Follwing up on yesterday's blog and one one I posted a week or so ago, I would want to make the case that the problem with so many postmodern approaches to the world is that they fail to grasp the tragic nature of the human situation.  By dissolving the tragedies of life through moral and epistemological relativism, they really fail to be prophetic.  Only as these tragic dimensions are grasped do truly great theology and reflections on life emerge, why Augustine, Owen and Pascal are giants, and why Euripides and Shakespeare are still worth reading (incidentally, this is why satire is vastly superior to other forms of comedy, why Seinfeld is worth watching and Friends worth avoiding -- though my fear is that too many trendy theologians tend to Friends and Starbucks as the barometers of reality rather than Monty Python, British Instant Coffee and American attempts to make tea -- now there's a taste of the tragedy of life for you)