Introduction

If you happen upon this blog and peruse it, you might come across more than once where I have stated that we live in a postmodern age. You might also ascertain that I have been influenced by the author, James Sire. Indeed I wrote an overview of several of his works (here) sometime back. Drawing upon his work, The Universe Next Door, I provided a synopsis of his take on the worldview of naturalism (here). Drawing on that same work, in this month’s blog I want to provide an overview of his take on postmodernism as a worldview. I approach this subject via the eight worldview questions he poses. He believes that any worldview must seek to answer on some level what he calls worldview questions. 

Worldview Questions

Sire posed what he considered eight crucial questions, the answers of which can help people understand particular worldviews. The eight questions he poses are: 1) What is the prime reality, the really real? 2) What is the nature of the external reality (the world around us)? 3) What is a human being? 4) What happens to a person at death? 5) Why is it possible to know anything at all? 6) How do we know what is right and wrong? 7) What is the meaning of human history? 8) What personal life-orienting commitments are consistent with this worldview. 

As one surveys these questions, the first four questions speak to ontology or what is real, that is prime existence. The fifth question leads one into an exploration of epistemology, of how we as human beings come to know things. The sixth question explores ethics and valuation. The seventh question takes one into the exploration of whether life has any meaning or not. Is history going somewhere? Is the flow of history taking us somewhere or are we merely here then gone? The eighth and final question looks at the connection, if any, of what I call thought and action (here). If an individuals hold to a certain worldview then how do they evidence through committed action by what beliefs they live? 

In his catalog of worldviews, Sire applies these questions to 9 different worldviews: 1) Christian Theism; 2) Deism; 3) Theistic & atheistic existentialism; 4) naturalism; 5)  Marxism; 6) Eastern monism; 7) New Ageism; 8) Postmodernism; 9) Islam. Likewise, Sire, utilizing these above questions, explores the philosophy of nihilism, which can be understood as a worldview, but also as a conclusion to certain other worldviews. As stated, this blog article will focus on Sire’s understanding of postmodernism. Not all worldviews will seek to emphasize the eight core questions posed by Sire. How they navigate or skirt those questions, however, will speak to the foundation on which the worldview stands, whether or not those who hold the worldview are foundational. 

Exploring Postmodernism

Wither is God, [the madman] cried. I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. [Nietzsche, “The Parable of the Madman”, in The Gay Science: The Portable Nietzsche, p. 95-96]

What Nietzsche referred to here is that, as a culture, people ceased to believe in God, yet they did not live the logical conclusion of their disbelief. The madman in Nietzsche’s parable challenges them, and thereby his readers to do just that. Sire comments: The acknowledgment of the death of God is the beginning of postmodern wisdom. It is also the end of postmodern wisdom. For in the final analysis, postmodernism is not “post’ anything; it is the last move of the modern, the results of the modern taking its own commitments seriously and seeing that they fail to stand the test of analysis [James Sire, The Universe Next Door, p. 204]. 

What is Sire alluding to here? During the Age of Enlightenment, many jettisoned the belief in God who created external reality. Yet, as scientists in the Enlightenment age, they held to the notion of absolute truth. Moreover, they held to the idea of a civilized and moral society. In what were these beliefs grounded? For the scientific age, such beliefs were grounded in the autonomy of human reason. Although the scientists of that age held onto the notion of truth as discovered via the scientific method, the culture at large moved to a cultural and personal relativity when it came to morals and ethics. The madman in Nietzsche’s parable is calling on those who make up the culture to live the logical conclusions of their rejection of the existence of God. Following the Age of Enlightenment came the Romantic era and then early 20th Century existentialism, eventually followed by postmodernism and deconstructionism. Hence the age of postmodernism is the filling out of the logical conclusion of modernism. 

For those of us who hold to a Christian worldview, what do we face in this postmodern age? There are at least five basic responses to our faith that we may experience from our postmodern culture at large. First, there is no absolute truth; therefore, Christianity is outdated. Second, Christianity is a metanarrative, and like all metanarratives serves the special interests of those who hold to it. Hence, like all metanarratives, Christianity is oppressive toward those who do not agree with its worldview. Third, human beings cannot know external reality in any objective sense. They speak of external reality via the use of language. Hence human beings construct their own subjective reality through their use of language. There is nothing outside our own minds that we can know objectively, and what we claim to know is constructed through our language. Fourth, as an oppressive metanarrative, Christianity like any metanarrative, is political. From the postmodern perspective, everything is political. Fifth, human beings cannot even answer the question of who they are individually because their is no unified self. There are only multiple selves, constructed via human language. Sire states, Our age, which more and more is coming to be called postmodern, finds itself afloat in a pluralism of perspectives, a plethora of philosophical possibilities, but with no dominant notion of where to go and how to get there. [p. 204]. 

But What Is Postmodernism?

Sire describes his struggle to catalog postmodernism as a worldview. In a sense, it has no center, no core set of propositions that give it some form of structure. (This fact makes postmodernism and its attendant literature difficult for many to understand and categorize). As stated above, postmodernists display an incredulity toward metanarratives or worldviews. In their writings, they tend not to use philosophical categories such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc., that is they purposely skirt the question of what is truth about reality. The one core belief (though they would not describe it as such) they hold aligns  with the naturalism. Matter is eternal, and God does not exist. 

Worldview Questions

The Shift from Being to Knowing to Meaning

As stated above, the eight worldview questions explore the gamut of philosophical questions from ontology to epistemology to ethics to history to personal commitments. Postmodernists, because of their stance toward metanarratives, ask instead, how language functions to construct worldviews. The notion that any worldview will reflect some external reality objectively is not within their take of how human beings function in the world. Construction of meaning via language is primary in their understanding of how human beings function. Since there is no truth from a postmodern perspective, human beings are understood as language bearers who construct their reality via the language and words they use. The only thing that matters is does one’s construction of language get him or her what he or she wants. Hence, rather than right or wrong, the postmodern position emphasizes a form of pragmatism. 

Given this reflection on language, postmodernists will view Sire’s eight questions as reflecting a worldview in and of themselves. Sire admits that this is an astute observation. His set of questions and understanding of worldviews reflect a premodern understanding of reality as external, human beings as created, and the existence of God. What followed the premodern is the modern age with its autonomy of human reason. The modern age was in turn followed by the postmodern age that jettisoned not only the existence of God, but any idea that reason could help human beings grasp the truth. Nietzsche’s madman is fully upon the scene. 

Why Is It Possible to Know Anything at All?

From a postmodern perspective, the truth about reality is not attainable. All human beings can do is tell stories. Hence, all humans construct narratives that they hope will help them navigate an unknown reality in a way that works for them. As such, all metanarratives represent nothing but wishful thinking. So how are individuals supposed to think about what truth entails? As Nietzsche stated, truth is nothing more than an army of metaphors. What individuals call truth is the use of language to aid them in navigating and living within a reality that cannot be known. If people hold onto their metanarratives as some grasp of truth outside of themselves, then they are living under an illusion. Human beings can have meaning, but they cannot have truth. Sire explains, According to postmodernism, nothing we think we know can be checked against reality as such. . . apart from our linguistic systems we can know nothing. All language is a human construct. We can’t determine the truthfulness of language, only its usefulness.  . . . In short, the only kind of truth there is, is pragmatic truth. There is no truth of correspondence. (pp. 211-212). 

What Is a Human Being?

Given the postmodernist belief that humans construct their own realities via language, postmodernists hold that human beings are basically story-tellers. Metanarratives are strong metaphors that can hold communities together. Once those metanarratives begin to crumble, then so does social cohesion. Since postmodernists hold an incredulity toward metanarratives, they also are committed to deconstructing all metanarratives to show that they have no center. Hence, postmodernists embrace a relativistic view of cultural mores, and that there is no such thing as a unified self. This view of human beings as story-tellers means that there is power in language. Hence, comes the notion that all is political and about power. Metanarratives compete for power in social settings. The shift that has occurred is as follows: in the premodern view of humanity, individuals have dignity because they are created in the image of God. The modern view, having jettisoned the belief in the existence of God, view people as the result of their DNA template, the product of unplanned evolution. The postmodern shift jettisons the existence of God and the absolute notion of scientific truth, coming to view human beings as self-constructed by their language that they use to describe themselves. 

How Do We Know What Is Right and Wrong?

Since all metanarratives are a mask for power, any one metanarrative is oppressive. Since there is no objective truth from the perspective of postmodernism, stories are what imbue individuals with power. The premodern held to the existence of God as the source of truth revealed in Scripture. The modern jettisoned the existence of God but held to the autonomy of reason and the human being’s ability to discover truth through the use of his or her mind apart from any belief in God. The postmodern has rejected the autonomy of human reason as a pathway to discover truth because there is no such thing as an objective truth or the correct use of reason. Hence all worldviews are nothing but metanarratives to imbue people with power. Hence what people can know is their metanarrative which pragmatically works or doesn’t work. Metanarratives may hold a society together for a while, but when they come to be disbelieved, the attending social structure collapses. In terms of ethics, premodern theistic ethics is based on the character of a transcendent God who is holy and good, having revealed what holiness and goodness is through revelation. Modernists believe that humans can know what is objectively moral or immoral via the use of autonomous reasoning. The postmodern shift jettisons both the existence of God and autonomous reason, holding that ethics comes about via a multiplicity use of language whereby human beings describe what is right or wrong. 

What Is the Meaning of History?

From the postmodern perspective, history has no meaning. All is in flux. History is going nowhere. Human beings have no ultimate purpose discoverable in the flow of history. Sire states, postmodernists, in short, are committed to an endless stream of “whatevers” [p. 218]. The premodern view of history recognizes God as sovereign and that there is an ultimate plan to history, whether or not human beings can comprehensively recognize that plan. The modern shift, while holding that history has no plan or meaning, posits that human beings can correctly learn about and from history, existentially making their own meaning. The postmodern shift sees history as not only having no meaning, but also humans can have no objective understanding of history. All understanding is constructed via language about history. 

Christianity Encountering Postmodern Commitment

As Christians, how might postmodern thought encounter or even attack our faith? First, we have to recognize that postmodern thinking has seeped into the culture. Most postmodern individuals have not sit around and philosophically built their belief systems on the basis of postmodern philosophy. Yet they have embraced the ethos that inundates the culture. As Christians we might hear the following types of statements: 

If your Christian beliefs work for you, that’s fine. They do not work for me, so they are not true for me.

No one can truly know whether a god exists or not. If you want to live as though there is a god, that’s fine. I do not. 

Your Christian beliefs are a denial of who I am, a denial of my identity. Hence, your beliefs are oppressive to those who disagree with you. 

Everyone creates his or her own meaning. You create yours and I’ll create mine. 

There is no objective truth. What you believe is outdated. 

And we could go on and on. What this does mean is that we have to be aware of the apologetic we use for our faith. It may well be that we have to begin our discussion with some people about what truth entails, what it is and what it isn’t. We are living in a culture whereby ethics are relative, people create their own meaning and purpose for life, history has no discernible meaning nor any recognizable direction it is heading, and there is no unified sense of self. Yet all these beliefs are tactics. At the same time people will declare that is wrong for metanarratives to be oppressive. People will hold to their identity while being intolerant toward others who see their identity as different. In holding that all is political and that worldviews are oppressive, people will create a milieu that is full of constant conflict. It is important therefore, that we as believers in Christ are not pulled into the conflict of opposing metanarratives. Jesus, the Christ, commanded us to love our enemies. And in describing the greatest commandment exhorted us to love our neighbor as ourselves. By God’s grace may we live that out in committing to our own worldview. 

References

Kaufmann, W. (1954). The Portable Nietzsche. New York, NY: Viking Press.

Sire, J. (1976). The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog. Downers Grove, IL: IVP.
[Originally published in 1976, Sire’s The Universe Next Door underwent six editions over the years, each building on the previous edition (1976, 1988, 1997, 2004, 2009, 2020).]

John V, Jones, Jr., Ph.D/October 14, 2026

Christian Thought/Worldview