Andy Chambers
Times have changed. I remember twenty-two years ago debating an atheist on my floor of Holt Hall dormitory at the University of Missouri , Rolla. We were both engineering majors who argued from the same evidence for and against God. He could not understand how any rational person could believe in a Creator considering the evidence for evolution and my inability, according to the scientific method, to prove to him God’s existence. I thought, based on the same evidence, he was that fool David described who said in his heart, “There is no God” (Psalm 53:1). 1 Our conclusions differed, but we both based our arguments on reason and evidence. We both believed passionately that there was a coherent explanation of reality that reflected a right understanding of the external world. We simply disagreed on what that explanation was.
That debate is a far cry from a conversation I had recently with a woman who lived a difficult life until some time ago when she underwent a profound spiritual change. Now, she is a respected citizen who speaks glowingly of God’s forgiveness and of her love for Jesus and the Bible. However, she cannot bring herself to believe that Christ had to die for her sins or that God would condemn someone to Hell who believes in another way. How do you have a dialogue with someone who loves Jesus and Scripture and yet lives comfortably with the contradiction between what she believes about Jesus and what the Bible says about him? Times have changed.
We are living in the transition from modernism to postmodernism. The very ground of religious debates has shifted dramatically with profound implications for ministry today. During the modern period the universe was considered a closed system of causes and effects to be studied scientifically and rationally. The authority of Scripture and the guidance of the church were rejected, and reason was considered the only reliable guide in the pursuit of truth. My atheist friend in college illustrates the spirit of modernism.
Today, spirituality and God (however you define him) are back in. However, people have either given up the pursuit of truth within a coherent worldview, or they fear the charge of intolerance and bigotry and hold their views privately. Or, like my recent evangelistic encounter, people put the world together for themselves and have made peace with the contradictions in their thinking and are usually happy to affirm the truth of competing worldviews.
Where postmodernism is going, how profound a change is occurring, and how long this period will last are hard to see. Some analysts think the cultural upheaval we currently live in is as profound a movement in our day as the Renaissance or Enlightenment was in its day. Significant transitions are occurring. However, I tend to agree with Thomas Oden’s view that postmodernism is less a new movement or ideological program distinct from modernism and more its natural conclusion. He calls postmodernism ultra- or hyper-modernism. “What is named post is actually a desperate extension of despairing modernity which imagines by calling itself another name (postmodern), it can extend the ideology of modernity into the period following modernity” (“Death” 26). Modernism has run out of gas, and people are rushing in to read the obituary and announce what is next.
There is promise in the transition from modernism to postmodernism. Many Enlightenment ideas, which were inherently hostile to evangelical Christianity, have come under fire both inside and outside the church. We are living in a unique moment of opportunity for the Gospel. Yet, there is also great peril in this transition for the undiscerning Christian.
Any attempt to assess the impact of this movement risks oversimplification of the issues surrounding a complex cultural change. This article is a modest effort to assess the implications of postmodernism for ministry today with a particular focus on the evangelical understanding of the nature of truth and its proclamation. We will do this first by surveying the major movements in the transition to postmodernism. Then, we will consider both the promise and peril in postmodernism. Finally, several suggestions will be made for a contemporary ministry that is distinctively Christian.
I. Five Significant Transitions in the Movement from Modernism to Postmodernism
A. A transition away from speaking of the existence of absolute truth toward a personal view of truth
Francis Schaeffer identified the trend away
from speaking of absolute or universal truth in Europe before
it became vogue to speak of “postmodernism” in
In the postmodern period, the idea of universal truth has been abandoned as either nonexistent or undiscoverable. The pursuit of truth in an objective or absolute sense is seen as a misguided, indeed futile, attempt to impose an epistemological certainty on scientific, philosophical, moral, and religious questions. Truth is at best a personal or communal understanding of reality. According to this worldview, “All discourse is particular, limited, and insular, and it inevitably breaks down into the competing language games operating among different communities of meaning” (Mohler 71). People are left to determine the meaning of the universe on their own, or wonder if it has any meaning beyond their own personal experience of things.
The postmodern view of truth stands in profound conflict with the absolute truth claims of Christian orthodoxy. Christians have historically seen God as the creator of all that exists, the source of truth, and the standard by which all truth claims are judged. Truth in this historic view is not what a person comes up with but whatever is in accord with the nature and character of God.
B. A transition away from totalizing metanarratives toward radical pluralism
The term metanarrative refers to an all-inclusive system or explanation of life and history that underlies and gives ultimate meaning and coherence to their individual parts. Before the modern era, the Christian worldview was the dominant metanarrative in Europe and the West. Enlightenment rationalism and the belief in the superiority of the scientific method and the inherent goodness of the knowledge it produced dominated the modern period.
Now, all totalizing claims are viewed with suspicion in the postmodern period. Postmodern theorist Jean-François Lyotard writes, “[S]implifying to the extreme, I define the postmodern movement as incredulity toward metanarratives” (xxiv). Comprehensive explanations of the world arose in a day when knowledge and awareness of other cultures and ways of looking at things were more limited. Globalization and the resulting sense of difference in perspective and approaches to reality among cultures have led to a rejection of the very possibility of comprehensive metanarratives.
Furthermore, totalizing worldviews are generally held by the majority in society and therefore are accused of oppressing other voices because of an alleged inability to tolerate competing opinions. The result has been a radical pluralism that affirms the right of persons to hold their views privately but rejects as dangerous any metanarrative that by definition excludes all other worldviews. Charles Kimball, chairman of the religion department at Wake Forest University, writes:
When zealous and devout adherents elevate the teachings and beliefs of their traditions to the level of absolute truth claims, they open a door to the possibility that their religion will become evil.... People armed with absolute truth claims are closely linked to violent extremism, charismatic leaders, and various justifications for acts otherwise understood to be unacceptable. (44)
In the face of such opposition, evangelicals tend either to make Christianity less exclusive and thus less offensive or to preach boldly and risk a hostile response.
C. A transition away from foundationalism toward coherentism and skepticism about the possibility of objective knowledge
Foundationalism holds that certain objective truths exist independent of the mind and are “self-evident” enough to be beyond dispute or need of proof. These bedrock truths become the basis for all other knowledge, the starting point upon which other truths are built and to which they must relate.
Crucial to foundationalism is the assumption of the knowability of such truths by an interested observer. During the modern period, an epistemology called realism dominated. According to realism, the mind can perceive things as they actually are; our perceptions correspond to what is really there.
Postmodernists reject such foundational truths as either nonexistent or unknowable, except as shared assumptions within the tradition of an individual community. Knowledge is not built on bedrock presuppositions. Rather, every assertion must be shown to relate to other assertions that are constructed together in a conceptual framework. These assertions form an interrelated web of ideas that cohere in a relativistic worldview where knowledge is relational and communal. All claims of truth are only true relative to other claims to truth, not to some external standard. Coherentists, sometimes called relativists when ethics are considered, do not see knowledge as objective or rooted in anything that transcends communities and cultures.
The implications for the nature of the Gospel are obvious. Norman Geisler and Paul Feinberg have shown the limitations of relying exclusively on comprehensive secular epistemologies like foundationalism and coherentism (151-54). Saving knowledge of God cannot be observed in nature or reasoned from first principles. The self-evident truths of nature can only make us without excuse (Romans 1:20 ). The things of God are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14 ).
On the other hand, how can Christ be savior for the world and call the nations to himself, if his message is not rooted in external transcultural realities? Some kind of qualified foundationalism is needed that asserts the existence of objective knowledge outside of us, accessible to the mind and heart, for the idea of coming to Christ to make sense or for apologetics to be possible. We will consider this possibility later.
D. A transition away from propositional truth toward narrative as the means by which religious truth is expressed and appropriated
The idea that God reveals true knowledge about Himself in Scripture that can be articulated in propositions has long undergirded the work of Christian theology, especially systematic theology. The traditional task of theology has been “to identify and articulate the revealed truths of Scripture in a logical, coherent and compelling manner” (Groothuis 112). Traditional views of biblical inerrancy especially depend on the belief that Scripture truth, no matter what kind of language a particular text employs, can be articulated in propositions, or statements of truth.
Jack Rogers and Donald McKim in 1979 led the way in criticizing evangelicals like Carl Henry in the twentieth century and Princeton seminary in the nineteenth century for allegedly adopting a rationalistic mindset in their approach to theology. 2 This context is not sufficient for responding to the popular postmodern evangelical position on Carl Henry and Princeton in the 1800s. However, excellent analyses by John Woodbridge and Paul Helseth offer the alternate view that both were explicit in their concern not to adopt the scholastic rationalism of the Enlightenment in their epistemologies. 3 According to Rogers and McKim, evangelicals owe more to the Enlightenment than to the apostles and early Christian interpreters. The early church, they say, stressed God’s narrative acts of redemption, not propositions, as the primary vehicle for expressing Gospel truth. Stanley Grenz, Alister McGrath, Robert Weber, and of late Leonard Sweet continue to make the charge that evangelicals are tied to a propositionalism that is not biblical. 4 They call for a reorientation of theology, preaching, and ministry toward a more narrative mode.
E. A transition away from the author toward the reader in biblical interpretation
Until recently, biblical interpretation focused on discovering the single meaning intended by the author of a biblical text. Historically, this approach has equated the words of scripture with the words of God, verbally inspired, objectively spoken, and authoritative for faith and life. During the modern period, biblical authority was rejected, but the quest for the historical meaning of the text was not. The historical-critical method, a modernist invention, sought through source, form, and redaction criticism to get at the historical event behind a text and relate the text’s meaning to what could be known about the event.
Today, the historical-critical method is being eclipsed by literary criticism, a product of postmodernism, which focuses on the relationship between the reader and the text in its final canonical form, not on the events a biblical text might refer to. According to this view, any correspondence between the text and the events it may report is not important. What is important is the response of the reader to the text and his or her subjective involvement in establishing what the text means as well as an emphasis on the various perspectives from which a text may be read.
According to this perspective, readers pass their encounter with the words of Scripture through the grid of their own personal agenda and expectations. Also, shared interpretive assumptions that reside within a community of interpreters can color how an individual reads scripture. These factors mire readers hopelessly in subjectivity and prevent a purely objective reading.
In the postmodern view, meaning either resides in the text itself, a potential cause of meaning, independent of its author because of the connotative and expressive nature of language, or does not exist at all except as the reader creates it out of his own encounter with Scripture.
Much can be learned about how a biblical text communicates meaning through its literary genre. Narrative criticism and rhetorical criticism have shed much light on the interpretation of biblical narratives and letters. However, meaning must exist in some kind of objective sense for Scripture to speak with any authority.
II. The Promise of Postmodernism
Whether postmodernism as a movement is as significant as the Renaissance or Enlightenment remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the transitions delineated above are significant and require a reassessment of how we understand the truth and proclamation of the Gospel. New cultural conditions can cause us to ask how much our understanding of the Christian faith is shaped by the content of Scripture and how much is shaped by the culture we are called to impact as salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16). For this reason, there is promise in the transition to postmodernism. Two helpful postmodern insights are considered here.
First, postmodernism’s critique of modernism’s exclusive reliance on reason and empirical science should be affirmed. Certainly modern science has improved many areas of life for people. The case could even be made that Christianity made modern science possible. The Bible affirms the existence and goodness of creation as a special work of God (Genesis 1:31). Scripture also declares that what God made declares His glory (Psalm 19:1) and reveals His divine nature and power to people (Romans 1:20). The created world is a worthy subject for investigation to the glory of God.
Yet, modernism at its core rejected the authority of Scripture and all supernatural religion. The word Enlightenment (Aufklärung in German) itself signified an advancement beyond the allegedly narrow confines of the biblical worldview and guidance of the church. The descriptions in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed.) are incisive:
[The] “Aufklärung" combines opposition to all supernatural religion and belief in the all-sufficiency of human reason with an ardent desire to promote the happiness of men in this life. Their fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature, which blinded them to the fact of sin, produced an easy optimism and absolute faith in the progress and perfectibility of human society once the principles of enlightened reason had been discovered. (126)
[The Enlightenment’s] adherents distrusted all authority and tradition in matters of intellectual inquiry, and believed that truth could be attained only through reason, observation, and experiment.... The more scientific among them...tried to discover ‘Newtonian’ laws governing man and his social relationships, believing that if these could be found, man would be in a position to control his destiny. (546-47)
Modernists preferred a thoroughgoing materialism that arrogantly presumed science and reason alone were all-sufficient for the inevitable progress people anticipated. Modernists assumed that knowledge and people are inherently good and that, armed with knowledge, people would lead society forward. Instead, we armed ourselves to the teeth and narrowly avoided a nuclear holocaust at the end of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century has opened with an aggressive effort to prevent terrorists and rogue states looking for power from obtaining the weapons modernism produced. Postmodernism soberly acknowledges that science, reason, education and government programs have not delivered the utopia modernity promised.
Second, in recognizing that reason is not entirely autonomous, postmodernism acknowledges that purely rational thinking is not possible in an absolute sense. Knowledge is not obtained in a static immutable environment (Cabal 8). Time, place, and culture can influence our priorities for research, our perceptions of reality, and even our methods for arriving at conclusions. Failure to recognize these influences will keep us from seeing how they can influence both interpretation of Scripture and application of Scripture to life.
We can be grateful for the increased epistemological humility of late. Because postmodernism has moved beyond the closed mechanistic system of causes and effects constructed by modernists, people are increasingly willing to admit that more seems to animate life than chance and blind forces. There are mysteries science has not penetrated. Spirituality is back in vogue because modernity as a metanarrative has not delivered on the meaning of life. In theory, many voices should be welcome at the postmodern table.
III. The Peril of Postmodernism
Everyone should be a part of the new pluralistic conversation postmodernism has initiated because the importance of spiritual issues is increasingly harder to ignore. However, there are several dangers in postmodernism, too.
First, postmodernism is hostile to all metanarratives, especially exclusive religions. During the modern era, belief in the supernatural and in biblical religion was excused as the naïve view of the uneducated masses. Now, evangelical assertions of the universal truth of Christianity are suspect as potential causes of oppression, especially of those whose practices conflict with the moral standards of Scripture. Chilling comparisons between evangelicals and the Taliban roll off pundits’ tongues with little critical awareness of the actual content of different religions or interest in the fruit of their respective ways of life.
Because postmodernism rejects the idea that there is a single overarching narrative that gives meaning to all of human existence, it rejects any truth claim that asserts one. Christianity says such a metanarrative exists. The story began in the Garden of Eden with a perfect creation, followed by the rebellion of the creatures against their Maker. The story climaxes at Calvary , when God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The moral of our story is that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12 ). That story excludes every other worldview but its own.
We should not be surprised, then, when the world says “yes” to spirituality but “no” to Jesus Christ, the Son of God and only Savior for the world. Christians are unwelcome at the table, not simply because abortion clinic bombers claim to act in Christ's name, but because we say, "You must be born again" (John 3:3). We must understand this. No matter how humbly we come to the table, if the sinful mind is hostile to God and unable to submit to its law (Romans 8:7), our table manners are going to be suspect.
Second, without the appeal to a common standard for truth, there is no longer any adequate basis for public or even private morality. Excluded are universal notions of right and wrong which according to Paul are written on the heart and conform to the Law of Moses (Romans 2:15 ). Society once appealed to them to restrain evil and selfishness. Now, those moral traditions are eroding and a new generation has risen up that bases morality more on personal preferences, with man at the center, than on universal principles revealed by God.
Postmodern man asserts his right to define truth and morality for himself. However, he is more despairing of finding truth and less certain than ever who he is and why he is here. The five transitions surveyed above suggest a common thread of difference between the biblical worldview and postmodernism that leads to this despair. All five continue the movement, begun in the Enlightenment, away from a God-centered view toward a view of life and towards reality with man at the center. We have rejected God’s truth for individual truth and the Bible’s metanarrative for radical pluralism. We have dismissed even a nuanced foundationalism that asserts the existence of objective knowledge, even one that calls for more humility in grasping that knowledge. However, the reasoning of the coherentists keeps leading back to man as the final arbiter of the real, and this road leads to nowhere. In hermeneutics the meaning of the author used to be seen as a reference point for transcendent truths rooted in the self-revelation of God through the written text of Scripture. Now, in the postmodern view, such meaning is irrelevant because it is either unknowable or nonexistent.
Postmodernism leaves people with no place to stand. In some ways, it is nobler than modernism because it admits the illusion of overconfidence in science and reason. However, it offers no universal answer for the human dilemma, no real hope for tomorrow. What a striking contrast to Paul’s God-centered confession in Romans 11:36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things”! We are living in a moment of tremendous opportunity for the Gospel.
IV. How Should We Minister in Postmodern Times?
A. Recover an emphasis on doctrinal Christianity
I welcome the postmodern critique of modernism’s
overconfidence in reason. No human mind can achieve a transcendent position
from which to make absolute truth statements about life apart from God’s
word. However, we must not forget that postmodernism is not a return to
the transcendent God of the Bible. The God of
There are encouraging signs of a conservative resurgence within American Christianity. These trends are documented in Tom Oden’s The Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Life in Christianity, in Colleen Carroll’s The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy, and in movements like the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and various confessing church movements within mainline denominations (Oden 140-46; Zahl 171-82).
On the other hand, there is also evidence of continued confusion in the culture and among many who identify themselves as Christians but who also are avid readers of New Age books like The Road Less Traveled, The Celestine Prophecy, and The Seven Laws of Spiritual Success (Fuller 9). We live in a day when doctrine is in decline, and the experiential elements of religion and spirituality are more important to postmodern seekers. Karen Armstrong recently wrote, “We cannot return to the spirituality of the premodern world, but moving forward to a less exclusive, absolute, and objective concept of God will also bring theology more closely in line with the dynamic of our time” (22). In the past, spirituality was tied to a comprehensive belief system that valued doctrinal clarity, intellectual agreement, and a genuine personal faith. Today, the emphasis on personal choice, individualism, and a consumer mentality has led to the general belief that “beliefs and doctrine must be in sync with one’s life experiences” (18).
Instead of attending a liturgical church, where the great christological consensus of the early church is confessed in the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds, or a conservative evangelical church, where strong expository preaching feeds truth to hearts and minds, you can attend Matthew Fox’s Sunday night New Age Techno Cosmic Mass in San Francisco. The program for the Mass reads, ”The Techno Cosmic Mass is a radical new way of worshiping which blends Western liturgical tradition with ecstatic music and dance, urban shamanism, multimedia imagery, and Eastern and indigenous spiritual elements to create a multicultural, intergenerational, and ecumenical form of worship” (Cimino and Lattin 25). Consider the words to a song sung during the service as the people dance to diversity:
One life, one breath, one Earth, one revelation,
We all share creation: the common denomination.
So I bow to the Tao and thank Brahmin
We all have creation in common. (Cimino and Lattin 26)
The only true truth in this worship service appears to be that the greater the diversity the better the worship.
How do you preach Christ to a man who no longer believes in the existence of truth? Without question, we should engage the postmodern view of truth critically. There are serious holes in the more radical elements of postmodernism through which biblical truth can move, and we need to know what those holes are. However, in our engagement we must remember that the Gospel is still the power of God to save (Romans 1:16) and that the Gospel is the narrative of the specific historical acts of God in Christ’s incarnation, passion and resurrection that correspond directly to the statements of Scripture about those acts. In fact, Paul says that if the resurrection of Christ did not happen, his entire message is in vain and faith in Christ is useless (1 Corinthians 15:12 -19). The Gospel is loaded with objective doctrinal content. The truth of this message is what God uses to convict the world (modern and postmodern included) of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11). To engage the anti-doctrinal stance of postmodernism, we must first consider the Bible’s view of truth. 5 How does the Bible speak of truth?
First, the Bible speaks of truth as objective. The Bible speaks of truth as real and corresponding to the way things really are. Of course, Scripture often describes realities our finite minds can only partially grasp from our limited perspective. We walk by faith and not by sight. Yet, that does not make the realities less real or statements about them invalid.
Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” because Jesus claimed to have come into the world to testify to “the” truth (John 18:37 -38). Jesus claimed to be that truth in person (John 14:6), but he also implied to Pilate that truth existed objectively for him to testify to it and for Pilate to grasp it. Paul spoke of truth as being there, too, when he said he “received” a set of fundamental doctrines from Christ that could be “passed on” to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 11:23; 15:1-3).
New Testament examples abound of the apostolic awareness of a specific body of doctrinal content given by Jesus and taught by the church. Jesus acknowledged to the Father that he gave his disciples the very “words” that were given to him (John 17:8; cf. 12:48 -50). He spoke of the Holy Spirit teaching “all things” and reminding us of “everything” Jesus said (John 14:25 -26). The Holy Spirit would not simply bring an intuitive awareness of God to our hearts. He would do it in accordance with the specific verbal utterances of Christ.
Therefore, Paul could challenge Timothy to pass on faithfully “the things” he had heard Paul say in the presence of many witnesses (2 Timothy 2:2) even as he continued in “what” he had “learned and had become convinced of” (2 Timothy 3:14). Peter also could speak of relying on the “knowledge” he had of God as sufficient by the power of God for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3-4).
Second, the Bible speaks of truth as coming from the outside, i.e. “from above.” When Peter confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus told him, “[T]his was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 16:16 -17). Truth in the Bible is revealed, not ascertained by individuals or limited to the linguistic constructs of a particular community. Christ, the word of God (John 1:1) and the source of truth (John 1:17 ), came from heaven and became a man full of truth so he could make God known (John 1:14 , 18).
Third, the Bible speaks of truth in an absolute and totalizing way that excludes all other claims to truth. When Jesus told his disciples, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” he excluded every non-Christian metanarrative (John 14:6). The apostles spoke in the same totalizing way when they said, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jude called the church to contend for the faith entrusted “once for all” to the saints (Jude 3). The doctrinal content of the faith was given once and was binding on all.
Fourth, the Bible speaks of truth as accessible
to the mind and heart. God called
Fifth, the Bible speaks of truth as the means by which God changes us. We become what we think about continuously (Proverbs 23:7). If we meditate on the law of God, we will be like a fruitful tree planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:2-3) because the good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart (Luke 6:45). We set our minds on what the Spirit of God desires (Romans 8:5) and are transformed as we renew our minds according to the truth (i.e. the opposite of the pattern or mold of this world) (Romans 12:2). For this reason, Jesus asked the Father to sanctify us by God’s word of truth (John 17:17 ). God’s word is the instrumental means by which He works to change us.
Sixth, the Bible speaks of truth as something that should be separated from error. We are called to separate truth from falsehood (1 John 4:6). Paul challenged Timothy to keep what he had heard from him as “the pattern of sound teaching” and to guard it as a deposit entrusted to him (2 Timothy 1:13 -14; cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 ). Paul told Timothy to identify men like Jannes and Jambres who oppose the truth and whose folly would soon be clear to everyone (2 Timothy 3:7-8). Paul told Titus that an elder “must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (Titus 1:9; cf. 2:1). Jude challenged the church to “contend” not just for faith but for “the” faith (Jude 3), which emphasized its specific content as opposed to the false teachers he went on to oppose in his letter, who denied the identity of Christ stated propositionally as our “only Sovereign and Lord” (Jude 4).
Let me quickly add that a commitment to theological fidelity must be matched by humility and graciousness. Doctrinal disputes tend to bring out the worst in people. Warriors for truth who forget that they have nothing that was not given to them (1 Corinthians 4:7) do not win many hearts. So, with a pure heart and a spirit not given to being quarrelsome, we should instruct gently in the hope that God will grant repentance (2 Timothy 2:23 -25).
Seventh, the Bible speaks of us as limited in our ability to know all the truth. Can we know all truth exhaustively? No, that kind of presumption is what the modernists did with reason. The mind is a gift from the Creator but worthless without his grace to redeem our fallen condition. Our minds were formerly darkened in their understanding (Ephesians 4:18 ), and, though we are new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17 ), our minds are still impacted by sin. Furthermore, God has not chosen to tell us everything. To search out a matter may be the glory of kings, but it is also the glory of God to conceal it (Proverbs 25:2). There are secret things that belong to the Lord alone (Deuteronomy 29:29), and He will not be put in the dock by us.
Christians should accept what the Bible says about how our sin and finiteness limit our objectivity. We see through a glass darkly. We come to knowledge as fellow pilgrims, admitting our sinfulness and limitations as historically situated creatures. It humbles us, especially if we define truth in terms of God's point of view. We are not God and should not claim to see the world as well as God can. We can construct logical systems that approximate and reflect the truth fairly objectively. However, a system that explicates the final and complete truth is impossible for anyone but God, and He has not chosen to tell us everything. Neither has He invited us to view things from His throne in heaven.
Yet, we should never lose the nerve to say, "This is what God's word says." An understanding that we are finite and fallible must not lead us to reject the idea that there is absolute truth we are called to proclaim. How does this help since we are not God? We, more than the rest, should not despair about truth. Our understanding of truth starts with the Bible and culminates in Jesus Christ (John 5:39 ; 14:6). There is a final and objective truth we should humbly and courageously seek to know and make known.
If Scripture treats the doctrinal content of Christianity in such starkly objective terms, we should do the same. Evangelicals have too little patience for doctrine. Part of the problem lies with ministers and teachers who make doctrine appear dry and disengaged from life. Furthermore, evangelicals rightly emphasize conversion, but when little is taught about God other than what is needed for salvation, faith and worship become shallow.
What should be emphasized today are the great doctrinal truths of Scripture that will cut through the fog of non-doctrinal spirituality so popular in recent years. People need to hear about God’s Sovereignty and holiness and their sin and depravity as the Law is preached in all its God-exalting conscience-searching thoroughness. They also need to hear about the incarnation—how God did more than reveal himself in general terms in creation. He spoke to us through a Son, through an objective special revelation. Christ’s cross, resurrection, repentance, and forgiveness of sin need to be declared to all nations, cultures, and people groups in the hope that many will come to know the truth. A revival of doctrinal Christianity is in essence a revival of the knowledge of God. This is what we should seek. 6
B. See the power of the Bible’s Story and its stories to carry its truths to the heart
A large part of the world’s population communicates in an oral rather than written fashion. They find stories easier to remember than discursive or logically structured presentations (Erickson, Truth or Consequences 202). Stories are easier to remember than lists of propositions. Stories help hearers lower their guard against hearing truth because they allow listeners to stand at a distance from the plot and action and consider what the characters are considering. Stories also are the way cultures tend to organize the chaotic experience of life into a meaningful whole because all of life has a narrative or journey-like quality to its experience (Crites 65-66).
However, the challenge with stories for communicating biblical truth is that they need to be interpreted (Erickson, Truth or Consequences 282). Jesus interpreted his parables with specific theological content and meaning (e.g. Matthew 13:18 -23, 36-43). The tension between propositionalism and narrative arises when we refuse to step outside our particular cultural frame of reference and allow the Bible to criticize imbalances in our emphasis. Modernistic preaching erred too far in favor of structuring sermons as lists of abstract propositional statements to be proposed and defended. Postmodern preaching runs the risk of focusing exclusively on telling the story and not explaining how it bears witness to timeless realities that transcend each story and speak concretely to life. Some postmodern evangelicals are so excited to point out evangelicalism’s apparent addiction to propositions that they seem to deny the legitimacy of a proposition as a concept.
In the Bible, we do not find this imbalance. The Bible emphasizes both story and doctrine. The earliest summary of apostolic preaching contains both doctrine and narrative related to Christ’s death for sin and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-6). In Romans 10:9-10, the doctrinal confession that Jesus is Lord is tied inextricably to God’s narrative action in raising Jesus from the dead. Narrative and doctrine appeal to and support each other. God’s story of redemption was retold often throughout the Bible (compare Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Joshua 24:1-13; Psalm 106, 106, Acts 6-8; 10).
The worldview of the Bible is not presented in tightly worded propositions like the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes. No system is set forth in a comprehensive fashion like a systematic theology or confessional statement. We would not feel the need to write confessions as summaries of our beliefs if it did. Rather, the ongoing metanarrative of redemption, of God saving a people who would be for the praise of His grace, is the theological macrostructure of each book and individual episode in salvation-history. God’s actions are based on His character and promises. Propositions and narratives work together to take truth to both mind and heart. In Dorothy Sayers’s words, “the Dogma is the drama” (27). Yet, even through narrative, Scripture bears a consistent witness to a core set of truths, as we have discussed above.
Preaching that is neither modern nor postmodern but biblical will tell the great stories and The Story of God’s action in the world to save, and it will explain the doctrines these stories reveal. Preaching needs both narrative and doctrine because the Christian life is tied to both. In Jeremiah 6:16, God told his people, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” “Ancient paths” means that the Law of Moses transcended time. It served as an objective doctrinal standard for successive generations. A “path” must be followed. Bible truth always encounters us on the path of life, not in an abstract modernist science lab. We need both for the journey as we relate our story to the timeless truths of God’s Story.
C. Challenge relativistic thinking head-on.
Common sense, like natural law, is a gift from God by design to help us spot intuitively intellectual theories that are contrary to common sense (Cabal 11). Postmodern ethicists are especially vulnerable to direct challenge. Two quotations, one from Groothuis and the other from Beckwith and Koukl, are instructive here:
On the one hand, they want autonomy from God and moral law; on the other, they still intuit standards of morality beyond themselves. As autonomous from God, they realize that objective moral truth is impossible; as creatures made in God’s image, they realize objective moral truth is inescapable. (Groothuis 208)
People can wax eloquent in a discussion on moral relativism, but they will complain when someone cuts in front of them in line. They’ll object to the unfair treatment they receive at work and denounce injustice in the legal system. They’ll criticize crooked politicians who betray the public trust; they will condemn intolerant fundamentalists who force their view on others. Yet these objections are all meaningless in the confused world of moral relativism. (Beckwith and Koukl 143)
The problem with relativism is that it keeps getting stuck on its own objections.
D. Do not retreat from seeking the biblical author’s historical meaning.
Reader-oriented criticism has helped us look more closely at the human factor in interpretation. However, we do not have to go the whole route of reader-response criticism to acknowledge that even the most objective interpreter describes a biblical author’s meaning with his own words, in his own language, and even in light of his own grid of personal experiences. Exegesis and exposition are distinct in focus but inseparable in practice (Smart 42-43).
Yet, it is unnecessary to suppose that a text’s meaning is indeterminate unless it is concretized in terms of the individual experience of the reader. Reader-oriented criticism wrongly presupposes that interpreters cannot limit their involvement in establishing a text’s meaning adequately enough to hear it as the author intended. Responsible interpretation acknowledges the socio-cultural context of readers, yet it does not surrender its authority to the subjective involvement of readers.
Biblical authority does not equate God’s will with every human interpretation of Scripture. However, it does require there to be a single historical meaning that can be understood, or at least aimed at by the church, with the help of the Holy Spirit who works in the process of interpretation to guide us into the truth (John 16:13).
E. Do not let the pluralists press you into their mold.
All religions are not the same. The sincere adherents of the world’s major religions will tell you that. There are oppressive theologies and ideologies, and wrong things have been done to others in the name of Christ. Yet, our message is either for the world, or it is for no one. The Bible is not politically correct about God’s demand that all men everywhere should repent (Acts 17:30 ).
Eric Auerbach compared the Bible to other ancient epics like the great Homeric poems and said the Bible’s narrator in effect exerted a tyrannical claim to be the only true worldview. In doing this, the Bible excludes all rival claims by placing the history of all mankind in the context of biblical destiny. The Scriptures do not seek to please and flatter as Homer did when he showed the heroes in their ordinary life. Biblical narratives “seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected, we are rebels.” Biblical narrative seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our life in its world, feel ourselves to be elements in its structure of universal history (12).
No doubt we should be winsome and compassionate in our sharing. Yet we must also remember that the Gospel is foolishness and offensive to the perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18 , 23). Consider what Jesus said about the offense his message would cause: “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:20 ). If they hate the light, they will hate those who are called the light of the world and commanded to let their light shine (Matthew 5:14 -16). For this reason, we accept persecution as the cost of living a godly life in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:12 ). Jesus said, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15:18 ); “[A] time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God” (John 16:2). He also prayed to the Father, “I have given them [my disciples] your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of this world” (John 17:14 ).
The promise of resistance should cause Christians to count the cost, but we cannot be silent. We have been sent on behalf of the Gospel to plead with men to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:18 -20). D. A. Carson reminds us, “Christians are never less than heraldic; they are proclaimers; they discharge an ambassadorial function; they are preachers” (509). We must preach Jesus.
F. Hold out the hope of the Gospel.
The last point is simply a reminder that Christians are servants of the word (Luke 1:2), and that word brings hope. Followers of Christ are prisoners of hope (Zechariah 9:12). The Gospel has captured your mind and heart. You know you were made for more than your current experience. The longing in your heart signifies that you were created for greater pleasures and enjoyments than this life can offer. Psalm 16:11 says of God that there are “eternal pleasures at [His] right hand,” which is why you can say to your soul, “Put your hope in God” (Psalm 42:5).
His revelation is real, and He is from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 90:1-2), while the postmodern moment is just that, a moment. The movement is defined more by what it knows it is not (“We’re not modernists!”) than by what it wants to be (“Free to be me!”). Yet, people will not tolerate a vacuum of cynicism indefinitely. They want a constructive alternative that brings hope. The hope of the Gospel is the only thing that will satisfy the hungry heart. The hope of Christ, objectively revealed in history and personally experienced in community with other believers, is the answer to postmodernism for our generation.
Notes
1 All biblical quotations in this article are taken from the NIV translation.
2 Jack Rogers and Donald McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (New York: Harper, 1979).
3 See John D. Woodbridge, “Biblical Authority: Toward an Evaluation of the Rogers and McKim Proposal,” Biblical Authority and Conservative Perspectives, ed. Douglas Moo (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1997), 9-64; and Paul Helseth, “Re-imagining the Princeton Mind: Postconservative Evangelicalism, Old Princeton , and the Rise of Neo-Fundamentalism,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45.3 (September 2002), 427-50.
4 Alister McGrath, A Passion for Truth: The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1996), 169-73; Stanley Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Age (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 70-80, 86-102; Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 83-93, 97; Leonard Sweet, “The Quest for Community,” Leadership, http:/christianitytoday. com/le/914/914033.html.
5 For more on the Bible concept of truth, see Roger Nicole, “The Biblical Concept of Truth,” in Scripture and Truth, eds. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 287-98; Andrew Smith, “Truth,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. Walter Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 783-85; and Anthony Thiselton, “Truth,” New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), 874-902.
6 For more discussion of the importance of doctrine today, see Paul Raabe, “Reintegrating Biblical Theology and Dogmatics,” in A Confessing Theology for Postmodern Times, ed. Michael S. Horton (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000), 217-228, especially 225-28; David Mills, “Necessary Doctrines: Why Dogma Is Needed and Why Substitutes Fail,” in Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century, eds. Kenneth Tanner and Christopher Hall (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002), 106-19; and Groothuis, 111-38.
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ANDY CHAMBERS <chambers@mobap.edu> is Vice President for Student Development and Assistant Professor of Bible at Missouri Baptist University. He earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla and an M.Div. and a Ph.D. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Fort Worth, Texas. Chambers pastored in St. Louis for six years before he joined the faculty at MBU in 1997. He has published over seventy articles in the field of Christian ministry.
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