The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity

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Summary: The Politicization and Legalization of Evangelicals
Review: There are really three parts to Raschke's new book. The first is a history of philosophical and religious postmodernism, the second part is a critique of the politicization and legalization of Evangelical Christianity, and the third part is what a Christian faith stripped of our politics and self comforting legalisms (idolatries) might look like. You can read any of the three parts as a self standing work. Anyone curious about what postmodernism is apart from the usual cliches will find the first part very informative. Those who like me, enjoy a little bomb throwing, will enjoy the second part. And those who are actually interested in the nuts and bolts of a postmodern ministry will appreciate the third part. Underlying all of this though, is a truly threatening proposition for the vast majority of Evangelicals who seek salvation through Big Box cathedrals, who feel comfort in the herd mentality of the new political/moral laws, and who prefer to seek salvation through crazy rationalistic formulations of literary theories. Knowledge collapsed into salvation will always be Gnosticsim, as Rashcke says, one of the greatest heresies of all time and one that has overtaken American Evangelicalism. Basically Raschke beckons us to worship God by way the Spirit and not the letter (or knowledge) of the law, for as Paul said, the Spirit gives life but the written code (of reason) kills. But faith alone as Martin Luther said, and Raschke is fond of repeating, makes us uneasy. We need our hard and fast idols. And America (conservative as well as liberal) is all about the idolatry of the written codes, the idols of reason, and salvation through obedience to (many) laws. Evangelicalism is not about the freedom of the New Tesatment writers because Evangeliscals are afraid that freedom leads directly to gay marriages, gun laws and teenage abortions. So once again we have "a fence built around the law" -- the ancient call to protect God from Man by legalisms. "On both the left and right, Protestantism - with its denominational, ministerial, and ecumenical councils, its political action committees, its preoccupation with palaces proffered as church buildings, its elaborate financial schemes and fund-raising...It has buttressed these worldly ambitions with regal rationalism that aggrandizes the institution of the church and its claims at the expense of broken souls crying out for grace and forgiveness." Raschke is pointing us back to the God who cares not about the widow's penny (much less the golden calf of materialism), but about a broken and contrite heart. God cares about our relationship to him above all else. "Proofs, "reasons," and "the rule of law" are not the basis for a relationship. They do not make for "Good News." Jesus broke rules, he didn't make up more rules. And look what happened to him. In one of the greates insights of the book, Raschke points out that Hitler had a lot more in common with Hegel than Nietzsche.
As a friend of mine emailed me after reading this book, echoing my own sentiments, "I no longer feel like I have to write this book, Raschke did it for me."

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Summary: Pomo Altar-Call
Review: "The Next Reformation" is not armchair theology/philosophy, though it is among Dr. Carl Raschke's more accessible texts. Carl is a world-class professional postmodern philosopher who happens to love God and the church; he has done today's North American church a great service in writing.

Could it be that history will reveal Derrida and the postmodernists as providing a service not unlike the service provided by Luther and the protestant reformers? I think Raschke would answer, "Damn right!"

Carl evangelizes evangelicals with God's invitation to faith/relationship offered through the prophets of postmodernity. I was almost expecting an altar-call, inviting evangelical Christians to personally accept and live into an existential conversion to a life of faith transcending objective truth, inerrancy, and worldviews. I highly recommend this text.

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Summary: The Postmodern Reformation
Review: As an avid reader of books connected with postmodern philosphy and culture, I found this book to be a wonderfully surprising treatment of postmodern philosophy in relation to evangelical theology. Perhaps the greatest strength of this engaging book is the adeptness that Raschke has for engaging important bot often inaccesible and idiosyncratic postmodern thinkers like Derrida, Levinas and Baudrillard. Raschke is lucid in his helpful exposition of these and other thinkers that many Christian interlocutors don't even bother to engage in any substantive way (see Raschke's excellent criticims of Groothuis on this exact point, pp. 15-17). Raschke has a masterful knowledge of the key players in French Postmodern Philosophy and this work is greatly enhanced by his helpful interaction with these important figures. In particular, Raschke's excellent discussions of Levinas were helpful and informative.

Another fascinating aspect of this book is the way that Raschke draws out the connections between the Reformer's (particularly Luther's) criticisms of Medieval Catholicism and Aristotlelian Philosphy and the criticisms of Modernity and foundationalism by postmodern thinkers. The argument is quite striking and compelling. Luther argued stringently for a theology of the cross over agains the hegemonic theolgies of glroy that emerged from the rationalism of Thomistic theology and Aristotlelian Philosophy which paved the way for the ontotheology that has been so ably criticized by Heidegger and Derrida. On this read, to the extent that evangelicals embrace postmodernity, they are embodying the legacy of the Reformers.

In arguing for an understanding of postmodernity that stands firmly the reformation tradition, Raschke explores the reformation battle cries of sola fide and sola scriptura as ways of getting beyond typical evangelical understandings of rationality and modernistic doctrines of biblical inerrancy.

Raschke makes some fascinating arguments against the foundationalism and rationalism that plauges evangelical theology from the standpoint of sola fide, namely that there is nothing more certain than faith from a Christian perspective. The quest for foundations on which to ground epistemological certainty are essentially a rejection of the reformation principle that all of Christian life stems from faith rather than reason. For, if beleif in God stems from reason then it is truely reason that is sovereign and then we end up with the death of metaphysical god of ontotheology that Nietzsche so rightly proclaimed.

Raschke then goes on to critique the evangelical understanding of inerrancy from the standpoint of the reformation doctrine of sola scriptura. In a nuanced argument, he shows how the evangelical doctrine of inerrancy betrays an essentailly gnostic and impersonal understanding of revelation. The evangelical emphasis on propositional truth is evidence of this fact. Propositional truth renders the discussion in third person terms (information about X) rather than being the place in which God actively speaks to the reader in a face-to-face encounter that is at once intersubjective and promissory. This "vocative" understanding of revelation renders the evangelical notions of inerrancy irrelvant in that inerrancy presupposes that the Bible is merely a book about things that is without error in respect to how it reports those things. Conversely, when Scripture is understood not merely as the factual account of God's words and actions, but rather as God's vocative Word to the reader of Scripture, the notion of inerrancy becomes moot since the authority of Scritpure derives not from it's scientific facticity, but from the God who speaks faithfully therein. Raschke's arguments are well-framed, and I think offer substantial resources toward further discussions of the authority of Scripture in the postmodern context.

There are a few minor areas in which I find Raschke's work a bit wanting, however. The first concerns the way that Raschke narrates the relationship between the Magisterial Reformers and the Radical Reformers. Raschke asserts that the Anabaptist's "doctrine of the plain sense of the text" lead to "extreme subjectivism" (p. 131). He offers no historical justification for this assertion, and I think it is far from the truth. The Radical Reformers were largely in continuity with the Magisterial Reformers on their understanding of Scripture and Hermeneutics. While Luther remained committed to the tradition in ways that the Anabaptists did not, to describe their understanding of Scripture as extreme subjectivism is quite unfair. The Anabaptists did not hold, as Rashcke implies, that anyone could interpret the text on their own and arrive at the right meaning thereof. Rather, they held that the church as a community could rightly read Scripture without the Magisterium of the Catholic church or the oversight of a specific class of clergy. The hermeneutic of the Anabaptists was not subjectivistic, or individualistic, but rather intrincically ecclesial and communal (on this point, see John Howard Yoder, "The Hermeneutics of Anabaptists", in Essays on Bibilcal Interpretation: Anapabtist-Mennonite Perspectives, ed. Williard M. Swartley [Elkhart, Ind.: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1984].)

This is, I think an important point given Rashcke's analogy between the Protestant Reformation and the Postmodern Reformation that Raschke sees transpiring in those theologians that are embracing postmodernism. Modernity was not merely a defunct rationalism or an idolatrous ontotheology, it was (and is) also a horrific political machine which has propogated and continues to propogate violence, terror, holocaust and all forms of oppression on the world in centuries since the Enlightenment. The Anabaptist's recovery of the radical poltics inherent in the message, life, death and resurrection of Jesus offers a crucial element in any attempt to truly transcend the evils of modernity. The work of John Howard Yoder is enough to make this point. Raschke would do well to reconsider the resources that the Radical Reformation has to offer in the attempt to construct a truly postmodern theology and ethic.

Another point that I think Raschke needs to do further work on is the ecclesial context in which the relational ontology he argues for must be lived out. In most of his discussions of ministry and church life, the emphasis in on charismatic experieinces and different postmodern forms of (musical) worship. There is little discussion about the daily lives of the church truly living the vision of relationality embodied in the Trinity. Despite Raschke's aim to offer an understanding of relationality that is both vertical and horizontal, most of his discussions end up focusing on the individual Christian's relationship to God, rather than on authentic community in the church and cruciform forms of life. This I think is another area in which Raschke could strengthen his call for a truly postmodern form of Christian theology and life.

However, on the broad level, this book is an excellent contribution to the contemporary theological discussion of postmodernism. The militant evangelica reactionaries that Raschke so rightly criticizes will likely hate this book, but that is to be expected from those who have things to gain from the status quo that has been the legacy of modernism. Nevertheless, I am hopeful that among Christians truly seeking to embody the Gospel in the postmdoern context, this book will prove helpful. Highly recommended.

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Summary: Irrationalism and Christian Nihilism
Review: Forward: of course what I have to say about the author's intention could be made even if Raschke had never existed since PM asserts the death of the author and the text's meaning(s) - we are free to play with his meanings (which are fictions) and make up our own intentions (deconstructively) and so it is important to keep in mind that any review here is false, and true at the same time, because really, since a propositional notion of truth and meaning is false, as he says, there is no propositional content for any reader of this book to embrace, and hence we cannot hold beliefs (and the SAME beliefs) about this book.

Theists, while decrying the 'rationalism' of philosophers, either contemporary or historical, use those philosophers' ideas when it serves their own purposes. This is what Raschke does. Basically the whole point is that Postmodern attacks on reason and rationality provide evidence (!!) that knowledge is impossible, so that faith only is what is needed. The only problem is that once you let in irrationalism and nihilism it will infect everything - it is very hard to contain. Indeed, giving an argument that only faith, not reason, is required shows the contradiction in the position. It is an old position and nothing really new - only the names have changed.

There is no relation between the Reformers and PMs that could not have been found between PMs and the Romantics, counter-Enlightenment figures. They all share the emphasis on irrationality and that Raschke picks the Reformers (his interpretations are questionable at best), show the serendipity of his position - he could have chosen Kierkegaard, Rousseau, Blake or any others, making his title "The Next Romanticism" or "The Next Theistic Existentialism." It's arbitrary at best. The reformers were part of older traditions which they used for their own end, like this book. Specifically, the Reformation was the reaffirmation of Augustine's view of salavation, and rejection of his view of the church, so why not go back to Augustine instead? Because he's too rational. It is fallacious to think Philip Melanchthon would believe that language has only private meaning, if any meaning at all. He used the philosophical tools available to defend a more rational faith - he was called the 'mind of the reformation.' Raschke's selective use of ideas and figures calls into question the whole enterprise. There is much he does not tell you - it's what he does NOT say that is important.

One could make similar arguments using any philosopher and any tradition because traditions span time. While decrying and declaiming others' uses of philosophies he does not agree with, and decrying using modernism itself, he embraces postmodernism and uses the philosophies he likes; he thus makes the same mistake he chides others for - uncritical use of a philosophy in theism. 50 years from now we will wonder how theism so bought into a worldly philosophy. If as an analytic theist I think PM is misguided, this is a reasonable stance; he does not deal with this other than name-calling (or as one reviewer called it "bomb-throwing"). And how can he decry evangelicalism's use of philosophy while reducing theism to irrationalist PM philosophy requiring faith, not reason? Pretty silly really. Again, it's just an old argument using irrationalist PM philosophy to motivate irrationalist, subjectivist fideism. One could just as well use Berkeley, Locke or whomever to motivate evidentialism. In 1982 Smith in "Beyond the Postmodern Mind" says those who wish to defend religion have used the discourse of Postmodernity to declaim modernity and Enlightenment rationalism. 1982!! Like I said, nothing new.

Once you reject that the object of a belief is a proposition, all you have is subjective experiences relative to minds (solipsism) and nothing outside of them. If there are no propositions then obviously two people cannot believe the same thing since there is nothing they share (like a proposition) in a believing-event. This the cash value of the retreat into PM irrationalism.

As an academic philosopher, I have heard other profs use Postmodernism to motivate fideism and irrationalism. The students rightly objected that it ended in subjectivism and relativism. Again, once you let in irrationalism it's hard to contain.

In reading many of the contemporary PMs, even they themselves claim PM's time has passed. Indeed, we live in a postmodern world (postmodernITY, post-industrial, late capitalist and so on), though PostmodernISM is dying a slow death. It is like anything - it rises, then fades. PM is now in a critical reappraisal of itself phase, questioning its own foundations. This is the natural course of all philosophies and one reason philosophy keeps moving ahead without getting stuck. Unfortunately this book is evidence of an uncritical acceptance of a fading way of thought - once again, an Evangelical is about 10 years behind the times. In contemporary academia PM is mostly kept alive in liberal Lit departments, and the Marxist critique of PM is in full swing. The problem with this book is that it conflates Postmodernity and Postmdernism - a simple mistake.

One major objection is the tone of the work. Name-calling and insults to other Christians ("wall-flowers"), who might not believe everything you have to say is immature at best. Evangelicals will never reach the world if their testimony to others does not rise above petty name-calling and bickering between themselves.

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Summary: New Perspective on Next Reformation
Review: I would like to praise and commend Dr. Raschke PhD. on his recent book entitled, The Next Reformation.

At first glance I thought the book was a complete fraud, but then I got to thinking. Of course I know, along with any thinking person, that someone with Raschke's credentials could never seriously be promoting a confused French salon, anti-intellectual, hippy, New Age, postmillennial charismatic, circular faith-in-faith message. Eureka! This is, of course, a satire of purest brilliance - right? Yes of course - what else. All that was required for the book to make sense was the proper recontextualization of what the author only appeared to be saying.

In it he has exposed the witless farce of postmodernism, what the social commentator and humorist Jean Shepard use to call, "Creeping Meatballism," in a way that no critique could by pretending to be writing in its support. This is a great example of classic Anglo-Saxon humorous satire that reveals by extending an issue into the absurd, which Raschke does with great skill and subtlety.

It was pure genius how he seemed to capture the contradiction and schizophrenic drift of substance and style not to mention the sophomoric arbitrary misuse of sources. Stringing together such persons as Tertullian (who was a follower of Montanus perhaps the real starting point anterior to Aquinas.) to Luther (who didn't object to the Book of Revelations because he wasn't interested in eschatology, as the author suggests, as much as his questioning its authorship and Christology which was a big un-pomo concern of his) and then, as the punch line, Aquarian Conspirator Margaret Ferguson (how she slips into a book about why Evangelical Christians should do anything is beyond me) as proto-pomos I thought nothing short of bizarre - until I got the joke.

I'm sure there will be liberal academics from leading universities that are already tripping over each other in lavish praise of this King's New Clothes so as to disguise the fact they don't have the slightest clue what was being said either.

Anyone thinking they might have postmodernist leanings need only read this book to be sent careening back into the arms of common sense if only to catch one's breath. This is a fresh and most original form of Christian apologetics in a post-Christian era. How better to jump-start the still viable parts of postmodernist gray matter than to cause it to dialogue with itself? Such a ploy might be considered deceptive or mean-spirited if it were not so badly needed.

As a tool for evangelism the book transcends mere messages about hell and hopeless perdition by causing the reader to actually experience it as did the movie Memento cause us to experience short-term memory loss along with the protagonist.

Finally, something else Dr. Raschke cleverly exposes is how contemporary philosophy has become the Wizard's Apprentice of the going scientistic theory of the day. Whereas contemporaries of Einstein attempted to apply relativism to social morals, Raschke has convincingly demonstrated how postmodernists have reflected quantum theory in literary critique by writing his own book simultaneously from ten different dimensions rather than following a single train of thought toward any discernable conclusion.

Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principal is handled as well in that any attempt to measure anything the author says seems to necessarily alter it. Further, you can try to imagine what larger point he's trying to make or try to comprehend what he's actually saying, but never at the same time.

In the Next Reformation Raschke appears just a bit self-serving almost to the point of narcissism but if my analysis is correct this is only an attempt to parody the postmodernist goal of the "death of authorship" with the "death of readership" by making authorship the sole object of writing. What Raschke is really telling us is that, through all the abstract convoluted metaphor, and the difficult and ultimately meaningless self-referential technical jargon, most postmodern writing is really simply about, "READ ME." Of course he could have just told us that but what he did was make us feel it. Philosophy as theatre.

I think I finally get it (although I once thought that about Wittgenstein) and I'm quite sure many others do as well like one of the above contributors that wrote that he likes the indiscriminate throwing of emotive pseudo-intellectual bombs into crowded class rooms, like some anarchist. Nothing more than dry witty sarcasm I'm sure.

I leave you with my favorite quote from Rorty: "The only valid view a philosopher should have regarding views is to have no view at all." With this in mind I'd like to say that it is my view, if I had a view (nothing written here should be construed as expressing a view which I don't have) that Raschke has produced the most eloquent requiem for postmodernism to date.