Customer Reviews

Mapping Postmodernism: A Survey of Christian Options

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A lot of students I was in class with when reading this complained about it, but I thought it was really great. It explains everything so well and helped me understand people and denominations so much better. Really glad this was assigned, back in my MTh program.

This book was excellent. Greer opened up whole new worlds for me to consider. As a minister seeking the most effective ways to live and work in a postmodern world, Greer's insights constantly made me put down the book and consider the implications of his arguments.

While other reviewers seem to be unimpressed, I suspect this has a great deal to do with the worldview they brought into their reading of the book.

The subtitle claims it is a "Survey of Christian Options" and in this respect I felt it did a great job.

I have a mixed reaction both to the book and to the three reviews that precede mine. I found that the author sometimes succeeds in his goal (stated in his prologue) to write about a difficult subject in a way that is neither overly theological nor too simplistic. He does provide some helpful ways of understanding difficult concepts, but as one reviewer has already noted, he occasionally oversimplifies to the point of misleading. However, I certainly would not characterize his style as a "rant"; his tone is quite calm and measured, which I appreciated, and I never doubted either his devotion or his intellect. His epilogue of questions about his ideas about what he calls "post-postmodernism" is very thought provoking. As someone who shares Mr. Greer's conservative Christian background and maintains ties to that tradition, however, I must say that I would have preferred that he had focused on someone besides Francis Shaeffer, whose influence on the Christian Right (of which I am decidedly NOT a part) has been pernicious. And while many may find this to be an extremely minor complaint, I was shocked that Jacques Derrida's name was misspelled through the book (with an accent on the "a" in Derrida, a spelling which does not exist in French and which Derrida never used). Overall, I expect that this book will be most helpful to a theologically conservative Christian who is willing to learn more about postmodernism and recognize its complexity, rather than reducing it to "relativism."

That anyone would mistake Greer's pseudo-philosophical rants for either an intelligent or thorough treatment of the subject is a testament to the pitiable state of Christian scholarship on the supposed "postmodern" turn in modern culture. Greer oversimplifies and misconstrues every complex philosophical term he touches, reading Derrida's "play of the trace" as a synonym for nihilism and spends a chapter "refuting" his views without ever providing evidence of having read (much less understood) him (no citations of Derrida's works are given).

If you are looking for a shallow, irresponsible treatment of the postmodern condition that restates evangelical fundamentalism with big fancy words, Mapping Postmodernism should be right up your alley. Those looking for an intelligent treatment of the subject, however, would be wise to find another map.

It is unfortunate that such pseudo-philosophical and pseudo-intellectual drivel gets passed off as either Christian or thinking. Greer's book is riddled with drastic oversimplification of complex philosophical and historical questions, with blatant misrepresentations, and self-defeating denials of the possibility of absolute truth and a-cultural or a-historical observation. Don't people like Greer ever stop to consider that their conclusions apply to their own claims? If it is "impossible to divest oneself of one's culture and historical moment," as Greer asserts (p. 37), then this impossibility extends to Greer himself. Consequently, his claim is merely an expression of his culture and historical moment. Therefore, his claim is not absolutely true. And, if this claim is not absolutely true, then it is not absolutely true that it is impossible to divest oneself of one's culture and historical moment. Don't people like Greer ever stop to think that they are doing the very thing they claim can't be done? Doesn't Greer realize that he is purporting to make a trans-cultural, a-historical claim about all claims? If Greer's book is a mapping of postmodernism, he seems to have followed the map to the point of imbibing postmodern relativism. If anyone is interested in mapping postmodernism, my recommendation is that you should locate a different map.