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Postmodernism and faith (3)

Dealing with postmodernism

In the previous leading articles we first discussed the origin and the essence of postmodernism, especially as culture-philosophical movement. Then we discussed the influence of this way of thinking on society and church.

In this final article we will discuss the dealing with postmodernism in relation to faith. Should we seek affiliation with this thinking? Does postmodernism offer new possibilities for spreading the gospel? Or will we have to reject it and not open up to it?

Seeking affiliation?

In the book Geloven in zekerheid, gereformeerd geloven in een postmoderne tijd (Believing in certainty, Reformed believing in a post-modern time) published in 2000 by the Theological College at Kampen, under editorship of K. van Bekkum and R. Rouw one already writes fairly unbiased about post-modern thinking. In this book the Scriptural faith of the Reformed people is set aside as rationalism of modernism.

The authors, from various churches, indeed criticize postmodernism in its most pronounced form, whereby everything is relativized, leaving emptiness. They certainly see great danger in the relativitizing of all truth where it concerns certainty of faith. Yet they do seek affiliation with the post-modern man. We will let a few writers have their say to make this clear.

The psychiatrist, Prof. G. Glas, writes that, as reformed people, we have become too strongly attached to historical reliability. According to him people used to be too busy with their intellect, trying to receive certainty. Historical reliability gives such certainty. But, says Glas, isn’t believing primarily a matter of the heart?

In this way Glas makes too much of a separation between certain knowledge and true faith. However, where it concerns believing, there are two aspects of the same thing: that what is certain and firm in God’s Word, may also be for me (HC, LD 7).

Prof. Glas, however, is carefully tampering with the absolute truthfulness of God’s Word and allows for criticism of Scripture. Particularly because he challenges the historical reliability.

Prof. Glas also comments on the antithetical attitude of the Christian in this world:

Christian participation in culture is not a matter of either decidedly following your own line, at the cost of everything, even though it means expulsion and isolation, or, on the other hand, gutlessly going along with the prevailing vogue. There are more dimensions that can help in assessing the Christian contribution in the social debate. (page 30)

Drs. P.H. Vos, lecturer at the Gereformeerde Hoge-school at Zwolle speaks of indebtedness of the orthodoxy towards modern thinking. What he wants to say is that Scriptural faith, that takes everything that is written in God’s Word as being trustworthy and accepts God’s Word as the infallible Word of God in all its parts, comes forth from the modern thinking of reason, of the mind. The reverent bowing to the Truth is considered to be a product of the movement that preceded postmodernism. He writes further:

Man did plead against the autonomy of the reason on the authority of the Bible or the tradition to the Confessions, but subsequently this basic principle often acted as the untouchable foundation on which the knowledge of faith could be built(…) Through this, certainty of faith was often reduced to a matter of accepting the right basic principle. Thereby the certainty of faith as existential involvement of the salvation of Jesus Christ could be oppressed. (page 52)

In other words: there used to be a rational believing wherein everything from Scripture was accepted and man was bound to the Confessions. No objections were allowed to be made against this. But with that, man placed himself out of the picture. Everything was pinned to truths without man himself being sufficiently involved.

Vos sees this as a form of ‘foundationalism’. A thinking from the firm foundation of God’s Word. But he rejects that type of thinking. Nowadays one can no longer come with absolute truths:

There appears to be no such thing as an undoubted foundation of knowledge. Also the Bible cannot serve as an undoubted foundation. The model wherein the Bible serves as an undoubted foundation for our certainty and claims of truth, has become problematic. (page 53)

Vos does see new possibilities for the Christian faith in postmodernism:

There is openness for different opinions and respect for other things. Also openness for transcendence. Christians can learn to speak a new language. Through the development of a subtle use of language, something can be expressed for which there is no adequate language. (page 58)

In this we see the return of something of what post-modern language has become: Expressing something that cannot be expressed. To him, faith is especially about personal experience and feelings. Especially stories can play a good role in this. They call up things:

In theology it must be about a manner of thinking that is aware of the narrative character of the Bible as its object. The biblical stories reveal a certainty that is not obtained by argumentation and proof, but takes shape in the life history of real people, who discover the transcendent God and at the same time experience that they are being found by this God. Certainty of faith has to do with the fact that they experience that God is carrying them. (page 58,59)

Finally we will let the philosopher, Drs. C.E. Vink, speak. He also pleads for a certain adaption and affiliation:

In the current era of freedom and individualism, believing is firstly a personal matter, that is to be confessed in an authentic way. On the other hand, a tradition of faith, that focuses itself especially on rational firmness and purity of its convictions that are to be authoritatively accepted , makes itself, with such an attitude, vulnerable in the current cultural climate (page 76).

Thus far some quotations from the book published by the Theological College at Kampen in 2000, on certainty of faith.

My conclusion has to be that, in this book, true faith as we confess it in our Reformed Confessions, is set down as a sort of rationalistic foundationalism, belonging to modernism. At the same time a plea is being made for a more existential relational approach. An approach which does more justice to man, especially the post-modern man.

I want to strongly reject this view. The authors, in my opinion, have not understood that the disease and sin of modernism was that man had lifted up his own reasoning, his own intellect to a norm, over against the real Truth of Scripture. With postmodernism that denies every firm truth, man is now actively undermining the certainty of the only Truth.

Ultimate Commitment?

In the above-mentioned book and also in a booklet written by Mrs. F. Oosterhof: Het postmodernisme in Bijbels licht (postmodernism in the light of the Bible), from the series Woord en Wereld, the ideas of the theologian Bishop Lesslie Newbigin are brought to the fore. This man of the World Council of Churches is also known as an apologist (defender) of postmodernism, therefore good reason to pay some more attention to him. Newbigin also, is of the opinion that it is necessary to do away with the modern rationalistic thinking. But through plural thinking and the relativism of postmodernism Christianity could come to an end.

Newbigin therefore propagates a different certainty. He does not place it in the ‘object’, the Bible, neither, as he states, in man, the ‘subject’. His certainty lies in the ‘personal commitment’, which is also ultimate and therefore may not simply be broken.

You then have a personal commitment, not with the Bible but with the Person of God and Christ, as it takes form in the Gospel.

Believing as ‘commitment’, according to him, always precedes knowledge. You first commit yourself to God, then you learn to know Him. You first commit yourself to Christ, then you receive knowledge of Him. For knowledge is always influenced by what your conviction is. Newbigin thinks that with this he overcomes the work-plan objective/subjective. According to Newbigin absolute truth does not exist, because everybody uses his own interpretation, imagination and intuition to determine this. In all types of human knowledge, in his opinion, a certain personal commitment of the knower plays a role. It is therefore your relationship with God and Christ, that is important to you, is ‘ultimate’. That gives you certainty. That is not obtained through the Bible, but the relationship gives it to you.

Every commitment of faith is highly personal. You may propagate the content of your faith and you may even try to convince others, but, says Newbigin, you may not claim its absoluteness. It remains your faith, your personal faith. No general absolute truth.

Newbigin: with your ultimate personal commitment with which you accept matters from the Gospel as true, you must then also enter into dialogue with others. Even with other religions. For such a dialogue can lead to you having to adjust what you believe. But that remains within your commitment, for your commitment with Christ does not change by it. So, even in new circumstances, it can become necessary to reconsider and re-word the Christian doctrine.

The thinking of Newbigin, that is so unsuspectingly recommended, does not allow for one’s confession to imply a firm confidence in the solid truth of God’s Word, on God’s firm promises. Such a confession is always a new starting point for the search for the truth. For, according to him, the truth is not fixed, but it develops. In this way there is always a changeable truth, yet there is ‘certainty’. For that certainty lies in everyone’s personal commitment. The commitment itself remains, but the ‘truth’ that you devise with it, can change.

Newbigin does not want to ‘return’ to the time when the authority of the Bible was regarded undoubted.

So here we have to deal with a serious mutilation of the confession regarding our faith, and a serious impairment of the authority of God’s infallible Word. We must namely never be allowed to find certainty in our faith itself. That certainty is in Christ and His Word. It is in God and His promises. Newbigin detaches faith from the absolute truth of God’s Word as the infallible source of our certainty.

To him certainty of faith does not rest on the absolute truth of the revelation of God and Christ but in actual fact in the believer himself. For the believer himself makes the commitment, he chooses his truth. It is his highly personal commitment. He is continually seeking new adaptations for what, to him, his ultimate commitment is worth.

For Newbigin, God’s Word does contain the ‘fact of Christ, as the centre of God’s self-revealing deeds’, but to him, the historical facts of birth, resurrection and ascension, do not belong to that fact. The historicity of it is left for what it is.

My conclusion has to be that this theologian, who in a post-modern manner, impairs the strength of God’s Word and thus the authority of God Himself, is just as dangerous as for example a Prof. Kuitert, who did that in a modern rational manner and finally said goodbye to his faith.

Final conclusion

The final conclusion must be that we reject both the rationalistic modernism and the relativistic postmodernism as philosophical ways of thinking that draws us away from God and His Gospel. The post-modern relativizing of the Truth of God’s Word is possibly even more dangerous than the rational opposing of that Truth. Relativizing is namely a process that is less tangible and creeps in into the churches more easily, to do its truth-undermining work more gradually.

At the same time we must realize that our society today is influenced immensely through the thinking and patterns of postmodernism. That influence can easily penetrate further into the churches because the great danger is that we are all being brainwashed via modern media and its post-modern thinking. This applies to both office-bearers and church members. In our thinking and speaking about matters of faith, Gospel and church, we will therefore always need to ask ourselves to what extent relativizing of the Truth of the Gospel is at issue.

Great vigilance is therefore required both in theology and in church life and in the ministry. Upon the ministers rests the huge task to arm the members of the congregation as much as possible against the destructive influence of post-modern doubting and relativism.