By the way, RobS, how do you figure Bonhoeffer to be a postmodern theologian? He was basically the voice of Christian conscience in Germany dueing the build up to World War II, who sacrificed his life to warn about the evil path the country was going down.
No, I'm not even sure what can be considered "postmodern" (it eludes any clear definition from what i can tell). That's why I asked you what you considered to be postmodern theology. We differ as to what theologians might even be included, but I would agree with you that there are strands of neo-Gnosticsm. For me I would consider theologians that have appropriated or critiqued Continental philosophers (Heidegger, Gadamer, Levinas, Derrida, etc.) for their own projects to be under the umbrella of "postmodern theology", but again there are sharp differences and distinctions amongst those theologians. I don't consider His Eminence Met. John Zizilouas in the camp of Caputo, Tillich, etc. but he is engaging with the same contemporary philosophers as them. There's just can't be a neat consensus.
Well, this is kind of my point: postmodernism is a vague buzzword. Even modernist theology is difficult to categorize, as I will show below, so I am inclined to agree with Dr. Hart when he says "Postmodernist theology sounds like it might be a good idea." Postmodernism as a whole has been extrnded to cover a vast range of aesthetic genres which followed those genres associated with Modernism, but really, everything from fashion photography to urban planning can be called "postmodern" and thus I think the term is not quite useful.
Philosophically, Nazism is evil, but it is not modernist. The Nazis were opposed to Modernist architecture, artwork, and other expressions of the Modernist concept (which unlike Postmodernism, actually makes sense as a unified whole; you can trace a conceptual similiarity between a Modernist writer, a Modernist theologian and a Modernist architect, largely related to rationalism, scientific progress, raw expression of materials, concepts, et cetera, a fundamental directness). The Nazis shut down the Bauhaus School of Modernist artwork.
Well I dunno, that's kind of the irony of Nazism. There is certainly a romantic nostalgia (hence it attracted a thinker like Heidegger) but it wound up becoming the most pernicious form of modern technology which is inherently nihilistic. Ultimately I'm not sure I agree with you.
Modernism is not, in my opinion, Nihilistic; in great modernist authors for example, Hemingway comes to mind, we do not encounter nihistic despair. Modernism occasionally coupled with Humanism, either in a religious, or secular, context, to produce works with a clear meaning and belief structure informing them. Expressed in the arts, I would highlight the Seagram Building and its (sadly closed forced to new premises by the building manager, but not before I dined there!) famous Four Seasons restaurant, and the beautiful interior thereof, or Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece Fallingwater. Modernism as a school of classical music exists (think Alex North), but I would also say most of the best of the sophisticated Jazz music after the end of the Glenn Miller "Swing" era, in the 1950s-70s, was Modernist, and swing music itself, like Art Deco and Streamline Moderne, was headed in that direction. You can extract general connecting aesthetic and philosophical positions from these diverse expressions of modernism.
What is called "modernist theology" I am not all that sure of the authenticity of. The Roman Catholic Pope St. Pius X (or was it his successor Pius XI) expressly condemned "theological modernism", but this condemnation predated the emergence of Modernist art, literature and philosophy, so I believe it was intended to refer to something else. CS Lewis would hate to be called a modernist, but he reads like the great modernist authors; "Mere Christianity" in terms of its self-proclaimed aim of simplicity of expression strikes me as the authentically modernistic work of Christian theology, par excellence. For that matter, the Neo Orthodoxy of Karl Barth and the Historical Jesus concepts strike me as modernistic. But I am not quite sure they are the heresy that Pope Pius X(I) was trying to condemn, the kind of iconoclastic destruction of dogmatic norms we see in Bishop James Pike, or in the 1920s book Christ or Christianity? (I forget the name of the author), or in Rennovationism in the Russian church, etc.
One thing I should mention about all contemporary theologians is that I generally tend to avoid them unless their work directly transects my areas of interest (liturgy, the history of the Church, or ecclesiology). I prefer to get answers from Patristic sources; I prefer older material to newer material; the only general theological book of recent publication that I truly love is The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.
Well if your area includes ecclesiology then I cannot recommend enough His Eminemce Met. John's Being as Communion. If you haven't read it yet, go get it. I'm sure you will find it fascinating.
I have it. Most of the major works of Metropolitan Zizizoulas I have either in print or in digital form. Also, Fr. Alexander Schmemann. I am trying to get more of Fr. Florovsky. The only 20th century Greek Orthodox theologian I am not a huge fan of, although I still enjoy some of his material, is Fr. John C. Romanides; specifically his nationalistic attempt to Hellenize Rome, to the point of denying the Latin language was anything more than a Greek dialect, which was a bit cringeworthy.
I have no interest in NT Wright, for example.
Before I bumbled into Orthodoxy 7 years ago, I remember being blown away by how good his The Ressurection of the Son of God was. It thoroughly convinced me of the Resurrection (although of course the Resurrection takes on a markedly different character in Orthodoxy that goes beyond merely historical). Highly recommend it. Haven't read anything else of his.
I have never had a particular problem with that area of faith. I believe from the testimonies of people that his books, Surprised by Joy comes to mind, are very good, and somewhat close to Orthodoxy; among contemporary Anglican authors, I am more interested in Dr. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who has written books on subjects such as Arius, although at the moment I am still more interested in finishing up the heresiological corpus of St. Hippolytus.