Addressing the Tolerance of Post-Modernism — Phil Johnson

Postmodernism and Biblical Christianity

What I want to do in this hour is explain the concept of post-modernism as simply as possible and explore the question of whether post-modernism is compatible with biblical Christianity. And let me just cut to the chase by addressing the second part of that just as clearly and straightforwardly as possible at the outset.

I want to tell you plainly to begin with that I am convinced that post-modernism is inherently incompatible with biblical Christianity. And in fact, the most essential elements of the post-modernist perspective are hostile to the fundamental truth claims of Scripture.

And for that reason, I would argue that a post-modernist mindset involves some positively sinful ways of thinking. That's a pretty strong statement, and I realize there are many people, and there may even be some here today, who think that the church needs to adapt to post-modernism, to embrace post-modernism.

And if we don't do that, we can't reach a post-modern society. But the error in that approach is absolutely no different from the error of our forefathers a hundred years ago, who some of them tried to devise a modernist brand of Christianity in order to reach a modern world.

The heart of biblical truth is lost in the process. And you understand, I think, that modernism was inherently anti-Christian. That represented a wholesale rejection of some vital biblical truths. And therefore, modernism proved to be incompatible with Christianity.

And most of us, I think, can clearly see that these days. And that's why the movements that most of us belong to, the churches that most of us belong to, the schools that most of us studied at, all remained evangelical when the mainline denominations embraced modernism.

Our spiritual forefathers were a handful of leaders in the church who a hundred years ago saw clearly that modernism was incompatible with biblical truth, and they were willing to fight the modernist trend.

And in precisely the same way, the post-modernist's way of looking at the world is fundamentally anti-Christian. Both modernism and post-modernism are exactly the kinds of evil ideology the Apostle Paul described in 2 Corinthians 10, verses 4 and 5, where he spoke of our spiritual warfare this way.

He said, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, for casting down arguments and every high thing or pretension that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

Paul was saying that spiritual warfare is an ideological battle. Yes, our main enemies are demonic principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, the purveyors of spiritual wickedness in high places.

But the battle is an ideological one, not a mystical one. And that's why the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We don't fight with swords and guns, but with truth, and specifically the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

You know, most of you know, I think, that spiritual warfare is not supposed to be waged by shouting verbal rebukes at evil spirits or by using spiritual incantations that invoke the blood of Christ or any other kind of magical or superstitious nonsense.

You know, demons aren't like vampires who can be chased away with the sign of the cross. But real spiritual warfare, what Scripture describes as spiritual warfare, requires us to refute false ideas with the truth.

That's where the battle lies. True spiritual warfare, according to this passage in 2 Corinthians 10, involves the tearing down of ideological strongholds and false belief systems. And what I want to show you in this hour is that postmodernism is based on an erroneous set of unbiblical beliefs, and we need to oppose it with the clear and careful application of biblical truth.

And I think my reasons for saying that are going to become clear as we go. So let me start with some broad definitions. And let me say also up front that because of the constraints of time and the nature of my subject here, there is no possibility of treating this in a comprehensive way.

And that's not what I'm trying to do. My goal in this hour is to simplify, to try to reduce the complexity of what we're dealing with. And that means I'm going to paraphrase. I'm going to paint the picture for you in broad strokes, and I'm going to streamline my description of postmodernism as much as possible.

I have to say that because if you've ever argued with a postmodernist, you know that one of the first things he'll do is criticize all your definitions. And so I just want to acknowledge that I don't pretend to be giving you a detailed or finely nuanced presentation of all the flavors of postmodernism.

I'm just trying to give you a broad survey of the postmodern panorama so that you have a working picture in your mind of what this perspective looks like so that you can recognize it when you see it. Now, what is postmodernism?

It seems like we hear that word all the time, and it's a new one, really. It came into vogue in the mid -1980s, less than 20 years ago, and the term has really gotten around. And you may have the vague notion that postmodernism involves a denial that absolute truth may be objectively known.

And that is the central idea that gave rise to postmodernism. According to the typical postmodernist, reality itself is not objective. It's an individual concept constructed by the subjective mind. According to postmodernism, the subjectivity of the human mind makes it impossible to discover objective truth.

The postmodernist would say objectivity is just an illusion. Now, perhaps when you think of postmodernism, you also think of tolerance and diversity, because those are the primary virtues postmodernism has elevated above every other kind of moral value.

That's another one of the hallmarks of postmodernist thinking. Another one of postmodernists' other outstanding features is its suspicion of everything, every truth claim that is made with certainty or authority.

And in fact, I would say the postmodernist really holds those sorts of truth claims in contempt. And I'll have more to say about that as we go. But all of those things are classic characteristics of postmodern thought.

Here's a couple more. Postmodernism generally prefers subjectivity to objectivity and ambiguity over clarity. Postmodernists are skeptical of logic. They also distrust history. They question every form of dogmatism.

Postmodernists, as I said, they don't even like authoritative definitions. You try to define something clearly, and the average postmodernist will nitpick endlessly over every ambiguity, every exception to the rule, every supposed paradox that challenges your definition.

They will try to exploit every generalization you make to try to make it appear absurd. They like to blur the line over every dichotomy. And all of that is how postmodernism's essential relativism plays out in practical terms.

But most important, postmodernism is generally hostile to every worldview that makes any kind of universal truth claim. In fact, it's fair to say that the whole idea of a worldview, or a comprehensive philosophy of life, is about as un-postmodern as it's possible to be.

Postmodernism might be defined in a nutshell as the belief that no single worldview offers a universally and objectively true perspective on all of life and reality. So, postmodernism is a kind of systematic skepticism.

It's not a constructive way of thinking. It's always deconstructive. And in fact, the postmodern hermeneutic on all of life and literature is known by that technical name, deconstructionism. And if you've taken a college course in literature at any point since 1985, you are undoubtedly familiar with that term, deconstructionism.

It speaks of an approach to handling texts that aims at unraveling their objective meaning by exposing unquestioned assumptions, by attacking inconsistencies, by exploiting ambiguities and whatnot. But in the process of deconstruction, the postmodernist isn't trying to express any clear viewpoint of his own.

Nothing is ultimately denied or affirmed. No true postmodernist would ever deliberately argue that any given proposition is right or wrong. That's not the point of the exercise. The only goal is to eliminate certainty, to question authority, to obliterate clarity, and to undermine the very notion of objectivity.

And that, you could say, is the postmodernist agenda. And I'll try to unpack all of that as we go. Now, you might be thinking, okay, if postmodernism canonizes tolerance above all other virtues and they resist saying anything is wrong or right, how might a postmodernist make a negative critique of Phil Johnson's critique of postmodernism?

And obviously, here's the answer. They would use the classic deconstructive technique. They would probably call me irresponsible for even trying to simplify and explain something as complex as postmodernism.

They would quibble about every sweeping statement I might make. They would use pedophagic arguments to try to overthrow every definition or every dichotomy I make. And they would call me naive for even attempting to clarify what they insist cannot be objectively explained or understood.

They would laugh at me for trying to explain postmodernism. And in all likelihood, an experienced postmodernist would not come out and say I'm wrong unless he really lost his temper with me. Obviously, if truth cannot be objectively known for certain, if reality and truth are whatever the individual imagines them to be, if each person determines what is true for himself and if reality is merely a construct of the human mind, then one person's perspective on truth is ultimately just as good as another person's.

And so they can't really say I'm wrong. And in fact, they would probably claim that the only reason I can say they are wrong is because I'm just an intolerant person clinging to outmoded modern ideas.

But their own postmodern tolerance makes it distasteful for them to have any kind of dialogue about who is right or who is wrong. Again, that's not the point of the exercise. And so even if they hated my critique of their philosophy, they probably wouldn't say my view is wrong.

Instead, they might say it's arrogant. They might say it's naive or outmoded or xenophobic or culturally biased. It marginalizes other people. It's judgmental. I'm using obsolete paradigms or whatever, and I'm sure you've heard all of those things.

Or perhaps adjectives like those have even been applied to your sermons when you preach. Don't be intimidated by that kind of rhetoric, especially when it's utterly divorced from any kind of rational justification.

Postmodernism's Attack on Preaching and Evangelical Authority

In fact, one of my greatest concerns about the brands of postmodernism that have infiltrated the evangelical movement is the way postmodernism deliberately undermines the authority and the clarity of evangelical preaching.

You can probably already see why that would be the case. And yesterday, I think, in one of my seminars, I quoted from a postmodernist pastor who claims preaching is dead. He said preaching is violence against the audience because it forces them to subject themselves to this thing that they don't even want to hear.

That was his perspective on preaching. You see how that fits this postmodernist mindset. And perhaps you recognize some of the typical dialogue of the postmodern culture in those expressions that I just used.

Marginalizing people, naive judgmentalism, faulty paradigms, all those sort of catch phrases that you hear thrown around. What you are hearing is an echo of postmodernist thinking. Postmodernism has become the dominant factor in the culture and the public discourse of our generation.

Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern Worldviews

Now, it might help us to understand postmodernism by seeing how it arose. It's possible to break down the course of Western thought and literature and art into three broad periods. And what I want to do is help you make a chart that you can take with you to show some of the things that we're talking about.

So if you've got a piece of paper there, it doesn't need to be a big one. I want you to draw a grid with nine slots in it. So draw like a tic-tac-toe grid on your paper. Or for you Brits, that would be knots and crosses.

Draw like a tic-tac-toe grid there and be sure to make it big enough so you can write something in each box. So you have nine boxes, three columns with three rows. And each of the columns are going to represent one of the three periods of Western thought.

And the first we'll call pre-modern. You can write that above, not in the slot, but above the leftmost column on your grid. Label that column pre-modern. And this era would extend from the birth of science and philosophy in the Greek culture until the age of the Enlightenment.

So roughly from the time of Thales to the French Revolution. That's a long time. And that would mean that the pre-modern era of Western intellectual history covers some 2 ,500 years. Now, obviously, over that span of time, multitudes of human philosophies and various worldviews arose.

Everything in the philosophical world from Plato's Republic to John Locke's empiricism would fall in the pre-modern era. And everything in the religious world, from Greek mythology to the paganism of the Druids and more.

There were multitudes of philosophies and religions and worldviews that flourished in the pre-modern era. But they all had three important things in common. First, they believed in objective ultimate truth.

And so you can write that in the top left-hand corner of your grid. Objective ultimate truth. Pre-modern people believed that whatever was ultimately true was objectively and transcendentally true. So that the same standard of ultimate truth was assumed to be true for everyone.

They believed in an objective reality. So that there's a reality that's true of the whole universe. And that reality is in some sense capable of being known, apprehended, perceived. And virtually all pre-modern worldviews made that assumption.

Second, in the pre-modern world, virtually all belief systems made room for the supernatural. And so in the center row of the left-hand column, write the word supernatural. Supernatural. Pre-modern people were certain that the limits of reality were not defined by the material visible world.

Second, in the pre-modern world, there was an almost universal belief in the supernatural realm. And even though various belief systems didn't necessarily agree on what the supernatural realm was like, they almost universally accepted the realm of the supernatural, the reality of the supernatural.

Third, in the pre-modern world, it was normally assumed that the foundation for ultimate truth was itself supernatural. All authority derived from God, or the gods, or the spirit world. And so in the bottom row of your left-hand column, write authority from God.

And another way of saying it is that along with the idea of ultimate truth, there was always an ultimate authority. Someone or something was perceived as the ultimate power in the universe. And that's why they saw the universe as a universe and not a multiverse.

That's why we use the word universe. And the ultimate authority in the universe was nearly always assumed to dwell in the supernatural realm. God, pagan gods, unseen spirits, or whatever. Now that was how people in the pre-modern world saw things.

They accepted without question the ideas of ultimate truth, supernaturalism, and a single central universal authority, supreme authority in the spiritual world. Those were non-negotiable and seldom-challenged concepts in the pre-modern world.

They were virtually universal presuppositions. They were the very foundations of human thought. But at the dawn of the Enlightenment, about the same time as the French Revolution, there was a massive paradigm shift in Western thought, and the world entered the so-called modern era.

And so atop the center column on your chart, write the label modern, the modern era. You might call this era the Age of Reason, after the title of the famous book Thomas Paine wrote in 1794. And that book more or less summed up the spirit of the modern era.

And Thomas Paine was kind of the midwife who helped birth modernity, modern thought. And the Age of Reason, both the book and the era, was an overt attack on biblical Christianity, and it elevated science and human reason to the position of highest authority.

Now, on point one, modern thinkers were in complete agreement with pre-modern thinkers. They assumed the necessity of objective, ultimate, universal truth. So you can write that in the top center box of your grid, objective, ultimate truth.

There was no change in thinking there. Moderns agreed with pre-moderns that whatever was really true was true in an objective sense. Ultimate truth was the same truth for everyone. Even though everyone didn't agree about what the ultimate truth was, they all agreed that whoever was right, the truth was true for everybody.

Now, on point two, in stark contrast to pre-modern thought, this changes. The modern mind became skeptical, dubious, cynical, unbelieving when it came to the supernatural. So you can write in the center box of your grid there, anti-supernatural.

Anti-supernatural. Modern philosophies did not necessarily deny everything supernatural, but they considered supernatural things irrelevant in the pursuit of truth. Modern thinkers said ultimate truth and knowledge are achieved only by scientific and rational means.

And so belief in supernatural realities and divine revelation was viewed as outmoded and superstitious. One author I read said this, while many Enlightenment thinkers did not completely reject belief in God, they banished God to the remotest realm of the transcendent.

If God did exist, He was neither concerned nor involved with His creation. Now, maybe a better way to say it would be this, distrust in the Almighty was virtually the hallmark of modern thought. And so on that point, belief in the supernatural, modern thought departed dramatically from pre-modern thought.

On point three, the issue of ultimate authority, the ground and foundation of truth, modern thought partly retained and partly departed from pre-modern philosophy. Remember, pre-moderns believed that truth is grounded in supernatural authority.

Modern minds retained the notion of an absolute central authority, but obviously they denied that that absolute authority was God or anything supernatural. Modernity placed a moratorium on God as the foundation of knowledge.

And instead, science and human reason became the supreme authorities. And so in the bottom center box of your grid, write this, authority from science and human reason. Authority from science and human reason.

So the modern world retained the notion of objective universal truths, but they jettisoned the notion of supernatural reality and therefore said the only authoritative truths are those that can be established by science or reason.

Now, obviously much of the world does still operate on modern assumptions, but modernism failed badly. And frankly, people who have retained a modern mindset are philosophically behind the times. They're just not with it philosophically.

The age of reason, the modern era, is over, thankfully. And the main results of modern thought were, if you think about it, what modern thought produced mostly were massive ideologies with centralized authoritarian control and utopian promises.

Fascism, communism, socialism, Marxism, Nazism, and similar 20th century social experiments all had their roots in modernism. We would include Darwinism in that list. All of them were fundamentally atheistic, humanistic, rationalistic systems.

All of them became tyrannical and oppressive. All of them failed, and they failed in dramatic ways. After two world wars and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the modern era was more or less declared dead by philosophers, by artists, by college professors, and by everyone.

The postmodern era had begun. So, above your right-hand column on your chart, write postmodern. Postmodern. Now, as I said, the premodern era lasted some 2 ,500 years. The modern era lasted less than 250 years.

And if the pace of worldly paradigm shifts keeps up, and I believe it might, this postmodern era could last less than 25 years. It might be over less than a decade from now. And I don't know what will replace it, but if evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived, as we're told in 2 Timothy 3 .13, secular philosophy is probably not going to get any better.

But meanwhile, it behooves us to understand the times in which we live and do all we can to tear down the strongholds of false ideology. So we need to understand the postmodern moment and be aware of the dangers it poses.

Postmodernism's Rejection of Objective Truth and Authority

Postmodernism is a radical reaction to the failure of modernism. It rejects virtually every distinctive of modernism, starting with the notion that truth can be objectively known. Now look at the chart you're making.

Remember, premoderns and modern thinkers both assumed that there is a single, universal standard of ultimate truth that is objectively knowable. Postmodernists aren't too sure that objective truth even exists, but if it does exist, they are pretty sure it can't be known.

And so they reject the first distinctive of both premodern and modern thought. In the top right-hand corner of your grid, write,. Objective ultimate truth is unknowable. Objective ultimate truth is unknowable.

Now, as for point two, remember that premoderns assumed the existence of a supernatural reality, and moderns either rejected or ignored everything supernatural. Postmoderns are willing to accept supernaturalism, but they have stripped the supernatural of any idea of authority.

The supernaturalism of postmodernism is a mystical supernaturalism, where every individual determines reality by what he perceives. And so in the middle right-hand box of your grid, you can write,. Mystical.

Mystical. Postmodernists don't apprehend supernatural realities by authoritative revelation. They do it by personal experience, feelings, and other subjective means. Think about it. If objective truth is unknowable, the only way to interpret any kind of reality, including God, is by personal experience.

In other words, since reality is ultimately a construct of the subjective mind, even God can be whatever you perceive Him to be. And so naturally, on the third point, the issue of authority, postmodernists disagree with both premodern and modern thought.

The postmodernists would say that there is no single central authority, supernatural or otherwise, and in a world that is completely subjective, the idea of authority just doesn't fit. So at the bottom right-hand of your box, of your grid, you can write,.

No ultimate authority. No ultimate authority. Postmodern religions are trying to construct a God without authority. He's a soft, pliable, avuncular, friendly, tolerant being. Pure love without any real authority.

And virtually all postmodern varieties of religion have this notion of God. You can see, perhaps, why the climate of postmodernism is one of the main things that has made the rise of open theism popular.

Open theism, a doctrine that strips God of His sovereignty and His authority, is perfectly suited to a postmodern age. And so there you have a chart that shows, in broad terms, how postmodernism compares to earlier ways of thinking.

That should give you a pretty good idea of where postmodernism collides with Christianity. And if you look at your chart, in each of the three areas we've listed, postmodernism is radically at odds with historic and biblical Christianity.

And yet, there is no shortage of voices in the visible church today insisting that unless we as Christians devise a new form of Christianity that's more acceptable to the postmodern mind, we're going to lose this generation.

Now let me be clear. I do believe it is our duty as pastors to understand the spirit of the age in which we live and minister. Obviously, I disagree with those who are willing to hide their heads in the sand and ignore the spiritual and intellectual climate of our time, or I wouldn't even be doing this seminar.

But it's one thing to understand the spirit of the age, and quite another to adapt to it. The truth is, Christianity is neither premodern, modern, nor postmodern. Biblical Christianity stood against both the superstitions and the human philosophies of the premodern era.

Authentic Christianity also opposed the rationalism and the humanism of the modern era. And we must also stand against the evils of postmodern thought. In the words of the Apostle Paul, Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy or vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

Worldly philosophies have always been hostile to Christ and to the Christian faith. And the church is called to stand apart from them and to confront them, not embrace them and adapt our message to suit them.

The gospel stands against every human worldview and every human philosophy. And that's more true than ever today in the postmodern era. If you notice the trend in your chart, you can see that secular thought has become progressively more hostile to Christianity as time goes by.

The world is not becoming more compatible with our faith. And yet, as I said, there are Christians today, some even calling themselves evangelical, who are advocating the development of a uniquely postmodern version of the Christian faith.

Christianity today has from time to time acted as cheerleader to those efforts. As I said in a message recently, this is one more reason to write Christianity Today off as apostate. CT did a major cover article on this very subject in November, just three months ago.

It's on the emergent church. That's what this is all about. Let me tell you about two books that explicitly make arguments in favor of postmodernizing evangelical Christianity. One was published in England, the other here in America.

The Post-Evangelical and the Rejection of Biblical Authority

The book published in the UK is titled The Post-Evangelical. It's by Dave Tomlinson. He's an Anglican who pastors in London. And on the one hand, Tomlinson claims that he has no agenda to move away from Christian orthodoxy or the evangelical faith.

Those are his exact words. He doesn't want to move away from Christianity, from orthodoxy or the evangelical faith. He says he merely wants to come to terms with our changing cultural context and find an authentic expression of Christianity that works in a postmodern paradigm.

On the other hand, he attacks evangelicals who are concerned with objective truth. Post-evangelicals, according to Dave Tomlinson, are those who don't like the old cut-and-dried approach to truth. These are his words.

They find themselves instinctively drawn towards a more relative understanding of the truth. And so he immediately announces that he wants a relativistic approach to truth. And in fact, he says, and these are his precise words, quote, post-evangelicals are less inclined to look for truth and propositional statements in old moral certainties and more likely to seek truth in symbols, ambiguities, and situational judgment, unquote.

What about seeking truth in Scripture? Tomlinson says this, and again I'm quoting, quote, I think it's fair to say that post-evangelicals have mixed feelings about the Bible. On the one hand, they have immense respect for the Bible and are keen to rediscover its relevance for their life and their world.

On the other hand, they have a negative backlog of feelings about the way they have seen the Bible used. He goes on to flatly reject the concepts of biblical inerrancy and biblical authority, and he says we ought to stop thinking of biblical words and biblical propositions as true in and of themselves.

And instead, he says, we ought to embrace the Bible as symbolic revelation. His words. The Bible, he says, ought to be read as a story or rather a series of story. These are his words again. Relational stories about faith journeys rather than propositional expressions of faith.

Again, those are his exact words. Now, keep in mind that concept of the Bible as a collection of stories, and I'll show you in a moment that it's so important in postmodern thought. Everything hinges on this.

But for now, just flag it in your mind and understand that Dave Tomlinson is a postmodernist pastor calling for a postmodernist version of Christianity, one that rejects the absolute authority and the absolute truth of Scripture, one that thinks the idea of propositional truth is outmoded, one who argues for a subjective situational approach to truth, morality, and spiritual experience.

The title of the book, again, is The Post-Evangelical. And in a recent review of this book, Al Mohler wryly remarked that the most honest aspect of this book is the post in post-evangelical. The other book I want to mention is an American book that recently won the award of merit from Christianity Today.

A New Kind of Christian and the Emergent Church

The book is titled A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren. I reviewed it last year at the Shepherds Conference, and very few guys had ever even heard of it. This year, everybody keeps asking me about it.

This book is making the rounds. It's affecting people you minister to. A New Kind of Christian, Brian McLaren. McLaren is the pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in the Washington, D .C. area, and he is an unabashed postmodernist.

He has co-authored another book with Tony Campolo, who also writes with a decidedly postmodernist slant. In fact, McLaren keeps coming out with books arguing in favor of postmodernist varieties of Christianity.

This book, A New Kind of Christian, was hailed by Christianity Today as one of the most helpful resources available to help us understand the grand implications of the postmodern moment. The book is written in a fiction style.

I told you postmodernists like stories. It's a sort of extended dialogue between a burnt-out evangelical pastor and a postmodern science teacher who is himself a former pastor. McLaren's introduction to the book implies that the book is a largely autobiographical account of his own spiritual journey.

He says the book stemmed from his crisis of faith when, at the age of 38, he says he got sick of being a pastor. Frankly, he says, I was almost sick of being a Christian. But in the midst of his crisis, he said, he learned how to be a Christian in a whole new way.

That, he says, is the subject of this book. And so the dialogues in the book reflect Brian McLaren's own thinking. He is both characters. This is a dialogue that originally took place in his mind with himself.

And he's devised a new approach to Christianity that is thoroughly postmodern. As I said, his postmodern faith has received the stamp of approval from Christianity Today. His book is very popular among evangelical students on college campuses.

I have no doubt that many college students from your churches, the churches you pastor, are reading and absorbing the vision of a new kind of Christian Brian McLaren sets forth in this book. It's a view you need to be familiar with and you need to be able to respond to.

And so I want to draw a few examples from these two books as we talk further about postmodernism and how it is impacting evangelical young people and evangelical churches. And in order to organize my thoughts for the remainder of our time together, I want to highlight for you four principles that I would deem essential to biblical Christianity.

These four principles are all treated with great suspicion or outright hostility by postmodernism. And they are principles that so-called postmodern Christians say they are prepared to jettison. And in fact, both of the books I have mentioned, The Post-Evangelical by Dave Tomlinson and A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren, expressly argue against all four of these essential biblical principles.

Four Essential Principles of Biblical Christianity

Here are the four principles. I'll give you the complete list and then we'll talk about them one at a time. So if you want to take them down, leave some space between them for your notes. Four essential characteristics of a truly Christian and biblical worldview, they are these objectivity, clarity, authority and certainty.

Objectivity, clarity, authority and certainty. I'll give you those as we go. So if you didn't get them all, you can get them as you listen. Objectivity, clarity, authority and certainty. Postmodernism is hostile to all four.

And I want to explain why. So let's take them in order, starting with objectivity. Authentic Christianity has always been concerned with objective truth. Propositional truth claims. History. Facts. Doctrine.

You do away with the objective, historic reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ, for example. And according to the Apostle Paul, you have destroyed the very heart of the Christian faith. In fact, listen to how Paul frames his argument.

And note that he relies completely on propositions, historical fact, and the objective reality of the resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15, verses 13 through 18. He says, If there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.

And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.

For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, you are yet in your sins. Then also they which are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. Paul is saying that all of Christianity depends on the objective truth of the bodily resurrection of Christ, a historical fact.

And he uses propositions and syllogisms, reasoning, logic, to make the argument. And notice Paul's repeated use of if-then, if-then. He's making a systematic argument. He is building proposition on proposition to show that Christianity depends completely on the truth of the historical fact of Christ's resurrection.

But remember, Dave Tomlinson says the post-evangelicals he claims to represent feel uneasy with such a cut-and-dried approach, and they find themselves instinctively drawn towards a more relative understanding of truth.

According to Tomlinson, again using his words, post-evangelicals are less inclined to look for truth in propositional statements, and more likely to seek it in symbols, ambiguities, and situational judgments.

Now, he gives lip service to history, but listen closely to what he says. Quote, rejecting naive realism doesn't mean one believes the Bible is devoid of historical content. However, it does mean that our faith need not hinge on everything in the Bible being historically factual.

Okay, in other words, the history in the Bible is not necessarily objective history, or even factually true. It's symbolic, subjective, a story. He's redefined what he means by history. Typical post-modern approach, redefine the term.

Brian McLaren's approach is only slightly more subtle, and he says essentially the same thing. He claims evangelicals err by making the Bible like a book of history, or an encyclopedia of objective facts.

Our mistake, he says, is that we read it as if it were a modern text. And McLaren's fictional hero says this, quote,. Sure, the Bible includes history, but not with all the modern trimmings, like a concern for factual accuracy, corroborating evidence, or absolute objectivity, unquote.

That's a shocking statement, isn't it? Yeah, the Bible contains history, but not with all the modern trimmings, like a concern for factual accuracy. He's saying it doesn't really matter if the history in Scripture is true or not.

Both of these books are taking a slap at objectivity, the objective truth of biblical propositions. And McLaren says the Bible's not meant to be an answer book. It's not a book of objective truth, but it's a story, or better yet, a collection of stories.