The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment were the trends in thought during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that influenced the growth of an increasing liberalism within the Church during the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These movements folded themselves into what we now recognize as the age of Modernism. This Modernism itself was the child of a progression in philosophical trends. Locke and Reusseau yielded to Kant and Reimarus. Increasingly in these new philosophies was a willingness to look at the world without a sense of divine order. The Deism of the enlightenment saw God as clock maker; later thinkers were willing to hypothesize about existence without a God at all.
These people because of their strict belief in natural theology and because they believed in a God who was totally transcendent, dismissed the miraculous. Hegel eventually through his dialectical process set forth the goal of mankind as complete autonomy. For Hegel, God is Reality, and the Mind; any other deity is simply a projection of the attributes of Man, and the denial of these qualities to oneself. Marx echoes this when he says that man invented religion by stooping down and becoming less than human in order to rest on a belief system which explained the great mysteries.[1]
Over the next hundred years this became the basic doctrine of society and culture. We, living comfortable lives in America
This distance from the acceptance of the spiritual and our reliance upon the technical to reproduce that which once was considered spiritual, is the essential nature of Postmodernism. To the Postmodernist, the biggest insult is that one might suggest he has superstitions.
The way of Postmodernism has been to say all kinds of things in such a round about and esoteric fashion as to conceal the fact that they are saying nothing at all. We can thank Karl Marx for the popularization of the subtle re-definition of terms which in turn has led to such ambiguity that, except to the initiated, meaning is entirely lost. This is an ancient problem which really goes back far earlier to a time when we are told “God confused their speech.”[2] So the problems of relativism and shifting language were instituted to keep us from becoming unstoppable. We should keep this in mind as we build our modern towers to God, for Postmodernism in actuality offers us nothing new.
Postmodernism allows words to mean different things based on the speaker or writers intention. The prefix “PRE” means 'coming before' except when it doesn't. The alienation of words from any concrete meaning has led to the mantra “etymology does not determine meaning.” Does Pi equal 3.14159~ or does it equal 3, or 7. What does the word marriage mean? Does a court or civil government have the authority to define a word, should it be left until popular usage changes its meaning? Many Christians have tried to join that esoteric society through the tacit acceptance of the Zeitgeist of Postmodernism. They have embraced this approach whole heartedly by adding “post” before a word, or a slash between two words, or making a word upper or lower case. A simple typo in the production of their work would render the meaning entirely changed. Obviously for many, to be “post” everything is to have come out of and in this sense they obviously mean that they hope what we are becoming is better than what we were.
This is precisely my objection to Postmodernism, it is essentially the continual repackaging of “Modernism;” newer is better.[3] I believe that although the message must be adapted for the audiences understanding, any attempt at discovering God must appeal to truth as timeless not progressive.
Francis Schaeffer aptly opens his “Christian Manifesto” with the following indictment on developing postmodern culture within America
“The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals. They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of family, and finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality- each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in world view- that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole.”[4]
He continues:
“Why have the Christians been so slow to understand this? There are various reasons but the central one is a defective view of Christianity... let me say quickly that in one sense Christians should be pietists in that Christianity is not just a set of doctrines, even the right doctrines. Every doctrine is in some way to have an effect upon our lives.... True spirituality covers all of reality.”[5]
I remember in Philosophy 101, reading “Twilight of the idols” and having a profound sense of grief, that if the God I believed in was in fact who I believed (at that time) he was, Nietzsche was right about everything. The God of Nietzsche is a god made in the image of man, who baptizes and ordains the awful acts of man (especially those in power). In this light, the answers of the Post-Modernist look attractive. It is an attempt to answer the great questions through plurality and relativism.
Postmodernism, embraces the error of false Causality by believing that our beliefs cause reality. Even within Christianity, we find people who interpret “faith” as a notion that if you assert and believe that such and such will be so, then it will be. For them, it is only doubt in ones mind that makes us unable. This of course leads to the error of the snake handlers, and relieves our consciences of ethical responsibility for the downtrodden. It brings us the health and wealth gospel in its varying forms, and various false teachers and doctrines such as the liberation gospel. Indeed Nietzsche clearly identified this error in Twilight of the Idols.
There is a demonstrable link between belief and causality in relation to the placebo effect for example. We as humans do have control over some things, however not all belief can be causal. This means there is in fact a reality, of which we all are aware, (that we have control over some things and not over others) demonstrating to us that we know our place within the universe. Something beyond rationality allows us to believe things that are possible, while keeping most of us from believing things that are not possible (those people who do not have this are generally called insane).
It is sheer nonsense when a believer in false causality points to the failure of one to alter reality as lack of belief. This attitude asserts an authority which is not rightfully ours to change the created universe as though we ourselves were omniscient. This is not to say that another authority cannot grant that we would walk on water, or be transported from Ethiopia Palestine
Syncretism: There is a great deal that Christians today could learn from Hinduism. Among these things is a respect for the infinity of the divine. The Hindu Religion is Panentheistic, that is, like the pantheist they believe that everything around them is God, yet they do not deny that there must be more of God than they understand from what is around them. This is Brahma. What Christians could stand to learn from this, is that the Hindus, in their respect for their deity, do not make a motion to limit their deity, but admit that there may very well be much more to their deity than they can and ever will understand.[6] Yet as Christians we make a disrespectful attempt to say that our God is what we know about Him and we leave no room for Him to be more than that.
Most of us think in pictures, not complete sentences. If I say rocket ship, you envision some sort of spacecraft, or even the letters r-o-c-k-e-t-s-h-i-p in your mind. A picture speaks more than a word. The rocket ship you envisioned could have been a Saturn 5, or one from a cartoon.
If I ask you to describe “rocket ship” to me, the picture in your mind will influence your description. What is more, the words you use to communicate may paint an entirely different picture in my mind than the one in yours. This is the fun of a game like Pictionary, but it is also the essence of all communication. I am reminded of the illustration of the blind men and the elephant
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he,
“the Elephant Is very like a snake!”
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“ ‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong![7]
They are all wrong, and yet they are all right - they just are unable to see how their descriptions fit together. I think this principle applies to revelation. If there is a God, and He reveals himself to man, then what are the common threads, how do the descriptions link? Just like the elephant analogy, the blind men are not wrong, except that they have set their scope too small. Does our faith link with someone else's faith? Or have we set the scope so small that we are exclusive?
A friend of mine who was reading the Bhagavad-Gita remarked on how Krishna says to Arjuna that he has chosen to reveal himself to Arjuna and not to the countless pious worshippers because Arjuna has simply asked. What is more, Krishna says to Arjuna that he is his friend. I could not speak to this text particularly, but I can say I see parallels with the sacred texts that I am familiar with. “Ask and it shall be given to you seek and you shall find”[8] and “I no longer call you servants... Instead, I have called you friends”[9] Furthermore, both point to the truth that the ideal for mankind is to be in relationship with God.
Syncretism then is not necessarily a betrayal of ones faith, but can be its validation. This is not an image of many roads leading up a mountain to the top, but of one road, obscured by mist, winding and narrow. We only know the road for what we see. The voices we hear echo, and reverberate, so we do not know whether they are ahead or behind, or even on the same mountain and we ourselves hope that we are further ahead than others.
[1] McGrath makes a good point however that Marx says himself that subjective feelings of alienation stem from the objective state of alienation. Thus our feeling of alienation from God is not the result of our stooping, but of the objective reality of alienation from God. For Marx, the only proper response is behavior modification, to repair the objective reality, in order to solve the problem of its symptom. (Alister McGrath, Understanding Doctrine; What it is – and Why it Matters, (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Zondervan, 1990) p.159-160)
[2] Genesis 11:9
[3] I may be wrong, perhaps the ultimate answer to Postmodernism is the redefinition of “Postmodern.”
[4] Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1982) p.17
[5] Ibid. pp.18-19
[6] I’m referring here to the teachings of Hinduism as one might study it, for I know that within Hinduism are many of the same problems that Christians or any other Religion faces.
[7] --John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)
[8] Matthew 7:7
[9] John 15:15
AnteChurch: confession of a young theologian, Copyright © 2010 by J.D.M. Jinno. All rights reserved. The Author grants the right for an individual to print one complete copy of this work for personal use only. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever (including but not limited to appearance on websites other than http://www.antechurch.com) without written permission except in the case of brief quotations. You may link to http://www.antechurch.com. For more information contact the author at antechurch @ gmail.com
http://www.antechurch.com
Many of the scripture quotations contained herein are recalled from memory, but generally they resemble the NIV.
http://www.antechurch.com
Many of the scripture quotations contained herein are recalled from memory, but generally they resemble the NIV.
Other quotations, are utilized in fair use
This work is not produced for profit
If you find an error in the citation of a work for which you hold the copyright, please contact the author directly.
This work is not produced for profit
If you find an error in the citation of a work for which you hold the copyright, please contact the author directly.
