The Postmodern Paradigm And Its Significance For Religious Belief.

Postmodernism is a difficult term to define. But postmodernism is seen as emerging or growing out of modernism. Mary Klages states that, 'Modernism is the movement roughly conterminous with the twentieth century western ideas about art. It is the movement in visual art, music, literature and drama which rejected Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of the same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinction, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony and playfulness.' Secondly, Klages defines Postmodernism as 'coming from history and sociology.this approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/ historical attitudes; more precisely this approach contrasts 'postmodernity' with 'modernity', rather than 'postmodernism' with 'modernism'.' Due to the enlightenment, modernity emphasised 'order'. Mary Klages states that 'This order was rationality. The more ordered the society was, the better it would function rationally. Furthermore, the ways that societies go about creating categories labeled as 'order' or 'disorder' have to do with the effort to achieve stability.thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between order and disorder.this disorder becomes the 'other' and must be eliminated from the ordered, rational society.' The above concepts are an effect of the enlightenment era that rejected any form of religion or faith and instead advocated reason and emancipation. In addition to this, David Harvey states that 'Modernity was 'a secular movement that sought the demystification and desacrilization of knowledge and social organisation in order to liberate human beings from their chains.' As a result of modernity emphasising on order and rejecting the other, postmodernism became the response to 'order'. Postmodernity is thus the rejection of rationalism, reason and absolutism; it rejected individualism and the view that modernity would emancipate people. To summarize, postmodernity is the rejection of the fundamental premises of modernity.

Jean François Lyotard, known as a moderate postmodern writer defines postmodernism as 'incredulity toward metanarratives.' His hypothesis is that the 'status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the post industrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age.' Thus due to the world war and the advancement in technology, Lyotard believes knowledge has changed. Not only due to the fact that we now have computers and machines that can store up knowledge and information, but how we use this knowledge. Lyotard states 'that knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself; it loses its use-value.' Knowledge has turned into a commodity. Therefore the solution to this problem is through what he calls 'legitimation' and language games. Lyotard differentiates between two types of discourse: Scientific knowledge and narrative knowledge. He argues that 'scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge, which I shall call narrative knowledge.' Narratives are the stories that communities tell themselves to explain their present existence, their history and ambitions for the future. Lyotard does not imply that narratives can prevail over science. He is simply implying that narratives are the basis of our societies; they tell us our purpose and identity. Science is presented through types of narratives that describe the physical world. Now due to different societies and different narratives, all societies will have different rules, beliefs and legitimate statements. In short every culture is different, thus not every culture will have the same rules as some other cultures. Furthermore, since all cultures will have different legitimate statements, it would imply that one culture's truth will not be the same as another culture's truth. Using Wittgenstein's idea of language games, Lyotard believes that language games and narratives in a society are organized and come under metanarratives. 'A metanarrative sets out the rules of narratives and language games. This means that the metanarratives organises language games, and determines the success or failure of each statement or language move that takes place in them.' Gilles Deleuze builds upon this idea of the rejection of the metanarratives. Deleuze's idea of repetition urges the individual to oppose moral and natural law. He states, 'What good is a moral law if it does not sanctify reiteration, above all if it does not make reiteration possible and give a legislative power from which we are excluded by law of nature?' This would be important for postmodernism thought as repetition would be representing postmodernism. In that the moral and natural laws are viewed as Grand narratives, laws to which we should abide by, but through repetition we can oppose them.

Jean Baudrillard, an advocate of radical postmodernism puts forward another theme of the postmodern condition. He states that, 'Simulacrum is the separation of a signifier and a signified; it is the representation without an original that it copies.' Baudrillard is arguing the point that images in the postmodern society have distorted reality. It is now difficult to tell the difference between what is real or what is an imitation. He argues that due to the rise of mass media we have images projected on us. These images shape us, they tell us what to be or become. For example, TV shows such as 'Americas' Next Top Model', they project women who go through manicures, elaborate hairstyles and many changes to their image so that they can become another image that has been projected on them. Essentially, viewers of this TV show also begin to desire to be like the image set before them. This idea essentially leads to the individual losing their personal identity, thus perhaps postmodernism for Baudrillard simply shapes our identity. The issue with this idea is that it could lead to us questioning what is reality? Is life real? Am I real? Am I simply an inmate in a big brother TV show? For Baudrillard, this leads to nihilism and melancholia. He states that 'Melancholia is the disappearance of meaning, of the mode of the disappearance of meaning, in operational systems. And we are melancholic.' It would seem that since all meaning has been lost, what would be the point of life? And if nihilism is the result of the postmodern paradigm, is it still viable?

In assessing postmodernism, Lyotard believes that modernity was founded on such metanarratives and is no longer credible. He argues that 'Knowledge is no longer organised towards the fulfilment of universal human goals. Postmodern knowledge is valued in terms of its efficiency and profitability in a market driven global economy.' With the incredulity toward metanarratives, there is now no longer a structured and unifying identity for the individual or the society. We can now tell our own stories or define ourselves through the construction of micro narratives, which are localised and contextualised ways of conceiving the world. In this case, the postmodern paradigm would be a credible idea for Lyotard. However, the postmodern paradigm is not viable because if all meaning has disappeared then life would seem rather pointless. Even with the rejection of the metanarratives, 'we are melancholic'. Thus the micro narratives would prove to be pointless because if there is no meaning there would be no point in searching for it.

Postmodernism is not significant for religious belief, because it rejects all forms of grand or metanarratives. Firstly, this argument is dependant on whether religious belief, for example Christianity claims to be a metanarrative. To avoid generalising, I will give an example. In the Fourth Lateran Council, the Catholic Church confession stated that 'there is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved.' This confession claims that there is only one truth that can be found in the Catholic Church. Hence, moderate postmodernism would reject religious belief on this ground because by asserting absolute truth, it thus means that all other truths are rejected. Furthermore, by rejecting other truths, it rejects other religions thus promotes binary oppositions and rejection of the other. In addition to this, Don Cupit states that 'The Grand Narrative begins with the eternal decree of the election in Gods right hand, and the eternal decree of reprobation in Gods left hand.' In this example, God would be the Great Discriminator.

However, it could also be argued that postmodernism is significant for religious belief. George Lindbeck makes the point that, 'The function of church doctrines that becomes most prominent in this perspective is their use.as communally authoritative rules of discourse, attitude and action.' Lyotard's theory requires an approach to Christianity as a 'cultural-linguistic' body: a narrative that provides the rules for meaningful discourse and world-creation/interpretation in the Christian context. This means, when studying it, focussing on its narratives and symbols: narrative and semiotic study. Hence, Lyotard becomes very important for religion, at a time when metaphysics has declined, with the consequence that we find it hard to understand how we could speak of God in 'cognitive-propositional' terms, he relocates meaning in cultural-linguistic praxis, thus not only making it potentially meaningful again, but locating it in an actual body of tradition something the enlightenment had been keen to critique. Furthermore, Lyotard provides for a less reductive approach to religion, being 'expansive' by wanting to include more rather than reducing it to mere metaphysical propositions now redundant or in opposition to science. In addition, James K Smith, argues that the 'biblical story is not a metanarrative in Lyotard's sense. Yes, it makes grand, even universal claims; but it does not at least within broadly conceived 'Augustinian' tradition claim to be legitimised by Reason, but rather trusted in faith.' This view, not only rides on faith, but by advocating faith, religious belief gives stories that need to be told. Whilst postmodernism rejects any metanarrative, religious belief could take positives from this by offering stories that claim to be true on the grounds of faith not on reason. We have to remember that we are humans in a context, not knowing our past not our future. Thus by having stories that are given through religious belief, we can escape nihilism and face life with hopes and purpose. Another strength could be noted is that Lyotard keeps in account our global religiously diverse and plural context. Micro- narratives are a great response to the diverse religious beliefs that claim to be true.

In conclusion, the postmodern paradigm can be seen as self- refuting. Postmodernism claims to be incredulous towards metanarratives and debunks any overarching stories. But whilst doing this, it writes out its individual story by denying an overarching story. It questions propositional truth but yet it gives propositional truths! And, if there are no universal truths how can the postmodern paradigm be true?