A Short Definition of Postmodernism
When I tell people that I am working to try to understand the debate going on in the church today about modernism and postmodernism they usually ask, “What exactly is postmodernism?” And when they do I find myself at a loss for words—not because I don't know about postmodernism, but because I don't know how to take all that I have read and thought and distill that down into a definition that they will understand and won't take a five-hour long discussion. So, I have endeavored to write this short definition of postmodernism for the uninitiated.
Postmodernism is a response to, and a reaction against modernism. Modernism is the mental framework people in the West have used for hundreds of years to think about things, evaluate things, and decide things. For instance Moderns believe that, if we are willing, we can raise ourselves above the immediate situation in which we are embroiled to see things rationally and objectively. Through the use of reason it is possible to be an unimpassioned objective observer. And thinking about things in this way is the most desirable way to be and the surest way to come to know the