From the always pointy quill of Doug Wilson:
The postmodernists have climbed into the car of
modernity’s premises, and have driven it into a
tree. What the postmodernists do not appear to
grasp, however, is that mumbling incoherently to one-
self in the wreckage of that old car does not constitute
having a new car. Not even if you say vrooom to yourself
and imagine that you are toodling down the road, bottle
of Jack Daniels still intact and still in hand.
But then along come some evangelical Christians
who (for some inscrutable reason, best known to them-
selves) want to identify themselves with the postmod-
ernists. What they are doing is slowing down their
vintage Mercedes of Trinitarian Bright Red Orthodoxy,
with not a scratch on it, to do a little rubber-necking at
the accident. “With a little epistemic humility, there is
quite a bit we could probably learn from that learned
fellow! And if we crawled in there with him, we could
crawl back out again. And then we would be an Emer-
gent Church, emerging (but not too far!) from the Shat-
tered Windshield of Modernity!”
Christians should not overstate our opportunities
in this. Postmodernism is only a good development in
the same way that the prodigal son envying the pig food
was a good development. The point is for him to return
to the Father, and not to acquire a taste for the food in
the trough.
One of the most frustrating aspects of reading
modern evangelical writers, especially those who are at-
tempting some sort of relevant edgy thing, is the inabili-
ty of such writers to see themselves in a broad historical
context. They have no x on a map of church history that
says, “You are here.”
Phil's Scribblings 