Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Problem with the Sovereign Self

Sometimes post modernity is an amplification of modernity. For instance, both take for granted the sovereignty of the self. In modernity the self could know all. In post modernity, the self has to be more modest. Reality is too slippery, so let it go slip-slidin'-away. It's a beautiful destination right?

Right, except there are no standards for beauty except what the individual likes. So this leads me to the sovereign self of post modernity. The self is sovereign not because it can fit the universe into its brain but because it can remake the universe in its own image. That is as long as it doesn't run roughshod over someone else's sovereign self. So we live for pleasure in splendid isolation. Not too comforting is it?

Christianity has a unique opportunity to say to the modernist that we can reliably but not exhaustively know the world, and, to the post-modernist, that skepticism is not the final answer. This is because we are created by the Logos, in the image of the Logos, and thus our reason and senses were made to know the world. So we can say yes to certainty AND humility. Reason is made to know the world of God's natural and special revelation through the senses. Thus, the self is not sovereign but is its true self under God in Christ.

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