In 1979, philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote The Postmodern Condition (introduction, first five chapters). He was the one who popularised the term “postmodern”. In his introduction, he said:

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.

What is a metanarrative? The simple answer is that “metanarrative” means “Big Story”. Since Christianity tells a Big Story of Creation, Fall and Redemption, and since postmodernism is incredulous of big stories, you might think that this places Christianity and postmodernism on a collision course – and many Christian thinkers and writers would agree.

But James K A Smith argues in Who’s Afraid of

Postmodernism? that if we look a bit closer at what Lyotard wrote, and how he defined “metanarrative”, we’ll see that it’s not quite that simple.

Lyotard wrote:

Science has always been in conflict with narratives. Judged by the yardstick of science, the majority of them prove to be fables. But to the extent that science does not restrict itself to stating useful regularities and seeks the truth, it is obliged to legitimate the rules of its own game. It then produces a discourse of legitimation with respect to its own status, a discourse called philosophy. I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth. For example, the rule of consensus between the sender and addressee of a statement with truth-value is deemed acceptable if it is cast in terms of a possible unanimity between rational minds: this is the

Enlightenment narrative, in which the hero of knowledge works toward a good ethico-political end — universal peace. As can be seen from this example, if a metanarrative implying a philosophy of history is used to legitimate knowledge, questions are raised concerning the validity of the institutions governing the social bond: these must be legitimated as well. Thus justice is consigned to the grand narrative in the same way as truth.

This is fairly involved, but basically he defines modernity as extending “science” – objective reason – beyond simply stating scientific fact and making larger, universal truth claims. The Enlightenment narrative claimed to be true on the basis of a “possible unanimity between rational minds”, for example. A “metanarrative” isn’t simply a “Big Story”, but a narrative that claims legitimation by universally accessible reason, as Smith explains it in his book.

So is Christianity a metanarrative? The Bible certainly gives us a big, overarching story, but does it claim that it can be legitimated by universally accessible reason?

Some Christians say that modernists are just starting from the wrong foundation – the individual self. But if we just begin from the right foundation – God, who knows all things and stands objectively outside all human culture, context and subjectivity, and who reveals the truth to us – then viola! We have certain and objective knowledge. Because God exists, we can prove he exists by our own independent reason.

But that actually fails to reckon with what the Bible itself tells us about the human condition. On the one hand, the Bible talks in several places about creation declaring the glory of God. Romans 1:18-20 says that humanity is “without excuse” because “what can be known about God is plain to them”, and his “eternal power and divine nature” have been clearly perceived.

But Paul goes on to say that our minds have been darkened by sin, that we became futile in our thinking, and in 2 Corinthians 4 talks about the Gospel being veiled, and that the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers. The Bible shows us that the Fall affects every area of life; all areas of human activity are damaged by sin, including our ability to know and to discover truth. If we ignore the “noetic effects of sin”, then we end up joining in with modernism’s misplaced confidence in autonomous reason.

So I’d say no, Christianity isn’t a metanarrative in Lyotard’s sense – we shouldn’t claim our faith is provable in this way. Some Christians treat our faith like a metanarrative by trying to prove Christianity in a very rationalistic way, but I think this is a mistake.

So how do we witness to our faith, if we can’t argue people into it by universal reason? I’ll come back to this in later posts when I discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by postmodernism.

This question of whether Christianity is a metanarrative has been discussed in quite a few places online – for example, Christianity is not a metanarrative on Wet Lenses, Lyotard’s Postmodern Critique of Metanarratives and the Proper Christian Response by Tom Sherwood on Confession of Inadequacy, and Is Christianity a Metanarrative? by David Nilsen on Evangelical Outpost. And there’s plenty more out there too.