Truth and the New Kind of Christian | R. Scott Smith

R. Scott Smith. Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effects of Postmodernism in the Church. Crossway, 2005. 208 pp.

CHRISTIAN RELATIVISTS

It is obvious in Western society that many people think moral and religious truths are relative. Not only is this idea clearly taught in secular universities, our media also trumpet it. But it has not been the position of historic, orthodox Christianity. In that light, it is surprising how many Christians now think that way as well. For example, a Barna poll showed that, even after the terrorist attacks on September 11, only 32 percent of born-again Christian adults, and a mere 9 percent of born-again Christian teens, think that ethics are not relative. Christians are increasingly accepting of ethical relativism, and in a climate that promotes pluralism, we are losing our understanding of Christian ethical and religious truths as being objectively true.

What do I mean by something being objectively true? Objective truths are true for all people, whether or not anyone accepts them as true or talks about them as such. Their status as being true (that is, corresponding with how things are in reality) is independent of our knowing them to be true. For example, 2+2=4 is objectively true in that its truth value is independent of anyone’s believing it or not. Similarly, murder is wrong even if someone happens to say otherwise.

Not surprisingly, the large decline in the percentage of Christians who hold to the objective character of morals mirrors what has been going on in our culture, and especially on our secular campuses, for some time now. When I first stepped onto the campus at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles as a graduate student, I sensed very clearly that the dominant view there was that all ethical and religious views are relative. As I both studied and taught there from 1995 to 2000, this impression was confirmed by repeated experiences with professors, reading assignments, fellow graduate students, and my own first-year students. . . .

BUT CAN WE KNOW OBJECTIVE TRUTH?

As Western Christians are buying into relativism more and more, this attitude threatens to completely eviscerate our historic stance on having objective truth based on God’s unchanging character and His revelation in the Bible. Now there is another view in our universities, both secular and even many Christian ones, and in our churches as well. It calls into question our ability to know objective truth. This view is postmodernism. . . .

Interestingly, some Christians are advocating that we should understand the faith in a postmodern way. I have found that there are at least two emphases they make. For one, several emphasize that we need to “contextualize” the faith in ways that will enable us to reach postmodern people, especially people of generations “X” and “Y.” These people have been very influenced by postmodern thought and attitudes, these Christians maintain, so if we are to reach them with the gospel, we must find ways to contextualize Christianity that postmodern people will appreciate and understand.

A second emphasis is more theoretical, and it is that we should not only contextualize the faith, we also should postmodernize the faith itself. Here we see the work of the more philosophical ideas driving postmodern thought, and this is where I want to assess carefully the postmoderns’ recommendations. We will see much of the theoretical work being done by people like Nancey Murphy, the late Stanley Grenz, John Franke, Brad Kallenberg, and even Stanley Hauerwas. We also will find that Brian McLaren, perhaps the most influential leader of the Emerging Church, and Tony Jones, recently appointed national coordinator of Emergent U.S., draw upon and may argue for certain theoretical ideas, but more so, they are concerned about how believers need to embody and embrace postmodern ideas and values in order to be truly faithful to the Lord in these times. This is what McLaren means by the title of his widely influential book, A New Kind of Christian. In his view, living out Christianity in a “modern” way just will not cut it in postmodern times, and it also will leave aside many postmodern people who will not hear the gospel if it is preached and lived out in modern ways.

For many Christians, though, I believe there is a general lack of understanding about postmodernism and in particular Christian postmodernism. When I have taught on this topic at church or school events, I have found that many believers think they should be concerned about postmodernism but they have little or no idea about its main ideas. This is especially so among Christian parents, but even their teenage children have little conception of what postmodernism is. And I have found many Christian adults are utterly surprised to hear that some Christians are advocating a postmodern way of interpreting our faith. . . .

TWO KINDS OF POSTMODERNISM

It will be helpful to first get a big-picture view of postmodernism, in order to understand its main ideas. There are two levels of postmodernism at work in society. First, there is the “street” or popular level, in which postmodernism manifests itself in attitudes such as suspicion of authorities’ claims to be telling the truth or to be acting for the good of people. Instead, postmodern ways of thinking have led us to realize that leaders often are acting to preserve their own power. . . .

This same distrust of authorities often manifests itself in a deep suspicion of hierarchies. Often I saw this attitude in my fellow graduate students who had had a Catholic upbringing. They were angry at the Catholic emphasis on a church hierarchy that could give normative ethical and theological pronouncements for all Catholics. This same distrust of hierarchies is often evidenced in feminist writings as well. . . .

Postmodern attitudes have also been shaped by a distrust of modern science. Confidence in the goodness of science was shattered when we discovered how the Nazis used medical science to perform gross experiments on Jewish subjects. Scientists also developed the most destructive weapon we know to date, the nuclear bomb. People now are far less trusting of scientists’ claims to be acting solely for the good of humanity. People are tempted to abuse their power, and we are rightly suspicious of claims made by the powerful that they are acting solely for the good of others. We often question their vested interests, as well we should. . . .

That is street postmodernism, but there is also academic postmodernism. Academic postmoderns are highly suspicious of human reason’s abilities. In fact, while many “modernists” (a term relating to the modern era, or the Enlightenment, roughly 1550-1945) thought that we could know universal, objective truths by our reason, postmodernists have given up on knowing such truths. . . .

Clearly, postmodernism undermines any claims to know objective truth, and when applied to Christian truth claims, this approach would seem to offer a serious challenge to the Christian faith. But is that the case? To what extent should we (or should we not) as Christians embrace the ideas of the Emerging Church and other Christian Postmodernists? Christian postmodernism is more problematic than the postmodernism offered by non-Christians, since writers such as Stanley Hauerwas (a theological ethicist), Stanley Grenz and John Franke (evangelical theologians), and Brad Kallenberg (an evangelical philosophical theologian) all will say that the gospel is the truth. In this they are right, but what they mean by this is not that it is the objective, universal truth for all people, which can be known as such. They believe we cannot know such things. . . .

So I will address several aspects of Christian postmodernism and assess to what extent Christians should, or should not, embrace it. I believe we will find both strengths and weaknesses in Christian postmodernism, and in the proposals offered by McLaren and Jones of the Emerging Church in particular. . . .

Overall, I will try to show that we have no good reason to give up the objectivity of Christian truths by accepting certain postmodern ideas, especially in a day when the objective character of Christian beliefs is under assault. So, in chapter 9, I will develop my own positive case why I think we can (and often do) know objective truth in morality, religion, history, and other areas. . . .

If Paul was right (and I believe he was) that in Jesus Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3), we need not, even dare not, abandon the objective truth of the Scriptures. Instead, we can stand firm, being fully assured that our faith and its many claims are objectively true, and that we can know it to be so. Further, and contrary to McLaren, we need not have “bombproof” certainty to know that Christianity’s claims are true.

It is true, of course, that truth can be used as a club. May that not be the case. We need to heed the postmodern reminder that truth must be embodied, or lived out. And we must match our embodiment of truth with the embodiment of grace, just as it was in the life of Christ (John 1:14). We need to live out both grace and truth, which I think will make for a very powerful witness in these postmodern times.

Taken from Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effect of Postmodernism in the Church by R. Scott Smith, copyright ©2005, pp. 13-21. Used by permission of Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL 60187. For more information, visit www.crossway.com.

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