Christianity and Modernity

Wells makes the very interesting point that postmodernism has done to modernity in a few decades what Christian opposition to modernity was incapable of doing over the course of centuries: “On just about every front Enlightenment ideas have been fought by Christians – whether in the academy, with its pervasive humanism and naturalism, or, more specifically, in the biblical arean which, in developing one sophisticated apparatus after another, has succeeded in ensconcing unbelief in the very source from which Christian belief arises, or in Western governments which have taken as normative the assumptions of secularism, or in Western societies in which materialism, feueled by a bottomless affluence, has dominated the way people think and behave . . . . what is striking about this effort is that its success has registered at only a personal level . . . . The gatekeepers to our culture have not allowed Christian ideas past the threshold.”

To this very insightful comment, I add a couple of glosses. Christians might instinctively react to this situation with a vow to “do better next time round.” If we’re more sophisticated or shrewd or strategic, we’ll check another secularism before it gets started. Christians confronting modernity have certainly made errors, primary among them the tendency to accept the assumptions of the modernity they battled. To confront secularists who say that Christian faith should remain confined to belief and liturgical practice in the name of a privatized gospel is to concede the war before the first battle is engaged. Yet, we shouldn’t perhaps be surprised that the secular opponents of modernity were more successful. Cain built the first city, and we can be confident that the treasures accumulated by the wicked are stored up for the righteous.

Wells’s point should also be nuanced by the recognition that certain aspects of the postmodern assault on modernity have been inspired by Christianity, albeit often in a distorted form. Heidegger, one of the grandfathers of postmodernity, was a theology student, briefly entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, and wrote his habilitation dissertation on Duns Scotus. Nietzsche initially studied theology. On this point, Milbank’s essay on the linguistic turn as a theological turn is helpful.