Postmodernism is a notoriously difficult concept to define. For the sake of this essay, I will use a set of ideas broadly described as 'postmodern': i. Deconstructionism, ii. Non-realism, and iii. Aestheticisation of knowledge, including the Death of the Author thesis (Barthes). I will show how these postmodern ideas can provide a basis for theology, but that in the end any theology that uncritically accepts them will depart from its central task in providing an honest assessment of what it might mean to talk about God. In short, postmodernism cannot provide a credible basis for theology.
Jacques Derrida described the ubiquitous postmodern method of deconstruction as follows: '[deconstructionism] does not assume that what is conditioned by history, institutions, or society, is natural.' He also described the act of deconstruction as 'memory work'; when a postmodernist deconstructs, what they are doing is remembering how the object at issue has been constructed over time. To what extent can this ever provide a credible basis for theology? If theology is the reasoned, scholarly discipline concerned with God-talk, then it might quite clearly benefit from employing such a strategy. Theologians have often sought to examine the use of religious language and the evolution of religious concepts, in order to more fully understand patterns of belief. New Testament scholars like N.T. Wright have used such a technique to refine assumptions as to what particular elements of the Gospels are authentic, on the basis of what is most likely to have been Jewish or later Christian interpolation. Rudolf Bultmann's process of demythologising owes much to the idea that certain passages in the bible that could not be reconciled with the findings of modern science owe more to superstition and myth rather than authentic revelation.
There is only so far that theology can benefit from deconstructionism, however. Deconstructionism in its purest form is incompatible with any assumption that there is objective truth that might be mediated through scripture. Suggesting that a Theologians like N.T. Wright and Bultmann make use of deconstruction to come to a fuller understanding of what might be considered 'authentic relvelation' is one thing, but to characterise this as outright postmodernism is, perhaps, going too far. The second idea accepted by many postmodernists is non-realism, that is, the notion that there is no external truth, no transcendent reality, or absolute meaning beyond human understanding. The search for Truth and meaning is at the heart of the theological enterprise, even in the work of more critical exegetes such as Bultmann. In order to decide what is authentically inspired revelation, and what is 'myth', there is an underlying assumption that there is a greater reality that can be discerned, even if we can only point to it through the lens of what it is not (apophasis).
It would be premature, however, to conclude that all theology has realism at the heart of its enterprise. Don Cupitt has recently put forward a more radical postmodern theology, that is (even in the words of Cupitt himself), non-realist. In After God: the Future of Religion (1997), Cupitt undertakes rather a postmodern project: demonstrating how religion can be re-conceived as a personal quest for meaning, or as an 'art-form', rather than as primitive superstition. Cupitt thinks the transcendent God of primitive superstition, the God 'out there', is dead. In Nietzsche's The Gay Science, the madman decries the death of God, and prophetically intones: 'Must we not ourselves become gods simply to appear worthy [of killing God]?' Cupitt takes this challenge to heart, envisaging a Feuerbachian reclaiming of our 'higher values' through the setting of our own aims and trajectories by refashioning God as 'your guiding star, as your ideal'. Cupitt's theology is, in its non-realism, fundamentally postmodern.
The strength of Cupitt's postmodern theology is that it provides a flexible, humanistic conception of religion, that might well be appealing to those in the modern age who claim belief in a 'higher being', but who struggle with the elaborate metaphysic of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Cupitt's theology is also compatible with the third aspect of postmodernism that we will consider: the aestheticisation of knowledge. As a corollary to non-realism, many postmodernists would insist that since there is no 'objective truth', or at the least, no reliable way of knowing it, the best way to approach a text is to discern and then develop meaning on a subjective level. What matters is not what the text means in itself, or what the author intends it to mean, but what it means for us. Applying this view to the Bible, a postmodernist might then view it as a text like any other text, albeit with particular historical and cultural resonances. Any theology which uncritically accepts this assumption and treats the Bible merely as a book among books ceases to be theology, and ends up as literary criticism. It is one thing for theologians to use some postmodernist ideas as part of their 'toolkit' to greater understand their subject matter, and its relevance to contemporary believers, but quite another to abandon its central task altogether.
In conclusion, it is clear that while postmodernism does offer a basis for theology – particularly the non-realist theology of Don Cupitt – that basis is not, in the final analysis, credible. Theology cannot stay true to its central task of attempting to more fully understand what it means to talk about God, then it needs at the very least to stay open to the possibility that such God-talk is based on a transcendent reality, rather than being a personal, subjective statement of meaning.