Help
Options
Didn't know it?
click below
click below
Knew it?
click below
click below
Don't Know
Remaining cards (0)
Know
retry
shuffle
restart
0:00
Embed Code - If you would like this activity on your web page, copy the script below and paste it into your web page.
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Postmodernism
Christianity and Postmodernism Test 1
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is Radical Orthodoxy’s ‘participatory ontology’? | The sense that we properly understand the nature of the world as creation only when we see that the world “participates” in God. Creation is “suspended” from the divine |
| What does Smith mean by saying, ‘In order for the church to be postmodern, it should be catholic’? | The emerging church is reacting against a deep, hurtful experience of sectarianism; the antidote to this is a generous orthodoxy and healthy catholicity |
| How are both liberal Christianity and primitivism guilty of indulging in ‘ahistoricism’? | Former – faith reduced to atemporal moral teachings that were universal and unconditioned. Latter – making the time of Jesus and the early church the universal for contemporary practice. |
| How, according to Smith, is Radical Orthodoxy more properly postmodern than ‘Derridean religious skepticism’? | Theology is most persistently postmodern when it rejects a lingering correlational false humility and instead speaks unapologetically from the primacy of Christian revelation and the Church's confessional language |
| How does this model play out in theology and church practice? | Takes Marxist sociology and correlates those human community facts with the Gospel. Churches who are looking for members look at the culture and transform into what it thinks those people want |
| In describing the shape of the emerging church, what does Smith mean by a ‘correlationist model’? | Theological strategy whose pedigree is distinctily modern. Certain confidence in the findings of secular discipline, adapts this framework as a foundation and then correlates Christian theological claims with those facts |
| Be sure that you can distinguish between what Smith means by ‘quasi-postmodern religion without religion’ from his ‘ancient medieval properly postmodern’ model. | Former proceeds by accepting the Cartesian equation of knowledge w/ certainty, then bc such certainty is impossible, it must concluding knowledge is impossible. Latter gives up pretensions to absolute knowledge but doesn't give up on knowledge altogether |
| What is the ‘Cartesian Anxiety’? | Refusing the modern equation of knowledge with omniscience |
| The deconstruction of Christianity is not an attack on the church but a critique of what? | Critique of the idols to which it is vulnerable – the literalism and authoritarianism, the sexism and racism, the militarism and imperialism, and the love of unrestrained capitalism |
| An institution modeled after deconstruction would be what? | Auto-deconstructing, self-correcting, removed as far as possible from the power games and rigid inflexibility of institutional life. Near but not anarchy |
| In what sense is deconstruction a philosophy of and for institutions? | A way to keep institutions alive and well and on the move. Fidelity to an institution requires so infidelity, as we can't hold rigidly to the rules and regulations |
| ‘When something is deconstructed, it is not razed but… what’? | Reconfigured and transformed in response to inner and uncontainable impulses. It takes on a certain look |
| Why is Eloi Eloi, lama sabathachthani? a ‘perfectly auto-deconstructing prayer’? | It's addressing God and asking why He has forsaken us |
| What is the ‘seamless garment’ argument against violence, made by Cardinal (Joseph) Bernardin? | The right to life spans the entire spectrum and it includes not only fetuses but felons, not only friends but enemies., from womb to tomb |
| Hans-George Gadamer used to say that texts are like musical scores, meaning what? | You don't get music until someone plays the score; reads and interprets them. Don't turn God into an idol of human fabrication |
| On Caputo’s reading, what is the difference between viewing the Bible as a ‘timeless archetype’ and an historical ‘prototype’? | Archetype: Bible can be directly and decontextually copied and pasted into the present. Prototype understands the Bible to be something that must be hermeneutically interpreted, inserted with hermeneutic sensitivity into a contemporary context |
| Caputo argues that patriarchy is contradicted by what Alain Badiou and others today call the what of St Paul? | Universalism – neither male nor female, slave nor free |
| Caputo prefers to redescribe just-war theory as the what theory? | “Lesser-evil” theory. Justified w/o being just |
| Ron Sider, in The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, claims that as evangelicals have become more upwardly mobile their charitable giving has what? | Decreased |
| ‘The dangerous memory of the crucified body of Jesus poses a threat to a world organized around the disastrous concept of what?’ | Power, sovereignty of autonomous subjects and nations powerful enough to get away with acting unilaterally and in their own self-interests (88). We have to make the weakness of God stronger than the power of this world. |
| ‘The only measure of love is…what’? | Love without measure. Excess, going the extra mile |
| What is the ‘central symmetry’ that leads Caputo to treat deconstruction as the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God? | Loving the unlovable, the possibility of the impossible |
| The key to the kingdom is to do what? | To love those who don't love you, or that the world says you should hate |
| What is the ultimate madness of the kingdom of God? | “Weakness of God”. The divinity lies in the emptying of divinity. Jesus taught non-violence and prayed that his crucifiers be forgiven |
| What does it mean to say that the ‘real’ is the ultrareal in every res? | The thing that slips away, the secret that will not yield to our advances or embrace. It's what we're trying to make come true, even while we can't fully understand it |
| Explain Derrida on hostipitality. | We're hospitable to those we expect the same from in return, who serve our interests/pleasures. We should welcome those who aren't welcome, strangers, enemies. Invitation and visitation. We can't erase the risk and keep with true hospitality |
| EP Sanders speculates that Jesus taught what kind of an unorthodox variation on the classical doctrine of Teshuvah? | Unconditional forgiveness; meeting with sinners who were perhaps unrepentant and didn't plan on changing their behaviour. Still He forgave them |
| What does it mean to say that the gift is the impossible (not that the gift is impossible)? | We know that the the gift sets off the circle of return and appreciate the aporetic situation but still give. Give economies a chance, but don't only live there. The gift is the event |
| Be sure that you can briefly explain the three ‘aporias’ of the law. Epoche | The epoche (suspend) of the rule. The law provides a rule that must be applied to a situation, but if the rule is applied routinely and mechanically without insight into the particulars of the situation, then the law will be unjust |
| Be sure that you can briefly explain the three ‘aporias’ of the law. Undecidable | A just decision becomes a real decision when it passes through the “undecidable”, the oscillation between two conflicting decisions – when justice is making a demand on us from both sides – and that oscillation has to be resolved one way or the other |
| Be sure that you can briefly explain the three ‘aporias’ of the law. Urgency | Urgency. Justice doesn't wait. Justice deferred is justice denied, don't matter how undecidable the situation is |
| In the deconstruction of the law, the law is exposed to the call of justice in order to what? | In order to provoke the reinvention if the law, thus offsetting the tendency the law has to close down around itself |
| What does Caputo mean by saying that the event belongs to the ‘vocative’ order? | The order of what is calling, what is called for, what is recalled, and who is called on |
| Caputo maintains that deconstruction ‘itself’ is not a definite position or worldview but rather what? | A “how” a way of holding a position of being under way or being on a path. An affirmation without being a self-certain and positive position |
| Caputo argues that from time to time Derrida signaled that when deconstruction is understood in the most searching manner possible it finds itself indistinguishably close to what state? | Prayer; to adopt a certain posture, exposed to God by God, in which God is the possibility of the impossible, the wholly other, who and exposes us to the coming of the other, the incoming of what we did not see coming |
| Be sure you can explain Malabou’s exposition of Derrida’s thought by way of the undecidability of dériver and arriver. | Dériver signifies at one and the same time to derive but also to drift or to deviate, while arriver means not only to arrive at or reach the destination one has consciously set out to reach but also to come about by chance, to happen, like a surprise |
| By a deconstruction Caputo means an analysis that shows something is possible only under conditions that do what? | Under conditions that also block it or make it impossible |
| Be sure you can explain Derrida’s neologism destinerrant | To be of erring or straying destiny, or perhaps to be destined to utterly aimless, hopeless wandering |
| Be sure you can explain Caputo’s use of pas (step/not) | It means to take a step but not to, to be following in someone's steps but then again not to. Steps cannot be insulated from missteps and side steps. To follow someone's steps doesn't mean that you won't take detours, misleading road signs, or impasses |
| Caputo argues that the religious frame of mind is neither realist nor antirealist, but what?Explain Caputo’s position. | Not realist bc not satisfied with reality around it. Not antirealist bc not trying to substitute fakes for reality. hyper-realist, in search of the real beyond the real, the beyond, in search of the event that stirs things that will exceed our horizons |
| If we ask, ‘What would Jesus deconstruct?’ the answer, according to Caputo, is first and foremost what? | WWJD itself, the whole “industry”, the whole commercial operation of spiritual and very real money-making Christian capitalists |
| According to Caputo, deconstruction is organized around the idea that things contain what? | What they can't contain, an uncontainable truth |
| In Caputo’s view, in a deconstruction our lives, beliefs, and our practices are not destroyed but what? | Reconfigured, reorganised, regroup, reassemble in order to come to terms with their inner tendencies, or repress them the stronger |
| In Caputo’s view, deconstruction is good news because it delivers the shock of what? | Of the other to the forces of the same; the shock of the good to the forces of being |
| Mark C Taylor once described deconstruction as the hermeneutics of the death of God. Caputo, however, treats deconstruction as the hermeneutics of what? | Kingdom of God; and interpretative style that helps get at the prophetic spirit of Jesus (who took the side of the other) |
| Caputo maintains that ‘it will be an eye opener to the Christian Right’ to discover that Sheldon’s question, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’, is a call for what? | Social justice |
| What does Smith mean by suggesting (following central insights from Derrida) that we see the world through the Word? | Emphasizes the priority of God's special revelation for our understanding of the world and making our way in it. |
| Why does Smith take issue with the claim that something is true only insofar as it is objective? | This assumes that interpretation is a disease and can't be true. |
| According to Smith, what does Derrida mean by saying that there is nothing outside the text? | Can't get behind texts – aren't able to get out of our skins to a place where language isn't necessary. There is no reality which isn't interpreted. We move from text to text. |
| What is ‘Rousseauean naïveté’? | Assumption that we can read without needing to interpret. |
| After reviewing various approaches to biblical interpretation, what considerations incline White to sympathise with the premodern church when it comes to biblical interpretation? | Concern for unity of the church, fragmented when we tried to follow different authorities.Relationship between christian character/ interpretation of scripture. Premoderns wanted to be shaped by the text, instead of the world shaping how they viewed it. |
| With respect to biblical interpretation, why is the multiplication of meanings a good thing? | Because we can't know 100% it's accuracy. It prevents dominant narratives from restricting our interpretive options. |
| How do postmoderns view the idea of objective verification? How do postmoderns tend to view the modern pursuit of knowledge? | Every question has multiple answers and so we interpret the evidence that we find convincing.View of power, science is just using the persuasive power of stories. |
| In the modern period, what begins to change? | Went from “the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate” to one of material and moral progress. Then, with disillusionment, morality was dropped and it became science for the sake of science. The individual and the senses are the constraints. |
| What was the ultimate aim of knowledge for premoderns? What constrained this pursuit of knowledge? | Aimed at the love of God and neighbor. The Church constrained the directions that the inquiries would take. |
| How do language games and conceptual schemes erode the sharp line between facts and interpretations? | Facts are known directly and for certain; interpretations require inference from facts/are less certain. Nothing can be absolutely known to be true. Postmodern's use this to never fully trust anyone's views about anything. No theories we can't reinterpret |
| What does White mean by saying that ‘metaphor is the postmodern tool of conceptual liberation’? | Allows us to think things that were literally unthinkable. |
| Why are postmoderns suspicious of ‘ordinary’ ways of thinking and talking? | Impossible to think without conceptualizing. Conceptual scheme is socially constructed, meaning it can be moral. Because it is a form of power exercised by the past over the present; version of reliance on tradition. |
| How would you summarise the shift in thinking from language as names to language as games? | There is a one-to-one relationship between words and things. Postmoderns show that this system doesn't work. Instead, words have to follow rules on their use. Now we're saying that if something is classified as something based certain characteristics. |
| In light of Foucault’s analyses of society, what does Smith mean by saying that the church must enact ‘counterdisciplines’? | We need to be shaped in a certain kind of person, not to simply think a certain way. |
| Explain, in general terms, how Smith believes Foucalt is right and wrong. | Right in his analysis of the way in which mechanisms of discipline serve to form individuals. Wrong to cast all such discipline and formation in a negative light. |
| Explain how Foucalt can be read as the ‘Nietzschean Foucault’ or the ‘Liberal Foucault.’ | He doesn't think that power has to corrupt, but he did see power being misused in France's penal system. |
| In what sense is society, according to Foucault, characterized by a ‘carceral continuum’? | Normalization |
| What is the ‘panopticon’ and how does it function in Foucault’s theory? | Architectural ideal; diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form. Turned from this into the utopian dream of a disciplinary society. Generalization of discipline through the social body |
| According to Foucault, in what sense is the ‘political dream’ of a disciplinary society found in the historical organization of a plague-stricken town? | Both are examples of regulated, disciplined organization of individuals subjected to constant surveillance and registration. |
| Was penal reform really a change in attitude -- the result of a new humanism? | No. Too many political problems associated with torture; people were identifying with the criminal. Turn to surveillance instead. |
| According to Smith, what is the point of Foucault’s attempt to document a change in the strategies of punishment within the penal system? | Wants us to be equally horrified by the mechanisms of domination that suffuse modern society. |
| For Foucalt, at the root of our most cherished and central institutions… is what? | A network of power relations. Knowledge and justice reduce to power. |
| How does White suggest that a Christian might defend moral absolutes? Why can pointing out Jesus’ summary of the law be helpful? | The surest way to hurt people in the long run is to abandon all moral absolutes – uncrossable lines safeguard every person. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Then have to show that a moral rule can express love, even if it's a tough love. |
| Why will the NLT not convince a postmodern, according to White? | A postmodern can give up the principles of this before giving up the belief. No one gives up on a cherished belief unless something better comes along and the NLT doesn't offer that. |
| What is the Nifty Logic Trick (NLT) Christians sometimes employ to critique the postmodern refusal to grant moral absolutes? | Saying there are no moral absolutes is absolute so it contradicts itself. If it isn't absolute then why should we listen to it. |
| According to White, the meaning of the postmodern slogan ‘truth is power’ is what? | The authority to determine what counts as true is also the power to determine who counts as important. |
| Why does Barber see a ‘darkening future’ for democracy | McWorld only wants social justice to promote economic consumption. Countries trading aspects of democracy for free markets, etc. Jihad relies on exclusion and obedience to a heirarchy of government & fanaticism in beliefs; no equality among individuals. |
| What does Barbermean by the ‘confederal option’? | Loose grouping of local regions. Giving small regions extensive jurisdiction. Democracy grows from the bottom up. |
| Be sure you understand what Barber means by speaking of ‘jihad’ not as an instrument of policy but as an ‘emblem of identity.’ | An expression of community. Everyone wants their own place – tribalism. |
| What imperatives make up the dynamic of McWorld? | Market: companies bigger than countries; int peace. Resource: being totally independent; doesn't work in reality. Information: technology/universal info, embrace of objectivity/impartiality, communication tech. Ecological: pollution doesn't obey borders. |
| Explain the two forces in title of Barber’s essay. | Jihad: driven by parochial hatreds, re-creating ancient subnational and ethnic borders from within; retain their regional identities. McWorld: universalizing markets, making national borders porous from without. |
| In brief, what consequences does Huntington see for the West? | More conflict between the Islamic world and the West. No universal culture – have to learn how to live with each other. |
| Why does Huntinton believe that civilizations will clash in the future? | Basic differences between cultures; world a smaller place; economic modernization; culture consciousness; culture less changeable; economic regionalism inc. |
| How does Huntington understand the nature of ‘civilisations’? | Groupings of similar cultures. “Western” “Japanese” “African” vs. “American” or “Roman”. |
| How does Fukuyama answer the question he raises: Has History Started Again? | He says no. He believes that Muslims will eventually come to value modernity as well, that they need to develop secular states and religious tolerance. |
| In what sense, according to Fukuyama, did history ‘end’? | History understood as the evolution of human societies through different forms of government had culminated in modern liberal democracy and market-oriented capitalism. Reached the best possible form of running society. |
| How or in what sense, according to Smith, does/should the postmodern ‘storytelling’ church resist the tendency of ‘pragmatic evangelicalism’? | Affirms the timelessness of the Biblical narrative. Don't try to make the narrative a contemporary one. Authentic worship doesn't have to choose between reaching seekers and building up the saints. |
| How does Smith answer the following question: ‘If postmodernity is incredulity towards metanarratives, then does postmodernism signal a rejection of Christian faith insofar as it is based on the grand story of the Scriptures?’ | No. It appeals to faith, not reason. |
| What does Smith mean by the following statement: ‘The question of the relation between modernity and postmodernity revolves around [the] issue of “legitimation” ’? | Modernity appeals to science for its legitimation. Science in this case means universal reason. Narratives don't try to prove themselves, but just tell a story. |
| What does Smith mean by the following statement: ‘What is at stake for Lyotard is not the scope of these [meta]narratives but the nature of the claims they make’? | The problem isn't the stories told but the way they're told. Stories have always been told, but with modernism they're being told with the thought that they can be proved true through reason. |
| n face of postmodern pessimism towards metanarratives, White says that Christianity offers not cheery optimism but what? | Divine promises. Things will not get better by themselves, but we have promises from God to turn to when things get bad. Hope, in a good kingdom yet to come. |
| What are the principal sources of postmoderns’ ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’? | “If you had an agenda to push, there would be no better way to push it than to slant history your way, they publish it as something objective and neutral.” the power to choose which narrative to empower, which people to immortalise. |
| Why have postmoderns lost faith in the idea of neutral, objective history? | Impossible to lose prejudice/partiality from history: winners write it. No account is fair to all. What's imp to one is not same to others. Always choosing which connections and facts to tell. What gets accepted is a matter of power, not truth. |
| With respect to the idea of the ‘sublime,’ how does Lyotard distinguish between the modern and postmodern work of art (particularly in the case of the novel)? | Indicates a mix of pleasure/pain, attraction/repulsion, awe/terror. Disturbance of everyday sense-making. Modern form offers consolation or pleasure, while the unpresentable is absent. Postmodern form and content say there is unpresentable things. |
| How can it be argued that postmodernism can be located throughout literary history – instead of seeing it located merely in a straightforward progression of the order: ‘realism, modernism, postmodernism’? | If postmodernism is a style then any literary work that embodies a certain range of formal devices associated with postmodernism would have to be called as such. |
| How does Fredric Jameson distinguish between parody and pastiche? | Parody challenges and subverts what it mimics. Pastiche is concerned with the superficial appropriation of different modes and genres for the generation of its own performative style. |
| If modernism in art was the age of the avant-gardes, then, for many critics, postmodernism signals what? | The end of the sense that art has a single purpose or can change the world. Breaks divide between high art and popular culture. |
| Surrealists | used dream imagery to challenge the dominance of rationality |
| Dadaists | Explored nonsense and absurdity |
| Futurists | celebrate and represent the new technologies and their potential to transform human nature, as well as broader movements such as abstract expressionism (pure form and color, not pictures) |
| How does Malpas characterise the relation of postmodernism in architecture to modernism and the International Style? | People weren't malleable enough for the International style. Postmodernist focuses on accepting the regional identities and local traditions. Borrows styles from other periods – eclectic – “double code”. Creates a multi-layered space. |
| What is the ‘International Style’ of architecture? | Modernist style which happened after WWI and became popular after WWII. Sought to end traditional styles and create a universal style, so places would look similar in different countries. Rational, functional, up-to-date materials, no ornamentation. |
| Why is a discussion of architecture important to understanding modernism and postmodernism? (3 reasons) | Architecture has an immediate impact upon people's everyday lives, the appearance of a person's environment influences how they perceive themselves, others, and the world. Show a clear distinction between the styles of architecture. |
| In what sense does the postmodern Christian’s faith come with a ‘touch of irony’? | Ironic about their moral commitments. We have strong beliefs, but we understand that not everyone feels the way we do, nor will they. We now choose to believe in Christ, it is now longer the obvious and only right answer (gift of God). |
| In what sense are postmodern art and artists a reaction to the modern art scene? | Modern art scene was about genius and originality; postmodern art is about coming up with a new synthesis of old ideas. Taking bits of pieces and combining them in new ways. |
| How has postmodern rootlessness produced a sense of irony? | Awareness that, with so many cultures and religions, any choice is arbitrary. Not one is obviously superior to others. People choose what they do bc of where they were born. A form of self-awareness. Loss of trust in reason as a standard for better/worse. |
| What is the characteristic reaction amongst postmoderns to the change associated with the vertigo mentioned above? | Embrace change. Having new choices feels freeing and they encourage a shift in cultural traditions. |
| What does White mean by ‘cultural vertigo’? | What was safe and reliable now seems strange and threatening. Product of exposure to other cultures. |
| In what sense are we ‘heirs to two traditions,’ ‘shifting uneasily from one foot to the other’? | From the belief in empiricism to the emphasis on self/motivivation. |
| Explain the following statement: ‘In conclusion… the new romantic transvaluation of values substituted the morality of motive for that of consequence, that of the inner life for that of effectiveness in the external world.’ | We only have control over certain things, and so our motives become important. We have no power over the results of our actions. Likewise, its the inner life which influences our actions in the outer world, a world which we have little control over. |
| Faith in what is the central pillar of the modern worldview? | Power of Reason |
| How could one argue that modernism itself was the source of moral & humanitarian failure? | Insisting on resolving differences; leads to coercion, abuse, domination. |
| What is a "trickle down" theory of philosophical influnece? | Cultural phenomena reflects philosophical movements |
| In what sense, according to Smith, do both modernity & postmodernity deny grace? | Self-sufficiency & naturalism |
| Be sure that you can contrast in general terms the model of classical aplogetics vs. that of presuppositional aplogetics. | What's recognized as true reason vs. what counts as true. |
| Withing the matrix of a modern Christianity, the base ingredient is what? | The individual. |
| In what sense did some philosophers of the enlightenment believe that philosophy could be converted into a natural science? | Only 1 answer which could be reached empirically. |
| Why is Kant significant in Berlin's discussion? | Defined that you can't empirically answer philosophical questions. |
| Explain "the romantic transvaluation of values. | Substituted the morality of motive for that of consequence that of the inner life for that of effective. |
Created by:
100001254825822