THEOLOGIE NA HET CHRISTELIJKE GROTE VERHAAL

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Summary J.-F. Lyotard is well known as the french philosopher who coined the vocabulary of postmodernity. According to him, we live in a postmodern condition, where the master-stories of modernity proved themselves to have failed and lost relevance. There is no possibility left for them to reduce all plurality into one, mastering, hegemonic story and to absorb the incommensurable variety of finalities into one, major, all-inclusive finality. In terms of the pragmatics of language, a master-story is a hegemonic and narratively structured discourse of an Idea (e. g., humanity, classless society,…) and has four characteristics: legitimation by an ultimate finality (the Idea), universal application, cognitive pretension, and an all-encompassing regulation (there is no legitimate extra-narrativity). As hegemonic discourse, it reduces all other discourses to the status of sub-discourses that are linked into one story. There is no room left for alternative versions, for difference, for the ‘occurrence’, the ‘differend’. Lyotard's theory of postmodernity criticizes the approach of master-stories because they immediately destroy plurality and heterogeneity. A master-story does not succeed in retaining an openness for the unpresentable, that which cannot be put into sentences. Lyotard pleads for a contemplative attitude towards the unspeakable in all possible speech. His philosophy is an attempt to testify to the unpresentable, although each testimony already from the beginning does not succeed. Instead of master-stories, the postmodern condition asks for ‘open stories’. Christianity and christian theology, as the reflection on christian faith, also functioned historically (and even today function) as a master-story. Its ultimate and universal finality was the Idea of ‘Love’, which legitimized the discourse. As a cognitively and univerally valid criterion, this Idea was used to perceive reality as the battle between love and the corruption of love. Moreover, love was the regulating principle for action, and there was no extra-narrative standpoint: either one belongs to the community of salvation or one is condemned. With the decline of all master-stories, the master-story of Christianity comes under suspicion. Nevertheless, Christianity does not have to disappear with the master-story. There remains a chance for Christianity and christian theology to become more than relevant, if conceived along the concept of the ‘open story’. A more careful study of christian tradition shows already elements that prove that Christianity as an ‘open story’ is even more appropriate to signify its core: the event of grace.