Postmodernism, Multiculturalism, Relativism
Audio Downloads: Postmodernism • Multiculturalism • Relativism • Postmodernism in the Church
What has replaced the worldviews that once sought to encompass the whole of existence in their understanding are now privatized worldviews, worldviews that are valid for no one but the person whose world it is and whose view it is. They qualify as worldviews because postmoderns are still addressing questions about what is ultimate (the answer is nothing) about the meaning of the universe (the answer is that it has none) and about human experience. They are no less interested at a private level in interpreting the facts and experiences that make up the reality of their lives than were intellectuals in the Enlightenment who did it in a rationalistic way. Postmoderns are just as interested in giving their account of “truth” and “morality” from their own perspective even if it is to say that neither truth nor morality in any ultimate and binding way exists. And they are just as interested in speaking about meaning as were the earlier figures even if their speech is filled with denials of meaning. We are, in fact, bumping up against an old conundrum. To say that there is no metaphysical reality is itself a metaphysical statement. To say, similarly, that worldviews have collapsed and been replaced by privatized interpretations of existence is no less a view of the world which is answering the question as to whether anything is ultimate than were the earlier attempts at grasping such matters. The earlier worldviews were ambitious and sought to grasp the whole of reality, be it on a humanistic or a religious basis; these are miniature and only seek to grasp reality which is private, personal, and evaporating.
— David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, pp. 74-75
There are important threads of continuity between modernity and postmodernity and not least among these is the fact that at the center of both is the autonomous self, despite all the postmodern chatter about the importance of community. During the Enlightenment, this was worked out in anti-religious ways, the Enlightenment thinkers refusing to be fettered by any transcendent being or any authority outside of themselves. In postmodernity, the autonomous being refuses to be fettered by any objective reality outside of itself. In the end, the difference is simply that the revolt in the first case took a more religious turn and in the second a more general turn.
— David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, pp. 67-68
If Enlightenment rationality was logical, favored clean categories, and sequential thought, postmoderns, in casual and not so casual ways, like to juxtapose things that do not belong together in a kind of flippant, or maybe ironic, dismissal of logic…
— David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, p. 70
…in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, there is a gravitational pull toward the death of all worldviews. Not every postmodern thinker moves consistently in these directions but every postmodern thinker has to resist this vortex, for those who find no cognitive footholds soon disappear into it. The Enlightenment assumptions may be rejected but the new cultural assumptions that follow its death are just as corrosive and destructive. The postmodern mood beckons us away from the old Enlightenment world, but its call is also a siren song, for we are drawn toward a place in which there are no worldviews, no truth, and no purpose.
— David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, p. 73
In our own private universes, we are free of external constraints, free of social custom, free of the past, free of values we ourselves have not selected and in that selection authenticated, and free of all beliefs which are incompatible with our internally constructed world of meaning. We have all become free in a most radical way, and in that radical posture we have become as light as a feather.
— David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, p. 238
In our pluralistic and postmodern context, it is helpful to articulate Christian truth claims in relation to opposing views not to be contentious but to clarify what is being put forth and what is not. For instance, if Jesus is God incarnate, then he is not (1) a mere prophet of Allah (Islam), (2) a misguided reformer (Judaism), (3) an avatar of Brahman (Hinduism), (4) a manifestation of God (Baha’i Faith), (5) a God-realized guru (New Age), (6) an inspired but not divine social prophet (theological liberalism), and so on. If God is a personal being who exists eternally as three equal persons (the Father, Son and Holy Spirit), then divine reality is not (1) one in a unitarian sense (Islam, Judaism or Unitarianism), (2) an impersonal-amoral consciousness (some versions of Hinduism, Buddhism and New Age thinking), (3) nonexistent (Theraveda Buddhism, Jainism and secular forms of atheism), (4) many gods (Mormonism, Shinto and other forms of polytheism, animism), and so on. Given the confusions of postmodernity, much work must be done on the level of enunciating the very claims Christians believe, even before specifically defending those claims as true.
Steve Turner’s satirical “Creed,” which summarizes the perplexities of postmodern perspectives, makes this point well: “We believe that all religions are basically the same…They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.”
— Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay, p.166-67
The idea that there are really no substantive differences between religions needs to be held up to careful scrutiny and declared fraudulent. For example, Islam says that Jesus was not crucified. Christianity says He was. Only one of us can be right. Judaism says Jesus was not the Messiah. Christianity says He was. Only one of us can be right. Hinduism says God has often been incarnate. Christianity says God was incarnate only in Jesus. We cannot both be right. Buddhism says that the world’s miseries will end when we do what is right. Christianity says we cannot do what is right. The world’s miseries will end when we believe what is right.
— Alistair Begg, Made For His Pleasure, p. 126
Truth is neither pigmented nor gendered. There is no “black truth” or “white truth” or “red truth” or “gay truth” or “women’s truth” or “male truth.” Truth is a property of only those statements, propositions and beliefs that match objective reality; it matters not who utters them, where they are uttered or why they are uttered.
John Henrik Clarke, claims that “African scholars are the final authority on Africa,” as if pigment and culture dictated truth. This is as wrong as saying that American scholars are the final authority on America.
The question of objective truth takes a backseat to narratives that supposedly empower beleaguered groups. When history is used as a weapon to counterbalance past evils (real or supposed), it fails to focus on a real past and, instead, constructs a useable past for present political and cultural purposes. However, two wrongs don’t make a right; and two lies don’t make a truth.
…postmodernist make truth the possession of various groups, fracturing truth into ethnic and gender conclaves.
— Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay, p.214-15, 17
In postmodernism the intellect is replaced by will, reason by emotion, and morality by relativism. Reality is nothing more than a social construct; truth equals power. Your identity comes from a group. Postmodernism is characterized by fragmentation, indeterminacy, and a distrust of all universalizing (worldviews) and power structures (the establishment). It is a worldview that denies all worldviews (“stories”). In a nutshell, postmodernism says there are no universal truths valid for all people. Instead, individuals are locked into the limited perspective of their own race, gender or ethnic group. It is Nietzsche in full bloom.
— Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Postmodern Times, (195-196)
About every other week, I confront popular pluralist notions, not with an entire sermon, but with a point here and there.
For example, pluralists contend that no one religion can know the fullness of spiritual truth, therefore all religions are valid. But while it is good to acknowledge our limitations, this statement is itself a strong assertion about the nature of spiritual truth. A common analogy is cited—the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels the tail and reports that an elephant is thin and flexible. Another feels a leg and claims the animal is thick as a tree. Another touches its side and reports the elephant is like a wall. This is supposed to represent how the various religions only understand part of God, while no one can truly see the whole picture. To claim full knowledge of God, pluralists contend, is arrogance.
I occasionally tell this parable, and I can almost see the people nodding their heads in agreement.
But then I remind them, “The only way this parable makes any sense, however, is if you’ve seen a whole elephant. Therefore, the minute you say, ‘All religions only see part of the truth,’ you are claiming the very knowledge you say no one else has. And you are demonstrating the same spiritual arrogance you accuse Christians of.”
[In other words, to say all is relative is itself a truth statement, but dangerous because it uses smoke and mirrors to make itself sound more tolerant than the rest. Most folks who hold this view think they are more enlightened than those who hold to absolutes when in fact they are really just as strong in their belief system as everyone else. I do not think most of these folks are purposefully using trickery or bad motives. This is because they seem to have even convinced themselves of the "truth" of their position; even though they claim "truth" does not exist or at least can't be known. Ironic isn't it? The position is intellectually inconsistent.]
—Tim Keller, Preaching Amid Pluralism, leadershipjournal.net
Revelation created a foundation for understanding the world. Then Modernism added reason above revelation. Postmodernism rejects them both. Postmodernism suggest that everyone tells their own story. That there is no real metanarrative to explain things. That there is no truth system endurable enough to give us a satisfactory foundation for understanding our lives.
— Gordon Pennington, The Truth Project, Lesson 6
Postmodernism is a set of ideas that has replaced modernism, another set of ideas. Which has tried to replace the Christian and Jewish faiths. The Christian faith believes in God, humanity reason, progress… Now much of this, modernism believed, but without God. Reason without God. Humanity without God. Progress without God.
— Os Guiness, The Truth Project, Lesson 6
A postmodernist would say a “metanarrative” is any “large story” that pretends to give an all-encompassing explanation of anything, especially an over-arching story of history and life in attempt to legitimize some version of truth.
— Del Tackett, The Truth Project, Lesson 6
Although postmodernists tend to reject traditional morality, they can still be very moralistic. They will defend their “rights” to do what they want with puritanical zeal. Furthermore, they seem to feel that they have a right not to be criticized for what they are doing. They want not only license but approval. Thus tolerance becomes the cardinal virtue. Under the postmodernist way of thinking, the principle of cultural diversity means that every like-minded group constitutes a culture that must be considered as good as any other culture. The postmodernist sins are “being judgmental,” “being narrow-minded,” “thinking that you have the only truth,” and “trying to enforce your values on anyone else.” Those who question the postmodernist dogma that “there are no absolutes” are excluded from the canons of tolerance. The only wrong idea is to believe in truth; the only sin is to believe in sin.
— Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Postmodern Times, (195-196)
Earlier this year I spoke to a class of seniors at a Christian high school in Des Moines, Iowa. I wanted to alert them to this “tolerance trick,” but I also wanted to learn how much they had already been taken in by it. I began by writing two sentences on the board. The first expressed the current understanding of tolerance:
“All views have equal merit, and none should be considered better than another.”
All heads nodded in agreement. Nothing controversial here. Then I wrote the second sentence:
“Jesus is the Messiah, and Judaism is wrong for rejecting Him.”
Immediately hands flew up. “You can’t say that,” a coed challenged, clearly annoyed. “That’s disrespectful. How would you like it if someone said you were wrong?”
“In fact, that happens to me all the time,” I pointed out, “including right now with you. But why should it bother me that someone thinks I’m wrong?”
“It’s intolerant,” she said, noting that the second statement violated the first statement. What she didn’t see was that the first statement also violated itself.
I pointed to the first statement and asked, “Is this a view, the idea that all views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another?” They all agreed.
Then I pointed to the second statement — the “intolerant” one — and asked the same question: “Is this a view?” They studied the sentence for a moment. Slowly my point began to dawn on them. They had been taken in by the tolerance trick.
“Would you like to know how to get out of this dilemma?” I asked. They nodded. “You must reject this modern distortion of tolerance and return to the classic view.” Then I wrote these two principles on the board:Be egalitarian regarding persons.
Be elitist regarding ideas.Tolerance applies to how we treat people we disagree with, not how we treat ideas we think are false. We respect those who hold different beliefs from our own by treating such people courteously and allowing their views a place in the public discourse.
Classic tolerance requires that every person be treated courteously with the freedom to express his or her ideas without fear of reprisal no matter what the view, not that all views have equal worth, merit, or truth.
— Gregory Koukl, The Myth of Tolerance (abridged), Full Article: The Myth of Tolerance
Respecting the right to believe anything is a matter of freedom of conscience; believing that anything anyone believes is right is plain stupidity.
— Os Guiness, The American Hour, p. 261
The freedom to criticize ideas – any ideas even if they are sincerely held beliefs – is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. And the law which attempts to say you can criticize or ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness – and the other represents oppression. …the more laws a nation has, the more lawless it becomes.
— Rowan Atkinson, (speaking at a press conference)
Secular absolutism is becoming the most potent religious force in America…What’s going on here is an effort by liberal activists and their judiciary enablers to turn one set of personal mores into a public orthodoxy from which there can be no dissent, even if that means trampling the First Amendment. Any voluntary association that doesn’t comply — the same little platoons once considered the bedrock of American freedom — will be driven from the public square. Meet the new face of intolerance.
— Quote from the March 10, 2004 edition of the Wall Street Journal
The world in which the cultural demand of tolerance is heard is one in which all values are privatized. People can believe what they want and, within the law, do what they want, but it becomes intolerable if they imagine that what they believe includes standards of belief and morality that are applicable to others. Today, that is the unforgivable sin. It is the blasphemy against the (secular) spirit.
— David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue, p. 51
The twentieth century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those [communist and Nazis] who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.
— Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism, p. 230
Tolerance… is the sin which believes nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for.
— Dorothy Sayers, Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World, p.4
[We] went through the period of the rationalist, and then the empiricist, and then the existentialist. The rationalist preoccupied with mind and truth, the empiricist with science and truth, the existentialist with feeling and emotion and truth. The postmodernist comes and throws all of them out.
— Ravi Zacharias, The Truth Project, Lesson 6
