Post-Modernism - CA-025

Post-Modernism

I had a teacher at the seminary who used to say, "When you discuss Descartes, the important principle to remember is: 'Not to get Descartes before the horse.'" I'm afraid that Descartes got Descartes before his horse in his, "I think, therefore, I am." First of all, there is a slight inconsistency there – a subtle inconsistency, because he is assuming that someone is there doing the thinking. So "I" is assumed. He hasn't proved that I exist. I am there doing the thinking. So if I were not thinking, would I exist?

There's a joke where René Descartes goes into a coffee shop and orders a cup of coffee. He sits there and sips the coffee until his cup is empty. The attendant comes over and says, "Professor Descartes, would you like some more coffee?" And he says, "I think not." Poof! He vanishes. He thinks not. Therefore, he doesn't exist.

Descartes was a Roman Catholic. He believed in God. He professed to be a Christian. He came up with some good thoughts that are valuable to Christian apologist. But his influence on modern day people is that truth is like a mathematical formula. If you can't prove it, as you prove two plus two equals four, then it isn't valid and it isn't true. So when I say that post-modernists don't believe in absolute truth, what I really mean is they don't believe in absolute intangible proof, and absolute spiritual truth.

In day-to-day living and mathematics, post-modernists figure their bank statement just like we do. But unless it can be shown mathematically or scientifically, or unless it can be measured, then it isn't truth. When it comes to spiritual matters, it's every man for himself.

How do you determine truth then, in spiritual things? First of all, there is no absolute truth. Now that has an inconsistency in it. Do you catch it? I'm telling you the truth. This is the absolute truth. There is no such thing as absolute truth. But if there's no such thing as absolute truth, how in the world can you decide what to believe? Well, it's all a matter of interpretation. You can make a statement about spiritual matters, referring to the Bible, and someone says, "Yes, but that's just your interpretation. Everyone has his own interpretation. What is it that makes your interpretation better?" They are coming from a post-modern world view, because there are only interpretations and opinions, and it all boils down to personal preference. What do you want to be true? Do you like vanilla or chocolate? If you like chocolate, then chocolate is true for you. Do you prefer banana nut? Then that's what your truth is.

Another thing is that all interpretations are equal. It's just your opinion, or your personal preference when it comes to spiritual things. How do you determine truth? By personal preference, or majority view.

I heard a story about a student on show-and-tell day who brought his pet rabbit to class. So the teacher let the student show the rabbit. The kids were really pleased to have a rabbit in their class. And they discussed the rabbit. Then one of the students called the teacher's name and said, "Is this a boy rabbit or a girl rabbit?" And the teacher said, "Well, you know, with some animals, it's easy to tell, but I really don't know about rabbits, so I'm not sure." But the kids really wanted to know. If you're going to have a rabbit in class, it's very important to know: is it a little boy rabbit or a little girl rabbit? And so the teacher said, "Well, how many of you would like for this to be a little boy rabbit? How many of you would prefer a little girl rabbit?" And so they determined the gender of the rabbit by majority vote based on personal preference. It had nothing to do with objective truth, but then there's really no such thing as objective truth anyway. It's just personal preferences and opinions and interpretations of truth.

So that's where post-modernism is coming from. With regard to intangible truth, there are no absolutes. If it can't be measured; proved in a laboratory; or, worked out on a calculator, then there's nothing absolute. My opinion is just as good as yours. The opinion of the homeless guy in the gutter is as good as ours. It's all what you prefer, and your own interpretation.

For about the past 30 years or so, we've been living in this post-modernist environment. In the Western world, the perception of the truth (the spirit of the age, or the thoughts of the man on the street) changes about every 30 years. I heard someone say that every 30 years, the children cannibalize their parents, philosophically speaking, because it's all torn up, and we start all over again. So nothing is absolute. Truth changes every 30 years so it really doesn't matter. Whatever makes you comfortable is what the truth is. This is basically what post-modernism teaches. There are no absolute truths when it comes to spiritual things.

Now, this is one of the philosophies that Western people have had for the last 30 years or so. Before that, it was modernism, Modernism accepted many of the premises that we've lived on, such as spiritual truth can be determined by reason and logic. The modernists would agree with the conservatives (with people such as we are – evangelical Christians) that we could come to truth that way. But the post-modernists say, "No, you can argue about it all you want to. All it amounts to is personal opinion, personal interpretation, and personal preference."

When we read the New Testament, we have a tendency to read it through the views that are predominant in our society, such as post-modernism. We might think of the Bible as water coming from the top of a mountain. It's coming from each side of the mountain, and on the Western world that we live in (on our side of the mountain), the water coming from the mountain is picking up all of our history, and all of the world views that have been predominant in our culture.

For example, it's picking up a little bit of post-modernism. Before that, it picked up some of the modernistic views. And before that, it picked up some of the reformation views. And before that, it picked up Roman Catholicism. And it takes a little bit of everything that it picks up. Then the 21st-century person reads the Bible, and reads parts of all of these different philosophies, maybe with one or two being dominant, but parts of all of it, because the water washes a little bit into it. So sometimes people have a tendency (even good people) to analyze Scripture through this grid of these different philosophies (world views that have been dominant in his culture through the ages).

On the other side of the mountain, this is the Eastern view, where the Bible was written. So they don't have all of this heritage that we have. There are people today (fewer and fewer every day), in the Middle East who live essentially the way they did during the time of Christ. In parts of Iraq and Syria, and different areas of the Middle East, there are people who live in villages just like they did. Very little has changed since New Testament times. So when they read the New Testament, they understand what it would mean to people who heard it for the first time. So this is the first thing we need to do when we're dealing with the postmodernist. We need to just try to push aside these post-modernist views that have been influenced by Descartes and others, and just say, "Well, let's see, if a person were living in the year 30 A.D. in the Middle East where Jesus lived, how would he have understood this Scripture?"

Post-Modernist Objections to Christianity

"Jesus Never Wrote a Book"

There were about three very prominent rabbis in Jesus' time, or one generation before Jesus. There was Rabbi Hillel. Then there was Gamaliel, who we read something about in the New Testament. The apostle Paul studied under Gamaliel. It was Gamaliel who said, about Christianity, "Maybe we just better back off and leave them alone, because if God really has raised up these Christians, we're not going to beat them anyway. So let's just kind of back off and see what happens." Then there was one that followed Gamaliel named Eleazar. There's one common strand about these men. Not one of them ever wrote a book. Their followers wrote many books about them, but they didn't write books. In the ancient Middle East, first-rate scholars did not write books. Writing a book was the mark of a second-rate scholar. An author was considered a scribe. First-rate scholars didn't write books. So that's an easy one to answer.

"The Apostles Created a Fantasy about Jesus"

So He never wrote a book, and it was all written by His followers – mostly the apostle Paul. So the next step is they say that Jesus was just an itinerant rabbi. He tells us some good things. He went around teaching people to look at the birds of the field, and the fowls of the air, and to trust God like they did, and to do unto others as they would want people to do to themselves. But He never wanted to found a new religion. He certainly never claimed to be God. But the apostle Paul came along, and he saw that Judaism was about worn out, and he somehow learned the teachings of this itinerant rabbi named Jesus, and he thought He had some good things there. So he took those teachings, and he blew them up, and he taught the deity of Christ. That's where the Jesus of faith comes in. The apostle Paul led the other apostles, and they created the Jesus of faith who performed miracles; walked on water; fed the multitude; was crucified; then rose from the dead; and, who was indeed God. But they will tell you, "This is not the historical Jesus. This is kind of a fantasy that the apostle Paul and some of his followers created."

Again, this is easy to answer. All you have to do is put a little bit of logic to it. We're going to go a little bit further, but first of all, the apostle Paul had it all. He had all the right stuff. When he was Saul of Tarsus, he was a rising star in the Jewish community, and he was a well-known, well-respected rabbi. When we read through the book of Acts, we hear the apostle Paul talk, and he's on a first-name basis with the high priest and with the scribes and the scholars. They all know him. He knows them. And before he became a Christian, he had everything going for him. He was a prosperous and up-and-coming young man who probably would have become as well-known, or even better known, as his teacher, Gamaliel, and who knows what heights he would have risen to? Then he believes in Christ as Savior, and there is a very real sense in which, from that moment on, it's all downhill for the apostle Paul. It's all downhill. He probably never dreamed of spending a night in jail, because he was so respected. But after that, he spent his time in jail; in shipwreck; in giving up everything that he owned; and, eventually being executed. And all the time, he was saying that he was glad to do it. He was honored to be a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This absolutely makes no sense at all if you say that Paul did this all for a fantasy – that he decided to make up a story, and give up everything he had, and eventually give up his life for this fantasy that he knew was a fantasy. So it doesn't hold water. It doesn't make any sense that Saul of Tarsus would want to do that.

"Jesus Never Claimed Deity for Himself"

Do you remember what His hearers did? They picked up stones to stone Him because they understood by this statement that He was claiming to be God. In fact, that was why He was crucified. Remember the charge that the Jewish people brought against him: "This man deserves to die because He has made Himself equal to God." At one time, He said, "All power and authority is delivered unto Me." The only person who can say that, "I am all powerful" is God. So all you have to do is just read the gospels. Jesus very clearly did claim deity.

What the post-modernist says to that is, "Yes, I know the gospels say that Jesus claimed deity, but the gospels are not reliable. Remember that Jesus never wrote a book. His followers wrote the gospels. So they wrote what they wanted people to think. They didn't write what Jesus actually taught. They got together and decided, 'You know, what this world really needs is a new religion. So what do you think Jesus should have said?'" They superimposed their post-modernist views on first century Palestinian Jews. They said, "Now, what would we do if we wanted to kick up a new religion?"

The Gospels are Reliable

He starts out in verse 1 by saying, "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us." Even at this early date, he says, "There were already a lot of books that had been written about Jesus. Many," he says, "have undertaken to write about the things accomplished among the Christian community." So Luke wasn't the first. In fact, he says, "Many people had written about Jesus," just as these traditions and these things were handed down to us.

Now, here's what I want to zero in on: "The things accomplished among us (about the life and times of Jesus), as they were handed down to us" (to the second generation of Christians). And who handed them down? "By those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses." So where did Luke get his information? He interviewed people who were, from the beginning, eyewitnesses, "And servants of the Word" (or servants of the gospel). Now, who could that be? Who were the ones who were eyewitnesses, and who were with Jesus from the beginning? They were His servants, the apostles. They were with Him from the beginning, and they were eyewitnesses.

Do you remember Granville Sharpe's Rule? When you have two nouns that use the same article, they're referring to the same person. Now, we can't be dogmatic about this here because the nouns are plural, but we can be at least 90% sure that the eyewitnesses and the servants are the same people, just on the basis of Granville Sharpe's Rule. In Ephesians 4:11, we really emphasize that, "He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers." We really bear down on the fact that the pastor and the teacher is the same person: pastor-teacher. And we base that on Granville Sharp's Rule. But these are plural: pastors and teachers. So many times, Granville Sharp's rule applies when the nouns are plural. As I say, we can't be 100% dogmatic on this, but I believe we can be almost absolutely sure that the eyewitnesses and servants are the same people, namely the apostles.

Let me show you one other thing here that will strengthen this. Turn to Luke 4:20. This is when the Lord Jesus Christ got up one Sabbath morning and read the Scripture in a Jewish synagogue. Verse 20: "He closed the book; gave it back to the attendant; and, sat down." The "attendant" is the same word that was used here for a "servant" of the Word. The attendant was the paid professional in the synagogue. He wasn't the rabbi. Today, if you go over to a Jewish synagogue, the top guy in the synagogue will be the rabbi, much like the pastor of the church. He is the leader of the congregation. But in Jesus' Day, it wasn't like that. Any man could become a rabbi. All he had to do was study the Scriptures, and people recognized his expertise and his gift of teaching. Younger men and people would come to him to ask him questions, and he would be invited to speak places. He was a rabbi, and he didn't necessarily have to be the leader of a congregation, because every synagogue had an attendant. That was the paid professional. His chief job was to be the steward of the sacred writings. These guys took their work seriously. Not many people had a Bible. In fact, probably the only Old Testaments that they had were those that were in the synagogue.

So on Saturday morning, it would be time for service. One of the men in the congregation would have been asked in advance, or he would have volunteered in advance, to read some Scripture. So he would come up and take his place at the podium, and the attendant would go over and unlock the box that the scroll was held in; open it; take out the sacred scroll; and, give it to the man. The man would read the portion of Scripture that he had decided to read. Then he would take it back and give it to the attendant or the servant – the steward, the top man in the synagogue. The attendant would put it back in the box; lock it up; take the key; and, put the key away somewhere, in his pocket or in some other place where it would be safe. People would be sitting there thinking, "Oh, boy, our Scriptures are safe. Old Moses here (or whatever his name was) is really doing a good job taking care of our Scripture. Nobody's going to steal our sacred scroll. All the time the young man was reading the Scripture (or the old man, or whoever it was that had read the Scripture), the attendant was standing there looking at him like, "Boy, you better be careful with that. Do you realize how valuable that is? Be careful when you roll it up. As soon as you finish, you give it back to me. This is sacred. We've got to take care of it." So the attendant was the steward. He was the guardian of the sacred Scriptures.

Luke uses that same term when he says where he got his information. Who handed down this information to second-generation Christians? Those who were eyewitnesses, who were with Jesus from the beginning, and the stewards of the Word. We strongly believe that the eyewitnesses and the stewards or the servants were the same people. This could only have been the apostles. So the apostles took such a strong view of Scripture, and such a strong view of what Jesus did; what was written about Jesus; and, what they accepted as true and put their stamp of approval on, that the Christian community used the same word to describe them that the Jewish people used to describe the attendant of their synagogue – the guy who was the steward of the sacred Scriptures. That's what they thought of as the apostles – the stewards of the sacred Scriptures.

Inside Experts

One of the things that I heard is from a man who was a professor at a university in Lebanon for many years. He's an American man. His name is Dr. Bailey, and he's in the United States now. He's retired. He taught at a university in the Middle East (in Lebanon) during the 1970s. If you remember the news in the 1970s, the nation of Lebanon just fell apart. There were revolutions, and there was a war between different factions of Islam and other different factions, among which were Christian groups and so on. The whole nation just experienced total anarchy.

One day, Dr. Bailey was sitting at an outdoor coffee shop, having a drink with a friend. A car drove up, and some men with machine guns got out; ran inside the building that they were in front of; shot the building up; got back into the car; and, left. So Dr. Bailey immediately called for his friend. He said," What's going on? Should we seek shelter? Will they be back or what?" And the friend said, "No, no, that was just so-and-so. He's the leader of such-and-such a faction. We had some problems with him some time ago. Some of our men roughed up some of his men, and he just came by to scare us. You notice that no one was killed. He just wanted to scare us. We don't have anything to worry about. He won't be back." So Dr. Bailey accepted this at the man's word and went on about his business. Sure enough, his friend was right because he was an inside expert. His friend knew the inside story.

Sometime later, a camera crew from another country came, and they set up their cameras. Dr. Bailey asked them, "What are you doing here?" They said, "Well, as you know, there was an incident some time ago in which one of the Islamic factions attacked this building." He said, "We're doing a documentary on it as objective observers, and we're going to analyze what happened; why it happened; and, what it will probably lead to in the future. It's really going to be a nice film. Would you like to order your copy now?" Dr. Bailey said, "No, no, thank you. I don't need it. I already know what's going on because a friend of mine is an inside expert. He knows the inner workings of these groups that made these things happen. You people are objective observers, and you have no idea what's really going on." So he turned down the offer for his own copy of the video because he didn't need it.

People coming from a post-modernist world view believe that what you really need is an objective observer – someone who can really look into the Scriptures and see what's really going on. They want someone who's objective – a non-Christian, someone who has nothing to lose or to gain by the Scriptures. They can determine what was actually taught by Jesus and what He actually meant. This is the whole thesis of the Jesus seminar. We'll have to spend an evening talking about the Jesus seminar. The purpose of the Jesus seminar is to get liberal theologians (of course) together to go over the New Testament, and you determine, as objective observers, "What did Jesus actually say?"

I know a guy who was a student at a seminary where the teacher said, "Now, during this class, we're going to try to determine: what did Jesus actually teach? Out of all the New Testament, how much of it can we say was actually taught by Jesus?" And this student said, "Sir, can I go ahead and get credit for this class? I have a red-letter Bible." Of course, he was saying that facetiously ‐ that he knew what Jesus already taught because he could just read the red.

Anyway, that's the purpose of the Jesus seminar – to determine what in the New Testament could actually be attributed to Jesus, because they say they're looking at it objectively, but they could never determine it objectively. What you need is an inside expert. This is who the early Christians were – the apostles. They were the inside experts. They can tell us exactly what Jesus said and did. They were the guardians (the stewards) of the sacred Scriptures.

Let me tell you something else that I've learned about the Middle East which probably hasn't changed. This is in modern days in the small villages where they don't have electricity; they don't have running water; in the evenings, you don't go plug into the Internet; and, you don't watch TV. You actually talk to each other as a community. One of the events that they have is called a preservation party. In a preservation party, the village gets together. Remember that these villages are small, probably about as many people as belong to Berean Memorial Church live in a village, or even fewer. They all get together, and anybody can stand up and say anything they want to say. You can tell a joke. You can tell some gossip. You can relate an experience. You can say anything you want to say in any way you want to say it. The whole village is obligated to sit and listen to you without criticism or correction, unless (and this is very important): If you tell anything about their culture (any of their official history), it has to be word-for-word, or you will be corrected. This is how important they take their cultural heritage. They have a very strong sense of "we."

Some of the people who do research in the Middle East say, "The thing that really amazes me is the way people talk about 'we.'" One man said that an inhabitant of a certain village was showing him around, and he was just amazed at all the history of his own village that this man knew. He was not an educated man, but he knew the history of his people – his village back hundreds of years. He kept using the word "we." He said, "This is the church where we used to attend when we spoke Coptic." Now they speak Arabic. They haven't spoken Coptic in 500 years. But he was still using the word "we:" "This is where we used to go to church when we spoke Coptic." They have a strong sense of community – a strong sense of "we."

This is like when you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and God says, "You are in slavery now in Babylon. But I'm going to lead you out of slavery. Someday you are going to be back in your own land." It was going to be 70 years before they were back in their own land. Most of the people that he was talking to would be dead. They would die in slavery. But He says, "I will lead you back. You will be back in your own land."

It's like when Ezekiel made a big deal of purchasing land. He was in Babylon, and he made a big deal out of buying land in Israel, and getting witnesses to witness the fact that he was buying land. Would he ever return to Israel? No. But he was making a public statement that, "My family will someday. We will return." That's the way Middle Easterners still think. They think in terms of "we." That is why their cultural heritage is so important to them. So if you're at a preservation meeting to preserve their heritage, and you stand up and you start talking about "we" (you can say anything you want to about "I"), but when you start talking about "we" (meaning "us"), it has to be their official history word-for-word. So if that's the way they are now, you can be sure that the apostles, as stewards of the sacred Scriptures, insisted that everything would be correct.

I heard about a man who wanted to write a book about the history of one of the villages in the Middle East, so he stayed in this village. It was all going to be in Arabic. He had studied Arabic for years, and he was fluent with it. He put out the word that if anybody could give him some information about the history of their village, that he would give them an American quarter for each bit of valuable information that he would publish in his book. He ended up spending $2,000 in quarters. He would write down what they said, and they were very careful to correct him: "No, no, I didn't say that. Here's what I said. You missed by one vowel point. You missed by one letter what I was saying. This is about our culture and our heritage. It's got to be correct."

There was a lady who was doing her PhD on George Washington. She heard about the work of these scholars who have gone to the Middle East. They'll spend years learning Hebrew, Aramaic, or Arabic, becoming fluent in it. Then they'll go to one of these villages, and they'll spend 10 years or so working on a dissertation about this village. One of these man who was a Christian and believed in the inerrancy of Scripture had spoken about this. This lady said, "I am doing my PhD on George Washington, the American president." She said, "You know, you actually have more reliable information about Jesus Christ who lived 2,000 ago than I have about George Washington who lived 200 years ago." She said, "I have reams and reams of stories, newspaper articles, and books about George Washington."

She said that one example of the stories was where one man wrote, "I remember back at Valley Forge, old George was just so discouraged. George told me, 'Sam, I'm just so discouraged. I think I'll just quit. There's no way we can win.' I said, 'George, you've got to fight on. We can lick these British. Come on. All they want to do is go to the taverns and drink, and we can do it. Come on, George. You've got to hang in there.' George said, 'Yeah, you know, you're right.'" And the lady said, "What makes me think this is authentic? I mean, everybody had a story about George Washington. How do I know if any of these stories are really true? But she said, "You people who study this sacred literature of the Middle East – I mean, these people really took it seriously. The Christian community said in the early days of the church, 'Yes, this is the absolute truth. This is Scripture. We're willing to die for this if we have to.' You don't have to worry about that. You don't have to wonder whether it's reliable or not, because it is."

Now, the point of all of this is, "Yes, we can refute the post-modernist, and I hope that we can use this information. I hope we get the opportunity to speak to people who are looking at Christianity through a postmodern world view. But the bottom line is that we know this is true. This just confirms the fact that, in the words of the song, "We serve a living Savior." Jesus was a flesh and blood human being who lived on this earth; He was God; He died on a cross; He shed His blood on the cross; and, He rose again – He rose from the dead. If the living Christ were to walk in here right now in the flesh, you could reach out and shake hands with Him. You could put your arm around Him and touch Him. He could stay for fellowship with us. He could eat a meal with us. We're not serving a ghost. We're not serving a figment of someone's imagination – a fantasy that someone invented. We are serving a living Savior who is 100% God; 100% man; who lived on this earth; who is alive today; who is working hard today at making intercession for us because He loves us; His love for us is real; He has a plan for us; His love is unending for us; and, we will spend eternity with Him.

Leon Adkins, 2003

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