ABSOLUTES & AMBIGUITY; MODERN & POSTMODERN

I started this post months ago when I substituted in Gospel Doctrine [1]. It was Lesson #38 "Beside Me There Is No Saviour." Being the opening of Deutero-Isaiah, I took time to briefly explain the concept of multiple Isaianic authors and time periods (with Second Isaiah taking place during the Babylonian captivity following the Josianic reforms and destruction of both Jerusalem and the temple). I explained the divine council setting of Isaiah 40 and Second Isaiah's prophetic call. I brought up Isaiah's festival imagery, particularly in Isa. 40:3. We briefly discussed the significance of the New Testament's quotation of Isa. 40:3 (as well as its proper Hebraic reading i.e. "A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD," not "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness..."). I noted the language of covenant and renewal throughout the chapters. I touched on the mission of God's chosen people (Israel) and His chosen Servant (the Messiah, the royal high priest). In connection to this, I discussed Isaiah's "monotheism" statements and their meaning of God's incomparability (along with their evidence for the possibility of Yahweh and El's conflation). It was about here that I think I began to lose my audience (the participation had been pretty mild already, but had nearly died by that point). The following explanation from Margaret Barker (or the basic concept, to be more accurate) suddenly came to mind:

45:16 and 20-21 are attacks on idol worshipers, those who carry their gods (v. 20), playing on the fact that "carry" and "forgive sin" are the same word in Hebrew. Thus the prophet contrasts the saving forgiveness of the LORD with the inability of wooden idols to save. The defeated and discredited gods and their peoples are not, however, abandoned; they are invited to acknowledge the LORD and be saved (v. 23). A consequence of Deutero-Isaiah's monotheism was that, if there was only one God, that God no longer belonged to exclusively to one nation. "To me every knee shall bow" became an important proof-text for the first Christians...The contrast...is between the gods who are carried and the LORD who carries and forgives his people, that is, carries their sins, the Hebrew idiom [2].

I explained that Isaiah was no longer portraying Yahweh as a national deity, but a universal one whom all gods and peoples owed allegiance. Israel's God was no longer confined to the borders of Israel, though the covenant and mission of the people of Israel remained. This brought about a lively discussion about the "false gods" we find ourselves devoted to in the course of our lives and how purging ourselves of such is necessary for covenant fidelity. This in turn prompted my unplanned allusion to a brilliant First Things article by David Bentley Hart. He explains that the First Commandment ("no other gods before me") for Christians came through and was bound to Christ (Isaiah's Yahweh). This loyalty

was not simply a prohibition of foreign cults, but a call to arms, an assault upon the antique order of the heavens—a declaration of war upon the gods...Life, for the early Church, was spiritual warfare; and no baptized Christian could doubt how great a transformation—of the self and the world—it was to consent to serve no other god than Him whom Christ revealed...We are still at war, of course, but the situation of the Church has materially altered...For, as I say, we moderns believe in nothing: the nothingness of the will miraculously giving itself form by mastering the nothingness of the world. The gods, at least, were real...How, though, to make war on nothingness, on the abyss itself, denuded of its mythic allure? It seems to me much easier to convince a man that he is in thrall to demons and offer him manumission than to convince him that he is a slave to himself and prisoner to his own will [3].

Hart, however, provides the alarming insight that "humanity could not have passed from the devotions of antiquity to those of modernity but for the force of Christianity in history...The gospel shook the ancient world to its foundations, indeed tore down the heavens, and so helped to bring us to the ruin of the present moment." He finds that the "only cult that can truly thrive in the aftermath of Christianity is a sordid service of the self, of the impulses of the will, of the nothingness that is all that the withdrawal of Christianity leaves behind. The only futures open to post-Christian culture are conscious nihilism...[W]e should confess that the failure of Christian culture to live up to its victory over the old gods has allowed the dark power that once hid behind them to step forward in propria persona." Such nihilism breeds restlessness in the soul, "for modern culture is nothing but the wasteland from which the gods have departed, and so this restlessness has become its own deity...[A]s a quite concrete historical condition, the only choice that remains for the children of post-Christian culture is not whom to serve, but whether to serve Him whom Christ has revealed or to serve nothing—the nothing" [4].



I mention all this due to some recent reflection on both modern philosophy and modern Mormonism. Hart's dichotomy between Christ and modern nihilism implies (or at least is interpreted to imply) a dichotomy between absolutism and relativism, as does Isaiah's consistent loyalty to Yahweh as the source of salvation despite the Babylonian captivity [5]. But how are we to understand these two competing -isms? I've expressed a kind of pluralistic, perhaps even postmodernist view of Mormonism elsewhere on my blog [6]. But as I stated in my earlier post, this does not mean all views are true or equal. What sparked this renewed interest was a fairly recent Facebook status by my friend Brad Eggerton:

"There is absolutely no absolute truth!" - guy in my sociology class.

Despite my pluralistic view, the above is simply nonsensical. As philosopher Roger Scruton observes,

If we examine the gurus of the new university establishment, those whose works are most often cited in the endless stream of articles devoted to debunking Western culture, we discover that they are all opponents of objective truth. Nietzsche is a favorite, since he made the point explicitly: "There are no truths," he wrote, "only interpretations." Now, either what Nietzsche said is true—in which case it is not true, since there are no truths—or it is false...It is vain to argue against these gurus. No argument, however rational, can counter the massive will to believe that endears them to their normal readers. After all, a rational argument assumes precisely what they put in question—namely, the possibility of rational argument...The question ceases to be "What are you saying?" and becomes, instead, "Where are you speaking from?" ...[W]e who live in the amorphous and multicultural environment of the postmodern city must open our hearts and minds to all cultures and be wedded to none. The inescapable result of this is relativism: the recognition that no culture has any special claim to our attention, and that no culture can be judged or dismissed from outside [7].

My friend Josh Harris made a compelling point regarding postmodernism: its very name is self-refuting. In an attempt to be more open to a variety of views, it rejects modernism by becoming postmodern. In this sense, it becomes the very thing it wishes to combat:

What is wrong with the Enlightenment project is not the belief that reason can provide a trans-cultural morality. For that belief is true. What is wrong is the assumption that people have some faint interest in reason. The falsehood of this assumption is there for all to see in our academies: in the relativism of their gurus and in the misguided absolutism—absolutism about the wrong things and for the wrong reasons, absolutism that excludes all but the relativists from their doors [8].

However, both Josh and I (if I understood him correctly) embrace certain values of postmodern thought. I think this mainly comes from recognizing postmodernism as an approach, not necessarily a belief. As philosopher James Faulconer put it, "Modernism is a set or constellation of doctrines or beliefs; postmodernism is a set of strategies for questioning modernism" [9]. Unfortunately, this understanding has been warped by some of postmodernism's own advocates (thus rightfully leading to critiques along the lines of Scruton). Faulconer explains, "The outrageous forms of postmodernism turn out to be more modern, though self-contradictory, than those who hold it think...One can believe that modernism is wrong about knowledge but that knowledge is, nevertheless, possible. Those who accept the strong relativist argument are radical only in their posture, not in their position; radical relativism is an unsophisticated, privative variation on modernism" [10]. Ben McGuire finds that Mormonism contains three postmodern elements: 1) continuing/continual revelation and the possibility of overturning previously accepted "truth," 2) the theological hierarchy, which includes personal revelation, self-direction, and individual experience (his example of Lehi/Nephi's vision is perfect), and 3) the pluralistic approach to discovering truth [11]. All of these elements, however, do not have anything to do with the supposed relative nature of truth (to be clear, McGuire does not argue that truth is relative) or that all paths or policies are equal (e.g. struggling with and overcoming the supposed vice of two pairs of earrings is not equal to struggling with and overcoming an addiction to pornography, despite the former's more frequent mentioning in Sunday School classes) [12]. It has to do with the limitations of the human experience, expression, and comprehension. I think William Hamblin sums this up in his introduction to his new Patheos column:

In the nearly forty years I have spent studying ancient history and religion, one of the most important truths I've discovered is this: I know fewer answers today than I "knew" when I started studying four decades ago...But I believe I am at last beginning to understand the right questions...My conviction that in this life we can only know in part does not, however, make me a post-modern relativist. Ontologically, I believe there is absolute truth. But epistemologically, I believe that truth about the human past cannot be absolutely understood by humans, for a wide range of reasons. This is not because of the relative nature of truth, but because of the limited nature of the surviving evidence from the past, and the imperfect nature of human reason, knowledge, and understanding. In the tension between intellectual hubris and humility, I think most of us could use a healthy dose of the latter. Although we may seem to be cursed, as Paul says, to be "ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 3:7), I do not take this to mean that we should not be "ever learning." When Paul said, "we know in part," I believe he did not mean that absolute truths cannot be known at all, but rather that our knowledge of absolute truth will always be conditioned and imperfect [13].

I am an advocate for a postmodernism that breeds humility. This comes by realizing (as Thomas Sowell has) that no one person has even 1% of all available knowledge; that the "ignorance, prejudices, and groupthink of an educated elite are still ignorance, prejudices, and groupthink" [14]. I reject, however, that all beliefs or choices are equal, good, or true. Ideas, beliefs, and opinions should be respected in the sense that they are engaged thoughtfully and intelligently. They are to be understood properly and accurately. But respect does not mean acceptance, nor does it mean that Dudesque responses qualify as actual arguments.




1. My study for the lesson largely consisted of the commentary from the New English Translation, Margaret Barker, "Isaiah," in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (Eerdmans, 2003), Michael Heiser, "Divine Council," in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings (InterVarsity Press, 2008), Frank Moore Cross, Jr., "The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 12:4 (1953), and David Larsen's blog post at Heavenly Ascents. I also encourage reading David's notes (as well as the post's comments from insightful readers, especially David T) from Lena Sophia Tiemeyer's presentation "What Did the Authors of Isaiah 40-55 Really Know About Babylon?" regarding the original setting of Deutero-Isaiah's writings. To correct one of my own comments on the post, David Bokovoy gives his hypothesis regarding Nephi's use of Second Isaiah in Part 4 of his 2007 FAIR Presentation, not Part 3.

2. Barker, 2003.

3. David Hart, "Christ and Nothing," First Things 136 (Oct. 2003). He also discusses this in his excellent Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2009).

4. Hart, 2003.

5. I'm not stating that God Himself is to be understood as an absolute. See Blake T. Ostler, "Absurdities of Prayer to the Metaphysical Absolute," Inscape (Fall-Winter 1983); Ostler, "The Fallacy of Fundamentalist Assumptions," Transcript of his presentation given at the 2005 FAIR Conference; Jacob T. Baker, "'The Grandest Principle of the Gospel': Christian Nihilism, Sanctified Activism, and Eternal Progression," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 41:3 (Fall 2008).

6. Chris Smith was kind enough to link to a couple presentations on this subject, including Jason Monson's "Mormonism and the Religious Other" at the 2009 SMPT Conference and Jacob Baker's "Joseph Smith's Welding Theology: An Introductory Overview."

7. Roger Scruton, "What Ever Happened to Reason?" City Journal 9:2 (Spring 1999).

8. Scruton, 1999.

9. James E. Faulconer, "The Myth of the Modern; The Anti-myth of the Postmodern," FARMS Review 20:1 (2008).

10. Faulconer, 2008. This is similar to the arguments against William James' pragmatism: "James's pragmatism, viewed outside the context of his notion of our experience of the world, will inevitably result in a distortion of what he means. His ideas of "thoughts verifying themselves" or being true because they "satisfy" some ends are invariably dismissed, on the basis of modern epistemology, as "subjective." For James, truth pertains to mind, but mind can only be understood in terms of its (our) prereflective, pretheoretical experiences of the world. This is the basis of James's rejection not only of traditional rationalism and empiricism, but also of his rejection of traditional realism and idealism—these traditions all understand "mind" as somehow independent of the experienced world, as a means or agency for knowing the world. But for James, "mind" always needs to be spoken of in terms of embodied beings—beings who are in the world and act upon the world. And as a consequence, the world is knowable only to the extent that it falls within our purposeful, ideal, and often spontaneous goals or aims" (M. Gerald Bradford, "William James on Religion and God: An Introduction to The Varieties of Religious Experience," in Revelation, Reason, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, ed. Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, Stephen D. Ricks: FARMS, 2002).

11. Ben McGuire, "Is Mormonism a Postmodern Religion?" Patheos (Dec. 29, 2010). An article worth exploring in connection with McGuire's is Terryl L. Givens, "The Book of Mormon and Dialogic Revelation," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 10:2 (2001), which is expanded and expounded on in ch. 8 of his By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002).

12. To be accurate, President Hinckley actually said, "We—the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve—have taken the position, and I quote, that “the Church discourages tattoos. It also discourages the piercing of the body for other than medical purposes, although it takes no position on the minimal piercing of the ears by women for one pair of earrings”" ("Your Greatest Challenge, Mother," Ensign, Nov. 2000, emphasis mine; he gave similar counsel in "Great Shall Be the Peace of Your Children" of the same Conference). This wasn't the focus of his talk. Elder Ballard isn't even sure whether or not wearing two pairs of earrings will have "eternal consequences." Compare this to President Hinckley's 2004 Conference talk "A Tragic Evil Among Us," Elder Oaks' 2005 Conference Talk "Pornography," and Matthew's record of the Savior's Sermon on the Mount (or Nephi's version at the Temple). Plus, the last time I checked, symposiums weren't being held on the social costs of wearing 2+ pairs of earrings.

13. William J. Hamblin, "An Enigmatic Mirror: An Introduction," Patheos (Dec. 26, 2010).

14. Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society (Basic Books, 2009). In regards to groupthink: "...American naturalist William Beebe came across a strange sight in the jungle of Guyana. A group of army ants was moving in a huge circle. The ants went round and round in the same circle for two days until most of them dropped dead. The reason is that when a group of army ants is separated from its colony, it obeys a simple rule: follow the ant in front of you. The trouble is that if the ant in front of you is lost, so will you be" (Jonathan Sacks, "The Prophets Are Our Unflappable Sat-Nav, Not the Lost Car in Front," The Sunday Times, Feb. 4, 2006).