Category Archives: Postmodernity

‘If the church were Christian’ – intro

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In his 2010 book, If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus, Quaker pastor Philip Gulley offers a recipe for, well, making the Church Christian.  Richard Rohr thinks that the recipe is ‘superb’, and restates it in the following words:-

  1. Jesus is a model for living more than an object of worship.
  2. Affirming people’s potential is more important than reminding them of their brokenness.
  3. The work of reconciliation should be valued over making judgments.
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Talk like a Babylonian

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We read that Daniel and his three friends were educated in, among other things, ‘the language of the Babylonians’ (Daniel 1:4).

There is great pressure on us today to avoid the language of the kingdom of God and to adopt instead the language of our culture.  John Lennox observes that ‘the wave of relativism now swamping Western thinking has increased the pressure to drop certain words from our languages and replace them with others that drive forward the secularist agenda of deconstructing the very nature of human beings and the society we live in.’

Some words are increasingly frowned upon in public discourse: ‘truth, commandment, dogma, faith, conscience, morality, sin, chastity, charity, justice, authority, husband, wife’.  …

What the ‘spiritual but not religious’ want to know

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In Belief Without Borders (2015), Linda A. Mercandante says that the ‘spiritual but not religious’ frequently ask the following questions:-

1. Is there anything larger than myself, any sacred or transcendent dimension, any Higher Power?

2. What does it mean to be human?

3. Is spiritual growth primarily a solitary process or is it done with others?

4. What will happen to me, if anything, after death?

Although based on research conducted in the US, the UK is probably similar enough for it to be relevant here.…

To the edge of faith, and beyond

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Kent Dobson, who succeeded Rob Bell as pastor of influential Mars Hill Bible Church, has recently announced his decision to step down.

He had begun, he says, with a desire to follow Paul by offering the traditional gospel in culturally-relevant dress.  But he had come to question not only the packaging as traditionally offered by the church, but also the message.

“I have always been and I’m still drawn to the very edges of religion and faith and God.

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An evangelical approach to the Bible

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To be an evangelical is to seek to be true to Scripture because of the conviction that to be true to Scripture is to be true to Christ. A contemporary evangelical approach to Scripture has the possibility of combining appropriate pre-modern, modern and postmodern elements.

1. It will be pre-modern in the sense that it submits to the will of God as revealed in the text and thus puts the human will and its capacity for detached reason or local special pleading under that authority.…

Post-modern evangelism

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In his book More Ready Than you Realize – Evangelism as Dance in the Postmodern Matrix (2002), Brian McLaren gives 8 factors that he sees as summarising post-modern evangelism:-

1. The Relational Factor – count conversations not conversions.

2. The Narrative Factor – listen to their story, share your story and share God’s story, not just propositions or formulas.

3. The Communal Factor – expect conversion to normally occur in the context of authentic Christian community, not just in the context of information.…

Connecting with postmoderns

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According to Robertson McQuilkin, there are some elements of postmodernism that we should adopt, others that we should modify, and still others that we should reject.

1. Adopt

(a) The spiritual trumps the material

(b) Authenticity is crucial

(c) Reality must be experienced

(d) Heart is more important than head

(e) Relationships are paramount

(f) Hope is at a premium

2. Modify

(a) Anti-intellectualism – a healthy suspicion of the cerebral helps dethrone materialism and scientific naturalism

(b) Story-telling – while not neglecting propositional truth, we follow Scripture when we tell stories

(c) Diversity – when taken to extremes, the celebration of diversity means that everyone’s ‘reality is different, and intolerance is the only sin.  …

The Parable of the Three Rings

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In his play Nathan the Wise, Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) re-tells the ancient parable of the three rings.

The story is set in the 12th century, during the Third Crusade.  It incorporates a discussion between the Muslim Sultan, a Jewish sage, and a Christian Knight Templar.

The Muslim Sultan asks the Jewish Sage, “What theological law do you regard as the best?”

Nathan responds by telling his parable.

A man owned an opal ring of great beauty and, reputedly, of magical powers. …

What should we do with Christianity’s exclusive truth claims?

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One of the most frequently-heard objections to the Christian faith is this: ‘You Christians are perfectly entitled to belief whatever you want.  But it’s arrogant and narrow-minded of you to suppose that you have an exclusive claim on the truth.  Stop trying to tell us that you are right and that everyone else is wrong.  In a pluralist society it’s too exclusive a way of talking, and in a democratic society it’s too divisive.’

Tim Keller recently addressed this issue in a talk given at the University of Berkeley:-

He began by acknowledging that there is frequently a problem with religious dogmatism. …

What is Foundationalism?

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Emerging church people of a more philosophical bent often speak critically of ‘foundationalism’.

What’s that?

Nancey Murphy explains:-

Foundationalism is a theory about knowledge.  More specifically, it is a theory about how claims to know can be justified.  When we seek to justify a belief, we do so by relating it to (basing it on, deriving it from) other beliefs.  If these other beliefs are called into question, then they, too, must be justified.  Foundationalists insist that this chain of justification must stop somewhere; it must not be circular, nor must it constitute an infinite regress. 

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