Faith and Philosophy

Volume 22, Issue 3, July 2005

John D. Caputo
Pages 284-296

METHODOLOGICAL POSTMODERNISM
ON MEROLD WESTPHAL’S OVERCOMING ONTO-THEOLOGY

I characterize Merold Westphal’s synthesis of Christian faith and postmodern philosophy as an “epistemological” or “methodological,” postmodernism, one that sees postmodern thought as describing certain limits upon human understanding while leaving open the question of how things are in the nature of things, that is, how things are understood by God. Postmodernism (unless it waxes dogmatic) is not denying God, but only that we are God. In a characteristically postmodern way, Westphal has found it useful to limit knowledge in order to make room for faith, in the tradition of Kant, where these limits are historical and linguistic rather than ahistorical and apriori. In the second half of this paper, I advance the notion that postmodernism cuts deeper than epistemology and makes questionable certain features of the self and God.