The gate back to modernity is wide (though it is closing), but it leads to hell. As I watched a couple of leading postmodern evangelicals squirm under questioning at a recent Wheaton Theology conference, I realized that evangelicals have invested so much of our apologetics in Enlightenment structures that once we return to embracing theological tradition we have no leverage against classically Catholic and Orthodox notions of it. We have traded convictions of holy tradition like justification by grace through faith for convictions of individual autonomy and universal reason. That's not Protestant; that's modern. A considerable share of "conservative" enthusiasm for modernity and suspicion of postmodernity is coming not from faithfulness to Christian tradition, but from obedience to the demands of modernity. Being an opponent of that particular ideolatry makes me a vocal proponent of postmodern Christianity. (more)
Via Eve Tushnet
On The New Pantagruel forums, I speculated that the secular pomo derision of religion as "a social construct" is a reaction to Christian apologists who frame their arguments in neo-Cartesian rationalist form. Since the social construction of reason is emphasized as a counter to Cartesianism, would-be postmodernists think they can refute all religion in the same way they counter Descartes.
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