Survival of Doctrinal Truth in Postmodernism

Missional Implications for Seventh-day Adventism Part One

Survival of Doctrinal Truth in Postmodernism

Missional Implications for Seventh-day Adventism

Part One

John Okpechi
John Okpechi, M.T.S Student
Friedensau Adventist University

Introduction

     Postmodernism allows for religious pluralism, beliefs, and practices. And none of these options can be said to be in possession of the whole and full truth. Also, Postmoderns live by their perspective life-options, whereby no perspective can be proven more plausible than anotherⁱ. Furthermore, a core strength of postmodernism is that all truth is relativized, and it becomes impolitic to suggest that one’s viewpoint on matters is truer than someone else’sⁱⁱ. One common mantra in postmodernism is that anything is true, every is true, and nothing is true. This is the spirit of the postmodern age; truth being at crossroads.
     Another consequential trait of postmodernism is that Postmoderns do not speak in classic doctrinal categories. They are not versed in it and are not interestedⁱⁱⁱ. The difficult reality is that many in contemporary western societies have the notion that the individual must work out his own solutions and that the most the church can do is to provide him with a favorable environment for doing so, without imposing on him a prefabricated set of answers. Simply put, no more is religious doctrine imposed. Postmoderns have a greater freedom than ever before to search for and construct their own ultimate meaning^iv. This freedom to search and construct precludes the assertiveness that characterizes the promulgation and propagation of doctrines. What makes an idea doctrinal is that it is taught as true, authoritative, certain, and definitive. The postmodern comprehension of truth negates the possibility of doctrinal correctness and assertiveness.
     This then poses an unavoidable challenge for Seventh-day Adventists, especially in their missional approaches. The Church makes bold claims to having a global gospel commission and that this mission is not discriminatory. How then would the Church, having definite and distinct doctrinal truths , enter into fruitful conversations with an increasingly postmodern and secular age and world? Put differently, will Adventist doctrinal truths survive the postmodern deluge? The Church might be expressing growth leaps in some parts of the Global South, but how has it fared in the Global North, where doctrinal exclusivity has a hard time surviving? It is the presupposition of this paper that the Church’s mandate of global reach in evangelism entails that Postmoderns and secularists are not to be ignored and that the Church needs to reinvent approaches in understanding and reaching them. Revelation 14 has been embraced by Adventists as the encapsulation of their message and mission, and in it a worldwide audience is their target. If the truths as espoused by Adventists is to be proclaimed to everyone, then Postmoderns are not to be disenfranchised.
     Also, it is suggestive here that the doctrinal bent of Adventism’s mission endeavors poses obvious and consequential challenges in reaching Postmoderns. Is the Church ready to confront such challenges? And what obvious methodological changes have to be made in relating the faith in a postmodern context? Instead of seeing postmodernism as an unwanted element that obfuscates the mission of the Church, how has Adventists fared in this milieu? Will the Church fail in making the gospel relevant to Postmoderns? It is not as if Postmoderns are just outside the Adventist Church, there are surprisingly, postmodern-Adventists or Postmoderns who subscribe to Adventism. The thing is that the Church cannot shy away from confronting postmodernism. If it fails to confront it without, it will inexorably confront it within. Just as the truth is at crossroads in postmodernism, the Adventist Church also finds itself in a crucial intersection. Understanding postmodernism is a task that must be undertaken by Adventists if they are to successfully proclaim the truth as proclaimed by them in postmodern context.

Understanding Postmodernism Succinctly

     Postmodernism^v as a subject, has generated continuous discussions in Christian circles. It has been touted as the most important challenge for religious belief and proclamation in contemporary times^iv. And this challenge is more critical for any claim to doctrinal truth. In fact, postmodern criticism asserts that there is no absolute ground for truth^vii. Carl Henry notes that “the one epistemic premise shared by all postmodernists is their rejection of foundationalism, the belief that knowledge consists of sets of beliefs that rest assuredly on still other sets of beliefs and that the whole is supported by irreversible foundational beliefs.”^viii Whatever postmodernism is, it does not seem compatible with the idea of an objective doctrinal truth, because it neither accommodates objectivity nor truth. J. E. White reasons that “At its heart, postmodernity is the removal of all foundations. Truth, morality, interpretive frameworks, all are removed in a postmodern context.”^ix
     Defining postmodernism involves much complexity as the concept itself. It is an elusive term, even for its advocates. But at least one thing is certain about postmodernity, and Voddie Baucham notes that “it is that the concept of accessible, objective truth is antithetical to standard postmodpostmodern epistemology.”^x Douglas Groothus sees postmodernism as “a philosophy that seeks to reconceptualize traditional notions of truth and rationality.”^xi This reconceptualization rejects the idea that truth is one and undivided, the same for all everywhere and at all times. W. T. Anderson notes that this newer view regards “any truth as socially constructed, contingent, inseparable from the peculiar needs and preferences of certain people in a certain time and space.” The implication of this notion according to Anderson, is that “it leaves no value, custom, belief, or eternal verity totally untouched.”^xii
     A large part of contemporary western society has embraced this popular and sophisticated intellectual movement which declares the abandonment of foundationalism. This leads to the denial of the objectivity of knowledge while claiming the uncertainty of knowledge.^xiii Postmodernity is also characterized by scepticism, pessimism, playfulness and a distrust of metanarratives.^xiv It does not only critique the objective world and other people, but also the self and self’s very ability to know and understand.^xv

So What Really is Postmodernism?

     To describe postmodernism as a worldview or a historical epoch has been the preoccupation in various academic discussions. Some scholars agree that postmodernism is a reaction against modernity and that in contrast to modernity, it repudiates any appeal to reality or truth. In fact, the very attempt to propose totalizing metanarratives that define and legitimate reality is denounced as oppressive.^xvi Perhaps Leonard Sweet and Millard Erickson think of postmodernism as an era than just a worldview when they opined that

                      If the modern era was a rage for order, regulation, stability, singularity, and fixity, the postmodern era is a rage for chaos, uncertainty, otherness,
                      openness, multiplicity and change. Postmodern surfaces are not landscapes but wavescapes, with the waters changing and surfaces never the same.
                      The sea knows no boundaries.^xvii
                      A late -twentieth- century movements in architecture, literature, literary criticism, philosophy, and theology, as well as music and popular culture. It
                      represents a reaction against the correspondence understanding of truth and universal explanatory schemes, as well as the enlightenment view of
                     objectivity, rationality, and progress. It tends towards pluralism and relativism.^xviii

     Mike Regele thinks differently by asserting that “We must look at premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity primarily as ways of perceiving reality, rather than as historical periods.”^xix He expounds his assertion by describing how reality is perceived in the three epochs. In premodern society, according to Regele, reality is singular and all-encompassing. There is only one central belief system. In modernism, reason is scrutinized and absolute certainty is sought. But in postmodernity, he concludes, all truth is relativized.^xx Stanley Grenz, an acclaimed Christian-postmodern, refers to postmodernism as “the intellectual mood and cultural expressions that are becoming increasingly dominant in contemporary society.”^xxi
     However, Jim Shaddix takes a detour by describing modernity and postmodernity as paradigms.
He notes that “The old paradigm (modernity) taught that if you had the right teaching, you will experience God. The new paradigm (postmodernity) says that if you experience God, you will have the right teaching.”^xxii That “experience” is placed above “right teaching” in postmodernism is implied above, and that is one pivotal element in postmodern thought. But using functional contrasts, Brain Ingraffia opines that “Whereas modernism tried to elevate man into God’s place, postmodern theory seeks to destroy or deconstruct the vary place and attributes of God.”^xxiii This notwithstanding, John Stackhouse does not see postmodernism as an entirely new phenomenon. He argues that if “the heart of postmodernity is doubt regarding any claims to having the truth, then postmodernity is not a brand new phenomenon. In important respects, it is merely the latest version of scepticism.”^xxiv
     Interestingly, David Dockery posits that the term postmodern primarily refers to time rather than a distinct ideology.^xxv Scott Smith advances this view further by arguing that “Postmodernism in general, and Christian postmodernism in particular, is not just a set of philosophical beliefs… It also is a cultural shift,”^xxvi and this suggests more than just an ideology. David Harvey’s inquiries further buttress the difficulty in understanding postmodernism: “Does postmodernism… represent a radical break with modernism, or is it simply a revolt within modernism against a certain form of ‘high modernism’? … Is postmodernism a style, … or should we view it strictly as a periodizing concept?”^xxvii Even Charles Van Engen views postmodernity “as primarily a reactive viewpoint against modernity rather than a radically new, discontinuous option that rescues us from modernity.”^xxvii
     That defining postmodernism is not an easy task is readily evinced in the foregoing arguments. Whether postmodernism is an ideology or an epoch is not as critical as the reality of its existence and implications. Some even opine that postmodernism is already exiting and it is uncertain what follows next. However, Crystal Dowing reasons that “Whether or not one regards our times as ‘postpostmodern’ as some do, postmodernism has been a culture-changing movement that must be taken seriously and studied.”^xxix It is to the serious study of truth in postmodernism that this study turns.

Perception of Truth in Postmodernism

     That the postmodern world exists is a fact, and Christians have a mandate to relate their message relevantly to it.^xxx But how can such message presented as truth thrive in a milieu with a suspicious view of truth? Postmodernists actually “claim that any attempt to verify the truths of a claim by its correspondence with reality is an impossible illusion.”^xxxi David Lose depicts the extent of truth loss in postmodernism:

                      In a place of an imposed homogeneity, postmodernism cultivates
                      rampant heterogeneity; as opposed to seeking consensus it celebrates
                      dissensus; instead of order, it glorifies unlimited play, and so on … In the
                      postmodern world nothing is sacred. Every claim of truth is subjected to
                      an ever-suspicious critique, and every boundary between ‘right and
                      wrong’ is wilfully transgressed.^xxxii Ultimately, perhaps the most damaged
                      item in the postmodern fray is not so much a unified sense
                      of the truth (was there ever really one?) but the very possibility of even
                      speaking about, let alone
                      asserting, a truthful description of our physical and moral world.^xxxiii

     Key to postmodernism is that the objectivity of knowledge is denied, thereby making knowledge uncertain. So whatever truth there is, is defined by and for a specific community and all knowledge occurs within that community. And that truth is not simply known through reason but through other channels, such as intuition.^xxxiv Another key distinctive feature of postmodernism is the rejection of metanarratives.^xxxv Paul Hoffman attempts to compare the truth loss of postmodernity to that of other epochs, “While genuine knowledge of truth … has been questioned by sceptics for centuries, few seriously challenged the very existence of truth … until the eighteenth-century’s hopeful modernism collapsed into the twentieth century’s chaotic postmodernism.”^xxxvi He further demonstrates that

                     ‘Say the Bible’ was a perfectly adequate reply for many a century ago.
                      That is not the case today… We seem to have no way to express even
                      the most basic directional concepts; there is no real ‘up’ or ‘down’ beyond
                      that which exists in one’s own mind. If up and down have no clear
                      meaning, what can we possibly know of truth …?^xxxvii

     Douglas Groothaus, in his classic Truth Decay, sees truth decay as “a cultural condition in which the very idea of absolute, objective and universal truth is considered implausible, held in open contempt or not even seriously considered.”^xxxviii He alludes that

                      For… postmodern thinkers, the very idea of truth has decayed and
                      disintegrated, it is no longer something knowable by anyone who
                      engages in the proper forms of investigation and study. Truth is not over
                      and above us. Something that can be conveyed across cultures and over
                      time. It is inseparable from our cultural conditioning, our psychology, our
                      race and our gender. At the end of the day, truth is simply what we, as
                      individuals, and as communities, make it to be – and nothing more.^xxxix

     A challenge for witnessing, and inter-faith witnessing in particular, is already envisaged if truth is to be defined by each individual and the community of which he or she is part of. David Dockery notes that “Postmodernism boasts that it allows all groups to have a right to speak for themselves in their own voice, and have that voice accepted as authentic.”^xl Perhaps accepting every voice as authentic divests any singular voice of a grand-narrative claim. Stanley Grenz argues unequivocally for the community nature of truth as against a unifying and supracultural truth:

                      The postmodern worldview operates with a community based
                      understanding of truth. Not only the specific truths we accept, but even
                      our understanding of truth, are a function of the community in which we
                      participate… With this in view, the postmodern thinker has given up the
                      Enlightenment quest for one, universal, supracultural, timeless truth. In its
                      place, truth is what fits within a specific community. Truth consists in the
                      ground rules that facilitate the well-being of the community in which one
                      participates.^xli

     In his A Primer on Postmodernism, Grenz takes his argument one step further by positing that “since there are many human communities, there are necessarily many different truths… The postmodern consciousness, therefore, entails a radical kind of relativism and pluralism.”^xlii He also reasons that postmodernism has rejected the corresponding theory of truth, thereby undermining Christian claims that doctrinal formulations state objective truths. In his words, “Postmodern thinkers have given up the search for the universal, ultimate truth because they are convinced that there is nothing more to find than a host of conflicting interpretations.”^xliii So, since postmodernism accommodates and pluralism and relativism, it would be helpful to briefly examine their scopes in postmodern thinking. These appear to be the two swords of postmodernism, and any attempt to situate Adventist mission in the postmodern context must not underemphasis these critical elements.

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Thinking God in Europe Today. Theology in Global Dialogue ed. Norbert Hintersteiner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 319.
ii Mike Regele, Death of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), 70.
iii Ibid, 216.
iv Michael Haralambos, Sociology. Themes and Perspectives (Slough: University Tutorial Press, 1980), 483.
v It appears that the term “postmodern” was first coined by Frederico de Onis in the 1930s but did not achieve prominence until it was used to describe reactive tendencies to modernism in art and literature in the 1960s and in architecture in the 1970s. Then in the 1980s its meaning was stretched to cover an emergent comprehensive worldview embracing philosophy, the arts, politics, and certain branches of science, theology and popular culture. Eddie Gibbs, ChurchNext. Quantum Changes in How We do Ministry (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 23. Postmodernism has never received a single definition agreed upon by all.
vi John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Humble Apologetics. Defending the Faith Today (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 22.
vii Fernado L. Canale, Back to Revelation-Inspiration. Searching for the Cognitive Foundation of Christian Theology in a Postmodern World (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001), 9. For a detailed study of postmodern theology, see Kelvin J. Vanhoozer ed., The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
viii Carl F.H. Henry, “Postmodernism. The New Spectre?” in The Challenge of Postmodernism: An Evangelical Engagement, David Dockery ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 42.
ix James Emery White, “Evangelism in a Postmodern World,” in The Challenge of Postmodernism: An Evangelical Engagement, 359.
x Voddie Baucham Jr., “Truth and the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World,” in The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, eds. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), 51.
xi Douglas Groothus, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity against the Challenge of Postmodernism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2000), 12.
xii Walter Truett Anderson, The Future of the Self: Inventing the Postmodern Person (New York: Jeremy P. Tacher/Putman, 1997), 27.
xiii Foundationalism is the idea that knowledge can be built on unquestionable first principles. See Millard J. Erickson, Postmodernizing the Faith. Evangelical Responses to the Challenge of Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 18.
xiv Hellen D. Morris, Flexible Church. Being the Church in the Contemporary World (London: SCM Press, 2019), 32.
xv Brain D. Mclaren, Reinventing Your Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), 169.
xvi Timothy R. Philips and Dennis L. Okholm, eds., Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 12-13.
xvii Leonard Sweet, Aqua Church (Loveland, CO: Group, 1999), 24.
xviii Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2001), 157.
xix Regele, Death of the Church, 58.
xx Ibid, 59-70.
xxi Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 13.
xxii Jim Shaddix, “To preach or Not to Preach: An Evangelistic Response to the Emergent Homiletic,” in Evangelicals Engaging Emergent: A Discussion of the Emergent Church Movement, ed. William D. Henard and Adam W. Greenway (Nashville, TN: B & H, 2009), 290.
xxiii Brain D. Ingraffia, Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God’s Shadow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1.
xxiv Stackhouse, Humble Apologetics, 22.
xxv David S. Dockery, “The Challenge of Postmodernism,” in The Challenge of Postmodernism. An Evangelical Engagement, ed. David Dockery (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 13.
xxvi R. Scott Smith, Truth and the New Kind of Christian. The emerging Effects of Postmodernism in the Church (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2005), 49.
xxvii David Harvey, The Conditions of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 42.
xxviii Charles Van Engen, Mission on the Way. Issues in Mission Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), 208.
xxix Crystal L. Downing, How Postmodernism Serves Faith. Questioning Truth in Language, Philosophy and Art (Downers Grove: Ill: IVP Academic, 2006), 21.
xxx Millard J. Erickson, The Postmodern World. Discerning the Times and the Spirit of Our Age (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2002), 69.
xxxi David Steward and H. Gene Blocker, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 241.
xxxii David J. Lose, Confessing Jesus Christ. Preaching in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 27.
xxxiii Ibid.
xxxiv Erickson, Postmodernizing the Faith, 18-19.
xxxv Millard J. Erickson, The Promise and Perils of Postmodernism. Truth or Consequences (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 273. “Because postmodernists believe all truth to be socially constructed, all claims of absolute, universal, and established truth must be revisited. All meta-narratives – that is, all grand and expansive accounts of truth, meaning, and existence – are cast aside, for they claim far more than they can deliver.” R. Albert Mohler, “Truth and Contemporary Culture,” in Whatever Happened to Truth, ed. Andreas Köstenberger (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2005), 59.
xxxvi Paul K. Hoffman, “Why I Believe in Truth,” in Why I am a Christian. Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe, ed. Norman L. Geisler and Paul K. Hoffman (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 15.
xxxvii Ibid.
xxxviii Groothaus, Truth Decay, 22.
xxxix Ibid, 20.
xl Dockery, “The Challenge of Postmodernism,” in The Challenge of Postmodernism, 17.
xli Stanley J. Grenz, “Star Trek and the Next Generation: Postmodernism and the Future of Evangelical Theology,” in The Challenge of Postmodernism, 95.
xlii Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 14.
xliii Ibid, 163.
xliv Carl E. Braaten, That All may Believe: A Theology of the Gospel and the Mission of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 150.
xlv Henry, “Postmodernism. The New Spectre?” in The Challenge of Postmodernism, 41.
xlvi Nicholas Rescher, Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 79.
xlvii Mohler, “Truth and Contemporary Culture,” in Whatever Happened to Truth, 60.
xlviii Dennis T. Olson, “Truth and the Torah: Reflections on Rationality and the Pentateuch,” in But is it All True? The Bible and the Question of Truth, ed. Alan G. Padgett and Patrick R. Keifert (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 18.
xlix Lesslie Newbigin, A Word in Season. Perspectives on Christian World Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans publishing Company, 1994), 159.
l Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (London: SPCK, 1989), 244.
li Bjørn Ottesen, “The Church and Individualism: Searching for Truth or Finding Oneself,” in Faith. In Search of Depth and Relevancy (St. Albans: Trans-European Division of Seventh-day Adventists, 2014), 464.
lii D. A. Carson, “Christian Witness in an Age of Pluralism,” in God and Culture, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), 66.
liii Dan Day, Straight Thinking in an Age of Exotic Beliefs (Boise, ID: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1987), 39.
liv Francis J. Beckwith, “Why I am Not a Moral Relativist,” in Why I am a Christian, 18.
lv Groothus, Truth Decay, 12.
lvi Beckwith, “Why I am Not a Moral Relativist,” in Why I am a Christian, 32.
lvii Norman L. Geisler, “Why I Believe Truth is Real and Knowable,” in Why I am a Christian, 39, 49.
lviii S. Wesley Ariarajah, The Bible and People of other Faiths (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989), 28.
lix Ibid, 27.
lx Ibid, 67.