Existentialism and Postmodernism

Existentialism and postmodernism are not the same thing, but there are some very strong connections between them. Chuck brought up existentialism as we were discussing postmodernism, and off it went. Two things that strike me as important in both are the values placed on 'authenticity' and 'passion'. The church in Kierkegaard's time had lost it's passion because it didn't really have a reason to believe anymore. The postmodern church, or 'emergent church' as it is called, is very interested in authenticity and passion, too. The issue is perhaps a little different now than in Kierkegaard's time, but the emergent church fights against strict, doctrinal belief systems that demand unquestioning allegiance. They view the traditional church as something that people tend to conform to outwardly without any change of heart.

That's all well and good, to a point. There is nothing wrong with trying to be 'authentic' and 'passionate' about your faith. You should be. The problem with existentialism and postmodernism is that their respective adherents think they have found the solution when they haven't. Neither one provides a good foundation on which build faith. You can't evangelize the world be saying, "take a leap into the absurd with me!" And you can't take away doctrinal truth without sliding away from the truth on a slippery slope.

Therefore, I have a proposition for anyone with existentialist or postmodern tendencies. Get yourself a good, strong dose of George MacDonald. He lived at roughly the same time as Kierkegaard, and dealt with some of the same issues, but with a more healthy response. The environment he lived in was a little different, but there were many similarities. MacDonald lived in Presbyterian, Calvinist Scotland. He reacted to the cold, mechanical, impersonal church as well. It was more of a demand for unquestioning, doctrinal purity that affected the church there. It didn't matter so much what was in your heart, as long as you said and did the right things, and didn't rock the boat. In the Lutheran Church in Denmark it was more a result of a full, frontal assault from modernism. (a huge generalization, I admit)

But MacDonald's solution was much different from Kierkegaard's. He wanted a faith that was both personal and authentic, but was still consistent with sound doctrine. I'm afraid I can't really describe it to you, at least not quickly. In my next post I'll give an example from MacDonald to try to explain how he balances all these issues. Better yet, read some MacDonald for yourself!

For now, suffice it to say, MacDonald had a large impact on later Christian writers such as Chesterton and CS Lewis. Lewis said of MacDonald, "I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself!" MacDonald has many different styles of writing. He wrote many novels, some theology, some fantasy. His Unspoken Sermons are supposed to be very good. I've only read one of his novels myself, but it was very good. It had a lot to do with living the Christian life and how to discern God's will. That's what I will try to summarize in my next post.

I just put a new link on the blog site. It's an interview of Dr John Patrick from the Christian Medical and Dental Association website. John is a friend of ours from Canada. Just to warn you, this is about 43 minutes long. But well worth it. There are a few things in there that touch on some things we've talked about.

Faith

What is faith, if it isn't a leap into the absurd? Modern minds have a hard time understanding what faith is, I think, because the idea that faith is opposed to reason has permeated society. Most people think of faith along the lines of 'belief in something against all the evidence.' If you look up 'faith' in an English dictionary you will get something along those lines, too. But that doesn't express at all the biblical meaning of 'faith.' The beginning of Hebrews 11 is good place to look for help with the definition of faith. And Hebrews 11 is a good place to look when studying faith anyway, with its 'Faith Hall of Fame.' But a simple definition for the biblical idea of faith is this: the ability to behave according to what we say we believe, or, a believe held at a deep enough level that we can act on it.

I've heard examples given with things like parachutes and bullet-proof vests. Sure, it's easy to say that you know a bullet-proof vest will protect you, but do you believe it enough to put one on and let me shoot you in the chest? Let's make it even more mundane. When you get up in the morning and go out to the kitchen table, you exercise faith when you sit in the chair. You have faith that you can sit down and won't fall. You believe at such a deep level you don't even think about it, and you behave accordingly. You sit. You don't fall. The next time you are even more sure to drop down with complete confidence that you won't fall. You have faith in that chair.

Now, some people might object that such a mundane example doesn't do justice to the idea of religious faith. Believing in things we can't see, touch, hear, etc, is altogether different, they would say. But I would say that the point of religious faith is to grow enough so that you have the same type of faith in Christ as you do in the chair at the kitchen table. Let's look at an example from the Bible.

Take Peter. When Peter first met Jesus he didn't have much faith. He played along when Jesus instructed him to drop his net on the other side of the boat, but he didn't really believe. When the nets were found to be overloaded he was very astonished. But his faith grew. He learned as he lived with Jesus day-to-day that what Jesus said made sense and could be trusted. He was there when the 5000 were fed, and when the 4000 were fed. So when Jesus started talking about how He was the bread that came down out of heaven, and those who eat of Him, and drink His blood will have everlasting life, he could believe in that. As many of those who had been following Jesus decided to turn away Peter said, "where else would we go, you have words of eternal life." Peters belief in Jesus had strengthened to the point where he could act on it. He didn't get wishy washy and fall away.

But growth in our faith isn't a straight line up. Peter still had faith when he the guards came to the Garden of Gethsemane, even if it was misdirected. But before the cock crowed three times he had denied Jesus. At that point I suspect Peter saw the absurdity of the situation and it led him away from faith, not to a leap of faith. The one he thought was the Messiah was being beaten and close to being killed. How can you have faith in that? Of course, we know part of his problem was that he didn't believe, and therefore couldn't behave accordingly, what Jesus had tried to tell him on more than one occasion about what had to happen to Him.

He still had his doubts Sunday morning at the tomb. But he was able to see the resurrected Christ for himself. From then on, and particularly after Pentecost, Peter's faith was great. It still wasn't a straight line up. Paul still had to correct him at one point. But by the end of his life he was willing to suffer and die for Christ's sake. It wasn't a leap into the absurd, he was behaving according to what he knew to be true.

I've spoken before, following Kierkegaard's famous example, of Abraham's similar path. When God called him to sacrifice Isaac he knew God would keep his promise somehow, even if he didn't understand it, and he proceeded to behave accordingly. There are many other example's in the Bible of course, but they all show the same thing. Look through Hebrews 11 and think about each one of the examples there. And what about Joseph (both the son of Jacob and Mary's husband), Mary, Moses, Shadrack, Meshack, Abednego, Thomas, and on and on. All of these people came to a place where acting in faith was as much a part of them as sitting in the chair is for you in the morning.

Is that trivializing faith? Perhaps it could be taken that way, and I want to be careful that I'm not misunderstood. Most of the biblical examples had their struggles along the way. Doesn't it seem like it should be much harder to go deep into the jungle to preach to cannibals than to sit on the kitchen chair? Sure, it isn't exactly the same thing. Some examples of faith may require more courage than others. But we should all desire to grow to the point that when the Lord calls us we go, and it is as second nature as sitting in a chair, because we know that what the Lord says is reliable and He is to be trusted, not in spite of what we assume we know.

Fortunately, we have a gracious God. Sometimes, abandoning the wrong things we think we know isn't that easy. As C.S. Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters, God is at times even pleased with our stumbles. I suppose that depends on how we learn from them. At times our knowledge may be more sure than others.

But there is one area of life in which our faith truly can improve to the point where we can have faith as easily as we sit in a chair. In his book How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, DA Carson talks about helping people 'die well.' Part of his point is that when faced with life and death, too many Christians are unable to face reality without a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety. It shouldn't be that way. We have every reason to know that what happens to us after we die, as Christians, is a very good thing. Some people say they fear the process of dying, not the actual death. But too many Christians have enormous anxiety about death itself. This is just speculation on my part (I just thought about it) but I think part of the blame for this can left with Kierkegaard. Maybe his faith was passionate and authentic enough that he really knew he was going to heaven. I don't know. But I don't think that a 'leap of faith' into the absurd gives many people much real confidence.

Thanks, Chuck. The article you scanned to my email was a little hard to read, but I got most of it. Likewise, sorry your note that I posted ended up the way it did on the blog. I'm not sure why it does that. It wasn't like that when I composed it. But it will have to do.

Anyway, as far as the atheists' new approach, been there done that. But it could be worse. In the past I've talked about Nietzsche and how I disagree with him, but in some ways he was honest in his appraisal of where morality was at without God. In terms of ethics, the Enlightenment was about providing a basis for 'good without God,' through human reason alone. From Hume, to Kant, to Hegel, that is what it was about. Then there was Mill and Bentham. But it didn't work. Nietzsche understood that at the end of the day no appeal to reason could hide the fact that what passed as morality was just sentimentality and arbitrary, personal opinion. So he looked out into the abyss with despair. God was dead, so all that was left was nihilism. But he called out for the 'uberman', the 'higher man' who would establish his own order and decide right and wrong. This would in effect be the next step in the evolution of man.

I guess the best way to explain it is that people just don't know the history of ideas, so they are doomed to repeat them. This kind of debate is refreshing in a way, at least. Having atheists post signs like that is better than outlawing nativity scenes, etc. But I wonder if they have any new approaches to deciding how to decide between different views of 'the good.' What would they say to Mulsims, especially the ones to whom jihad is 'good'? One of the things Nietzsche realized was that the 'good' that the Enlightenment thinkers were trying to justify were things parasitized from Christianity. Kant felt there was a categorical imperative not to lie. But how did he know in the first place that lying was an ethical concern except by inheriting it from Christianity.

Does that answer the question? Anyone else have any thoughts? I put a link on the right hand side of the web page with a link to a First Things article from a while back about the very subject of 'Good without God.' I haven't read it for a while, but it is good, written by a guy from Wheaton.

Cory,

This was excellent reading. I'm not sure I get it all, but I think
you nailed Kierkegaard and his "Christian Existentialism." I thought
your reality check in the first paragraph regarding economics was
good too.

I was reading the paper last night and came across the attached
article about atheists who are promiting the idea of "goodness
without god." The christmas phrase "be good for goodness sake" is
being used in creative ways to speak to atheists about celebrating
holidays without the need for god. I've attached the article, but you
might not be able to read it.

You say in one paragraph "But Hegel was just working out the ideas of
those before him, such as Kant. Human reason was elevated to the
highest good in the universe, and what was good could actually be
determined by human reason." My question to you, regardint this
comment and the article in the paper is, "can a person really know
what's good and what's bad without God?" Also, if he were to truly
know it, can anyone really be "good" without the concept of God?

What are your thoughts on that?

Chuck

What was Kierkegaard thinking?

What was he thinking? What made him tick, and what about his experience made him come to the conclusions he did? I mentioned some things about his biography initially, then followed his ideas forward. It's time to back up a little.

One thing about heresies is that they have a hint of truth in them. Marx thought that everything in life is determined by economic factors. He was wrong. That ignores that fact that God has a purpose in history, and he's the one in control. Economic factors might not be as important to Him, or might be irrelevant to His purposes. God is usually more concerned with what kind of stewards we are with what He has provided for us, how we develop our minds, how that affects our actions, and our love for others, and our place in eternity, etc. But that doesn't change the fact that some things in life are determined by economic factors. Ask any parent getting ready to send their kids to college, missionaries trying to raise support, a Christian charity, or anyone who is out of a job. Economics matter. But economic factores are not the only factors.

So, where's the hint of truth in Kierkegaard? Remember back when I proposed we follow Alasdair MacIntyre and broke history up into three time periods? There's the Judeo-Christian period, followed by the modern and postmodern. Kierkegaard agreed with me that the modern world had gone wrong. The Enlightenment had created an atmosphere that elevated human reason so high that they thought they could do anything, and they were in control of their own destiny. Newton's laws had come to be interpreted to mean the universe could survive on it's own, and as LaPlace famously stated, "I have no need of that [God] hypothesis." The result on the church was a dead, lifeless, mechanical church, as we have discussed.

One of the philosophers responsible for the decay of the church was Hegel, and Kierkegaard probably reacted against him more than anything else. But Hegel was just working out the ideas of those before him, such as Kant. Human reason was elevated to the highest good in the universe, and what was good could actually be determined by human reason. Kierkegaard saw the results of that in the church, and he reacted. He didn't want the mechanical, meaningless church. He wanted passionate and authentic people in the church, people who really lived out what they said they believed.

He was right in his recognition of a problem, and partially right in his diagnosis, but totally wrong in his solution. Where his diagnosis started to go wrong was in not reaassesing the role of human reason. He found that human reason couldn't take you to a vibrant, passionate faith. So he proposed a leap of faith, to get him beyond reason.

That's the problem. Human reason by itself is not enough, that is true. But the Christian response through the centuries had always involved an interplay between reason of faith, not the abandonment of reason to leap into the absurd. Aquinas had started to separate faith and reason many centuries before, to be sure, but the distinction wasn't so stark until the Enlightenment. The Christian response prior to the Enlightenment had been captured in the phrase, "Faith seeking understanding," or "I believe in order to understand." They realized human reason wasn't enough. But faith informed reason and reason informed faith. At some point there may have to be a leap, but as Pascal said, it's a leap in the light, not a leap in the dark.

In Surprised by Joy CS Lewis talked about a fellow student, an atheist, who announced to his friends that after looking into it, it appeared to him that the Christian story of God becoming a man really happened. With his reason he had found the truth, but he never combined that with faith. That student went mad. If I remember the story correctly he died (suicide?) soon after discovering the truth, but never became a Christian. Contrast that with Lewis. He had similar experiences in what he discovered about the historical truth, but this eventually informed his faith. His faith then led him to a better understanding of what his reason was telling him. It wasn't just a one way street, or a one way leap. What resulted was a set of coherent thoughts. In contrast, existentialism leads you to statments like Barth's, "It isn't true as a matter of history, but it is true as a matter of doctrine." In reality that is very incoherent.

The incoherence isn't necessary. It is possible to humble human reason without having to free yourself from it altogether. In fact, you can't. It is after all part of how God made us, "In His image." It also allows us to maintain some mystery in our faith, but helps us locate those mysteries more appropriately. God's ways are inscrutable (Isaiah). His ways are higher than our ways (Psalms). It only makes sense that God's ways are not going to be easy for us to grasp, and at times impossible to fully grasp. But usually we can at least say we know that something (like the resurrection) is true, even if we can't explain exactly how it happened.

The bottom line is that the existential turn is not necessary. You don't have to follow Kierkegaard to have passion or authenticity. But more importantly, he didn't provide a foundation for a strong faith.

Remember the meaning of logos. It is more than just "word". "In the beginning was the Reason, and the Reason was with God, and the Reason was God."

Finally, many Christians have recognized as their walk with God matures that faith isn't something they do. It is something that happens to them. Whatever you think about predestination, you have to admit that left on your own you never would have come to faith. C.S. Lewis' account of his conversion demonstrates this. Over a period of time he had encounters with something outside of himself that penetrated his heart. He recalls sitting on a bus and having the feeling that something, or someone, was stripping away the facades of his personage, layer by layer, and getting down to his heart. This was before he was a Christian. Later, he and his brother took a trip to the zoo. Lewis was riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle. He says he doesn't remember making a conscious decision to trust the Lord, he just knows that on the way to the zoo he was not a Christian, but on the way back he was. His life had been given over to Christ, and he was committed to the truth. He says this was the freest thing he had ever done, and yet he could do no other. He elsewhere says that the idea of truth 'seekers' is really false. As sinners, seeking for God is like the mouse seeking the cat. Without God stirring the heart no one will seek.

What we see in Lewis' life is contrary to what Kierkegaard told us. Lewis didn't make a 'leap of faith' in which he abandoned the rational and embraced the absurd. There was an interplay between what was happening in his mind, intellectually, and his faith. And what happened to Lewis was, in a significant way, done to him. The existential catch-phrase, "reality viewed from the perspective of the actor," does not come close to explaining how we live our lives in reality. True faith is not a matter of us conjuring up our own feelings, and establishing meaning and purpose for ourselves. We have to come to rely on God. We don't do the work ourselves.

The connections between existentialism and postmodernism become clear at this point. One of the marks of postmodernism is a distrust of metanarratives. Postmoderns love narratives. Everyone has their own story. Everyone has their own adventure. But they disbelieve in any over-arching story that controls all of reality. They have no use for the meaning and purpose God designed into the universe, or for God's story of creation-fall-redemption. If everything is always about 'the actor', they'll never be able to submit to God.

Beyond Kierkegaard II

The other general brand of existentialists are the theists. Some of the names here include Karl Barth, Rudolph Bultman, Paul Tillich, and the Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and Richard. A label stuck for these guys: neo-orthodoxy. They didn't necessarily like the label, but it stuck, and it is useful. This is, of course, related to 'orthodoxy' not 'Eastern Orthodoxy'. It is the basic, creedal, historic Christianity that unites all true believers throughout time, regardless of denomination. And 'neo-' refers to that same basic Christianity, with a twist. I've already spoken about Barth previously, so I'm going to use him as an example. That doesn't mean he represents all neo-orthodoxy. And I'm not trying to judge the faith of any of these men. That is between them and God. Barth appears to me to be a sincere believer. (What an existential, even post modern thing to say, huh.) Some of those other guys I'm less sure about. That being said, I think they leave the Christian faith without a firm foundation.

Barth's history is a lot like Kierkegaard's. He grew up in the liberal church of the time, and in time he rejected it. There was nothing left to believe in. If it was shown that miracles don't happen, dead men don't rise from the dead, and no prophecy in the Bible can be taken seriously, then all that is left is a lot of out-dated traditions and doctrines. Barth wanted to believe in the those doctrines. He couldn't ever really divorce himself from some of the premises of the liberal church, however. As a matter of historical fact Jesus didn't rise from the dead. But as a matter of doctrine, and of faith, he did. And that is all that matters.

If you study Barth, and I'm not saying I have thoroughly, he seems to believe in all the right doctrines. But the Bible is clear (I Cor 15) that the resurrection, etc, as an historical fact, happened. And if it didn't, "we are to be most pitied..." Barth's position, somewhat unwittingly, leaves future generations to decide for themselves whether or not to take that 'leap of faith,' without any clear reason why they should.

As an aside, Barth does have more interesting things in his history. He was German, rejected the Nazis, and fled to Switzerland. He was involved with a group of theologians in opposition to the Nazis that also included Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have a lot of respect for Bonhoeffer. His book The Cost of Discipleship is definitely worth reading. Bonhoeffer was executed after the failed plot to kill Hitler.