Subverting the subversion

Postmodern sensibility has been described as the priority of image over reality, surface over depth, style over content, signifier over signified. The immediate Christian instinct is to turn those upside down – we are for reality and depth and content.

That’s a superficial response. The more fundamental, the more Trinitarian, response, the real subversion of postmodern subversion, is to undo the opposition. Just as the Father is never without His Son, and (so Athanasius) cannot be Father at all without His Son, so there is no reality without some imaging-forth of reality, no depth that does not play on the surface, no content that is style-less, no signified that is not accessible through signifiers.