More about Modernity

In What Is New Testament Theology? (Guides to Biblical Scholarship: Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 95, Dan Via describes modernity as the "rejection of tradition and the authority of the past."

"The dominating thrust of modernism was to employ reason in order to gain a truly objective knowledge of the real order of the things of the world."

Against the backdrop of the last few posts, hear again Cornell West's description of postmodernism:

• Postmodernism is antifoundational "in that it resolutely refuses to posit any one premise as the privileged and unassailable starting point for establishing claims to truth."
• Postmodernism is antitotalizing in that it "suspects that any theory that claims to account for everything is suppressing counterexamples, or is applying warped criteria so that it can include recalcitrant cases."
• Postmodernism is demystifying in that it "attends to claims that certain assumptions are 'natural' and tries to show that these are in fact ideological projections."

Have we gotten it yet?