WHAT IF...? or, Sometimes Brian McLaren Drives Me Crazy

Brian McLaren wrote in his article, "Why I Still Use the Term Postmodern," http://www.emergingchurch.info/reflection/brianmclaren/index.htm

"Postmodernity will more likely seek to integrate rationality with things beyond rationality, things like imagination, intuition, even faith. In fact, if the medieval era (the thesis, in a Hegelian progression) was seen as an era of faith, and the modern era (the antithesis, in the Hegelian sense) as an era of reason, we could expect the postmodern era to be a synthesis of faith and reason."

This is what drives me nuts with McLaren and some other emerging church figures--their facile philosophical and historical analysis, an example of which is demonstrated above. Wherever did McLaren get the idea that the medieval era was the era of faith, and the modern era the era of reason? This is the story that Modernism tells about the Middle Ages, not the story the Middle Ages tells about itself! In fact, the medieval era--culminating in Thomas Aquinas--was the place where faith and reason were synthesized. Read Peter Kreeft, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis or Tolkein, not to mention Etienne Gilson, Frederick Copleston, Jacques Maritain, Romano Guardini, Josef Pieper etc and one can see how it was done.

It would fit the Hegelian dialectic very nicely if McLaren were right, but what if the story actually goes this way?

Premodernism:
Greeks = culture of intellect; Hebrews= culture of faith;
Middle Ages= synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem; faith and reason;

Modernism:
Renaissance=pull back toward intellect; reason over faith
Reformation= pull back toward faith; faith over reason.
(instead of a synthesis, we get a ping-pong:)
Enlightenment=the Age of Reason: reason against faith, feeling

Postmodernism:
Romanticism/Existentialism = the Age of Sentiment: feeling against reason
Naturalism/Logical Positivism = reality is exclusively physical
(instead of a synthesis we get another ping-pong)
New Age = reality is exclusively spiritual

If what McLaren is really trying to say that we are long overdue for a synthesis, I couldn't agree more. But he is mistaken to think that one hasn't already happened!

McLaren breezily dismisses the premodern period, saying,

Let's face it: there are still quite a few more or less medieval Roman Catholics out there, and quite a few more medieval Moslems. The world of religion has a fine way of baptizing the last era and riding it until the next era is nearly over.

He assumes that history and cultures and worldviews are one big buffet for the picking:

After all, many of us postmodernsare rediscovering good things from our medieval heritage, things that modernity forgot, and were glad for those who have maintained medieval values or practices through the harsh climate of modernity

What if Alasdair MacIntyre is right, and we are not being given a buffet to choose from, but a menu is being placed before us from which we must order our future, a menu which forbids substitutions, and offers only three items: "Tradition" (premodernism), "Encyclopedia" (modernism), and "Geneology" (Postmodernism) ? (See his Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry).

Again, McLaren displays his ignorance of the Middle ages when he writes, "medieval faith without modern reason didn't work." But to say this is to ignore Albertus Magnus (teacher of Thomas Aquinas) was not just a theologian, but a scientist. He and Roger Bacon proved that faith and science go hand in hand, and without them the modernist Scientific Revolution of Copernicus and Newton would have been much delayed.

One other reason I havent given up on the term: I actually believe that people of faith like you and me can play a role in defining not just the term, but the era itself. In other words, I sense in this transition an openness--no, more: a desperate need--for people of faith to enter the fray and help create a new postmodern synthesis. Medieval faith without modern reason didn't work. But modern reason without faith didn't work either. Maybe there's an untried alternative that we can help to pioneer? Maybe we have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Maybe this opportunity is part of what keeps me hopeful about the times we are in, and that hopefulness keeps me using the term.

But what if what McLaren really is longing for is what T.S. Eliot pointed to in part V of "Little Gidding," in his Four Quartets? Christians, least of anyone, should be a people without a history, because Kairos depends upon Chronos. What if the way people of faith, like you and me, are called to define the postmodern era by arriving where we began? What if McLaren and the emerging church folk were to give history and Tradition (in MacIntyre's sense) the respect they deserve?

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph.
And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration.
A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.