Chastened modernism or principled postmodernism–comments inspired by C S Lewis on medieval morality

It occurred to me that this comment and my response, spurred by the post “C S Lewis and ‘medieval morality'” may be worth its own post, as an invitation to others to join the conversation:

1. Don Williams | August 16, 2010 at 11:19 am | Reply | Edit

   Curious. I would say that his emphasis on objective value makes Lewis precisely the patron saint Post-Moderns need; but that emphasis is the one thing the people I know who are comfortable with the PoMo label would never accept. Indeed, this pre-modern (!) medieval notion would get Lewis branded as a Modernist Satan even by the “Evangelical” PoMo’s I know pretty quickly. At least this situation should satisfy their need for constant irony!

   • Chris Armstrong | August 16, 2010 at 11:43 am | Reply | Edit

     Well, I suppose my sympathy for Lewis on this matter “outs” me as something of a modern. So be it. As long as we can agree at the same time on a kind of critical realism that admits we all grope toward that objective value through what Dorothy Sayers once called “a poetry of search”–and admit that when we write a “poetry of statement” instead, we are still aware of the hermeneutical nature of what we are doing.

     In other words, I think it is possible to occupy some middle ground – a “chastened modernism” or a “principled postmodernism” – in which objective value is acknowledged, as the medievals acknowledged it, and yet we keep to that apophatic dimension that the medievals also acknowledged: God is never fully knowable. Scripture admits to multiple (allegorical, spiritual) meanings. God is a living being who simply will not be put in our boxes. Images help us worship, but they do not capture God at his essence, in the mystery of those precious truths most tenaciously protected by the tradition: Trinity, Incarnation.

     The Christian tradition is living, supple, flexible, while at the same time strong and true. The Christian community, the church, has been the (ONLY) channel for that truth. Yet that tradition is always open to translation, correction, as we enter new human situations. We live not in certainty but in personal trust, rational reliance, as the tail of the ice-skaters’ whip–the tradition–that thrusts us out into OUR particular world in mission.

     Well, that’s the best I can do for now in response to your rather pugilistic comment. Perhaps I am showing my Canadian stripes. Perhaps I am wussing out. But I think I do know some “Evangelical PoMo’s” who would never dream of branding Lewis a Modernist Satan, because, first, they recognize some of this same chastened modernism in him, and second, they sympathize with his affirmation of objective value.

     But perhaps you would see these people as Postmodernist Satans. I am just having a hard time acknowledging the same polemical polarization that you seem to want to insist upon. I happen to think that, for example, D.A. Carson’s portrayal of “Emergent” Christians as thoroughgoing relativists is a serious misunderstanding of the concerns of that group identified by the late Bob Webber as the “younger evangelicals.” I sense something of Carson’s mistake in your note. But then, it’s just a brief note. And maybe I’m missing your meaning entirely.