Among the books passed along to me after I sought insight from several reverend friends was Faith in the Living God, a dialogue between English theoretical physicist John Polkinghorne and German theologian Michael Welker, both convinced Christians. Admitting that “theology is more difficult than physics,” Polkinghorne suggests that it would not be surprising if the “idiosyncratic rationality” of the quantum world he ponders in complex equations might also be applied to knowledge of the divine. He seeks “a middle way between the heroic optimism of the failed modernist search for certain truth, and the intellectual pessimism that so often leads postmodernism into a slough of relativistic despond.”
I’ve often described myself as a postmodern being, without being quite sure what postmodernism is. It has, however, never led me into a slough of despond. In a remarkable coincidence, while reading Polkinghorne I picked up a book by California professor of English Crystal L. Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith. In a lively, witty and pun-filled jaunt, Downing writes that “postmodernism calls into question the immediacy of our access to facts, suggesting that prejudices, presuppositions and other constructions of culture tint the glasses through which we see facts.” Anyone who has grown up English in the crucible of Quebec nationalism readily agrees.
Perhaps Downing is not the first to imagine towers of knowledge, but her blueprints are easy to read. On a sheet of heavy paper, list the basic things you believe to be true, perhaps “a loving God, salvation through Jesus, democracy, capitalism.” Scotch-tape the paper into a roll and stand it on its end. Make yourself tiny–Downing refers to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids–and stand inside the tower. Think of all the other towers that can be built–by Jews, Muslims, Hindus and atheists, or even by each individual sect within Christianity.
We stand in our towers, confident that the ground of reason on which our feet are firmly planted supports the truth of our belief. But if it was possible to visit one of the other towers for a little while, we would sense at once that the ground of reason is different, more bumpy or slanted, pebbled or smooth. Instead of gazing at the ground, however, we should look upward where we might see, although each from a slightly different perspective, an overarching sky beyond the reach of our reason and our words. Downing refers to French philosopher Jacque Derrida’s “acknowledgement of a possible Other so far beyond language that to give a name would be to enclose the Other in his tower and thus limit the Other to human constructions.”
Downing concludes by proclaiming faith in that “universal Other the other that is the imago Dei,” the image of God. She understands that acknowledging that our perception and language are limited “opens us to the other among us, reflecting our trust that the transcendent Other intercedes for us with truth too deep for words.”
If that’s postmodernism, I’ll have some.
As a final note, let me read you something scrawled on my particular tower of knowledge a long time ago: Marshall McLuhan was right when he forecast his global village coalescing in the electric age. When it took months for explorers and missionaries to reach the native savages of colonial lands, we could huddle comfortably in our towers of Enlightenment superiority. With radio, TV, jet travel, the internet and goodness only knows what doodads the future will bring, our tower is under assault and our ground of reason shaken. “Open to the other among us” seems to be a particularly Christian–and postmodern–posture in the traffic and turmoil of our global village.
