POSTMODERNISM
He who sups
with the devil had better have a long spoon.
The devilry of modernity has its own magic: The (believer) who sups with
it will find his spoon getting shorter and shorter-until that last supper in
which he is left alone at the table, with no spoon at all and with an empty
plate. The devil, one may guess, will by
then have gone away to more interesting company.
Quoted in: Guinness, Dining with the
Devil, Baker, 1993, p. 5.
Quite simply,
it is a fact of history that the church of Christ has not experienced any major
nationwide revival under the conditions of advanced modernity. On the other hand, modernity undercuts true
dependence on God's sovereign awakening by fostering the notion that we can
effect revival by human means. On the
other hand, modernity makes many people satisfied with privatized,
individualistic, and subjective experiences that are pale counterfeits of true
revival.
Os Guinness
Dining with the Devil, Baker, 1993, p.
20.
In distinct
contrast to the widespread conservative fallacy of the eighties, the sharpest
challenge of modernity is not secularism, but secularization. Secularism is a philosophy; secularization is
a process. Whereas the philosophy is
obviously hostile and touches only a few, the process is largely invisible and
touches many. Being openly hostile,
secularism rarely deceives Christians.
Being much more subtle, secularization often deceives Christians before
they are aware of it, including those in the church-growth movement. How else can one explain the comment of a
Japanese businessman to a visiting Australian?
“Whenever I meet a Buddhist leader, I meet a holy man. Whenever I meet a Christian leader, I meet a
manager.
Os Guinness
Dining with the Devil, Baker, 1993, p.
49.
Once upon a
time tolerance was the power that kept lovers of competing faiths from killing
each other. It was the principle that
put freedom above forced conversion. It
was rooted in the truth that coerced conviction is no conviction. But now the new twisted tolerance denies that
there are any competing faiths; they only complement each other. It denounces not only the effort to force
conversions, but the very idea that any conversion may be necessary. It holds the conviction that no religious
conviction should claim superiority over another.
John Piper
World Magazine, November/December,
2001.
"Tolerance"
gives me room to say, "I think you're wrong, but I'll defend your right to
be wrong." "Pluralism"
suggests, much more strongly than most folks admit, that there isn't such thing
as right and wrong - and no such thing as truth and error. As it is practiced more and more in America,
pluralism tends to require that you not only leave room for your neighbor to
believe what he believes, but that you also refrain from disagreeing with
it. There's a world of difference
between the two perspectives. Tolerance
promotes civility combined with clear thinking.
Pluralism promotes civility combined with mushy-headedness.
Joel Belz
World Magazine, November/December,
2001.
Many of those
whose task it is to broker the truth of God to the people of God in the
churches have now redefined the pastoral task such that theology has become an
embarrassing encumbrance or a matter of which they have little knowledge; and
many in the Church have now turned in upon themselves and substituted for the
knowledge of God a search for the knowledge of self.
David Wells
Postmodernism
(the thinking of our age) is fiercely antinomian (without law). It is admitted that people make mistakes, but
the word 'sin' is seldom mentioned and the idea that we all sin against God is
avoided. Right and wrong are judged
according to human feelings. The idea
that God has an unchangeable holy moral law by which he will judge every person
is unpopular.
Erroll
Hulse
Who Are the Puritans? Evangelical Press, p.
15.
We live in
the climate of postmodernism. Western
society encourages sin in an enormous extent and resists definition of, or
clarity about, sin. Postmodernist
philosophy is fiercely antinomian, that is, opposed to law. Right and wrong are judged on the basis of
subjective human feelings. The result is
a slide into an abyss of lawlessness.
The consequences of lawlessness are seen in the alarming increase in
family break-up, divorce, crime and overcrowded prisons.
Erroll
Hulse
Who Are the Puritans? Evangelical Press, p.
172
If postmodernist claims are objectively true [and if they
aren’t, there is no reason why we should believe or accept them], then those
claims are themselves the mere products of social forces and so are not
objectively true. Of course, if postmodernist claims are not objectively true,
then they are just the arbitrary opinions of certain people that we are free to
ignore
William
Craig
Five Views on Apologetics, Zondervan, www.zondervan.com,
2000, p. 181.
Whenever a
Christian converses with a non-Christian about the truth of the faith, every
request of the non-Christian for the proof of Christianity should be met with
an equally serious request of proof for the non-Christian's philosophy of life. Otherwise we get the false impression that
the Christian worldview is tentative and uncertain, while the more secular
worldviews are secure and sure, standing above the need to give a philosophical
and historical accounting of themselves. But that is not the case. Many people who demand that Christians
produce proof of our claims do not make the same demand upon themselves.
John Piper