http://crc.sa.utoronto.ca/courses/Postmodernity2001.

html

[Courses Page]

Postmodernity and a Biblical Worldview

WYT 3805/6805HS

&

Postmodern Challenges to the Biblical Text

ICJ 5101HS

Instructor: Dr. Brian J. Walsh, Wycliffe

Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat, ICS

Times: Tuesdays 11AM to 1PM

Course Description:

The worldview of modernity which has dominated western civilization for three hundred years is
presently being replaced by what has been described as postmodern culture. While the period of
transition is characterized by a growing sense of fragmentation, marginality, paralysis and numbness,
many people hope that postmodernity will be able to engender a worldview that will overcome the
individualism, economism, technicism and scientism of the modern era. The implications of this
cultural shift and emerging worldview effect literally every dimension of cultural life. This course will
discuss postmodernity as a cultural phenomenon, trace its implications in various areas of cultural
endeavour, and work toward an integral Christian worldview that gives guidance in a postmodern
world. Of particular concern in this combined ICS/Wycliffe course will be to plumb the resources of
Scripture for such a cultural context, with specific reference to the epistle to the Colossians. How do
we read a text that claims unconditional truth and authority in the face of a postmodern hermeneutic of
suspicion.

Required Readings:

A. For all students:

Anderson, Walter Truett, editor. The Truth about the Truth: De-Confusing and Re-constructiong the
Postmodern World. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995.

Keesmaat, Sylvia C. Paul and His Story: (Re)Interpreting Exodus Tradition. Sheffield: University of
Sheffield Press, 1999, chapter one.

Middleton, J. Richard, and Brian J. Walsh. Truth is Stranger than it Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a
Postmodern Age. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995.

Walsh, Brian J. “Reimaging Biblical Authority.” Christian Scholar’s Review 26,2 (Winter 1996): 206-
220.
B. Additional Reading for Advanced Degree Students

Moore, Stephen. Poststructualism and the New Testament: Derrida and Foucault at the Foot of the
Cross. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994.

Phillips, Gary. “Exegesis as Critical Praxis: Reclaiming History and Text from a Postmodern
Perspective.” Semeia 51 (1990), 7-49.

The Bible and Culture Collective. The Postmodern Bible. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1995, chapter 3: 119-147.

Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and
Reconciliation. Nashville: Abingdon: 1996.

Course Requirements

Basic Degree Credit (WYT 3805HS)

1. attendance and participation in all classes. This will count for 20% of the final grade.

2. one 15 to 20 page essay on a topic of relevance to a Christian

interaction with and evaluation of postmodern culture. This will count for 80% of the final grade.
Paper proposals (one paragraph description and beginning bibliography of at least five works) are due
on February 27. The paper is due on April 10.

Advance Degree Credit (WYT 6805HS, ICJ 5101HS)

1. attendance and participation in all classes, plus three additional three hour tutorials for the
discussion of the additional readings. During these sessions students will be required to lead
discussion of the set readings. This will count for 30% of the final grade.

2. one 20 to 25 page essay on a topic of relevance to a Christian interaction with and evaluation of
postmodern culture, with specific attention to the biblical (or other sacred) text. This will count for
70% of the final grade and paper proposals are due on February 27. The paper is due on May 25
(unless it is important for you to have your grade recorded for this semester, in which case the paper is
due on April 10.

Course Outline 2001

Jan. 9 Introductory Session: the Postmodern Condition

Jan. 16 Modernity and its Discontents: Contextualizing Ourselves

Readings: Truth is Stranger, ch. 1

Truth about the Truth, Introduction and chs. 1,2,3

Jan. 23 Contextualizing Scripture, with specific reference to Colossians

Reading: Walsh, “Reimaging Biblical Authority.”

The Epistle to the Colossians (please read this text twice)

Jan. 30 Reality Isn’t What it Used to Be

Readings: Truth is Stranger, ch. 2

Truth about the Truth, chs. 4-6, 10-19

Feb. 6 They Don’t Tell Stories Like They Used To: The Problem of Metanarratives

Reading: Truth Is Stranger, ch. 4

Feb. 13 Regimes of Truth and Scripture

Reading: Truth is Stranger, Interlude and ch. 5.

Truth about the Truth, chs. 30,33.

Colossians, the whole text again, with specific attention to 2.1-3.4

Note: An advanced degree seminar will need to be arranged for this week.

Readings: Philips, “Critical Exegesis …”

Postmodern Bible, ch. 3

Feb. 20 Reading Week, no class

Feb. 27 Metanarrative, Local Narratives and Colossians within the Canon

Reading: Keesmaat, Paul and His Story, ch. 1

Colossians, the whole text again, with specific attention to 1.1-20.

Mar. 6 Creation and Being At-home in a Postmodern World

Readings: Truth is Stranger, ch. 7

Truth about the Truth, chs. 27-29

Colossians, the whole text again, with specific attention to 1.20-29

Mar. 13 I’m Just Not Feeling Myself Anymore

Readings: Truth is Stranger, ch. 3

Truth about the Truth, chs. 20,21,22 [supplementary, 23-26]

Mar. 20 From the Decentred Self to Wholness-in-Community

Readings: Truth is Stranger, , ch. 6

Colossians, the whole text again, with specific attention to 2.6-3.11

Note: An advanced degree seminar will need to be arranged for this week.

Reading: Moore, Poststructualism and the New Testament

Mar. 27 From Paralysis to Culture Praxis: Narrative, Character and Church

Readings: Truth is Stranger, ch. 8

Truth about the Truth, Epilogue

Colossians, the whole text again, with specific attention to 3.1-4.18

April 3 The vacant class because the whole schedule will inevitably get behind at some point.

April 10 The Ongoing Story: Where do we go from here? Oustanding Issues

April 17 Advanced Degree Seminar

Reading: Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

Beginning Bibliography: (asterisk indicates recommended)

1. Postmodernity

*Adams, Douglas. Mostly Harmless. London: Pan Books, 1992. [This is the fifth book in the
increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.]

*Anderson, Walter Truett. Reality Isn’t What it Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-wear
Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World. San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1990.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.

Becker, Ernest. The Birth and Death of Meaning. 2nd ed. New York: Free Press, 1971.

Berger, Peter, and Lukmann, Thomas. The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1967.

*Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1969.

Berman, Morris. The Reenchantment of the World. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984.

*Bernstein, Richard J. The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of

Modernity/Postmoderntiy. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1992.

*Best, Steven, and Kellner, Douglas. Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. New York: Guilford
Press, 1991.

Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
*Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1992.

Caputo, John D. Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to
Deconstruction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

*Chambers, Iain. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.

Connor, Steven. Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary. Oxford,

U.K. and Cambridge, U.S.: Blackwell, 1989. [Includes an especially good bibliography.]

*Derrida, Jacques, edited by John D. Caputo. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with

Jacques Derrida. N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 1997. [This conversation, together with Caputo’s
essay is the best introduction to Derrida’s thought that I have read.]

*Flax, Jane. Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Postmodernism in the

Contemporary World. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990.

*Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York:
Pantheon, 1980.

Foucault, Michel. Religion and Culture. Edited by Jeremy R. Carrette. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Gergen, Kenneth. Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1994.

Gilkey, Langdon. Society and the Sacred: Toward a Theology of Culture in Decline. New York:
Seabury, 1981.

Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton, 1981.

*Grenz, Stanley. A Postmodern Primer. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1996.

Griffin, David Ray, ed. The Reenchantment of Science: Postmodern Proposals. Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 1988.

Grossberg, Lawrence. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern
Culture. New York and London: Routledge, 1992.

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. London: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

Hauerwas, Stanley. After Christendom? Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991.

Hoesterey, Ingeborg, ed. Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist Controversy. Bloomington, Indiana
University Press, 1991.

Hunsberger, George and Van Gelder, Craig, editors. Church Between Gospel and Culture: The
Emerging Mission in North America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. [Especially helpful are the
chapters by Van Gelder.]

*Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 1989.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1991.

Knight III, Henry H. A Future for Truth: Evangelical Theology in a Postmodern World. Nashville:
Abingdon, 1997.

Kroker, Arthur and Mary Louise, ed. The Panic Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the
Postmodern Scene. Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1989.

Lasch, Christopher. The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times. New York: W.W. Norton
and Co., 1984.

*Lyon, David. Postmodernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.

Lundin, Roger. Christian Faith and the Postmodern World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.

Lyotard, Jean-François. The Lyotard Reader. Edited by Andrew Benjamin. London and Cambridge,
Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

*Long, Jimmy. Generating Hope: A Strategy for Reaching the Postmodern Generation. Downers
Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997.

Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by G.

Bennington and B. Massumi. Theory and History of Literature, vol. 10. Minneapolis: University of
Minnestota Press, 1984 [1979 original].

Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Middleton, Richard, and Brian Walsh. “Theology at the ‘Rim of a Broken Wheel’: Bruce Cockburn
and Christian Faith in a Postmodern World.” Grail 9, 2 (June 1993).

Millbank, John. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.

*Natoli, Joseph. A Primer to Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. [Great book if you are
television literate, frustrating if not.]

Nicholson, Linda, ed. Feminism/Postmodernism. New York and London: Routledge, 1990.

Oden, Thomas C. After Modernity … What? Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990.

Oden, Thomas C. Two Worlds: The Death of Modernity in Russia and America Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 1992.

*Olthuis, James H. “A Cold and Comfortless Hermeneutic or a Warm and Trembling Hermeneutic: A
Conversation with John D. Caputo.” Christian Scholar’s Review XIX, 4 (1990). Also see the
continuing discussion between Caputo and Olthuis in vol. XX (1990).

*Olthuis, James H. “Crossing the Threshold: Sojourning together in the wild spaces of love.” Toronto
Journal of Theology.

Rifkin, Jeremy. Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1987.
Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Shapiro, J. Michael. The Politics of Representation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press,
1988.

*Smith, James K. A. The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational

Hermeneutic. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000.

*Taylor, Charles. The Malaise of Modernity. Toronto: House of Anansi, 1991.

Taylor, Mark C. Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Thiselton, A.C. Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

Tracy, David. “Theology and the Many Faces of Postmodernity.” Theology Today 51,1 (April 1994).

*Usher, Robin and Edwards, Richard. Postmodernism and Education. London and N.Y.: Routledge,
1994. [A very helpful book.]

Veith, Jr., Gene Edward. Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and
Culture. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994.

Walsh, Brian J. “Derrida and the Messiah: The Spiritual Face of Postmodernity.” Re.generation
Quarterly 5.1 (Spring 1999): 29-33.

Walsh, Brian J. “Education in Precarious Times: Postmodernity and a Christian World View.” In The
Crumbling Walls of Certainty: Towards a Critique of Postmodernity and Education. Edited by Ian
Lambert and Suzanne Mitchell. Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1997.

Walsh, Brian J. “Postmodernity and the Church: Ten Things you need to know.” Good Idea 3,4
(Winter 1996).

Walsh, Brian J. “Transformation: Dynamic Worldview or Repressive Ideology.” Journal of Education

and Christian Belief 4.2 (Autumn 2000).

2. Biblical Studies, Paul and Colossians

*Barclay, John M. G. Colossians and Philemon. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1997.

* Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978.

*Brueggemann, Walter. Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination.
Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.

Dunn, James. The Epistle to the Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Elliot, Neil. Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle. Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1995.

*Hays, Richard B. Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989.
Horsley, Richard A., ed. Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society. Harrisburg,
PA.: Trinity Press International, 1997.

Keesmaat, Sylvia C. “Commentary on Colossians 3.18-4.1.” Third Way 23,6 (July 2000).

Keesmaat, Sylvia C. “Commentary on Colossians 3.18.” Third Way 23,7 (September 2000).

Keesmaat, Sylvia C. “Scripture, Law and Fruit: Paul and the Biblical Story.” Pro Rege 28,1 (June
1999).

Lincoln, Andrew T. Colossians. In The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. XI. Nashville: Abingdon, 2000.

*Lincoln, Andrew T. “Liberation from the Powers: Supernatural Spirits or Societal Structures?” In The
Bible in Human Society. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995.

Sternberg, Meir. The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Price, S. R. F. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984.

Walsh, Brian J. “Commentary on Colossians 1.15-20.” Third Way 23,3 (April 2000).

Walsh, Brian J. “Homemaking in Exile: Homelessness, Postmodernity and Theological Reflection.” In

Reminding: Renewing the Mind in Learning. Edited by Doug Blomberg and Ian Lambert. Sydney:
Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1998.

Walsh,Brian J. “Late/Post Modernity and Idolatry: A Contextual Reading of Colossians 2.8-3.4” Ex

Auditu 15 (1999).

Walsh, Brian J. “Regimes of Truth and the Rhetoric of Deceit: Colossians 2 in Postmodern Context.”
Interface: A Forum for Theology in the World 2,1 (May 1999): 23-37. Also published in Pro Rege 28.3
(March 2000), with respondents and a reply entitled “Exegesis - Pro Rege in communione.”

Walsh, Brian J. Subversive Christianity: Imaging God in a Dangerous Time. Bristol, UK: The Regius
Press, 1992.

Watson, Francis. Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective.
Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.

Wilson, Walter. Hope of Glory: Education and Exhortation in the Epistle to the Colossians. Leiden:
Brill, 1997.

*Wright, N. T. Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1991.

*Wright, N. T. Colossians and Philemon. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986.

Wright, N. T. Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.

Zanker, Paul. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Translated by Alan Shapiro. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1990.
Return to: [Courses Page]