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BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING IN A POST-MODERN WORLD

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

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BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING IN A POST-MODERN WORLD

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  1. BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING IN A POST-MODERN WORLD Biblical Christian Living

  2. WHY BOTHER? • Romans 12;1,2 “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. Biblical Christian Living

  3. WHY BOTHER? • I Peter 3:15, “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 Biblical Christian Living

  4. WHY BOTHER? • II Corinthians 10:5, “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.” Biblical Christian Living

  5. WHY BOTHER? • Matthew 28:19,20, “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.” Biblical Christian Living

  6. INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT • Pre-Modern World • Modern World • Post-Modern World Biblical Christian Living

  7. 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. Biblical Christian Living

  8. PRE-MODERN WORLD • There was a belief in the referential understanding of language; that is, “language referred to something beyond itself,” Erickson, EI, 100. Biblical Christian Living

  9. 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 Biblical Christian Living

  10. 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 Biblical Christian Living

  11. 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 Biblical Christian Living

  12. MODERN WORLD • The Modern Period embraced the objectivity of truth, although “more nearly Aristotelian.” Erickson, EI, 100 Biblical Christian Living

  13. PLATO VS ARISTOTLE Aristotle Plato Ideal Ideal Biblical Christian Living

  14. 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. Biblical Christian Living

  15. 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. Biblical Christian Living

  16. 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 foundation’s for one’s 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. Biblical Christian Living

  17. MODERN WORLD • Naturalism (materialism) became the primary mode of explanation, from Hume’s skepticism to Darwin’s evolutionism. Deism is in this sense a betrayal of classical theism and an accommodation to naturalism. Biblical Christian Living

  18. 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. Biblical Christian Living

  19. MODERN WORLD • Modernity depends on “meta-narratives” (“universal “narratives” or accounts of reality, of the way things are”) . . . .These “meta-narratives include Marxism, Hegel’s 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. Biblical Christian Living

  20. MODERN WORLD • Modernity embraced individualism. “Truth being objective, individuals can discover it by their own efforts.” Erickson, Postmodernizing the Faith, 17. Biblical Christian Living

  21. 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 Biblical Christian Living

  22. POST-MODERN WORLD • Postmodernism is that which follows modernity; modernity has run its course and is exhausted, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt. Biblical Christian Living

  23. POST-MODERN WORLD • *Oden argues for paleo-orthodoxy, a return to the classical orthodoxy of the early undivided church. Biblical Christian Living

  24. 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. Biblical Christian Living

  25. 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 Biblical Christian Living

  26. POST-MODERN WORLD • Belief in progress, in transcending the past, leads those who are sociologically modern to become intellectually postmodern. Erickson, PTF, 27. Biblical Christian Living

  27. 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, I:8. • “This despair began in the discipline of philosophy, and spread successively to art, music, general culture, and finally, theology.” Erickson, PTF, 65. Biblical Christian Living

  28. 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. Biblical Christian Living

  29. 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) Biblical Christian Living

  30. 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 Biblical Christian Living

  31. 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? Biblical Christian Living

  32. 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 Biblical Christian Living

  33. 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! Biblical Christian Living

  34. BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING IN A POST-MODERN WORLD Biblical Christian Living

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