then the speaker or author has to face the additional fact that a good number of the audience or readership already will have a bias one way or another toward the word. And it will usually be a strong bias, either positively or negatively. For some, postmodernism is the essence of all that is wrong with America and the world today. It is the death of truth and the triumph of relativism. For others it is the latest hip "in" thing, and anyone who knows anything or is anybody is a part of it.

Then there are the glib and not too insightful dismissals. "So postmodernism claims there is no such thing as truth, right? Well, that's a truth claim itself. So by claiming there is no truth you are claiming a truth and, therefore, postmodernism is fundamentally incoherent."

The original title I suggested for this piece was "What is true about postmodernism in relation to the Bible?" It was meant to be a mildly amusing pun on the fact that postmodernism is more often associated with "un-truth" than with truth. Indeed, some might describe postmodernism as anti-truth. It is more about what is not true than what is true.

But as I will define postmodernism in a moment, there are important truths to be gained from this epoch of thought and unthought. In particular, post-modernism brings with it some very significant reflections on the Bible and the way the Bible functions as Scripture among Christians. At least from my current vantage point (;-), some of these seem unavoidable. Let me mention some of my conclusions up front so you know where we are headed.

First, the Bible itself is an object of knowledge. Pre-modern readers of the Bible assume that the meaning of the Bible is self-evident: "God said it; I believe it; that settles it for me." They speak about the Bible as if it's meaning came installed and unzipped on their hard drive. But a little reflection on the process of "inputting" the Bible into our word processor argues strongly otherwise, as does the massively fragmented history of Protestantism.

Postmodernism thrusts on us a question that has always been even more important than the question of whether the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and authoritative. And that is this: which interpretation of the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and authoritative? David Koresh thought the Bible was inerrant... but he was a nutball.

Secondly, postmodernism points out to us that meaning is a matter of minds. Squiggles on a page mean nothing to a tree. And whatever written words might mean to a chicken, it is hopefully not the same as what they mean to me. Once a text becomes detached from its author, the author loses control over its meaning (Ricoeur). The determinative element in the equation of meaning is thus always the reader or audience. Meaning for me cannot take place in your mind. It ultimately can only take place in my head.

Finally, the result of the previous two points is that there are indeed far more potential meanings for "the Bible" than most people would imagine. We emphatically would see that this is the case if we could tally the interpretations of all the Bible study groups around the world on a given text. We emphatically see this in the over 20,000 different Protestant denominations thinking themselves to base their doctrine on the Bible. We emphatically see this in the diversity of interpretations by scholars of the original meaning on any particular text, multiplied by the trends of even the last century.

So who will free us from this body of confusion and ambiguity? The problem is to figure out what the Christian meaning of these books are. The obvious answer is to read the text as God does. But this answer is no answer because it simply hasn't been listening to anything I have said so far. I am stuck in my mind, not God's. There would be no problem in the first place if there were some straightforward way to know how God reads the text.

Let me suggest only a slightly less outrageous proposal. The Christian reading of these texts is the reading of these texts that an ideal Christian would have. Who is the ideal Christian? I suppose the ideal Christian knows as much as a human can know, is as filled with the Spirit as a human can be filled, and is in as much communion with the saints of the ages as a Christian can be in communion. At the end of this paper I will suggest how individuals and groups of Christians can strive to be this type of reader.