Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age [Paperback]

J. Richard Middleton (Author), Brian J. Walsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 1995

Voted one of Christianity Today's 1996 Books of the Year! The carnivalesque, pluralistic culture in hich we live can be seen as a consequence of the breakdown of modernity (which touted itself as the "greatest show on earth"), combined with a recognition of the socially constructed character of reality. Since the old construction has been discredited and is in a process of decomposition, the season is open on the construction of new realities which are produced with the speed and ease of temporary circus tents being raised. Far from witnessing the erosion or even eclipse of religious belief that the Enlightenment so confidently predicted, the eclipse of the Enlightenment has resulted in a veritable smorgasbord of religions and worldviews for our consumption. So Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh colorfully describe our postmodern setting. In this book they survey postmodern culture and philosophy, offering lucid explanations of such difficult theories as deconstruction. They are sympathetic to the postmodern critique, yet believe that a gospel stripped of its modernist trappings speaks a radical word of hope and transformation to our chaotic culture. The book for those who wonder what postmodernism is and how biblical Christians might best respond.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

J. Richard Middleton (PhD, Free University of Amsterdam) is professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan College, in Rochester, NY, and serves as adjunct professor of Old Testament at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology, in Kingston, Jamaica. He is the author of The Liberating Image (Brazos, 2005) and coauthor with Brian Walsh of The Transforming Vision (IVP Academic, 1984).

Brian J. Walsh (PhD, McGill University) serves as the Christian Reformed Church chaplain to the University of Toronto and as adjunct professor of theology of culture at Wycliffe College. He is the coauthor with J. Richard Middleton of The Transforming Vision (IVP Academic, 1984), with Sylvia Keesmaat of Colossians Remixed (IVP Academic, 2004) and with Steven Bouma-Prediger of Beyond Homelessness (Eerdmans, 2008). He is also the author of Langdon Gilkey (University Press of America, 1992) and Subversive Christianity (Alta Vista College Press, 1994).

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: IVP Academic (June 5, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0830818561
• ISBN-13: 978-0830818563
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,854 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

J. Richard Middleton is Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary, located on the campus of Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY. He also serves as adjunct Professor of Old Testament at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology in Kingston, Jamaica. He is the newly elected president of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association.

A native of Jamaica, Middleton moved to Canada for graduate studies, before settling in the United States. While in Canada he coauthored (with Brian Walsh) "The Transforming Vision" (InterVarsity Press, 1984) and "Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be" (InterVarsity Press/SPCK, 1995). The former book has been published in Korean, French, Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The latter book received a Book-of-the-Year award (1996) from Christianity Today magazine and has been published in Korean.

He holds a B.Th. from Jamaica Theological Seminary, an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Guelph (Canada), and a Ph.D. in Theology from the Free University in Amsterdam.

His most recent book is "The Liberating Image" (Brazos Press, 2005), which has been translated into Korean, and a new book on eschatology, tentatively entitled "A New Heaven and a New Earth," is forthcoming from Brazos Press. He is editing a volume of essays on Caribbean Theology for Pickwick Publications, and is working on a manuscript for Abingdon Press on the dynamics of human and divine agency in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel.

Published essays include topics such as biblical creation theology, salvation in the Old Testament, eschatology, the problem of evil, the theology of popular music, and the interpretation of specific Old Testament texts. His essay "Let's Put Herod Back into Christmas" was awarded the Canadian Church Press prize for best theological reflection (1993) and another essay, "Why the 'Greater Good' Isn't a Defense: Classical Theodicy in Light of the Biblical Genre of Lament," received the annual Fall essay award of the Princeton Graduate Theological Forum (1997).

Before beginning at Northeastern Seminary, Middleton taught at Roberts Wesleyan College for ten years, and before that at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (Rochester, NY), Redeemer University College (Ancaster, ON) and the Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto, ON). He has also served as campus minister at two universities in Canada (the University of Guelph and Brock University) and two in the United States (Syracuse University and the University of Rochester).

Richard is married to Marcia, his teenage sweetheart, and they have two sons, Andrew and Kevin. Due to their mixed cultural and national heritage, they consider themselves "Jamericadians."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, October 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (Paperback)

From among the recent flood of books on Postmodernism from evangelical authors on the topic of Postmodernism, 'truth is stranger than it used to be' this is clearly my faourite. Most writers write on postmodernism 'from the outside looking in', full of fear and anxiety of what the PM era holds. Walsh and Middleton however understand, correctly in my opinion, that fearful rejection is not an option, and instead they explore how people who want to live by Biblical truth can carry out an inspiring witness in the new era. In doing so they treat Postmodernism on its own terms and do so fairly. Christians wanting to come to grips with life in the Postmodern era will find this book most helpful, indeed more helpful than many other books on the same issue.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Summary of the postmodern question, August 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (Paperback)

Middleton & Walsh give a good summary of modernity and the shift in thinking to postmodernity. While they emphasize that modernity is definitely on the way out, they question whether postmodernity has really developed enough to be considered a new philosophical base. Postmodernity has been an effective tool in challenging many of the short-comings of modernity, but it has not provided an answer to the questions raised. Instead, postmodernity has begun the process of moving to a new philosphical base. In the second half of the book they try to provide a Christian perspective on the answers to the questions postmodernity has raised. I felt that Middleton & Walsh did a good job in the first half of the book (summarizing and presenting the weakness in modernity and postmodernity), but their answer to the questions raised in the second half of the book good use some improvement. Indeed, answering these questions is a challenge to Christianity. This is a great book and a very helpful book for Christians in understanding the issues. I do highly recommend it, but it fell short of receiving a five rating for me because of the weaknesses in the second half of the book

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What is truth?, February 8, 2004

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (Paperback)

To a certain extent, the title says it all. The truth is stranger than it used to be. Who would have ever guessed that there would be a book that takes both the postmodern intellectual paradigm and the evangelical sense of the Bible seriously? And yet, here it is. Perhaps this is a testament to both the resilency of the Bible in the face of even the most monumental of paradigm shifts in cultural and intellectual history, as well as an admission on the other hand that postmodernity is 'here to stay', and the differing intellectual pieces that make up postmodernism must be addressed, not ignored.

Authors Middleton and Walsh ask in the first chapter four key questions, that they put in context of the controversy over honouring the discovery of Columbus in 1992. Whereas in the not-too-distant America, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the New World would have been heralded as an historical success, in the growing postmodernity sensibility, the varying interpretations of Columbus (the destruction of Native America, the original intention of colonialism and resource exploitation, the fact that others had in fact 'discovered' America first, etc.) made sure than no particular view held sway. This was new -- we no longer knew who we were. Who are we? Where are we? What's wrong? What's the remedy? These are the key questions, and in typical postmodern fashion, they are deceptively simple in construction, and nearly impossible to answer completely.

Whereas modernity saw society as always in progress, a sense of continuing evolution toward the better, postmodernity saw the failures of this -- empires fall and don't always lead to better situations; science cannot in fact answer all questions and solve all problems; reason and intelligence and individuality are not the unqualified 'goods' that the Enlightenment made them out to be. But not only is our worldview different, but how reality is constructed and deconstructed is different (can there be a book on postmodernism that does not reference Derrida? If there were, would it be worth anything?). The self becomes de-centered, and objective history and society gives way to narrative -- Middleton and Walsh reference Alistair MacIntyre's significant work 'After Virtue', which, while far from being a postmodern book, anticipates much of postmodernism's interest in recovering useful aspects of the ancient and pre-modern. One of the concerns of postmodernism in relation to narrative is the distrust of the universalising and totalising nature of metanarratives, i.e., making all things fit into one story, usually told one way.

The authors an interlude serving as a bridge between the two primary sections of the text, here to examine a few crucial points, one of which being an obvious problem -- if postmodernism is suspicious of metanarrative, how can Christianity and its attendant scriptures have any real authority, being one of the greater and more powerful metanarratives in human history?

Middleton and Walsh suggest that metanarratives may be pharmacological in nature -- take enough and it is a remedy, take the wrong dose, and it is poisonous, even fatal. One thing vital to the biblical project of the authors is that this become not just a story, but our story, something that we not only believe and espouse, but inside of which we dwell. Referencing such biblical scholars as Brueggeman and Trible, Middleton and Walsh acknowledge the need to be honest about the diversity within the scriptures and the sometimes terrible texts included.

There is an overall chiastic structure to the book, akin to various biblical passages in both testaments. Middleton and Walsh look for internal norms and guidance from scripture -- while these might be arguable, they correctly identify that postmodernism in-and-of-itself does not provide a norma normans. One criticism of Middleton and Walsh's overall approach is that they tend to see postmodernism as more monolithic than in fact it is; perhaps this owes more to the structure and limitations of the text than to their actual views.

Ultimately, Middleton and Walsh look at the biblical texts in ways that probably become too liberal for most strive to see the Bible as an inerrant text. However, it would be hard for anyone to say that the biblical text is not taken seriously, both as a normative document and as a living embodiment of God's word. Perhaps God is, in God's own self, postmodern, defying conventional notions of foundation and totalising -- the fact that God created things that are not God might speak to this.

A fascinating text.