Full of Grace and Truth

A lie is the truth! So seems postmodernist verbal sleight-of-hand. Postmodernism can be tied to a number of intellectual trends, from a denial of any normative overarching metanarrative to the relativity of truth, but most postmodernists assume with ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras that “Man is the measure of all things” and that we humans are the sole source of meaning, morality, and “truth.”[1] Postmodern philosophy constructs “truth” unconnected to any referent in objective reality “out there.” As the godfather of postmodernism, Friedrich Nietzsche, said, we create truth from out of the perspective of our perceived need, in our contemporary world, out of marginalization, powerlessness, racial, gender, or sexual oppression.[2]

The unfitness and insufficiency of the postmodern rhetoric to account satisfactorily and do justice to the way things are was vividly lit up for me in the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard defamation trial last spring 2022. The celebrity trial fascinated millions of people worldwide. Depp contended that Heard damaged his reputation by declaring through various public media sources that he had committed domestic violence against her and physically and sexually abused her. Amber’s statements under oath highlight for me the postmodern proclivity to use objectively false “true-for-me” statements as authentic, legitimate, moral speech protesting exploitation and abuse of an oppressed class—in this case, a woman Amber Heard.

Ms. Heard spoke as a vulnerable woman oppressed by a rich, violent man. In the Virginia court of law, she accused Johnny Depp of beating her up and breaking her nose. Photos of her face the next night after a gala showed no signs of being beaten—no marring, no swelling or bruising, and no crooked nose. There were no doctor visits. When confronted with her speech and the lack of correspondence to actual outside reality, she defended her speech saying it certainly “felt broken”!

To Amber, “felt broken” is the same as being broken. No, they are not the same. Neither does “felt broken” describe the fact he had not struck her at all! A claim must correlate with the facts it describes. Rather than creating a harmony of justice in which right is restored and the injured party and the malefactor get what each deserves, Amber Heard’s speech created injustice she sought to right. Amber Heard was not the injured party. Heard’s claim, “I spoke up against sexual violence,” justified as authentic testimony of an oppressed woman, carries significance only if it is connected with actual oppression. If she was not an offended party against whom sexual violence had been committed, words to that effect are simply untrue.

In fact, Johnny Depp proved to be the injured party because the public prior to the trial considered Amber Heard’s words to be connected to actual reality and acted accordingly. Movie studios did not renew Depp’s contracts for leading roles such as iconic pirate “Jack Sparrow” in Pirates of the Caribbean and villain “Gellert Grindelwald” in Fantastic Beasts. Depp was deemed an abuser of women. His reputation suffered and he lost employment.[3] Of course, in recent days our society has done at least a marginally better job taking the claims of real victims seriously, but if claims of abuse are demonstrably manufactured, investing them with authority will not advance the cause of justice, but subvert it.

With postmodernism denying truth as objective and considering only personal perspective authentic, the Depp/Heard trial claims drew me this Advent season to juxtapose it with the Word become flesh “full of grace and truth.” The Incarnate Word’s claims of deity were and have been received or rejected since based on whether they correspond to objective, existent reality. In Acts 2:17 and following, Jesus’ disciple Peter told the Jewish crowd on Pentecost that the Lord’s display of deity by acts of power and might was visible to them as eyewitnesses. Though defying human explanation, His words and wondrous acts connected with this real, corporeal world.

The truth embodied in Jesus is not rhetoric originating from Jesus’ particular perspective as a minority Jew subjugated by an imperial Roman power. It was and remains words and acts corresponding with reality they describe and to which they were directed. The Word become flesh has abided with this vulnerability for millennia. Christian teaching has from the very first century rejected Gnostic tendencies to separate the Word from His incarnation in this sensual, material world. The Word become flesh full “of truth” in correspondence to this world is a fascinating contrast to postmodernism’s refusal to be evaluated by the truth and falsity of the existent, objective world. The Word become flesh “full of grace and truth” connected to this objective world beckons all to view Him in accordance with it.

In postscript, the Word become flesh is judged against the objective world, but the objective world is also judged against Him. He the Truth came “to testify to the truth” that the way things are inhere in Him. His Advent promises “the glories of his righteousness.” He reveals Himself the universal scale by which all things are weighed, including oppressor, and oppressed; and all, both oppressor and oppressed, are found wanting; neither is the way they’re supposed to be.

Certainly, though Johnny Depp had not physically or sexually abused Amber Heard, the trial testimony disclosed that before God there was sin and offense enough on both sides. The Word become flesh full of truth reveals that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”; yet the Advent season points to the Word become flesh who is not only full of truth but also full of grace. The Gospel John says, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Indeed, His truth promises the oppressed and the oppressor justice! But better yet, His grace promises each undeserved grace more than either deserves, more than either you or I deserve. Truly good tidings of great joy and good news indeed. Merry Christmas!

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[1] I have referred to Douglas Groothuis’s book in writing this piece.  See, Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism  (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2000).

[2] This has resulted in a transition from what Charles Taylor calls a “mimetic view,” according to which the world has objective order and meaning, to a “poietic” view that sees the world as so much raw material out of which meaning and purpose can be cranked by the individual. 

[3] Abby Gorzlancyk, “The Defamed Explained: Depp v. Heard,” Syracuse Law Review, Syracuse University/College of Law, June 9, 2022.

The Obfuscations of Stanley Fish

Stanley Fish has written:

"In the period between the attack on the World Trade Center towers and the American response, a reporter from the Los Angeles Times called to ask me if the events of the past weeks meant 'the end of relativism.' (I had an immediate vision of a headline—RELATIVISM ENDS: MILLIONS CHEER—and of a photograph with the caption, 'At last, I can say what I believe and mean it.') Well, if by relativism one means a condition of mind in which you are unable to prefer your own convictions and causes to the convictions and causes of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began. Our convictions are by definition preferred; that’s what makes them our convictions, and relativizing them is neither an option nor a danger. (In the strong sense of the term, no one has ever been or could be a relativist for no one has the ability to hold at arm’s length the beliefs that are the very foundation of his thought and action.) But if by relativism one means the practice of putting yourself in your adversary’s shoes, not in order to wear them as your own but in order to have some understanding (far short of approval) of why someone else—in your view, a deluded someone—might want to wear them, then relativism will not and should not end because it is simply another name for serious thought."

  So the first way Fish envisions someone defining moral relativism is like this: “a condition of mind in which you are unable to prefer your own convictions and causes to the convictions and causes of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began. Our convictions are by definition preferred; that’s what makes them our convictions, and relativizing them is neither an option nor a danger.” Let’s call this the “preference” account of relativism. Fish rejects the idea that such relativism can or should go away because, after all, people holding beliefs means they take them seriously.

  And the second formulation of relativism goes like this: “the practice of putting yourself in your adversary’s shoes, not in order to wear them as your own but in order to have some understanding (far short of approval) of why someone else—in your view, a deluded someone—might want to wear them, then relativism will not and should not end because it is simply another name for serious thought.” Let’s call this the “empathy” variant of relativism. And again, Fish says this variant of relativism shouldn’t and can’t go away either.

  The problem here, as I see it, is that Fish has offered two highly idiosyncratic definitions of relativism. Ethical relativism is the view that says morality is relative—usually to culture, though some relativize it to subcultures or even individuals. It’s a subjective understanding of morality in the sense that there aren’t objectively true moral answers—instead the content of morality is a function of individual, subcultural, or cultural choice. The problems confronting ethical relativism are legion and well-rehearsed. What’s interesting to me about Fish is that he simply tries sidestepping all of that by offering two accounts of relativism that have nothing essentially to do with it.

  Consider the preference variant. Fish is of course entirely right to say people prefer their own beliefs. But if so, why would he think that anyone means by relativism the denial of such a thing? If a student did such a thing in a paper, I’d rake him over the coals. So why on earth is Fish, an established academic, doing such a thing?

  Take the empathy variant. There’s nothing indigenous to relativism that involves putting yourself into your enemy’s shoes to see things from his perspective. That may be a cultural or subcultural approach, but it equally well may not be, in which it would be, by relativistic lights, the wrong thing to do. If someone wants a principled reason to embrace judicious tolerance and a cultivated sense of empathy, he needs to look in direction other than relativism. In other words, any good reasons there are to cultivate such attitudes most assuredly don’t come from relativism. So why treat such a thing as relativism’s distinguishing or defining feature except to answer the easy question and avoid the hard ones?

  Fish is an academic who works with words. Remarkable to me how willing he is to bastardize them with such shameless and reckless abandon, and that an outfit like the New York Times accords space to such obfuscation while turning down so many pieces far more worthy but written by folks less well known. For he employed the same procedure in an October, 2001 NYT commentary on 9/11 when he reduced “postmodernism” to merely this: “The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies.”

  Postmodernism means lots of things, but surely what it doesn’t mean is the mere suggestion that we can’t persuade terrorists that their tactics are wrong—a recognition anyone has who’s spent more than an hour engaged in substantive debate. Postmodernism isn’t without its insights—the need to see other perspectives, recognize our own shortcomings, demonize opponents, etc. (though I hardly think we need postmodernism to grasp such truths). But I simply don’t see how discussion is advanced when, confronted with the flaws and fallacies of one’s approach, one simply reduces the view in question to an isolated, incidental, innocuous thread and argue it’s harmless, while overlooking the plethora of troublesome and profoundly counterintuitive implications of its more robust (and honest) versions. Serious academics should do a whole lot better.