I must preface this entry by noting that I derived much of this information from the second chapter, “Contours of the Present: The Culture of Modernity,” of Harold Netland’s insightful book Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith & Mission (InterVarsity Press, 2001).
Postmodern: 1) a way to describe the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society or the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy, which was marked by a dramatic increase in information and communication technology. 2) the architectural, literary, philosophical, and social critique of modern values and assumptions.
Postmodernity: the broad critique of modern culture based primarily on an antifoundational epistemology (theory of knowledge). Minimally, it is an expression of dissatisfaction with at least one aspect of modernity and a challenge to adopt a different approach. In his preface to The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, Kevin Vanhoozer construes it as “an ‘exodus’ from the constraints of modernity.”
Postmodernism: the following three definitions of the term are based on Lawrence Cahoone’s helpful taxonomy in From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
1) historical postmodernism: a descriptive historical distinction that perceives social and cultural changes between the emerging era and the previous period of modernism (distinguishing the transition from modernity to postmodernity).
2) methodological postmodernism: a variety of prescriptive views that share a common rejection of objective truth and knowledge about reality, especially foundationalism in epistemology, in favor of a thoroughgoing perspectivalism. The following thinkers are routinely cited as exemplars.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) - believed that all truth claims are really just assertions of power.
Jacques Derrida (1930- ) - espoused a nonrealist theory of language and meaning that attacked the logocentrism of Western philosophy. In other words, he rejected the prevailing assumption that our words or linguistic concepts refer to objective realities in the external world: “There is nothing outside textuality.” His skeptical hermeneutical method, which allows no privileged point of reference (such as authorial intent), has been dubbed deconstructionism. In its attempt to show that we cannot transcend our own ideas this method seeks to subvert or dismantle metanarratives and objective conceptual frameworks.
Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) - is well-known for his definition of postmodernity as the “incredulity toward metanarratives,” that is, grand, over-arching stories or frameworks that seek to explain the world.
Richard Rorty (1931- ) - rejected the assumption of modern philosophy that our concepts mirror reality (the way things are in themselves). Instead he adopted an entirely pragmatic view of truth and knowledge: since justification, as the criterion for truth, is relative to audiences, truth is simply a social construct that works.
3) positive postmodernism: any attempt to go beyond the negative critiques of methodological postmodernism to construct new and different answers, albeit limited and to some extent perspectival, to the basic questions of life while avoiding the inconsistencies of total relativism. Stanley Grenz, Nancey Murphy, and Kevin Vanhoozer are examples of Christian theologians who might fit this category.