BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING IN A

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BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING IN A POST-MODERN WORLD
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WHY BOTHER?

• Romans 121,2 Therefore, I urge you, brothers,
  in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as
  living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this
  is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform
  any longer to the pattern of this world, but be
  transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then
  you will be able to test and approve what God's
  will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.

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WHY BOTHER?

• I Peter 315, But sanctify Christ as Lord in
  your hearts, always being ready to make a defense
  to everyone who asks you to give an account for
  the hope that is within you, yet with gentleness
  and reverence.
•  Every believer has a hope
• There is a reason for this hope
• There will be questions re the reason for this
  hope
• The believer must be ready to defend the
  reason/hope
• The believer should use the best defense
• The believer must prepare in order to offer the
  best defense

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WHY BOTHER?

• II Corinthians 105, We are destroying
  speculations and every lofty thing raised up
  against the knowledge of God, and we are taking
  every thought captive to the obedience of
  Christ.

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WHY BOTHER?

• Matthew 2819,20, Therefore go and make
  disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
  name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
  Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I
  have commanded you. And surely I am with you
  always, to the very end of the age.

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INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT

• Pre-Modern World
• Modern World
• Post-Modern World

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PRE-MODERN WORLD

• Embraced the objectivity of truth
• The preference was for a Platonist, or
  neo-Platonist notion of reality
• There is an objective, or external realm that is
  transcendent
• Reality existed independently of any individual
  apprehension of it
• For the Christian pre-moderns, this independently
  existing realm of transcendence was the mind of
  God. Erickson, Evangelical Interpretation, 100.

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PRE-MODERN WORLD

• There was a belief in the referential
  understanding of language that is, language
  referred to something beyond itself, Erickson,
  EI, 100.

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PRE-MODERN WORLD

• There was belief in the Correspondence Theory of
  Truth which asserted that true ideas are those
  that accurately correspond to the state of
  affairs as it is. Erickson, EI, 100

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PRE-MODERN WORLD

• In terms of hermeneutics, the pre-modern period
  accepted that the meaning of a text was . . .
  within that text in a rather literal or straight-
  forward fashion. . . . Hermeneutics was in this
  approach virtually equivalent to exegesis.
  Erickson, EI, 101

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PRE-MODERN WORLD

• The premodern understanding of reality was
  teleological. There was believed to be a purpose
  or purposes in the universe. Erickson,
  Postmodernizing the Faith, 15

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MODERN WORLD

• The Modern Period embraced the objectivity of
  truth, although more nearly Aristotelian.
  Erickson, EI, 100

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PLATO VS ARISTOTLE
Aristotle
Plato
Ideal
Ideal
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MODERN WORLD

• Cartesian rationalism shifted the focus of the
  rational order from the objectively, externally
  true to the thinking subject, thus creating
  (among other things) a subject-object dualism.

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MODERN WORLD

• There was belief that creation was orderly and
  certainty of knowledge was a possibility.
  Rational structures existed and were identifiable
  by use of reason and historical investigation.

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MODERN WORLD

• The way thinkers built up their knowledge and
  ordered it was commonly foundationalist i.e., it
  was presupposed that one must adopt certain
  foundations for ones knowledge. The foundations
  might be self-evident truths or incontestable
  sense-date, but only on the basis of such
  foundations can one certainly infer entire
  superstructures of thought that are then added to
  the foundations. Carson, The Gagging of God, 61.

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MODERN WORLD

• Naturalism (materialism) became the primary mode
  of explanation, from Humes skepticism to
  Darwins evolutionism. Deism is in this sense a
  betrayal of classical theism and an accommodation
  to naturalism.

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MODERN WORLD

• Scientific knowledge became the model for all
  knowledge data had to be obtained empirically,
  or they were suspect. Meanwhile religion,
  relegated to the category of mere opinion, was
  necessarily based on faith. Carson, GOG, 63.
  An excellent recent example of this is found in
  E. Wilson, Consilience. Faith is relegated to the
  realm of private opinion, while reason is the
  guide to all true knowledge and basis of public
  discourse.

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MODERN WORLD

• Modernity depends on meta-narratives
  (universal narratives or accounts of reality,
  of the way things are) . . . .These
  meta-narratives include Marxism, Hegels theory
  of universal spirit, the post-Enlightenment view
  of progress, and in theology, the view that we
  should accept as rational in the field of
  theology only what is judged rational by any
  reasonable and intelligent person. Carson, GOG,
  63.

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MODERN WORLD

• Modernity embraced individualism. Truth being
  objective, individuals can discover it by their
  own efforts. Erickson, Postmodernizing the
  Faith, 17.

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POST-MODERN WORLD

• Thomas Oden defines the modern period as the
  period from 1789 to 1989, from the Bastille to
  the Berlin Wall. For Oden, Postmodernism is used
  in a chronological sense, that which comes after
  the modern period. Oden, Requiem, 110,117

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POST-MODERN WORLD

• Postmodernism is that which follows modernity
  modernity has run its course and is exhausted,
  intellectually and spiritually bankrupt.

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POST-MODERN WORLD

• Oden argues for paleo-orthodoxy, a return to the
  classical orthodoxy of the early undivided
  church.

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POST-MODERN WORLD

• David Wells somewhere between the middle of the
  nineteenth century and the middle of the
  twentieth century we moved from a Eurocentric
  world to a world centered on America, a period he
  calls Our Time. Wells, No Place for Truth,
  53-54.

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POST-MODERN WORLD

• Our time- based on urbanization and democratic
  tendencies it is dependent upon technology and
  capitalism.
• For Wells, powerful forces bring about
  sociological modernity, which leads to
  intellectual postmodernism. Wells, NPFT, 61

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POST-MODERN WORLD

• Belief in progress, in transcending the past,
  leads those who are sociologically modern to
  become intellectually postmodern. Erickson, PTF,
  27.

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POST-MODERN WORLD

• Francis Schaeffer a line of despair bisects
  history, in Europe around 1890 in the U.S. after
  1935. Schaeffer, The God Who is There, CW, I8.
• This despair began in the discipline of
  philosophy, and spread successively to art,
  music, general culture, and finally, theology.
  Erickson, PTF, 65.

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POST-MODERN WORLD

• The roots of despair began with Hegel and his
  dialectic, an attack on the older rational model
• The meaning of life can no longer be dealt with
  in terms of a rational explanation, but instead
  the real things of life must be dealt with by
  a nonrational leap of faith. Erickson, PTF, 67.

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POST-MODERNISM SUMMARY

• Chronologically a development beyond the rational
  worldview fostered by the Enlightenment
• Represents a dissolving of an orderly, structured
  view of reality
• Represents the abandonment of a metanarrative
  and the embracing, instead, of many (mini)
  stories (in community)

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POST-MODERNISM SUMMARY

• Is thoroughly anti-foundationalist and suspicious
  of the objectivity of knowledge
• Rejects the secularized notion of progress (a
  Christian heresy) and questions whether knowledge
  is good
• Embraces ways of knowing, other than by reason
  e.g., intuition, experience, feelings

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HOW THEN SHOULD WE LIVE?

• Acknowledge the paradigm shift
• The Church is no longer part of the
  establishment
• We are living in a Post-Constantinian era
• In many ways, the Post-Constantinian era is
  remarkably similar to the Pre- Constantinian era
• How did the early church live?

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HOW THEN SHOULD WE LIVE?

• The early church
• At the minimum, sought to transform the
  culture, rather than assimilate it
• At times, stood against the culture
• Demonstrated the reality of the Christian faith
• By their love for one another
• By their consistency of life
• By their commitment, even unto death
• By their willingness to share the faith with all

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HOW THEN SHOULD WE LIVE?

• Outreach to young people?
• Remember this is the MTV generation
• Multi-tasking, non-linear learning
• Short attention spans
• Make use of story and personal witness
• Be willing to dialog- not pontificate
• Remember that faith comes by hearing the Word of
  God!

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BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING IN A POST-MODERN WORLD