Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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The postmodernists undertook this course of action mainly from 1979 until 2001.
Benedikter said the second generation of postmoderns is now left to carry on where the
first generation left off, charged with building a new system from the wreckage of the
[deconstructed] old. While there are those who now recognize the need to go beyond
first-generation postmodernity and deconstruction, efforts to ‘re-create’ according to the
postmodern ideology are still extremely disjointed, as youth explore their world, and
consider how to shape the future.
Within the broader notion of deconstruction, was the implication that institutional
religion -- considered dogmatic and intolerant by the postmoderns -- should also be
deconstructed, especially in favour of a more tolerant, pluralist spirituality: precisely what
has happened. Further, in the West we now see essentially two Christianities. The first
are the traditional forms, still thoroughly entrenched in modernity, and so much like ‘old
lights’ of the past, mostly unwilling to change to meet current challenges. The second are
the postmodern forms which are presently shaping a culturally contextualised Christianity
(e.g., Emerging Church), often retaining the best of historic Christianity, while
responding contextually to present cultural changes and challenges.
Benedikter said the late writings of the postmoderns, which are far less studied than
their earlier works, show a decided “ethical and theological turn” (ibid.). Derrida, in
particular, made this turn to the ethical and theological, though certainly not in the
conventional-traditional sense. Through his struggles he developed, what Benedikter
calls, a proto-spirituality, motivated by his war with himself (Cf. Jacques Derrida: Like
the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell; Paul de Man’s: War. University of Chicago
Press 1988; cf. Jacques Derrida, Je Suis En Guerre Contre Moi Meme, in: Le Monde,
Mardi, 12 October 2004, pgs. VI-VII). Benedikter believes here is the point at which the
postmoderns turn to embrace their innate human need for spirituality, though hardly
according to convention. This is what Benedikter considers true postmodern spirituality,
or ‘proto-spirituality,’ taken from the written thoughts of Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault,
who used terms like, ‘re-spiritualize,’ to describe their thinking about spirituality.
Benedikter said there seems to be a search today for a new ‘essentialism’ -- a
spirituality for today’s needs, a self-critical spirituality for the [postmodern] global civil
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa