Back to talking about Theological Expressionism, Philosophy and Religion, and how they work together.
This time, I'm actually going to talk about Post-modernists!
Cultural-Linguistic Expressionism
To unpack those big and official-sounding words into something useful, I'll translate them into something a little less strange.
"Cultural" means "in a culture," and linguistic means "using or creating language." Put together, they basically mean "using language within a culture."
According to this expressionist model, doctrines in the Bible function in a way similar to the way language does in a culture.
Say what?
That is to say, scriptures were written within the bounds of a culture, often as speeches or letters, written from a person or people in a position of authority to a group of people who were under the author's supervision.
Doctrinal statements, then, were communally authoritative rules of discourse, attitudes, and action.
*This isn't to say that they were legalistic. Rather, they were much like "vision statements," or "memos," in that they functioned to tell people about the Apostles' goals, give directions, or to correct abnormal or abusive behavior.*
In order to properly understand a doctrine, then, it must be first placed into a perspective similar to that of the original target audience, and then when the original intention is illuminated, then and only then can it be taken out of that context and placed into any other context.
Back to grace alone. According to Postmodern (yes, this is often the postmodern approach,) in the viewpoint of Cultural Linguistics, the phrase "we are saved by grace alone" can be interpreted as followed:
"Christians should always speak and act about their salvation in a way that expresses gratitude to God, and not pride in their own accomplishments." (We are saved by grace alone, and not by works, lest any man should boast.)
In other words, Paul was mediating between two groups of Christians. One, the Jewish Christians, had the law and the prophets and the traditions and the Talmud and the bloodline of Abraham and all of this great theological knowledge at their backs. And this gave the Jewish Christians a sense of superiority in their salvation compared to the other Christians, the Gentile Christians. A year ago, the Gentile Christians had been burning sacrifices to Zeus, Poseidon, and Diana, visiting oracles, and sleeping with temple prostitutes. They didn't know anything about the great Jewish traditions.
And Paul steps in and says "none of this matters, because you're not saved by any of those things."
"Christians shouldn't act as if their works (traditions, sacrifices, etc) saved them. Because they didn't."
The above example, btw, isn't my own. I should just make that clear.
Post-modern theologians, then, rely on what they call Narrative Theology, which actually comes from Yale school in the States. Basically, the idea is to consider Christianity as a separate unit from other religions (go figure) and to use literary criticism, rather than historical criticism, to understand the texts.
Basically, the Bible is not a history textbook. It's a set of books, essays, biographies, stories, legends (not necessarily the fictional kind,) and some literary anthologies. There's actually very few history books in there.
And in addition, the Biblical texts are intimately connected to the communities that read them -- narratives shape communities, and communities are shaped by the narratives that they read. <<<and that line was copied directly from the powerpoint in my hand, which means it's copyright my theology prof, Dr. Jeff MacPherson. Just saying.
As an aside, when it comes to applying these doctrines to your own life, the Postmodernist basically (oversimplifying) does the same process in reverse, re-shaping the expressions to apply to the current culture without doing violence to either (I could make a decent case to say that Propositional and E-E expressionism do violence either to today's culture or to the originals.)
Aaaand philosophy. You're not going to get away from it. Actually, this opens up a new section:
Post-Liberalism
Unfortunately, I don't have a nice handy powerpoint to look at Post-Conservatism, so you'll just get this one. More or less.
Post-liberalism is the result of applying Cultural-Linguistic models to Liberal theology.
Liberal theology, as covered before, seeks a foundation for truth in universal human experiences.
I'm going to break out of the purple to explain how Post-liberal theology is different:
1) Post-liberal theology is non-foundationalist; that is to say, that it doesn't require an external experience ("I think, therefore I am," for example) in order to understand the universe.
That is to say, knowledge is not based on logicking through your experiences. Instead, knowledge is grounded in belief.
Experience is never pure; it is always interpreted. Therefore it makes no sense to base your philosophy off of logic + experience.
2) Post-liberalism rejects the idea of an overriding metaphysical philosophy that fully explains everything.
In other words, the Post-liberals don't see philosophy as a requirement for theology. Instead, they only use philosophy when it is helpful. Non-Christian frameworks, such as philosophies or cultures, should not set the context for Christian beliefs.
3. Post-liberals recognize that religions are different, so they don't try to come up with the universal mega-religion that reduces all the religions into one thing.
4. Post liberals emphasize the scriptural stories or narratives by which Christians learn to identify God and which shape the Christian community.
5. Post-liberals frame moral discussions in the contexts of virtues and character as opposed to legalistic requirements or situational ethics.
A brief note on Post-Conservatives
I don't have a fancy-dancy source for information on Post-Conservatives. However, while Post-conservatives begin with the Conservative "Propositional" model and apply Post-modernism to that, what they end up with looks an awful lot like those 5 points above, although for different reasons. Post-conservatives also use a Cultural-Linguist model of Expressionism to form their theology.
This means that Post-liberals and Post-Conservatives get along just fine, for the first time since about Descartes.
