Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age: A Book Review

Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age: A review by Jacob Aitken:

This book was one of the earliest salvos into the postmodern situation, at least from a semi-“conservative” Christian position. The authors (hereafter MW) highlight the collapse of the “modern” project, examine the postmodern response, and then offer their own Christian response....

MW call attention to legitimate postmodern critiques of the modern project (the latter which they date roughly from the time of the Renaissance until now). Modernism, which is usually–rightly or wrongly–defined as a variant of Western liberal capitalism, sought a narrative which gave a universal legitimatization of Modernity’s goal.... Postmodern thinkers–and even Christian premoderns–pointed out that any story they told was always conditioned by a certain community at a certain moment in history. “We can never get outside our knowledge to check it against objective reality” (MW 32). Further, this metanarrative is shown to be a highly contingent one which serves to legitimate power (a common, if overdone postmodern refrain). MW then continue with a lucid description of key postmodern thinkers....

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