Eberhard Jüngel: postmodernity is ambiguous by definition

“What postmodernity? It barely bloomed and has already faded. At least modernity lasted a few centuries. But look at what has happened to its successor. After only a few decades, postmodernity is no longer what it intended or appeared to be. Actually, postmodernity was never able to articulate clearly what it wanted to be. And any effort to mold it into a less-than-ambiguous concept seems quite paradoxical. After all, postmodernity was an affront targeted at any claim to clarity; thus it was ambiguous by definition.”

—Eberhard Jüngel, “The Cross after Postmodernity,” trans. Uwe Siemon-Netto, One incarnate truth: Christianity’s answer to spiritual chaos (St. Louis: Concordia, 2002), 109.