by Ian Thomson with help from Stanley Grenz: Primer on Post-modernism

Modernity (‘Enlightenment Project’) aimed to master nature - to make a better world; a rational management to life through technological advance. But is it a better world? It is a world out of control: pollution, nuclear threat, greenhouse horror and increasing conflict. In India ultra sound technology can now determine the sex of a baby - if a girl, it is likely to be aborted. Modernism has not banished superstition surrounding the value of male over female children, but has made it easier to maintain it. "Modernism was seen as Final Truth in comparison with which all divergent world views are ‘superstitious’; arrogant, ignorant". Here was a most dogmatic faith - faith in reason and it bred the strongest kind of fundamentalism of all: reason and science were untouchable, holy.

Christian modernists eagerly took up the scientific method, commonsense realism. Just think of the many attempts at making Christianity credible to a world that glorified science and reason. Thinkers rallied against the materialistic world view and many of us were brought up on a solid propositional approach to the faith, systematised doctrine, rational apologetics, proofs of the existence of God, arguments for the resurrection, ingenious defenses of biblical infallibility.

As a result of the scientific method, the bible has been subjected to analysis like no other document from the Ancient World - rational, mechanistic and often destructive. Yet it has survived the process and we are the better for it! We are well beyond a raw fundamentalism and can venture into a new confidence in it. Thanks to the challenges of modernism.

Modernity also worshipped freedom - so we rejected any beliefs that limited our autonomy. This was the age of individual freedom - the self determining person who can live outside any tradition or community - ‘I’ll do it my way’. Such insistence on autonomous freedom brought some benefits - we were able to appreciate that God is concerned for each person, and all of us are accountable before God personally.

But now the knives are out against modernism. It has had its day with Western thought and pop culture. This abbreviated chart may help in seeing some of the changes to postmodernism.

The postmodern ethos is especially influential with the children of the information age. But it is bringing despair to the young who can see the loss of values and a centre, of truth, of hope. Just think of film, music. The result is an underlying despair that there is no unified whole that we can call ‘reality’. The search for universal, ultimate truth is abandoned. There is nothing to find but "a host of conflicting interpretations or an infinity of linguistically created worlds". (163) If this is ‘true’, then there are no standards by which we can judge the many conflicting interpretations of reality. At best, all we have left is judgment on the basis of ‘what works OK’. Thus there is "a never ending struggle among competing interpretations" (164).

This idea of objective truth being trashed, clashes with the Christian claim which is based on truth. But the Y’Shua event is assured by ‘many witnesses’ and is rooted in time and space (Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-3; John 20:30, 21:34-35; 1 Cor 15:3-8; Gal 1:12-16, 3:1; 1 John 1:1-3). This is one thing we must maintain or we have lost the faith forever. There is a centre of reality and its locus is in the man, Y’Shua from Nazareth, the Word from the Beginning. We know that there is a story which is true - the story of God’s intervention in space and time into human affairs to fulfil his purposes. This we must hold on to, whilst agreeing with the postmodernist conclusion that modernism’s appeal to reason alone is naive. What "we proclaim lies beyond reason either to discover or to evaluate" (165), as Paul knew (1 Cor 1-2).

We have seen that PM rejects the assumption that knowledge is certain, objective and good. Well, what do you know - this too is a Christian concept! We know that the rational, scientific method is not the only measure of truth. There are things that are beyond reason. The apostles declared that sin can blind the mind and knowledge by itself may lead us away from God. (Matthew 11:24-25; 1 Cor 1:20-25). We can also agree with PM that we can never be truly objective - we are always part of the process ourselves. We are part of a historical and cultural context - we cannot help being conditioned. Grenz says this echoes "Augustine when they assert that our personal convictions and commitments not only colour our search for knowledge but also facilitate the process of understanding" (166). And there is no coming utopia! With PM we know that the idea of knowledge replacing ignorance is a myth. What is needed is a new heart and a new mind which only Christ can bring. People do not necessarily act rationally - common sense is not all that common.

The gospel which creates this new heart casts out individualism, the very thing which contemporary communitarian scholars proclaim: "the individual-within-community". Social networks are essential in the formation of frameworks for our knowing process which come via our communities and we are embedded in their stories. And these are the very same ideas of the gospel - "the goal of God’s program is the establishment of community in the highest sense" (168). You cannot be a Christian alone - the very purpose of creation is fellowship and God is the social God!

More than words are required to demonstrate the truth to the emerging generation. Demonstration is required: ‘by this shall all know you are my disciples, if you have love one for another’ (John 13:35). Then we have the right to invite them to join us "in the community of those who whose highest loyalty is to the God revealed in Christ" (169).

We are not only thinking beings and there are other dimensions of reality such as ‘mystery’. The bible challenges us to question the asserting of truth as mere mechanistic propositions. We must not become anti-intellectual, yet The Way is much more than correct teaching. Experience will shape the terms we use to speak about our lives and when we experience relationship with Y’shua, we naturally talk about things like ‘sin’ and ‘grace’ to make sense of what has happened and here doctrinal statements are relevant. Y’Shua chose 12 not to fill them with academic knowledge, but to consociate, to be with him. The relationship is more important than how it is described. Here we also have an ally in postmodernism: a post-rational approach.

The Enlightenment project was characterised by a false ‘mind’/‘matter’ or ‘soul’/’body’ dualism which often led Christians into a concern for just ‘saving souls’, while the physical was of no significance. But the PM generation is interested in the person holistically, with an emphasis on emotion and the affective, and by integrating these with the bodily-sensual, and the intellectual-rational, and also to refer to the social and environmental context that forms and nourishes us. Thus we take seriously the biblical truth that relationship to nature, others, God, and ourselves are all part of our identity. Y’Shua spoke about and ministered to people as whole persons and as persons-in-relationship.

In Acts 15:6-21 we read of a most momentous shift in thinking from the Jewish to the gentile world. The gospel must not to be packaged as Western culture, or church culture, or even as Christianity. It centres on Y‘Shua who is the same yesterday, today and forever and in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free for all are one in this person.

• We must concentrate on spirituality rather than ideology.
• We must build personal relationships rather than mechanistic institutions.
• We must cultivate bold faith rather than blind certainty.
• We must develop personal relational knowledge rather than mere rationality.
• We must concentrate on wisdom rather than accumulation of facts.
• We must demonstrate servanthood rather than domination and control.
• We must encourage on true participation by all, not just the few, in the visible people of God.
• We must think in terms of wholism not dualism in our understanding of humanity.
• We must nurture community rather than individualism in our lifestyles.

• The idea of truth - that in Y’Shua there is objectivity for all: there is a unifying centre to reality: The Way.
• Hope: the Quest for new heavens and a new earth; incorporation & liberation of all things (Rom 8:19-23; Phil 3:20-21).
• The concept of revelation - the bible is sufficient and relevant (Matt 11:25, 16:17; 1 Cor 2:10-11; Gal 1).
• Suspicion of every present order - none will finally work except the Kingdom of God in Y’Shua.
• Making sense of it all: there is a criterion by which we may evaluate matters - in Y’Shua the eternal word made flesh.
• The stories of all humans do fit into a grand single story - for all peoples (not the super heroes).
• God acts in history through Y’Shua and history is moving to a Consummation.
• The gospel is the power of God for salvation.
• Faith - not certainty, not reason - is the operative (Romans 8:24-25).
• Grace, not a striving rationalisation for reality, is the emphasis.
• Christ and the cross is the focus, not an objective value system (1Cor 1:17-18, 2:2, Phil 2:5-11).