AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: THE "MISSING LINK" IN OUR CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDING OF DIVINE AUTHORITY?, THE

Trinity Journal, Fall 2004 by Studebaker, John A Jr

IV. POSTMODERN AND CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY

Finally, in postmodern theology we discover yet another critical debate - this time concerning the relationship between the Spirit and the church community. The question here is, "What is the nature of the Spirit's authority within the church?" This has to do with the way we should understand the activation and incorporation of the Spirit's authority with respect to the way the Spirit governs or functions within the church.

First a simple definition of postmodernism is needed. It is that philosophy which comes after modernism, usually as a response to the deficiencies of modernism. Postmodernists, of course, would remind us that there is no single postmodern philosophy or theology, and that postmodernism is as varied as the responses themselves.

A. Evangelical "Postmodern" Pneumatology vs. Communitarian "Postmodern" Pneumatology

According to Veith, "One response to the end of modernism is to recover what was of value in the premodern era and to apply old worldviews in new creative ways to our contemporary times."68 This seems to be the response of a few evangelicals. Such a "postmodern" approach recognizes once again the essential community basis for the discovery of truth and spiritual life, but does not dismiss the pattern of divine authority, particularly the Spirit's essential relationship to Christ and to the Word of God. Oden, for example, speaks of a "postmodern paleoorthodoxy" which calls theologians to assess all texts from the historic church (that allege to be consensual Christian teaching), listening continually to the centrist interpreters of the received traditions. Oden holds that we will recognize heresy not by pure rational analysis but "only by first knowing and sharing deeply in the language, worship, ethics and ethos of the ecumenical testimony of many cross-cultural generations of apostolic testimony."69 The result of such a "paleoorthodox" approach seems to be a renewed focus on the experience of the Spirit within the church that coincides with a respect for the pattern of divine authority.

Stanley Grenz understands the church to be a "socially constructed" reality through the Spirit's work of "world construction."70 As individual members of society deem their knowledge about the world to be "objective," so religion involves a legitimization of the socially-constructed world that places a society within a sacred and cosmic frame of reference and gives participants a sense of being connected to ultimate reality. This "world construction" today does not lie in the text itself but in the Spirit as he speaks through the biblical texts, governing the church by creating within her the eschatological world, the world God intends for creation as disclosed in the text.

Veith also asserts,

The other response to the end of modern rationalism is to take the next step and deny rationalism altogether. These postmodernists maintain that truth claims and moral absolutes are nothing more than a personal or social construction.71