CONCEPTUAL CONNECTIONS AND NARRATIVE DISPLACEMENT
IN THE RUSH TOWARD RELEVANCE
We are clearly engaged in cultural wars, worship wars, and homiletics wars. What are the cultural and intellectual factors which have precipitated these post modem phenomena? In our brief trek we propose the paradigm shifts from (1) Classical communication theories of Aristotle to Bacon, (2) the Post Christendom model of communication; to (3) Post modem homiletics (also entail education and media prime time TV, e.g.. Jay Leno and David Letterman).
Four articles would be of particular interest for those interested in our post modem homiletic journey. Robert Stephen Reid, "Post modernism and the Function of the New Homiletics in Post Christendom congregations" Homiletics (Winter, 1995): 1-13); Robert Reid, David Fleer and Jeffrey Bullock, "Preaching as the Creation of An Experience"; John Stewart, "A Post Modem Look at Traditional Communication Postulates" Western Journal of Speech Communication (55: 1991); and the not so —"Rational Revolution of the New Homiletic" The Journal of Communication and Religion. (Vol. 18, no. l, March 1995): 1-9).
The Post Modem Homiletical paradigm did not arise full bloom from Athenie's head. In fact the homiletic paradigm derives from a number of radical shifts in the physical sciences. These are —The conservation of energy; the kinetic theory of gases; the second law of thermodynamics; the evolution of the earth's crust and of the fossils found therein; the stages of embryological development; the principles of domestic breeding; Quetelet's, Comte's, and Buckle's sociological generalizations; Taylor’s laws of development of primitive societies; Maine's theory of the passage from status to contract; the Malthusian law of population growth (which Darwin said suggested to him the idea of the struggle for survival). All of these confirm the legitimacy of the Philosophy of Science. The radical developments of Einstein precipitated the Bohr/Heisenberg "Indeterminacy Principle" and they continue to search for Einstein's "Unified Field Theory." The conflict within the post modem developments in Chaos Physics is fundamentally between micro and macro physics, i.e. the search for cosmic order. Einstein's contributions centered in his continuing search for this unified "cosmic order", i.e., this interpretation of the view of micro and macro dimensions of the universe. The implications of these developments will be made clear in the discussion concerning narrative homiletics because the developments of science are also narrative displacements.
In tracking trends to Post Modem Homiletics, we must keep in mind these three philosophical premises of the modem mind. These are (1) Epistemological Foundationalism; (2) Representational Expressive Theory of Language; and (3) Atomistic Reductionism.
Three pillars of the Post Modem Mind are (1) Holism in Epistemology; (2) the Relation of Meaning to "use" in the Philosophy of Language; and (3) the Presupposition of the Organic Panentheistic View of the Global Community in Ethics, Politics and Philosophy.
Willard V.O. Quine is perhaps the first post modem epistemologist for his explicit rejection of the foundationalist model of knowledge and replacing it with a holistic paradigm dependent account. His two articles regarding "Dogmas of Empiricism" (Philosophical Review LX (1951) have become landmarks in post modem epistemology. (Compare Quine's Holistic Epistemology with Kuhn's paradigm within The Structure of Scientific Revolution (2nd ed. University of Chicago, 1970). The ultimate question in Holistic Epistemology is of legitimacy and criteriology and is communication across "the accepted theory" possible? If so, how? Why accept one theory rather than another? (See my papers, "New Hermeneutical Horizons in Logic, Epistemology and Language Communication" and "Philosophical and Psychological Horizons of Post Modem Hermeneutics"; also see Maurice Mandelbaum's "Epistemological Crisis, Dramatic Narrative and Philosophy of Science" in Monist. vol. 60,1977):453-472).
THE INFLUENCE OF THOMAS KUHN'S CONCEPT OF PARADIGM
ON POST MODERN HOMILETICS
A major contribution to the discussion of Post Modern Homiletics is Thomas Kuhn's Scientific Revolution, which provides a vigorous discussion of the contextual character of knowledge. Critical interaction with Kuhn's thesis is available in Gary Cutting's, Paradigms and Revolutions (University of Notre Dame Press, 1980); lan Hacking, ed. Science and Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 1981); Imre Lakatos and Aloan Musgrave, eds.. Criticism and The Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1970); and Allan Megill, "What Does The Term "Post Modem" Mean?" (Annals of Scholarship (6, 1989): 136, whole article).
Kuhn’s concept of paradigm is concerned with the contextual conditioning of scientific research. In his preface he acknowledges the influence of Alexandre Koyre', Etudes Galaleennes. 3 vols. (Paris: Henmann, 1939); Emile Meyerson, Identity and Reality (NY: Macmillan, 1930); Helene Metzger, Les doctrines Chimiques in France, du debut du XVII a la fin du XVIII siecle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France;) Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post Critical Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 1958); idem. Science, Faith, and Society (Chicago. 1964): idem. The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967); and Jean Piaget, The Child's Concept of Physical Causality (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1930).
There is a pluralism of responses to Kuhn's thesis. On the left of Kuhn, taking a more relativistic, even anarchist, position is Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1978); on the right of Kuhn, but endeavoring to take account of his insights, is Imre Lakatos, The Method of Scientific Research Progamme (Cambridge University Press, 1978). A significant extension of Kuhn in the direction of embedding scientific exploration in historical explanation is Alasdire Maclntyre, "Epistemological Crisis, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Science," in Paradigms and Revolutions, ed. Gary Gutting (University ofNotre Dame, 1980). The essence of the Kuhn, Popper, and Hanson debate is the denial that all empirical knowledge claims ultimately rest on the foundation of theory neutral observation statements.
One of the crucial results of Kuhn's influence has exposed various forms of relativism and pragmatism because they focus on the relativity of pieces of knowledge to a whole framework or conceptual system. This influence is present in Richard Rorty, Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979); see esp. Jack M. Meiland and Michael Krausz, eds., Relativism—Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame Press, 1982). These philosophies may be called relativistic because they do not see any supposed knowledge as foundational (see my paper "Demise of Foundationalism: From Rationalism to Relativism: What Ever Happened to True Truth?) This is a far cry from the foundational presuppositionalism of Van Til, Dooyeweerd, et al. The Christian meta narrative asserts that it has knowledge from outside of the limitations of human finiteness. Biblically ordered Christians can never adopt a full fledged relativism. But we cannot ignore the radical revival of relativistic philosophy expressed in pluralistic multiculturalism. Non Christians can still have some valid insights about the implication of human finiteness.
FROM SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION TO PHILOSOPHICAL
HERMENEUTICAL AND HOMILETICAL REVOLUTIONS
The phenomenological/existential tradition in philosophical hermeneutics has long been interested in the conditioned character of human understanding. Every person understands against the background of assumptions and realities of human existence in history, existence as a person in society, existence and a person immersed in language as a pre and supra individual reality, and existence "unto death." Two major gurus are Heidegger and Gadamer (see Heidegger's, Time and Being and Gadamer's Truth and Method; Also, we would be amiss if we failed to mention the "hermeneutic of suspicion" practiced by people with interest in economic and political conditioning of ideologies and propaganda (see esp. Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest (Beacon Press, 1972), and Paul Recoeur, Interpretation Theory (Texas Christian University Press, 1976); idem. The Rule of Metaphor (University of Toronto Press, 1977).
THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE THESIS
COMES AS AN INFLUENCE ON HOMILETICS
Another expression of the relativity of all human interpretative schemes is the Sociology of Knowledge which has analyzed the ways in which the formation and beliefs that a society counts as knowledge are passed along, maintained, legitimated and supplemented by social processes and institutes. The Sociology of Knowledge makes clear the great dependence that knowledge has on a social setting for its maintenance.
Kuhn's thesis might be understood an nothing more than the application of Sociology of Knowledge to the field of science (note attention to his influence on homiletics). Sociology of Knowledge is in fact interested in the social context for knowledge in any academic discipline including post modem hermeneutics and homiletics. It also has interest in the social contexts of the more informal and tacit knowledge of mass participants in religious institutions. Kuhn's thesis is similarly rooted in the general characteristics of the social context of all human knowledge.
The 20th century is not the origin of the Sociology of Knowledge but it received its formal inauguration with Karl Mannheim's, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to The Sociology of Knowledge. (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968); org. pub. 1929. Note the cultural relativism thesis asserted in 1934 by Ruth Benedict's cultural relativism thesis in Cultural Anthropology Works. 1934; a post modern expression of the Sociology of Knowledge thesis in Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on The Sociology of Knowledge (NY: Doubleday, 1966); Susan Hedman, Hermeneutics and The Sociology of Knowledge (Notre Dame University Press, 1983)
This debate is hotest in Anthropology and is most significant since Derek Freeman demolished Margaret Mead in the early 1980's. The heart of the post modem cultural debate is that different cultures have different rationalities.
KUHNIAN REVOLUTION ENTERS EPISTEMOLOGICAL,
HERMENEUTICAL AND HOMILETICAL DEBATE
Kuhn is an honored guest in all post modem homiletical discussions. The implications of Contextualization for methods of biblical interpretation are legend (see my paper Contextualization in Context). Liberation Theology, Feminist Hermeneutics, Black Hermeneutics, African American Hermeneutics—all promote interest groups, (see esp. Vol. 7, Foundation of Contemporary Interpretation (Zondervan). What is lacking in these developments is the absence of discussion on Scientific Method in comparison with Theological Methods.
One notable exception is Torrance's work, Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (Oxford University Press, 1981) and Transformation and Positive Progress in The Frame of Knowledge (Eerdman, 1984).
In this later work, Torrance mentions Kuhn (p. 243) and notes the conditioning character of world views and the social background of knowledge, especially the philosophical dualism of modern Western thought (eg. pp. x-xiii). Torrance uses science and epistemology where convenient for analogically illustrating his Barthian theology.
A more notable exception is Ian G. Barbour, Myths. Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion (NY: Harper, 1974); and his Issues in Science and Religion (NY: Harper, 1971). Barbour's main weakness is his comparison of science and religion, not science and Christianity. Vern S. Poythress, Symphonic Theology: The Validity of Multiple Perspectives in Theology (Zondervan, 1987) examines the tension between single perspective versus multiple perspective approaches to this post modem debate. In Symphonic Theology Poythress interacts primarily not with Kuhn, but with the internal developments within theology as linguistics. The magisterial works of Pike or Nida in linguistics have demonstrated that there is a universal structure within world languages. Language is perhaps the most crucial weapon for confrontation with the epistemological-cultural relativism thesis available. Fused with M. Behe's, Darwin's Black Box, Christians are armed for constructive confrontation with post modern radical contextualization.
The influence of Kuhn's thesis will now enter the post modem homiletic debate (e.g. esp. James 0. Martin, "Towards a Post Modem Critical Paradigm," New Testament Studies. 33 (1987):370-385; Vern S. Poythress, Science and Hermeneutics: Implications of Scientific Method (Zondervan, 1988). Our brief trek into Kuhn's influence was necessary because the influence of his concept of paradigm is employed by Loren Mead in his work. The Once And Future Church: Reinventing the Congregation For A New Mission Frontier (WDC: Alban Institution, 1991). Mead calls post modem homiletics a "crack in the system of Christendom Paradigm." But the homiletical shifts from Apostolic paradigm, Christendom paradigm, medieval paradigm, Renaissance paradigm. Enlightenment paradigm, Modern paradigm, and post modern paradigm are not parallels to radical scientific revolutions. Mead uses Kuhn's paradigm as a "promise." The interpreter becomes a translator "attempting to create" the conversion experience that Kuhn likens to a "gestahit switch." (Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolution (2nd d. University of Chicago Press, 1970): 23-24).
One crucial outcome of Mead's paradigmatic shift is the demise of "universal theory," "paradigm," legitimization. Instead of no paradigm we have a pluralism of conflicting/contradictory paradigms which are all together equal in the universe of discourse. What rational foundation is available to select irrelevant versus fraudulent data in the universe of discourse? Such post modernism erases the difference between True Truth and error and between theory and nonsense, and this opens the door to Nihilism. "Since there is no True Truth, there is no error either and all beliefs are equal." (Robert Scholes, Protocols of Reading (Yale University Press, 1989):56).
For the sceptics to deny that they are endorsing Nihilism is a fatal, irrational enterprise. "The absence of truth is a positive, liberating activity in as much as it accepts complexity and complication." (David Hoy, "Splitting the Difference: Habermas' Critique of Derrida," Praxis International. 1989 8(4):442-464; also "Jacques Derrida" in The Return of Grand Theory in Human Sciences, ed. Skinner (Boston: Cambridge University Press).
Derrida contends that the abuse of any possible truth claims makes not for "Nihilism; rather it make totalitarianism impossible. But since totalitarianism is a fact, it is not impossible. This is, of course, not true. But if it were, what could be "wrong" with totalitarianism? This judgment would require a meta ethic, narrative which post modem epistemology cannot abide. Is it true that totalitarianism is wrong? If so, how and why? What is the legitimization ground for this "universal judgment?" If there is no "true truth" what could be the rational norm for its negation? Even the negation requires a true truth claim. "The secret of Theory is indeed that truth doesn't exist." (J. Baudraler, Social Text 15 (Fall}: 140-144: 1986}: 147; see my critique, "Terrorism of Truth: Truth and Theory in Post Modem Epistemology")
SEARCH FOR CRITICAL PARADIGM
As previously noted, there is extensive employment of dominant scientific paradigms and hermeneutical schemes currently in analysis by post modem homiletics. Scientific revolutions in physics, cosmology, biology, philosophy, theology, hermeneutics and homiletics together signify a radical shift from a Mechanistic (critical) to a Holistic (post critical) Paradigm. Albert Outler traces this radical shift in "Toward A Post Liberal Hermeneutic" Theology Today XLX (3, 1985): 281-91. The same radical shift relates to the homiletical revolution. Each of these areas of radical shift derives from "scientific paradigms" generated in Western culture generally, (see my Scientific Context of Post Modern Homiletics: Crisis, Narrative and Science).