Ted Peters, describing the impact of modernity and postmodernity, both deconstructive and reconstructive, suggests that there are three stages of Christian consciousness.1 First, there is the precritical phase of “naive world-building,” the critical phase of world-destroying,” and the postcritical phase of reconstruction. One may note a more than faint hint of Owen Barfield’s original participation, withdrawal, and renewed participation in this formula, not least since Peters intends it to describe the same general epochal shifts in thinking in the West that Barfield did (though some portion of this period goes beyond the point at which Barfield published his theory): antiquity to the birth of early modernity; the modern period through to the end of the Second World War and/or the disillusionment with modernity that came at the conclusion of the 1960s and the dawn of the 70s; and the 70s to the present.2 So notes Peters, fundamentalism, neoorthodoxy, and atheistic secularism are all consequences of the shock of critical consciousness and operate by essentially the same basic logic; and there are various options for postmodernity and therefore postcritical theology, including protestant (to the modern synthesis) deconstruction, unfolding holism, and epigenetic holism. Peters favors the last option as the most fruitful for postcritical theology, as an integrated experience of reality which assumes the possibility not just of predetermined potencies but of genuine novelties in the universe, including the ultimate future novelty of the Kingdom of God. And so Peters’ postcritical theology focuses on the way that the transcendent God is proleptically present in history in and through Jesus Christ, the gospel, and the Christian tradition and its symbols.
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