THEME: Postmodernism has dominated our culture and has tried to expel
Christian faith from the public arena. It is a mind-closing tyranny. The true
church of Christ must stand up on the Word of God and must not be compliant to
these cultural trends.
QUESTIONS:
Where can we
see the signs of postmodernism in the society?
·
We live
in a time of prosperity; we live in a time of trouble. We are no longer seeing
the first signs of cultural trouble, but rather the indicators of advanced
decay. We are living in the midst of an intense season of cultural, political,
and moral conflict because postmodernism and Christian faith.
·
A
central dimension of this reality is the dawning of a post-Christian age. The
society has become so secularized that they can only be described as
post-Christian in composition, in culture, in theme, and in worldview and
understanding. We can look to the nations of Western Europe and see what a post-Christian
culture begins to look like
·
Look at
the cultural elites—the political elites, the legal elites, the judicial,
academic, and entertainment elites—look at them, and you will realize that they
are largely post-Christian in their mentality.
·
Postmodernism
redefines everything, including truth, beauty, dignity, and marriage. It is
expressed in art and music and literature.
·
We
understand the challenge of postmodernism to Christian truth.
·
Tolerance
is perverted into a radical secularism that is anything but tolerant.
·
The
main pillar is dedication to moral relativism, and an understanding that truth
has no objective or absolute basis whatsoever.
What can be used to demonstrate the closing of the postmodern mind?
·
Nihilistic
philosophy of literary deconstructionism: it is the reader who comes to the
text with meaning and determines what will be found within the text.
·
Unfortunately,
deconstructionism has also found its way into many pulpits. It is now up to us
to decide what it should mean, so we can turn the Biblical text on its head. The
biblical text, they argue, has to be understood in terms of our modern
understanding. Modern psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and cultural
studies have something to bring to the interpretation of the text, they argue,
something to tell us which the human authors of Scripture missed.
Rev 22:18-19
I warn everyone who
hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them,
God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes
words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in
the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
·
The
closing of the postmodern mind is the opposite of what postmodernism claimed to
be its aspiration. Postmodernism claimed that this new postmodern age—with the
end of modernity, the demise of scientific objectivity, and the openness to new
forms and understandings of truth—would lead to an opening of the mind. But as
is always the case, the totalitarian opening of the mind always ends with the
radical closing of the mind.
·
In the
world of postmodernism, all institutions are plastic, and all principles are
liquid. We can reshape anything. Nothing is given. Nothing is objective. We can
take any institution, be it government or church, or marriage, or family, and
we can make of it what we will.
·
Across
much of Western Europe there is legislation in which it is can be considered a
crime to speak of the sinfulness of any sexual lifestyle, and of homosexuality in
particular.
·
In
Belgium and the Netherlands, there are now official protocols for killing
children and infants in hospitals. 31 percent of pediatricians have admitted to
killing babies, and 45 percent of neonatologists have admitted to euthanizing
infants—even without informing the parents that that is what happened to their
child.
·
A
recently published book by Sam Harris entitled The End of Faith even claimed
that faith itself is a form of terrorism, and that the United States can no
longer afford its long cherished ideal of religions toleration and religious
liberty. Thus, secularism is trying to restrict religious freedom.
How has the church react to postmodernist domination of the culture?
·
In the
past decades, the church has surrendered in a spirit of cultural compliance. If
we continue to be complacent in this culture, if we are compliant in the face
of its demands and expectations, then there will be no preaching of the gospel.
·
The
secular argument—which is the prevalent position in the academy—and argues that
Christians have no right to make Christian arguments in the public square.
·
[The
society accepts only secularist arguments, forgetting secularism too is a
religion.]
·
[example:
a jurist was accused of biased because he considered the sentence using his
Christian principles.]
·
There
are many who will say that what must be pressed in this debate over same-sex
marriage are the deleterious social effects of undermining marriage – and leave
all theologically-based arguments out of the picture. That argument, however,
is not only wrong in principle, it is a pragmatic failure.
·
Any
church that would normalize and celebrate what Scripture condemns has set
itself in direct opposition to revelation, reason, and the witness of the
martyrs. Many churches have been just that.
·
The
entire biblical truth claim is under assault in today’s culture. We see the
tightening grip in the tenacity of all this onslaught. We see a culture that
increasingly loves darkness rather than the light. We can see the logic of the
culture, and we can see that the church has been compliant too long.
·
In a
post-Christian age, confronted with the challenge of the postmodern mind, the
Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is called to be a post-compliant people.
Anything less is just another form of spiritual surrender.
What should our reaction be?
·
We tend
to swing like a pendulum between a naive optimism and a wrongful pessimism. In
reality, we have no right to be either optimistic or pessimistic. To be either
optimistic or pessimistic is to be deluded, and in some sense to deny the
sovereignty of God.
·
We have
no right to be optimistic, but we have no right not to be hopeful.
·
Be
ready, be alert, be watchful. Be a watchman on the wall. Have your eyes open.
Be ready for action.
What are the main points in postmodernism? (from reading last year)
·
Rejection of Reason & Objectivity: There is no single world view that
captures reality. Reason is to be distrusted because there is no way to know
which person’s reason is reliable. There is no such thing as objectivity.
·
Rejection of Absolute Truth: There is no “truth” to appeal to for
understanding history and culture. There are no moral absolutes. Everything is
relative.
·
Suspicion towards Ideas: Ideas are cultural creations. Texts,
whether religious or philosophical or literary, do not have intrinsic meaning.
We need to be deeply suspicious of all ideas given the way that ideas are used
as tools to oppress and confine humans.
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THEME: Mainline Protestantism continues its slide into doctrinal oblivion.
This is illustrated by the heretic moderator of the United Church of Canada.
QUESTIONS:
What has happened to mainline churches?
·
Over
the past century, virtually every essential doctrine of the Christian faith has
been denied by liberal theologians and church leaders, usually without
sanction.
How is the moderator Phipps heretical?
·
Phipps
denied the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the existence of
heaven and hell, and, most directly, the deity of Christ.
·
“I
don’t believe Jesus is the only way to God. I don’t believe he rose from the
dead as scientific fact.” After being criticized, he apologized, for hurt
feelings but not for heresy and is unrepentant.
How did the church react?
·
Evangelicals
are outraged, and have accused the moderator of standing outside both the Bible
and the denomination’s statement of faith. Their outrage, however, has been
lost on the United Church’s bureaucracy.
·
The
church’s General Council stood behind the moderator, noting that “Rarely, if
ever, do we use doctrinal standards to exclude anyone from the circle of
belonging.” Evidently, the doctrinal standards of the United Church of Canada
are there for the taking or the leaving-even for the moderator.
·
The
true scandal is in the church’s refusal to deal with the heresy and call the
moderator to account. This doctrinal cowardice indicates just how far the
church has fallen, and how empty its confession now stands.
·
Athanasius,
the great bishop theologian who opposed the Arian heretics in the fourth
century, triumphed over the heresy at the Council of Nicaea. But not a few
years afterwards, the same doctrinal problem occurred.
·
Conclusion:
True believers can only escape from these churches. In evangelical churches,
everyone must be alert and stop any slightest tendency to heresy.
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