Faith , scholarship and postmodernism

Faith, Scholarship, and postmodernism Postmodernism represents perhaps the most important philosophical shift occurring in Western thought since the Enlightenment. It is thus crucial fo r Christian scholars to address the issues it raises. In the United States, Christian scholars have employed at least two different paradigms in discussing the relationship o f faith and scholarship. In the integration model, scholars assume that faith and scholarship are two distinct entities that must be brought together, while the worldview model assumes that the scholar always begins with a narrative worldview that subsequently informs one's scholarship. However, the worldview model holds that one's world­ view can be influenced and informed by one's scholarship, life experiences, and cultural settings as well. After distinguishing between various kinds o f postmodernism based upon their views o f truth, unknowability, and cultural relativism this article argues that worldview thinking may benefit from the academy’s embrace o f postmodernism. Although Christian scholars have expressed a wide variety o f opinions on postmodernism, I argue that postmodernism’s anti-foundationalism and recognition o f the importance o f perspectival thinking provide new opportunities fo r Christian scholarship.


Introduction
Discussing the relationships among faith, scholarship, and postm odernism is a daunting task, but an extremely important one, since postm odernism embodies perhaps the m ost important philosophical shift occurring in W estern thought since the Enlightenment.Hence, it is crucial for Christian scholars to think carefully about the issues it raises.In this article, I will attem pt to outline some o f the term s in w hich these issues have recently been discussed in the American academy, and some o f my own reflections upon those discussions.After sketching tw o common models or paradigms used to discuss the relationship o f faith and scholarship, I will discuss some o f the disputes within the Christian academ y over postmodernism.M y hope is that these reflections will prove useful for South African Christian academics in their own attem pts to relate faith, scholarship, and their discipline.
Koers 62 (2) 1997:149-162 Approximately ninety colleges and universities in the United States are affiliated with the Coalition o f Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU ), which, among other activities, lobbies the American federal government on behalf o f Christian colleges, coordinates several off-campus study programs both in the US and overseas, and sponsors a variety o f activities encouraging academ ics to consider the relationship o f faith and scholarship.These institutions have identified them selves as "Christian" in terms o f having an institutional commitment to the centrality o f Jesus Christ to all campus life, practising integration o f biblical faith with academics and student life, and requiring a personal Christian commitment from each full-time faculty member and administrator.I am a daughter o f the Coalition: I earned my B.A. at one member institution; during my career, I have taught at three other member institutions; I have lectured at countless others; and I am the co-author o f a textbook in a series the Coalition sponsors: Literature Through the Eyes o f Faith (Gallagher & Lundin, 1989).An often-repeated phrase at Coalition schools refers to "the integration o f faith and scholarship", and the idea o f integration, with, in the American context, its unfortunate resonances o f racial separation, has been one o f the primary paradigms used to relate Christianity and scholarship during the past twenty-five years.

T he integration model
In order to integrate, something must be separated, and the integration model operates on the assumption that faith and scholarship are tw o distinct entities that somehow must be brought together.Faith consists o f one realm o f knowledge and practice -personal religious commitment, an intellectual grasp o f a particular theology, and communal practices o f liturgy and fellowship.Scholarship is a separate realm, a professionalised practice devoted to the discovery, propagation, and theorising o f different areas o f knowledge -whether those be scientific, aesthetic, social, or -even -religious (which in today's secular academ y is usually seen more in anthropological or historical terms).
Scholarship is conducted according to certain rules o f the game, which can differ among disciplines: anecdotal evidence, for example, is viewed quite differently in the natural sciences and the humanities.In order to enter the academ y o f scholars, one simply learns these rules o f the game: how to collect evidence, how to evaluate it, how to theorise about it.It makes no difference if you are female or male, black or white, Christian or Hindu.Yale philosopher N icholas W olterstorff has an effective image to describe this procedure: Before entering the halls of learning we are to strip off all our particularities, particularities of gender, o f race, of nationality, o f religion, of social class, o f age, and enter purely as human beings.If it turns out that we have failed to strip off some particularity and the others in the hall of learning notice this, they are to order us back into the entry, there to remove the particularity which, unintentionally or not, we kept on.[In this view] black history, feminist sociology, Muslim political theory, and liberation theology are bad history, bad sociology, bad political theory, bad theology.In the practice o f learning we are to make use only o f such belief-forming dispositions as are shared among all human beings, and we are to accept only the deliverances o f such shared human dispositions (W olterstorff, 1993:8).
But when w e leave the hall o f learning, or come down from the ivory tow er, to employ an alternative educational cliché, we are welcome to add on our Christian faith to the learning that has taken place.
Integration attem pts a less schizophrenic lifestyle, trying to combine the two distinct realms in some kind o f complementary fashion.Some Christian scholars have chosen to integrate in a personal way: by being truthful, loving, and forgiving, by dem onstrating Christian civility and charity in their practice o f scholarship and teaching.
Others have employed the discoveries o f their particular discipline in such a w ay as to advance the kingdom: someone who engages in communication studies, for example, intending to become a pastor or missionary, and recognising that the insights o f this discipline need expansion and elaboration by the addition o f a missing Christian dimension.A good example o f this kind o f approach is Psychology Through the Eyes o f Faith (M yers & Jeeves, 1987), another volume in the Coalition's "Supplementary Textbook" series.Alternatively, a scholar's Christian commitment might prompt her or him to study certain areas: the role o f the church in colonization, or the use o f Christian symbols in m odem art, or -has been argued recently -Shakespeare's commentary on M artin Luther in Hamlet.In this model, there are points at which the tw o areas touch, possibly even overlap a little, but there are also vast spaces in which the tw o operate independently.
The integration model has significant historical origins.Christianity and learning w ere not always considered distinct and separate realms; after all, the beginning o f the European university system lies directly in the medieval church.The distinction evolved only with the onset o f the m odem period, in which faith, the supernatural, tradition, and authority fell into disrepute with the rise o f rationality and technology.Max W eber (1963) locates the onset o f modernity in two related phenomena: first, in the emergence o f what he called differentiated spheres, and second, in the increasingly pervasive practice o f rationalised thought and action within these spheres.The differentiated spheres were either social sphereseconomy, state, and household, or cultural spheres: science, art, law and ethics.The process o f rationalisation, W eber believed, would eventually result in a fully "disenchanted" view o f the world, in which religion and the supernatural would play no role.The differentiated spheres, no longer held together by any kind o f religious metanarrative, would be entirely distinct and autonomous -so that in the econom ic sphere an ethic o f brotherly (and sisterly) love is not relevant, ju st as in Koers 62(2) 1997:149-162 the artistic sphere, economic theories play no role.W eber thus provides one account o f the secularization o f society by the establishment o f distinct " spheres" in which faith is either completely rejected, or relegated to its own isolated and definitely less important sphere.With such a paradigm, integration becomes necessary.

T he w orld view model
While in and o f themselves many specific examples o f integration are admirable endeavours, I prefer to employ a different paradigm for the relationship o f faith and scholarship -w hat I will call the worldview paradigm.This paradigm has been embraced by American Christian academics w orking out o f many different theological traditions, and is the common paradigm that you w ould find employed, for example, in many books published in the US by Inter-Varsity Press, such as those by Arthur Holmes (1983a and1983b) and James Sire (1976).However, this w ay o f thinking has primarily been developed by Reformed Christian philosophers and thinkers, following in the illustrious path o f Abraham Kuyper.In some American discussions, w orldviews are treated as intellectual systems o f thought closely related to, if not synonymous with propositional theology.Brian J. W alsh, a senior member o f the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) in Toronto, however, argues that worldviews are pre-theoretical in nature; they are a more general "view, outlook, perspective on life and the w orld that characterizes a people or a culture" (W alsh, 1992:16).Similarly, in an essay called "On W orldviews", James Olthuis, also from the ICS, describes a worldview as "a framework or set o f fundamental beliefs through which w e view the world and our calling and future in it" (Olthuis, 1985:155).These fundamental beliefs are articulated not in propositions but in a story, a myth, which provides us with an understanding o f our own role in human history -who we are and why w e are here.W orldviews, W alsh elaborates, are visions o f life as well as visions f o r life, w hat is and what ought to be, both descriptive and normative.A w orldview gives rise to, prompts, and informs the culture-building activities o f human beings.Finally, worldviews are religious in character: They are frameworks o f beliefs but these beliefs are not theoretical in character.Such beliefs cannot be argued to on the basis o f either inductive or deductive reasoning -rather they are the very foundation o f such arguments.W orldview beliefs are more likely argued from than argued to (Walsh, 1992:19).
In The Transform ing Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview, W alsh and J.Richard M iddleton (1984) list four kinds o f questions that they consider worldview questions, questions that guide all human culture formation: • W here am I, or w hat is the nature o f the reality in which I find myself?
• W ho am I, or what is human nature?H ow do human beings relate to each other, to the natural world, and to the divine?
• W hat is wrong with the world?
• W hat is the remedy?W hat gives us strength and hope?
The answ ers to these questions are ultimately determined by one's faith stance: one's relationship to the Creator/Redeem er God, the Scriptures, and the church.
O ne last point about worldviews: their relationship with culture and faith goes in both directions; it is reciprocal.Scholarship can affect, even change, a world view, and such a change might mean change in the faith as well.For example, a com plex cultural conglomerate -political theory, social reality, moral commitment, and scholarly arguments -worked together, along with the Holy Spirit, to change the worldview long held by certain portions o f the Christian church that slavery w as scripturally endorsed.Throughout the beginning o f the nineteenth century, American theologians from both the north and the south conducted an acrimonious debate concerning the Christian view o f slavery.Today, the Christian church agrees that the practice o f slavery is a violation o f G od's will for humanity, but w e sometimes forget w hat a radical change in w orldview this necessitated, as well as some significant adjustments to Christian faith.
A similar reciprocal process can occur with respect to faith and scholarship.In Reason within the Bounds o f Religion, W olterstorff (1976) suggests that in the process o f scholarship, w e work with data, theory, and what he called "control beliefs," beliefs that control what data and w hat theories we accept.He w rites, "The Christian scholar ought to allow the belief-content o f his authentic Christian commitment to function as control within his devising and weighing o f theories" (W olterstorff, 1976:72).But W olterstorff also goes on to insist that sometimes the right thing to do in response to developments in a discipline is to revise one's view as to what constitutes one's authentic Christian commitment.W e do, he reminds us, make mistakes on that score: [T]he Congregation o f the Inquisition viewed the geocentric theory as belonging to authentic commitment.I think they were mistaken, and virtually the entire community o f Christians now thinks they were mistaken.W e have all revised our beliefs, though we have by no means all revised them at the same point.W hat originally induced the revisions were developm ents in astronomy and physics (W olterstorff, 1976:90).
W hen w e enter the hall o f learning, then, w e do not enter as " nakedly human" but are clothed in our faith, our worldview, and our control beliefs, and w e come to carry on a dialogue, a conversation."W hat actually happens when the Christian enters the hall o f learning and begins conversing?" W olterstorff-asks, and then explains, A great many different things happen; we should honor the diversity.Sometimes the Christian finds that she agrees with everyone in the room on the topic o f conversation.At other times, she finds she disagrees.Some times the root o f her disagreement seems to her to lie in her adherence to Christianity; sometimes, it does not seem to her to lie in that.Either way, she will argue her case and try to bring the others around to her view.She will try to offer reasons which attach to what they already believe, or provide experiences which will alter their beliefs.She may find she has some allies in this.These allies may be Christians.Then again, they may not be.She may in fact find that she has Christians in opposition (W olterstorff, 1993:28-29).
Sometimes during the course o f the conversation, our hypothetical scholar might change her mind, might reconsider aspects o f her worldview in new lights.Conversations, true conversations, not ju st talking past each other, involve listening, and the Christian scholar must be willing to listen.After all, God grants gifts o f wisdom and insight to all humanity, not only those who em brace faith.Walsh (1992) talks about change in slightly different terms.He is concerned with worldview crises -w hat happens when there is a chasm between o ne's faith and worldview and the reality o f one's life.He identifies at least three possible responses: • Reformation, in w hich the reality o f life leads an individual or a community to a refocusing or a reforming o f their worldview.
• Conversion, the abandonment o f one worldview for another.
• Entrenchm ent, a conservative backlash to the tlireat and a subsequent, stubborn hanging on to a tradition, despite the fact that it no longer adequately allows one to cope with historical reality (W alsh, 1992:22).W alsh's category o f reformation is the kind o f thing that can occur during those long conversations in the halls o f learning.Conversions, too, might take place.
Let me make a few summary observations about the worldview paradigm.(Percesepe, 1990) to Clarence W alhout's dialogical reflections on whether "Derrida can be Christianized" (W alhout, 1985), to Roger Lundin's sharp condemnation o f those Christians who have been "beguiled by the blandishments o f deconstruction" (Lundin, 1993:204).Hoksbergen also identifies W olterstorff as postm odern.But Lundin, again equating deconstruction and postmodernism (which are not necessarily the same thing) argues with reference to W olterstorff that only "at first glance [does] the deconstructive agenda seem ... similar to the powerful contem porary Christian critiques o f modernity and its im passes" (Lundin, 1993:203).Although I can by no means discuss all the complexities o f these issues, let me at least attempt to isolate some o f the different strands o f the Koers 62(2) 1997:149-162 argument.Some disagreements arise from definitional differences; others from what I call perspectival differences -viewing the same thing as either a glass half empty or a glass half full; and still others from fundamental differences in worldviews.
The word postm odern can refer to a historical period, a philosophical theory, and a kind o f artistic w ork (in this article, I will only be referring to the first two definitions).In one sense, then, w e are all postm odern since w e live in the historical period following the modem era (which apparently ended some time after World W ar II, perhaps in the sixties, definitely by the eighties).Concerning philosophical postmodernism, there is fairly wide-spread agreem ent on at least three points: • It is a reaction to, or an evolution from, or a stage after modernism (as indicated in the very word: part-m odern).
• As such, philosophical postmodernism is critical o f the Enlightenment myth o f progress that the G olden Age is attainable through human reason and technological achievement.
• Consequently, postm odernism denies the possibility o f reaching certainty on the basis o f reason alone.
In The Condition o f P ostm odem ity, D avid Harvey (1989) explains post modernism's rejection o f philosophical modernism in this way: Generally perceived as positivistic, technocentric, and rationalistic, universal modernism has been identified with the b elief in linear progress, absolute truths, the rational planning o f ideal social orders, and the standardization o f knowledge and production (Harvey, 1989:9).
Postmodern philosophy distrusts the Enlightenment's optimistic confidence in reason and is suspicious o f universal theories that explain the w orld, preferring to rely instead on narratives based on particular viewpoints, or "standpoint epistemology" .Postmodernists are especially skeptical o f the claim that pure reason will always lead us to the truth.Some o f the m ost noted antifoundationalist philosophers have been Christians -philosophers such as W olterstorff and Alvin Plantinga, who have argued that it is impossible to form a body o f beliefs solely by means o f an unsullied reason, because certain control beliefs always come into play.M any Christian thinkers agree with W o ltersto rffs assessm ent that classical foundationalism essentially is dead and that w e must "learn to live in its absence" (W olterstorff, 1976:52).However, there are many paths that one can take after assuming foundationalism's demise, and it is here, at the crossroads, that the dissension ensues.

Postmodernism and truth
Perhaps the most basic disagreement concerns how to talk about truth.If w e can no longer unquestionably rely on reason to lead us to absolute truth, what are our options?Some, let us call them h a rd postm odernists, consequently claim that "truth" is always a fabrication emerging only from human desire and manifestations o f power.Richard Rorty (1989), for example, w ants to talk about truth as something that is made rather than found, constructed rather than discovered.Values and truths are merely a matter o f personal choice.
Concentrating on what cannot be had, the half empty glass, this focus on the human construction o f truth often leads to a kind o f carefree nihilism.Others, we might call them soft postm odernists, do not abandon die search for truth, but conduct it provisionally, examining "truths," as historically conditioned and perspectively limited.They concentrate on what w e are able to have in place o f absolute certainty, the half full glass.
Many postm odernists are notoriously difficult to pin down when it com es to their view o f truth; they would rather talk about something else, such as discursive constructions.Few, when pushed, actually want to abandon the idea completely, and few deny the reality o f scientific truth when it com es to taking antibiotics for an infection.The reality o f the physical world is not as easily disputed as the reality o f ideas lying behind language.Postmodernists, however, prefer to talk about truth only tentatively and to spend their time instead examining specific contexts in which a view o f truth emerges.Derrida, for example, argues that the cultural roots o f language, the fact that language is always interpretation, means that w e are not able to speak about truth and reality in any absolute sense, from a point outside history.W alhout (1985:19) responds, Language may be subjective, historical, and culture-bound and at the same time have the capacity to speak truthfully about reality.There is no necessary contradiction between subjective interpretation and truth: some interpretations may in fact be true.D errida's own pronouncements on political issues, such as his condemnation o f apartheid and his support o f Amnesty International's campaign for human rights, dem onstrate his lived belief that interpretations, while subjective, may also be true or false; one must take stands, make commitments on the basis o f what appears to be the closest stand to the truth.

Koers 62(2) 1997:1-19-162
There is no question that some contemporary theorists have responded to the collapse o f modernism by following N ietzche's affirmation o f "the playful will for the affirming s e lf' (Lundin, 1993:210), which can lead to hedonism and/or fascism.
But an equally strong inclination among postm odern thinkers is corrective in nature, ethical in emphasis, critiquing culture and discourse by examining the pow er o f representation.Barthes may celebrate the almost sexual pleasure he achieves by playing with a text unfettered by authority, but D errida attempts to unmask the pervasive kinds o f oppression he believes are caused by metanarratives.In literary studies, w e find both playful deconstnictionists and ethically concerned unmaskers o f discursive power.Some historians, such as John M cGowan, suggest that postm odernism consists both o f anti-foundationalism and a leftist political commitment.M cGow an believes that postmodernism "designates[s] a specific form o f cultural critique that is resolutely antifoundationalist ... while also proclaiming itself resolutely radical in its commitment to the transformation o f the existing W estern social order" (M cGowan, 1991 :ix).A common rejoinder to such claims has been to ask on what moral grounds can such a transformation be based, if no metanarrative exists, no absolute truth?But note the difference between claiming that no truth exists and claiming that our access to absolute truth is limited or even impossible.Many postm odernists do claim that truth is com pletely contingent and constructed, but others paradoxically assume that truth is universal and unchanging (somewhere -in the real world, or in the mind o f G od), as well as contingent and constructed.

Postmodernism and ambiguity
A second important question, then, is how w e are to respond to the limits o f our rational knowledge.W hat do w e make o f ambiguity, undecidability, paradox, intuition?Christians sympathetic to postm odem ism 's puzzles are fond o f citing 1 Corinthians 13:22: " For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am know n." Lundin (1993: 204-205) argues that using this text in this w ay confuses indeterminacy and mystery: The indeterminacy promoted in poststructuralism is a very different thing from a biblical sense o f mystery.W hereas mystery speaks o f a truth that encompasses men and women even as they fail to comprehend it fully, indeterminacy has to do with the vertiginous play o f interpretation that has given up on truth and seeks its only comfort in the gam e-playing potential o f language.
But not all postm odernists resort to pure play; many are far more interested in unmasking the terrors that historically have resulted from an overly confident belief that one has seen or grasped absolute truth.John D. Caputo (1990:164) identifies him self as embracing "a version o f postmodern hermeneutics which does not simply jettison every notion o f truth, self, ethics, and ... faith, but rather situate[s] these notions within the radical constraints that postmodernism analysis bring[s] out" .He continues by pointing out that "religious faith gets to be quite dangerous, and even quite bloody ... when it lack[s] undecidability" (Caputo, 1990:168).(As in the case o f the assassination o f Israeli Prime M inister Rabin, w hose murderer, a right-wing Israeli law-student, claimed that God instructed him to kill Rabin.)Other scholars, such as Robert Detweiler (1989), have found in indeterminacy a door to the sacred, or a space for God: a place beyond science, reason, and technology for the holy, the sacred, the ineffable.

Postmodernism and cultural relativity
A third crucial concept involved in postmodernism is cultural relativity.Diogenes Allen, in an essay called "Christianity and the Creed o f Postmodernism" (Allen, 1993), sees the unique emphasis o f postmodernism not as its antifoundationalism, nor its emphasis on interpretation, nor even its rejection o f a superhuman reality, but rather all those elements plus cultural relativism.He claims, W hen cultural relativism is added to [these] commonplaces ... we then get the phenomenon o f a postmodernist creed.... It is only when the concepts we use in science, literature, and philosophy are said to be wholly embedded in culture, along with the obvious fact that cultures differ, that we get the heady mixture o f postmodernism (Allen, 1993:119).
For some postm odernists, the importance o f cultural em beddedness leads to the claim that every cultural idea and practice is ju st as valid as the next, the only difference lies in the amount o f pow er one has to assert one's position.But Allen's conclusion that relativism necessarily results when concepts are "wholly em bedded in culture" is not one with which all Christian thinkers w ould agree.W alhout has argued, persuasively, to my w ay o f thinking, that Christians are essentially historical in their creation and in their relationship with God, and, as such, human conceptualising is always em bedded in history, culture, and society.He claims, "moral principles are not transhistorical or static norms for judging value.Rather they emerge from history and require historical interpretation" (W alhout, 1994:43).Situating morality in historical context does not deny the reality o f G od or truth, but does realise that we encounter the ultimate only in the particular, the incarnate.Cultural em beddedness is one o f the realities o f the G od-created world, and within a theological understanding calls not for hedonism, nor nihilism, nor assertions o f pow er, but rather conversation.Given the provisional nature o f the truth to which w e all have some access, should we Faith, scholarship and postmodernism not continue talking to and with others in order to correct our own mis perceptions?Christians and non-Christians alike?
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975) presents a model for this kind o f interaction in historical terms in Truth a nd M ethod.W e have, he explains, a certain horizon o f historical experience that limits our interpretations or understanding; that horizon is always being extended and its understanding is always evolving.The past, with its own horizon o f understanding, remains available to us as a resource to be used to compare with present ways o f interpreting experience.Our understanding thus progressively unfolds, but it is always guided by the continuity o f historical experience.W e engage in continual reinterpretation.W hat G adam er says with respect to historical horizons also applies to cultural horizons: positions in fluenced by religion, gender, or ethnicity provide horizons against which we judge and readjust our perspectives.
W olterstorff (1993:35) proposes that "occupying certain positions gives one the only likely initial access to certain kinds o f truth", which he calls "particularism o f cognitive access" .That initial access endowed by one's perspective, however, can be communicated to another; conversations can take place; as a white, forty-something American woman, I can learn from listening to a black, sixty-something African man, like Chinua Achebe.
These are a few o f the many questions that emerge when Christian thinkers wrestle with the large, baggy m onster o f philosophical postm odernism.I can summarise them as follows: if w e agree that the Enlightenment reliance on reason to reach absolute truth is no longer viable, are w e then postm odern?If we accept the demise o f classical foundationalism, how do we respond?Do w e give up on pursuing truth at all? Do w e give up on reason entirely?How do we understand the importance o f perspective and cultural em beddedness?W hat kind o f authority do we grant to the Christian tradition as represented in the Scriptures, the confessions, and the church?

Postmodernism's opportunities
Postmodernism's anti-foundationalism, along with its renewed em phasis on the importance o f perspectives, aids the Christian scholar in three crucial ways.

• First, postmodernism may open up an intellectual arena in which Christian
scholars can more easily speak with the strength o f their convictions.As religious historian George M arsden (1994:430) notes in The Soul o f the Am erican University, "Few academics believe ... in neutral objective science any more and most would admit that everyone's intellectual inquiry takes place in a framework o f communities that shape prior com mitm ents" .In other words, postmodernism, although not in exactly these term s, admits that worldviews do exist and do affect scholarship.M arsden argues, "Hence there is little reason to exclude a priori all religiously based claims on the grounds that they are unscientific" .If it is indeed important to listen to different perspectives, Christianity deserves a hearing in the academy, and this is an argument we can now make in postmodern terms.
• Secondly, postm odernism's focus on the limits o f reason provides a valuable corrective to m odernity's deification o f the human mind.Christians acknow ledge that the fall has affected all areas o f human life -including thought and intellect.W e also depend on faith, not ju st reason, to recognise the reality o f such truths as G od's sovereignty, grace, and love.Our starting point is not reason but the truths o f the biblical story.
• Thirdly, postm odernism 's concern with undecidability reminds us o f the danger o f too quickly making up our mind, the dangers o f rigidity, especially in our understanding o f the Christian faith.Postmodernism has helped us to see how cultural and historical perspectives can revise our Christian under standing.Lesslie Newbigin (1989) who served for nearly forty years as a missionary in India, explains that gradually his cross-cultural experience prom pted him to see how his own Christianity had been "dom esticated" by his intellectual formation as a twentieth-century Englishman.Similarly, Vincent Donovan (1982) experienced a "rediscovery o f Christianity" w hen he began w orking with the M asai and viewing the biblical story from their perspective.
H owever, Christians will part with postm odernists who hold that the only reality is that constructed by human beings, that all rationality is completely flawed, and in the practice o f scholarship, we should merely celebrate ourselves, our will, and our pleasures.These theories do not comport with our worldview or our control beliefs, for w e acknowledge a transcendent G od who created a real world and entered that world in the form o f a Jewish man.W e believe that God gave us (among many gifts) the gift o f rationality, which w e can and do employ.Reason may be reliable in many cases, but it is not our god; it is limited in its capacity to produce or discover absolute truth.And finally, w e agree that our motivation for scholarship is not an Enlightenment drive to control the world, nor a purely hedonistic desire to play with the world, nor a nihilistic exercise o f pow er over the world, but rather a biblically informed goal to construct our stories in such a way as to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves.
First, scholarship emerging from one's Christian worldview is not necessarily unique, but it is faithful.As W olterstorff (1993:29)  says, The general goal o f the Christian in the practice o f science and in the conversation o f learning is not difference but fidelity: N ot scholarship different from that o f all non-Christians but scholarship faithful to Scripture and to God in Jesus Christ.Secondly, it is important that we be open to the possibility o f change originating both from the worldview and from the scholarship.D epending on our own personal temperaments, we may be more likely to turn tow ard one direction or another: holding blindly to a rigid conception o f our faith in the face o f evidence to the contrary; or erratically setting our com pass o f faith by the current direction o f the intellectual weathervane.This leads to my third observation -because o f the difficulties o f such negotiations, such issues must be worked out in a Christian community, in a dialogue among Christian scholars, in prayer, and in regular participation in the life o f the church.That is the value o f organizations like the Coalition o f Christian Colleges and Universities, professional conferences such as "Christianity and Literature", and Potchefstroom 's Centre for Faith and Scholarship.4.C hristian scholarship and postm odernismOne particularly timely discussion occurring in that great hall o f learning involves the attitude the Christian scholar should have toward the phenomenon o f postmodernism.Christian scholars across many disciplines have voiced numerous opinions.The pages o f Christian Scholars' Review, Faith a n d Philosophy, Faculty D ialogue, and Christianity and Literature over the past ten years have been full o f debates on this topic, with contributions from philosophers, theologians, biblical scholars, literary critics, and even economists.Responses have varied widely, ranging from Gary Percesepe's enthusiastic embrace o f "the unbearable lightness o f being postm odern" Some o f these disagreem ents can be traced to differing assumptions about what postm odernism is.Throughout his book, The Culture o f Interpretation: Christian Faith a n d the Postm odern World (1993) Lundin equates postmodernism and deconstructive criticism, condemning both and aligning him self with figures such as Hans-G eorg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Alasdair M acIntyre, especially in terms o f their respect for tradition.Yet all three o f these philosophers are identified by Roland Hoksbergen in a recent issue o f Christian S c h o la rs' Review as postm odern, because o f their claims that personal perspectives influence what we can know.