ABSTRACT
For almost 40 years the seemingly harmless term “postmodern” has sown discord and ruffled feathers in the intellectual world. Mere sight of the term has caused some commentators to see red in more than one sense: “postmodernism” for them embodies the utter degeneracy of the 1960s Left. For their part, more than a few commentators on the left have associated the term with the neoliberal climate of the 1980s, viewing its essence as an appeal to a kind of anything-goes-philosophy: you choose your truth, I choose mine, and neither of us can lay claim to a truth value beyond the endless droning of the market. When the formulation “postmodern theology” first emerged in American theological circles in the mid-eighties, eyebrows were understandably raised. Not least because for most people, inside as well as outside traditional religious boundaries, theology and religion stand for something that postmodernism would seem to repudiate: belief in some form of comprehensive and lasting truth.
