Knox Theological Seminary

PREACHING AND TEACHING CHRIST IN A POSTMODERN CONTEXT

a Major Project Submitted to

the Faculty of Knox Theological Seminary

in candidacy for the Degree of

Doctor of Ministry

BY

MARK A. BARBER

CLEVELAND, TENNESSEE

MAY 2015

Knox Theological Seminary

PREACHING AND TEACHING CHRIST IN A POSTMODERN CONTEXT

a Major Project Submitted to the Faculty of Knox Theological Seminaryin candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Ministry

BYMARK A. BARBER

CLEVELAND, TENNESSEEMAY 2015

Approved:

_______________________________________ Advisor

_______________________________________ Dean of Faculty

_______________________________________ Reader

COPYRIGHT

This dissertation is the intellectual property of the Reverend Mark A. Barber and may not be copied or sold without the written permission of the author. Short citations for academic and review purposes are permitted.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One: The Tenents of Postmodernism and Christianity 1

Chapter One: Postmodernism: The Silencing of Human-Centered Metanarrative Claims 2

Chapter 2: The Metanarrative of Scripture: The God Who Speaks25Part Two: Approaches to Presenting Christ to a Postmodern Culture43Chapter Three: The Way of Accommodation44Chapter Four: The Way of Challenge65Chapter Five: The Accommodative Approach 89Part Three: Applying the Accommodative Approach to Preaching and Teaching Christ to a Postmodern World: A Sample lesson and Sermon 110Chapter 6: Teaching and Preaching Christ from the Book of Ecclesiastes111Bibliography141Vita150

ABSTRACT

This project was designed to develop a biblical and theological means to proclaim Christ to a postmodern cultural context. Research for this project covers a broad range of topics, including the fields of theology, exegesis, philosophy, science and mathematics. Comparisons were made between the worldview of postmoderns and the metanarrative of of Scripture. Following the comparison of worldviews, different methods of approach to bridge understanding from the Biblical metanarrative to the tenents of postmodernism were critically examined. These methods include assimilation, challenge, and a blend of the two which is called accommodative by the author.Part three applies the accommodative method to teaching and preaching using Ecclesiastes as an example.

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Part OneThe Tenents of Postmodernism and Christianity

Chapter One: Postmodernism: The Silencing of Human-Centered Metanarrative ClaimsThe title of this chapter requires that two terms be defined. The first is metanarrative. What is a metanarrative? Basically, a metanarrative can be defined as the big story[footnoteRef:1] which serves as a unifying principle of all other stories. This big story holds a position of transcendence and provides a common and ultimate meaning for everything [1: http://www.sociology.org.uk/ws1k5.htm (August 22, 2014)]

One of the influential French postmodernists, Jean-Franois Lyotard, rejected the concept of the big story. [footnoteRef:2] In fact he defined postmodernism as a incredulity toward metanarratives.[footnoteRef:3] Lyotard is not making a universal statement denying metanarratives carte blanche, but as Tom Sherwood notes, a rejection of metanarratives that try to legitimate themselves, often using universal reason.[footnoteRef:4] The attempt to find a uniting narrative by reason has been the pursuit of philosophers. In response to this quest, Corinne Enaudeau, who wrote the introduction to Lyotards book Why Philosophize makes this observation: [2: Brueggemann says of Lyotard: Jean-Franois Lyotard, in The Post-modern Condition, has made the extreme case that no grand story can any longer claim assent; he asserts that we are left only with quite local stories. See: Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 8.] [3: Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minn. Press, 1984), xxiv.] [4: Tom Sherwood, Lyotards Postmodern Critique of Metanarratives and the Proper Christian Response, July 20, 2009. http://tomsherwood.wordpress.com/. Accessed January 13, 2015.]

Philosophers, it would seem, are those crazy chatterboxes whom history carts along with it throughout its history, without profit but without any great loss either. They may well interpret the world, but they stay standing at its door and will never change it. So their discourse may be interrupted, may return to silence, without the face of the world being changed.[footnoteRef:5] [5: Jean-Francois Lyotard (2013-12-04). Why Philosophize. Wiley. Kindle Edition,(Kindle Locations 47-55).]

Having come from a Marxist liberationist past, Lyotard felt that metanarratives that claimed to explain everything created a society that listened to some people and ignored others.[footnoteRef:6] The postmodern considers any such universal imposition of value or truth upon the individual as tyrannical, limiting personal freedom. The squelching of a imposed unity leaves the individual free to create his or her own meaning. [6: Ibid.]

When trying to define what the second term postmodernism means, one is immediately presented with a problem, because as Craig Bartholomew notes: Postmodernity is an unusually slippery word, used nowadays in a bewildering variety of ways.[footnoteRef:7] Their love of autonomy means that they want at least a say in the definition of words. This leads them to hold the reader as at least an equal authority over the meaning of text and speech as compared to the authority of the author or even the words or even of the text itself. As Chris Wright observes: [7: Craig Bartholomew, (1997). Post/Late? Modernity as the Context for Christian Scholarship Today. In Themelios: Volume 22, No. 2, 1997 (25). United Kingdom: The Gospel Coalition.]

It reverses the priority of author intent as the determinant factor in a texts meaning. In fact, in some cases, reader response theory goes so far as virtually eliminating the author altogetherIt doesnt really matter who said this or what they meant by saying it; what matters is what it means to me. Thats all that really counts.[footnoteRef:8] [8: Chris Wright. Christ and the Mosaics of Pluralism: Challenges to Evangelical Missiology in the 21st Century. World Evangelical Fellowship. Theological Commission, Evangelical Review of Theology 24, no. 3, electronic ed. (2000).]

The polyvalency of meaning that results from this inversion of authority leads to chaos if not left unchecked. There has to be at least some common semantic ground between the author and reader concerning the definition of any word or concept in order for meaningful conversation to occur. It is a fair statement to say that no two people understand any given word, phrase, or concept in exactly the same way. But for meaningful exchange of dialogue to occur, there is a responsibility of the author to define what he or she means by a given term and for the reader or listener to carefully hear what the author is saying before responding in kind. The author needs to listen to this feedback to ensure that he or she is being properly understood. Noting this dilemma, the best way to proceed in defining postmodernism is to approximate its meaning by saying what it is not. The component parts of postmodern are the words post and modern. Therefore what it means is inextricably bound to the age which preceded it. Therefore, it would seem that the best way to describe postmodernism is in terms of what preceded it, which is modernism.A Review of ModernismScholars are not all agreed as to when the Modern Era began. For example, Peter Leithart sees it beginning in the Renaissance and starts his treatment of modernism with the sentence In the beginning was the Renaissance.[footnoteRef:9] Thomas Oden, on the other hand, sees it beginning with the French Revolution in 1789 and ending in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.[footnoteRef:10] As human life is dynamic, systems of thought constructed by human beings are dynamic. There is gestation, birth, growth, maturity, and decay in human based metanarratives. The process of death in mortal humans begins at conception. So even as life grows, death also grows with it. It then is hard to assign a birthday for modernism in that its own conception goes back to the Medieval Synthesis, the metanarrative which preceded it.[footnoteRef:11] [9: Peter Leithart, Solomon among the Postmoderns. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition, 2000. (Kindle Locations 173-176). ] [10: Craig A. Loscalzo, Apologizing For God: Apologetic Preaching To A Postmodern World Review and Expositor 93, no. 3 (1996): 406.] [11: Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 23.]

The birth of modernism sprung from the death of the Medieval Synthesis. In postmodern terms, the Medieval Synthesis was the result of a dialectical fusion of Greek philosophy and Christian theology, which was heavily influenced by the work of Thomas Aquinas.[footnoteRef:12] The breakdown of this synthesis resulted in the birth of two metanarrative claims. The one which was born from this act of deconstruction is the Reformation, which kept the Christian side of the synthesis, while modernism grew from the Greek side of the synthesis. These two metanarratives would fight to become the metanarrative. [12: Cornelius Van Til and Eric H Sigward, Modern Philosophy Before Kant. The Cornelius Van Til Audio Library, Electronic ed. Labels Army Co.) New York, 1997.]

Rene Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher, was a pioneer in the development of modernism. As Leithart notes: Ren Descartes is usually identified as the fountainhead of modern philosophy, and his importance lies as much in his plan to construct a self-evident, neutral basis for intellectual consensus as in the substance of his conclusions.[footnoteRef:13] He lived in Europe during the great uncertainties caused by the Thirty Years War, which has been seen by many as a religious one. Mathematics was a good refuge for Descartes in that mathematics offered consistent and reliable results.[footnoteRef:14] In philosophy, Descartes wanted a definition of truth that he felt was more stable and certain than the religious truth which was causing death and destruction in Europe. [13: Leithart, (Kindle Locations 239-240). ] [14: Leithart, (Kindle Locations 240-242).]

Descartes began his inquiry for a foundational truth upon to build a more certain system. He did this by employing a form of Socratic skepticism in which he doubted everything. He was even able to doubt the existence of God. But he was unable to doubt his own existence. This foundational truth was expressed in the famous cogito, ergo sum (I think; therefore I am.). This represented a major shift in the center of the universe from God to the individual human. The I am of man replaced the I AM of God as the source of absolute truth. As Cornelius Van Til notes, for Descartes: Man is a being who can explain himself, his world and his God in terms of himself.[footnoteRef:15] This man-centered approach is demonstrated by Descartes where he says The idea of God, which is found in us, demands God himself for its cause.[footnoteRef:16] This demonstrates that Descartes direction of theology was from man to God. [15: Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism. (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Philadelphia, 1962). Electronic edition, 16, 2.] [16: Ren Descartes, The Method, Meditations and Philosophy of Descartes, trans. John Vietch, Universal Classics Library (Washington; London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), 217.]

Descartes contributed to the process of secularizing of Western society. Pre-modern societies according to Charles Taylor, had been in some way connected to, based on, guaranteed by some faith in, or adherence to God, or some notion of ultimate reality, something which the modern West has freed itself from.[footnoteRef:17] [17: Charles Taylor. A Secular Age. Kindle Edition, 2007. (Kindle Locations 35-36).]

Modernism came to full maturity in the time of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. This period was dominated by the apparent triumphs of science and technology.[footnoteRef:18] Kant built upon the idea of the autonomous man, who was introduced by Descartes. Human autonomy was believed to be the stable platform upon which knowledge and scientific discovery were built.[footnoteRef:19] [18: World Evangelical Fellowship. Theological Commission, Evangelical review of Theology 24, electronic ed. (2000).] [19: Michael Rohlf, Immanuel Kant. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/, May 20,2010.]

Kant introduced a synthesis between rationalism and empiricism. [footnoteRef:20] These two schools of thought threatened the unity of modernism in their major differences of epistemologies. Rationalists like Spinoza believed that human reason was capable of comprehending all reality. For Spinoza: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.[footnoteRef:21] Empiricists like John Locke, on the other hand, saw the human mind as passive. The mind was a tabula rasa upon which the facts of reality were captured. Knowledge came from observation of phenomena. Locke disagreed with the rationalism of Descartes in that reason was not infallible in determining reality as such. Instead, one had to be satisfied with probabilities, as nothing could be known for certain.[footnoteRef:22] [20: Ibid.] [21: Baruch Spinoza, The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza: De Intellectus EmendationeEthica, trans. R. H. M. Elwes, Revised Edition., vol. 2, Bohns Philosophical Library (London: George Bell and Sons, 1891), 86.] [22: Patrick J. Connolly, Locke, John Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/, 2009.]

Kant logically saw that both Spinoza and Locke could not be right. Pure reason leads to a unity without content, and empiricism leads to disparate unrelated facts without purpose. Neither philosophy led to a satisfactory answer, so Kant solved this intellectual dilemma by taking elements of both and forcing them into a unity. This hybrid system allowed for the mind to process phenomena to create facts. This acted as a limit to empiricism in that facts could not be known as they actually were.[footnoteRef:23] The thing could not be known in itself.[footnoteRef:24] The same limit applied to human reason as well in that nothing could be known that was beyond the limits of human reason. This means that the exhaustive penetration of all reality by human reason that the Greek philosopher Parmenides[footnoteRef:25] sought for as well as Spinoza was impossible. [23: Cornelius Van Til and Eric H. Sigward, Immanuel Kant. The Cornelius Van Til Audio Library, Electronic ed. (Labels Army Company: New York, 1997).] [24: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of Its First Publication, trans. F. Max Mller, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1881), 26.] [25: Cornelius Van Til, Modern Theology 2, The Audio Lectures of Cornelius Van Til.. Van Til thought that Parmenides and Spinoza were the ultimate rationalists.]

Kant divided epistemology into two realms. The first was the phenomenal[footnoteRef:26], which is the world of objects which could be processed by the human mind to create factuality necessary for science. The phenomenal world was deterministic in nature. Even so, the best that could be known of phenomena was what was currently known. The possibility existed because perceptions might change as more data became available. This mixture of brute factuality and determinism was in itself irrational. [26: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of Its First Publication, trans. F. Max Mller, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1881), 205 ff.]

The second realm of knowledge was the noumenal. This was the realm in which the human mind lived. Kant assigned the thoughts about God to this realm as well. This was the world of freedom and autonomy free from the determinism of phenomena. Nothing in a scientific sense could be known in this realm.[footnoteRef:27] Kants god then was wholly other and could not be known. But as the human was also in this realm as far as thinking was concerned, it also made the human being unknowable as well because the human mind lay in the noumenal realm, outside the deterministic a priorii of time and space which frame the world of phenomena. It was the placing of the human mind in the noumenal realm that Kant believed made human autonomy and freedom possible.[footnoteRef:28] [27: Of this Kant says: That we are perfectly right in thus resolving that famous argument into a paralogism, will be clearly seen by referring to the general note on the systematical representation of the principles, and to the section on the noumena, for it has been proved there that the concept of a thing, which can exist by itself as a subject, and not as a mere predicate, carries as yet no objective reality, that is, that we cannot know whether any object at all belongs to it, it being impossible for us to understand the possibility of such a mode of existence. It yields us therefore no knowledge at all. See: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of Its First Publication, trans. F. Max Mller, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1881), 496.] [28: Kants own words are: Now, freedom which belongs to the supersensible sphere (the sphere of noumena) cannot be determined by anything in the phenomenal world. See: Immanuel Kant, Kants Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Fifth Edition, Revised. (London; New York; Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898), lxi.]

Even though Kant had enormous influence, he actually came closer to the end of both the enlightenment and modernism than the beginning.[footnoteRef:29] The Romantic Era was about to begin as a critique of modernism and the first noticeable wind of change to the postmodern world. This can be seen in the first words of The Social Contract by Kants contemporary, Rousseau, who states Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.[footnoteRef:30] The problem was that the autonomous man was an abstract man, a homo universalis. However, for the promise of modernity to be realized, this autonomy needed to be realized by real men and women in the phenomenal realm of space and time. [29: Immanuel Kant. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/#CriEnl.] [30: Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract. Submitted by Jonathan Bennett http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfs/rousseau1762.pdf]

A major death knell to modernism came in the nineteenth century and is demonstrated by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a man before his time who has had a lot of influence on recent postmodern thinkers such as Vattimo,[footnoteRef:31] Foucault, and Derrida as well as many notable existentialists such as Heidegger. He was a scholar of the classics as well as a student of philology.[footnoteRef:32] His thought has affected several aspects of postmodernism. He questioned the validity of truth, calling it a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms.[footnoteRef:33] He has been classified as a radical existentialist or a nihilist. By this, it does not mean that he affirmed life as utterly meaningless, but as Michael Horton quotes Nietzsche: There is no point to life that I dont create for myself.[footnoteRef:34] What Nietzsche stressed was the sovereignty of the individual human will. Nietzsche states: That my life has no aim is evident from the accidental nature of its origin. That I can posit an aim for myself is another matter.[footnoteRef:35] [31: Anthony C. Thiselton, Postmodernity, ed. Trevor A. Hart, The Dictionary of Historical Theology (Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K.: Paternoster Press, 2000), 434.] [32: Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm, Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 13.] [33: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ Friedrich Nietzsche. First published Fri May 30, 1997; substantive revision Fri Apr 29, 2011] [34: Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 25.] [35: Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life, 25.]

Nietzsche was obsessed about power and autonomy, another postmodern trait. He also was interested in the meaning and authority of words. He considered appeals to objectivity as really being subjective in nature and a means of expressing power over others. This was destructive of the idea that human persons must be their own self-sufficient authority,[footnoteRef:36] This, too, characterizes postmodernism. The promises of technological advancement and modernism were put to a severe test by Nietzsche and found wanting [36: E. Fahlbusch and G. W. Bromiley, Eds. The Encyclopedia of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans: 2005, 302.]

Nietzsche not only attacked modernism, but he also attacked religion and morality as well. In particular, he was very anti-Christian in his views and consistently attacked Christians as weaklings. He proclaimed the death of God, an idea that came back in the 1960s with Thomas Altizer and others.[footnoteRef:37] Nietzsches influence outside the intellectual circles was limited in his day. The advances of modern technology and a sense of optimism kept such radical ideas suppressed. It took almost a hundred years before it started filtering down to the masses. But in many respects, he should be considered the father of postmodernism. [37: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.]

The horrors of the First World War came as a shock to the euphoria of the age that man was progressing towards utopia. Part of the ascendancy of modernism was that it had subjugated religion to the private domain and ended religious wars. But the First World War was not a religious war. This was a modern war fought with terrifying new weapons made possible by the advances of technology. Commanders threw away millions of human lives in the senseless butchery in places like Verdun and the Somme. Millions of others were maimed. One of the great pillars of stability which had supported modernism, that of global peace and harmony, was replaced by global war.Yet modernism was not yet dead. World War I was shrugged off as the war to end all wars. Russia morphed into the Soviet Union upon its promise of peace and bread. The rest of Europe felt that a League of Nations would bring the long awaited age of peace. America sought its utopia within itself in a splendid isolationism. The automobile and radio grew the size of peoples world during the Roaring Twenties.Yet in the midst of the apparent progress of his time, the American theologian J. Gresham Machen, made an analysis which was prophetic of the failure of modernism:The modern world represents in some respects an enormous improvement over the world in which our ancestors lived; but in other respects it exhibits a lamentable decline. The improvement appears in the physical conditions of life, but in the spiritual realm there is a corresponding loss. The loss is clearest, perhaps, in the realm of art. Despite the mighty revolution which has been produced in the external conditions of life, no great poet is now living to celebrate the change; humanity has suddenly become dumb. Gone, too, are the great painters and the great musicians and the great sculptors. The art that still subsists is largely imitative, and where it is not imitative it is usually bizarre. Even the appreciation of the glories of the past is gradually being lost, under the influence of a utilitarian education that concerns itself only with the production of physical well-being.[footnoteRef:38] [38: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, New Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 8.]

The Great Depression next attacked the optimism of modernity. Scientific attempts to manage the economy through organizations like the Federal Reserve actually contributed and worsened the catastrophe.[footnoteRef:39] The millions of destitute challenged the claims of modernism. In addition, the Dust Bowl showed that modern technology actually contributed to the effects of the drought.[footnoteRef:40] [39: This is the view of Ben Bernanke and others. See: WND, Bernanke: Federal Reserve Caused Great Depression http://www.wnd.com/2008/03/59405/. (Accessed September 11, 2014).] [40: Ken Burns calls the dust bowl the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history. See: PBS, The Dust Bowl: A Film by Ken Burns. http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/. (Accessed September 11, 2014).]

World War II then showed that the first war was not the last great eschatological war to end all wars. The Cold War and nuclear weapons showed the dangerous side of technology and progress. Nuclear technology enabled the x-ray, which has prolonged the lives of millions. But the same technology provides the means of killing billions in the form of nuclear weapons.As Western Civilization adjusted itself to the reality that the solution to the ravages of war were as far away as ever, attention was turned towards the improving of society. Americans had to deal with the problems of segregation and income inequality. This culminated in President Johnsons vision of the Great Society. The power of technology grew astronomically with its potential to improve peoples lives. Soon people from all over the world could meet on the information superhighway.However, the massive debts of the Great Society experiment as well as the struggle for natural resources such as oil, radical Islam, environmental pollution and such issues all continued to wear on the promises of modernism. The attempted solution to one of the problems seemed to create as much collateral damage, if not more, than the solution offered.The epitaph of modernism and the birth of postmodernism was rendered brilliantly by the lyrics of a song written by Paul Simon called, The Sound of Silence in 1964. Especially poignant is the third stanza:And in the naked light I sawten thousand people, maybe more.People talking without speaking;people hearing without listening.People writing songs that voices never share.And no one dared disturb the sound of silence.[footnoteRef:41] [41: Simon and Garfunkel Lyrics: The Sound of Silence.http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/simongarfunkel/thesoundofsilence.html. (Accessed September 30,2014).]

With these words, postmodernism came to maturity. The modern age had begun with skepticism, and it died in skepticism. The difference is that Descartes expected to find something solid to stand on through his skeptical epistemology. But postmodernism is skepticism without a floor. It really isnt a movement at all. It is more of a transition.[footnoteRef:42] As Jimmy Long notes, one of the seismic shifts which characterizes postmodernity is the transition from the belief in human progress to that of human misery.[footnoteRef:43] [42: Brueggemann notes that some like Habermas think that postmodernism is only a movement within modernism. See: Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 2.] [43: Will McRaney, The Art of Personal Evangelism: Sharing Jesus in a Changing Culture (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2003), 120.]

Postmodernism: the Postmortem of ModernismThe deconstructing acids of Postmodernism attacked the very philosophical foundation of modernity. Scholars such as Michel Foucault, Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard tested and found that so-called objective and factual truth depends on all kinds of assumptions which are themselves relative and questionable.[footnoteRef:44] Leithart brings out several cracks in the foundation of modernism. One of these is that was that Descartes excluded religious convictions about God as not being either self-evident or universal from his foundation which involves an arbitrary choice.[footnoteRef:45] This exclusion would also limit human knowledge from being comprehensive. This means that the Cartesian system was limited in scope and could not be a grand and infallible narrative that humans could ascribe to all of reality. [44: Chris Wright, Christ and the Mosaic of Pluralisms: Challenges to Evangelical Missiology in the 21st Century. World Evangelical Fellowship. Theological Commission, Evangelical review of theology 24, no. 3, electronic ed. (2000).] [45: Leithart, (Kindle Location 989).]

Another problem with the Cartesian system as illustrated by Leithart is that the I am of Descartes is different from the I am of someone else who might have a different understanding of self-evident truth.[footnoteRef:46] Finally, the I am of Descartes changed with every new experience. Just as Heraclitus noticed that No one steps into the same river twice,[footnoteRef:47] no one would meet the same Descartes twice. Descartess foundational truth is always in the same flux as Descartes. So the Cartesian platform does not provide the grand narrative he desired because it was limited by what his system excluded and unknowable. It could serve as a limited narrative. [46: Ibid, (Kindle Locations 970-972. ] [47: Heraclitus was an ancient Greek philosopher to whom the quote No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man is attributed. See: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/117526-no-man-ever-steps-in-the-same-river-twice-for. Accessed February, 19, 2015. ]

Kants autonomous man also fails scrutiny in the attempt to forge a meaningful unity from the philosophies of the empiricists like Locke and the rationalists like Spinoza.[footnoteRef:48] Their epistemological divisions taken by themselves would tear the Cartesian unity apart. The rationale of Descartes was to create a system of certainty over against the divide over religious truth. The Cartesian system of science was about to collapse, because rationalism led to an empty unity beyond differentiation and empiricism led to disparate brute facts without relation. Kants solution was to mix the best of both philosophies into a new synthesis.[footnoteRef:49] [48: Cornelius Van Til and Eric H. Sigward, Immanuel Kant. The Cornelius Van Til Audio Library..] [49: Ibid.]

This synthesis came at the expense of limiting scientific knowledge to sensual phenomena which could be measured. So facts are the creation of the autonomous mind and are limited. All other knowledge including the religious was put into another realm of thought and was unknowable. This unity had to be forced dialectically. Because this view of knowledge is not comprehensive but is in flux as new discoveries in science are made, the truth of science is an ever changing target. New scientific truth replaced the old. What was true today might not be true tomorrow. This means that the truth of science is relative and not absolute. This means that even the phenomenological realm not Kant was a stable narrative, to say nothing of the noumenal. The relativity of human knowledge can be seen in the realm of mathematics, of which Kant says, For one part of this knowledge, namely, the mathematical, has always been in possession of perfect trustworthiness.[footnoteRef:50] Yet, in mathematics, one still has to deal with irrational numbers such as pi and the square root of two, both of which are irrational and yet lie at the very foundation of mathematics. This leads to rounding errors which, in a large enough system, becomes significant. Stephen Keilert also notes that even though the inputs completely determine the outcome of an event, that we are limited in that we do not understand all of the inputs and their interactions which makes long term predictions of the behavior of phenomena impossible.[footnoteRef:51] This theory called Chaos Theory basically says that even math and science are limited and to some degree unknowable, both in the present as well as the future. [50: Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 34.] [51: Stephen H. Keilert, In the Wake of Chaos: Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems. Chicago: University of Chicago Press:1993,32. ]

Part of the rational appeal of mathematics lay in its predictable determinism. But even here, it is only rationally pure because humans have defined it as such. This is easily demonstrated by evaluating the simple equation 3+2*5+1. If one evaluates this equation from left to right, one would add 2 to 3, which is 5. Then 5 times 5 is twenty-five, then add 1 for an answer of 26. If one thought like a Hebrew and evaluated it from right to left, then 1 plus 5 is 6 times 2 is twelve plus 3 is 15. Yet neither of these is the correct answer. There is a rule in mathematics that multiplication be evaluated before addition. Then the equation is to be evaluated from left to right. By some arbitrary authority, one must evaluate 2 times 5 first which is 10, then add 3 and 1 for an answer of 14. The postmodern thinker might challenge the validity of that authority. Who gives this authority the right to determine the rules of mathematics? What makes the determined evaluation any more rational than either of the other ways? Why cant we choose the method that works for us?One can immediately see that allowing each individual to set rules on meaning would lead to utter chaos. This challenge of authority is useful if one applies it to the question, Who determines what a thing is? Does God call the shots and establish the rules, or does man? The answer to reality depends upon whose set of rules are used to evaluate it. The postmodern challenge to the rules of modernism then becomes helpful to the Christian theologian.In the realm of physics, billions are being spent trying to prove what is called String Theory. String theory is an attempt to provide a complete, unified, and consistent description of the fundamental structure of our universe. (For this reason it is sometimes, quite arrogantly, called a 'Theory of Everything'). [footnoteRef:52] The trouble with this theory is that it is based upon what Alberto Guijosa calls our current knowledge. [footnoteRef:53] If such an absolute statement is based upon what we currently know, then what will be the truth of string theory tomorrow? [52: Alberto Gijosa, What is String Theory? http://www.nuclecu.unam.mx/~alberto/physics/string.html. Last modified on 09/09/04.] [53: Ibid.]

The ever-changing truth of physics is demonstrated in the work of Stephen Hawking. In A Brief History of Time he noted that for Newton and Aristotle, their concept of time was absolute.[footnoteRef:54] He also notes that Einsteins Theory of Relativity allows this concept to be abandoned.[footnoteRef:55] This means that time is not necessarily linear, and neither is space, the two Kantian a priorii. This means that everything including the truths of science and mathematics are relative to the position of the observer. Hawking uses the illustration of a bouncing of a ping pong ball on a train to demonstrate this. To another person on a train the two bounces of a served ping pong ball seemed to be less than a meter apart. But to someone outside the train, the two bounces of the ball appear to be many meters apart.[footnoteRef:56] The very foundations of both classical and modern philosophy were shattered in an instant. Reality was now to be determined by the viewpoint of the observer. Therefore, nothing could be absolute as far as reality is concerned if this line of reasoning be accepted. [54: Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: The Updated And Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition. New York Bantam Books 1998, p18.] [55: Ibid, p.20.] [56: Ibid, p. 18.]

Newtonian physics does not explain the very small and the very large. On the other hand, Einsteinian physics explains these well but does not describe what lies between. Hawking fuses these two together into one system by force, noticing the discontinuity. However, this is a dialectical solution and not a unified one. Newtons physics which contributed much to the Enlightenment is so flat earth today. It is useful in the real world we live in just as when we plot tracts of land we use rectangular coordinates. It is nearly universally accepted that the earth is not really flat, but an oblate spheroid. However, trying to use spherical coordinates would be irrational in the everyday calculations of real estate. It is more practical to consider the earth to be flat in calculating plots of land. For large distances where curvature of the earth is an issue, such as transcontinental air flights, spherical coordinates are used because of their efficiency and accuracy. But one has to use one or the other, depending on the application. As brilliant as Hawking is, all he can offer is the conclusion that a unifying principle might be found. In other words, his quest leads to an uncertainty about uncertainty.[footnoteRef:57] There is, therefore, no unity in physics so far as human knowledge can penetrate. God who has complete knowledge of physics as the creator of its laws alone has a comprehensive view that is different than that of limited humanity. [57: Hawking, p.191. Hawking seems to agree with Wittgenstein that The sole remaining task of philosophy is the analysis of language. Ibid. This seems lower philosophy considerably below Aristotle and Kants dreams. In fact, Wittgensteins comment seems to be quite postmodern.]

If the most assured truths of mathematics, physics, and philosophy as perceived by human eyes are only relatively true and are constantly subject to change, then they cannot be considered universal truths. And even if one takes the Heraclitian idea that all is flux as being the unity, there is the problem then that if there is an absolute truth, then it will always be unknowable in the present, and as the future becomes the present, the extension of this is that it will be unknowable in the future as well.The postmodern has drawn the right conclusion that any system centered in finite man cannot be absolutely true. It is unknowable by purely human means and is what Leithart calls shepherding the wind.[footnoteRef:58] Whatever absolute truth there be, it must exist in a realm outside man. The question which needs to be answered is whether this realm exists, and if it does, how this truth might be known. This is where the Christian has the advantage over the postmodern. [58: Leithart, (Kindle Locations 306-309).]

Another implication of the collapse of modernism is that there can be no absolute human authority as well in a human centered world of thought that is a comprehensive authority. This does allow for authority in some areas, but not all areas. The modern system had sought comprehensive authority over the entire realm of human endeavor. In their attempt to remove God from the center of all meaning, they had become gods themselves. The problems of theodicy now became their problem. The question can be asked: If human beings are basically good, why does evil exist? Without an absolutely true system, arbitrary human authority takes the place of Gods authority over creation. This authority becomes tyrannical. It is a great irony that instead of freeing the autonomous man, the promise of human autonomy makes a slave out of him. There is a feeling of loss of control and personal significance which contributes to and feeds the general pessimism.Without either an absolute truth or authority, there cannot be an absolute system of morality either. Either the individual or groups of individuals has to do the best it can to make standards of morality which suit the current and local situation. This has led to a confusion of morals and is another implication of the death of modernity.As Leithart also notes, the fall of modernism produces a problem of eschatology.[footnoteRef:59] In a sense, the future is entirely open. This would seem good at first, except for the fact that there is a loss of teleology involved. Modern physics feels this vacuum in that the entire universe in their opinion is expanding into nothingness.[footnoteRef:60] Being a human being who is left without a real future who is one of billions of individuals on a small planet in a small solar system in a medium sized galaxy, one of millions if not billions in the huge universe which is most characterized by a vast emptiness does not leave a person with a feeling of significance. It seems that the only absolutes left are death and nothingness. And even death is only absolute if one feels that he or she exists at all. When I think, therefore I am is replaced by I am, I think then nihilism is the ultimate reality for that person. This is not to say that everyone experiences this despair to its logical conclusion, but even in the less intellectual places of the world, the sense of lostness can be felt, even if it cannot be expressed. [59: Leithart, (Kindle Locations 1244-1249).] [60: This is what the deepastonomy.com website concludes: So what is the universe expanding into? If we live in an infinite universe, then the answer has to be nothing. See: Deepastronomy.com. What is the Universe Expanding Into? http://www.deepastronomy.com/what-is-universe-expanding-into.html]

The loss of faith in the power of autonomous reason by postmoderns would at first seem to present an opportunity to present the Christian faith. For centuries, the absolute claims made by reason stood in complete contrast to Christian claims of the absolutes of the Triune God. But Taylor notes that for many postmoderns they seem often even more eager to underscore their atheist convictions. They want to make a point of stressing the irremediable nature of division, lack of centre, the perpetual absence of fullness; which is at best a necessary dream, something we may have to suppose to make minimum sense of our world, but which is always elsewhere, and which couldn't in principle ever be found.[footnoteRef:61] [61: Charles Taylor. A Secular Age, (Kindle Locations 183-186). ]

Wright concludes that However, while postmodernity certainly helps us to dispense with the arrogant claim that scientific truth is the only truth worth knowing or capable of being known at all, it throws up what is probably an even more serious challenge to the Christian worldview. That is, the assertion that there is no ultimate or universal truth to be known about anything at allscience included.[footnoteRef:62] What this means is that this contribution of the postmodernists is indirect to the presentation of the Christian position in preaching and teaching. It does not provide positive guidance. MacArthur notes that postmodernism may even present a greater challenge to the church than modernism.[footnoteRef:63] Even though modernism has been debunked, people will still bow and pray to the neon gods they made[footnoteRef:64]. [62: Wright, 2, B.] [63: John F. MacArthur Jr., The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007), 12.] [64: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/simongarfunkel/thesoundofsilence.html.]

A more positive contribution made to Christianity by the rise of postmodernism is that if frees up Biblical interpretation to a fresh examination. As Wright notes: Enlightenment modernity constrained biblical hermeneutics into the straitjacket of the historical-critical method and a form of modern scientific exegesis that excluded the transcendent from Scripture as sharply as autonomous rationality excluded it from the natural sciences. But, as Brueggemann and others have pointedly made clear, the myth of neutrality, of scientific objectivity, concealed a western hegemony in biblical studies that tended to stifle all other voices or readings.[footnoteRef:65] [65: Chris Wright, Christ and the Mosaics of Pluralisms World: Challenges in Evangelical Missiology in the 21st Century. Evangelical Fellowship: World Theological Commission, Evangelical Review of Theology 24, no. 3, electronic ed. (2000).]

Modernism subjected the message of the Scripture to abuse. Its authority was subsumed to the authority of scientific examination. In its extreme forms, the Bible was deconstructed into numerous sources of human origin. The message of the Bible was replaced by the theories of theologians under the guise of science. But even in more conservative circles, the grammatical-historical method as well as the science of textual criticism held sway.The discrediting of modernism has reopened hermeneutics to new methods, including those that have been historically used by the church. Brueggemann notes: While this new pluralistic, postmodern situation is perceived by many as a threat to mainline churches and to the long-settled claims of conventional text-reading, it is my judgment and my urging that the new situation is in fact a positive opportunity to which church interpreters of the Bible may attend with considerable eagerness.[footnoteRef:66] Johnson asserts that because historical critical approaches developed within the naturalistic worldview of the Enlightenment abandoned allegiance not only to apostolic hermeneutic and homiletic but also to apostolic doctrine,[footnoteRef:67] the message of Scripture was distorted, especially the Old Testament. He advocates a return to the hermeneutics used by the Apostles[footnoteRef:68], even though they seem strange to our Enlightenment tuned ears. However, scientific positivism did not always determine the shape of knowledge, and historical criticism is not the way in which theological interpretation of Scripture has always proceeded or must proceed.[footnoteRef:69] [66: Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation, vii.] [67: Dennis E. Johnson, Him We Proclaim P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition: 2009, Kindle Locations 2300-2309.] [68: Ibid, (Kindle Locations 2360-2367).] [69: Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation, 1.]

Dr. Warren Gage takes this even further. Even though he accepts the grammatical-historical approach as being a valid method, he advocates that Bible be read as literature and not as something to be dissected into its parts. Gage asserts: All theology is poetry.[footnoteRef:70] He later states: There is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry that has shaped the entire Western tradition of literary criticism, a debate which has inevitably given contour to biblical hermeneutics as well.[footnoteRef:71] Therefore, in preaching and teaching Christ in a postmodern world, one should not feel limited by the hermeneutical constraints of modernism and instead be free to explore a different approach. This will be explored in chapters 3, 4 and 5 of this thesis. [70: Warren Austin Gage, Theological Poetics: Typology, Symbol and the Christ (Fort Lauderdale, FL: Warren A. Gage, 2010), 5.] [71: Ibid, 6.]

Chapter 2: The Metanarrative of Scripture: The God Who Speaks

When we opens Scripture, God comes to us. As Martyn Lloyd Jones says about Scripture: It starts with God.[footnoteRef:72] Lloyd Jones sees only two ways to understand life and the world people live in. The first is the biblical, and the second is all others.[footnoteRef:73] What does the Bible say that makes it so unique? [72: D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Gospel in Genesis: From Fig Leaves to Faith. (Day One, 2010), 7.] [73: Ibid, p.6.]

The Bible begins by stating the eternity of God. Boice notes that the beginning of Genesis presents God as one who confronts us as the One who was in existence before anything we can even imagine and who will be there after anything we can imagine.[footnoteRef:74] This is reaffirmed in the first words of the Gospel of John. The Bible affirms that God is the Creator of all things. Create is the first verb of the Bible. The second verb was describes the state of the cosmos in the beginning. The third verb said is also significant in that it describes the means by which God created the heaven(s) and the earth. The reader is met by a God who created everything by a speech act. God spoke. This is the first of many times that the speech of God is recorded in Scripture. As Brueggemann notes: The way of God with his world is the way of language.[footnoteRef:75] [74: James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 17.] [75: Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), 24.]

A speech act requires a speaker. It also implies an audience. A speaker speaks with the intention of being understood. Not only does the speaker desire to speak with understanding by the recipient(s), it also elicits a response from the listener. The process of dialogue is called a narrative. When this narrative makes a claim to be the narrative, then it is properly a metanarrative. Seeing that the Scripture then begins with God as well as being unique in its claims about God, then the Bible is certainly making a claim to the metanarrative.The metanarrative of Scripture is that of a God who speaks. If God speaks, then certain questions arise. Who is the speaker? Who is the audience? What does the speaker say? What purpose does the speaker wish to accomplish by speaking in relation to the response of the audience?The Purposes of the God who SpeaksGods first speech act recorded in Scripture is that of creation.[footnoteRef:76] Until recent times, the idea of a first cause was pretty universal.[footnoteRef:77] As Charles Hodge notes: It is a self-evident truth that existence cannot spring spontaneously from non-existence. In this sense ex nihilo nihil fit is a universally admitted axiom.[footnoteRef:78] But how did creation come into being? The Scripture makes an extraordinary claim that God spoke it into existence. The metaphor of speech stands in contrast to humans who make things with their hands. Brueggemann notes that even though the verb create occurs five times and the weaker word make is used to describe Gods action of creation, Gods characteristic action is to speak.[footnoteRef:79] God spoke into nothing, and creation came into being.[footnoteRef:80] There was no audience to the beginning of creation but the Triune God. The Father willed, the Son spoke by the breath support of the Spirit. Even the nothing had to obey His voice. In several speech acts, God created all things including human beings, and He Himself pronounced the benediction over creation. On the seventh day, God rested. [76: This does not mean that God did not speak prior to creation. One can think of the Decrees, for example. ] [77: This was until Stephen Hawkings recent quote in The Grand Design decreed Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. This statement has caused a storm of controversy. See: Stephen Hawking says universe can create itself from nothing, but how exactly? http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/13013/stephen-hawking-says-universe-can-create-itself-from-nothing-but-how-exactly. (Accessed October 31, 2104).] [78: Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 550.] [79: Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, 24.] [80: This is assuming the traditional view of creatio ex nihilo. Some modern translations like the NRSV makes things ambiguous by translating Genesis 1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void which leaves open the possibility that God may have created the universe from formless matter. See: The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Ge 1:12.]

As creator of the cosmos, the Bible presents God as being its absolute Sovereign. When one contemplates the vastness of the created order, he or she should at the same time recognize how great God is.God Speaks in ProvidenceGods speech acts are not limited to creation alone. The Bible states that He upholds and maintains the universe by a speech act as well. A metanarrative to be valid has to be comprehensive, which means that the speech acts of God be providential as well. Scripture affirms this in Hebrews 1:3 of which F. F. Bruce says: The creative utterance which called the universe into being requires as its complement that sustaining utterance by which it is maintained in being.[footnoteRef:81] Colossians 1:17 also speaks of the Sons role in holding all things together. In this, Van Til sees that all facts derive their meaning through the acts of Creation and Providence. This is why a thing is what it is, because it is part of the plan by which God ordains all events.[footnoteRef:82] The audience of providence is the entire created order in general, and the church in particular as the Word of God who holds the universe together is also the head of the church. [81: F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Rev. ed., The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 49.] [82: Cornelius Van Til and Eric H. Sigward, Patterns of Thinking and the Gospel. The Cornelius Van Til Audio Library..]

God Speaks in RedemptionGod speaks the word of redemption, which is more comprehensive than just the salvation of humankind. Paul in Romans says that the entire created order groans for restoration, which will occur when the children of God who are the elect of God are revealed.[footnoteRef:83] This will occur when the Son, the Word of God, sounds with the voice of an archangel.[footnoteRef:84] All of creation will be restored according to Gods foreordained plan. [83: Romans 8:19-22.] [84: I Thessalonians 4:16.]

Even though the Scripture teaches about the redemption of creation in which a new heaven and a new earth shall emerge, the bulk of the scriptural revelation concerning redemption centers in the salvation of Gods elect from humankind. The divines of the Westminster Assembly saw this election as being a speech act. It states: God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect, (Gal. 3:8, 1 Pet. 1:2, 1920, Rom. 8:30) and Christ did, in the fulness of time, die for their sins, and rise for their justification: (Gal. 4:4, 1 Tim. 2:6, Rom. 4:25).[footnoteRef:85] [85: The Westminster Confession of Faith (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996), XI, 4.]

The Apostle John presents Jesus as the Word become flesh[footnoteRef:86]. What exactly John means by the Greek word logos here is widely debated among scholars. It is closely related to , which is the Greek word for speaking[footnoteRef:87] and is used in its aorist form in the LXX translation of Genesis 1:3 ( ). The root meanings for the word are quite broad, but the context of the prologue would indicate a religious and or philosophical treatment. But even here, the use of the word has a wide range of uses. Logos having such a wide semantic range means that the word was well known in the Hellenistic world to which the Gospel of John was written, although this understanding of all its technical applications may not have been understood by everyone. Some of Johns audience may have been familiar with Philo of Alexandrias extensive use of logos. Johns use of the term could have served as a bridge term to Hellenistic Jews. It would also serve the same purpose to followers of Greek philosophies, such as Stoicism.[footnoteRef:88] But caution needs to be exercised lest a merging of the ideas of John mixed with or merged with the meanings that Philo or the Academy might have attached to it. Gnosticism serves as a warning to be careful with bridge terms. [86: John 1:14.] [87: Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 69.] [88: Ibid.]

It seems necessary, therefore, to first define scripture by other scriptures before even entertaining other uses of logos. How does the Old Testament use the term? Exploring this question, D. A. Carsons approach. He states However the Greek term is understood, there is a more readily available background than that provided by Philo or the Greek philosophical schools. Considering how frequently John quotes or alludes to the Old Testament, this is the place to begin. There, the word (Heb. dr) of God is connected with Gods powerful activity in creation (cf. Gn. 1:3ff.; Ps. 33:6), revelation (Je. 1:4; Is. 9:8; Ezk. 33:7; Am. 3:1, 8) and deliverance (Ps. 107:20; Is. 55:11).[footnoteRef:89] Kstenberger sees Johns use of logos to be similar to that of Psalm 19:1-4, to convey the notion of divine self-expression or speech.[footnoteRef:90] Carson adds: In short, Gods Word in the Old Testament is his powerful self-expression in creation, revelation and salvation, and the personification of that Word makes it suitable for John to apply it as a title to Gods ultimate self-disclosure,[footnoteRef:91] This seems to be the proper way to understand Johns use of logos, as the Scripture shows that this Word is creator and sustainer of the universe which as has been discussed. [89: D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John. The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 114.] [90: Andreas J. Kostenberger, John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 25.] [91: Ibid, p. 115.]

A metanarrative requires by implication that it be absolutely true as well. When the postmodern denies that there is a metanarrative, he or she is also denying that there is no such thing or concept that is absolutely true. So if the Scripture who presents a God who speaks is to be a metanarrative, then it has to make a claim to absolute truth as well. The Scripture does affirm this, especially throughout Johns writings. Most salient is John 14:6 where Jesus says I am the way, the truth, and the life. (AV) The definite article before way, truth, and life sets Jesus relation to these terms in a way that is unique to Jesus alone.[footnoteRef:92] Hendrickson notes: Notice also the pronoun I. In the last analysis we are not saved by a principle or by a force but by a person.[footnoteRef:93] The I AM is emphatic, like it is in the other six I AM statements in the Gospel of John. The I AM points back to Exodus 3:14 and makes them explicit claims to deity.[footnoteRef:94] [92: William Hendriksen and Simon J. Kistemaker, Exposition of the Gospel According to John, vol. 2, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 19532001), 267.] [93: Ibid.] [94: R. C. Sproul, ed., The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (Orlando, FL; Lake Mary, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2005), 1521.]

An absolute truth implies an absolute God as well. This means that Jesus is the absolute God as well, the autotheos of Calvin[footnoteRef:95] as a full and equal member of the Triune God. But this same Jesus is also fully human who at the same time fully participates in the being of God seeing that his humanity is inseparably bound to His divine nature. [footnoteRef:96] [95: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 1997), I, xiii, 25. This has to be carefully nuanced as Calvin does. This is not a denial of the Trinity or a Jesus only view of the divinity of Jesus. What it does mean is that Jesus fully participates in the Godhead equally and that each member of the Trinity is fully divine.] [96: The Chalcedonian Creed states of Jesus: perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin. Even though there are two natures inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably, there is but one Christ. See: http://carm.org/christianity/creeds-and-confessions/chalcedonian-creed-451-ad. So the humanity of Jesus participates in His divinity and vice versa.]

God Speaks in JudgmentIt is hard to determine whether Gods judgment speech should precede or follow Gods redemption speech. As the promise of Genesis 3:15 is spoken before the curse placed upon Adam and Eve as well as Scripture recording that Christ was slain from the foundation of the world[footnoteRef:97], the words of judgment were placed after the words of redemption in this treatment. [97: ! Peter 1:20, Revelation 13:8.]

Even though the provision of the means of salvation as it predates time itself is temporally before the decree of judgment against Adam and Eve, it is also true that experientially, judgment precedes the realization of redemption. In other words, one has to be brought to the position that he or she understands his or her condemnation before one can appreciate and accept salvation. So for the elect, the words of judgment become a part of the ordo salutis. For the unbeliever, the words of judgment lead to eternal condemnation.The Bible records many speech acts of God which address both the judgment preceding redemption as well as words of outright condemnation. Thus saith the Lord is the cry of the prophets.Jesus has been granted the right to speak the final words of judgment at the end of the age. This is attested for example in Matthew 25:31-46, where Jesus as the Son of Man will separate the sheep from the goats. So the one who begins the narrative as the means by which the Triune God spoke the world into existence is the same as the one who will close out the history of this universe and inaugurate the new age. The Media of the God who SpeaksWhat are the media by which God reveals himself by His speech acts? Nature itself reveals God as Psalm 19:1 states: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. (AV). Of this verse, Calvin notes that the heavens act: as witnesses and preachers of the glory of God.[footnoteRef:98] In the Institutes, he says: on all his works he hath inscribed his glory in characters so clear, unequivocal, and striking, that the most illiterate and stupid cannot exculpate themselves by the plea of ignorance.[footnoteRef:99] Van Til makes an interesting comparison of natural revelation with the Reformed view of the characteristics of the revelation of Scripture with natural revelation, saying that necessity, perpsecuity, sufficiency and authority equally apply to natural revelation.[footnoteRef:100] But what should be the clear proclamation of Gods glory in creation is willfully suppressed by rebellious and fallen human beings (Romans 1:19 ff.). So the media of natural theology can only be properly understood by the regenerate. The Westminster Confession puts it this way: Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; (Rom. 2:1415, Rom. 1:1920, Ps. 19:13, Rom. 1:32, Rom. 2:1), yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation.[footnoteRef:101] [98: John Calvin, Psalms, electronic ed., Calvins Commentaries (Albany, OR: Ages Software, 1998), Ps 19:1.] [99: John Calvin and John Allen, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1 (New-Haven; Philadelphia: Hezekiah Howe; Philip H. Nicklin, 1816), 59.] [100: Cornelius Van Til and William Edgar, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 2003), Chapter 4. He also says that this is the historic Calvinistic position.] [101: The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1:1.]

Another medium used by God to speak is through implanted knowledge of Himself in the human mind. To Calvin, this is an a priori. In his argumentation in the Institutes, he states: All men of sound judgment will therefore hold, that a sense of Deity is indelibly engraven on the human heart. And that this belief is naturally engendered in all, and thoroughly fixed as it were in our very bones, is strikingly attested by the contumacy of the wicked, who, though they struggle furiously, are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God. [footnoteRef:102] In other words, the very actions of the wicked to suppress this knowledge of God are proof of this knowledge. It is also properly one of the best proofs for the existence of God. The question that the Atheist must answer is, if God really does not exist, then why does he or she spend so much time fighting Him? However, the use of this medium is marred by the willful suppression of the human mind just like natural revelation. It is only the believer who can appreciate this medium of Gods revelation. [102: John Calvin, Institutes, 1:3.]

God also speaks through the media of Scripture. Although the unregenerate can twist and distort Scripture just as they can suppress natural revelation and their conscience, the message of Scripture itself is clear. It is by Scripture that the fact that God has spoken words of Creation, providence, redemption, and judgment are spoken. Here the words of the God who speaks are written. It is in the words of Scripture that Gods spoken Word is revealed to the church who is the primary audience to which Scripture is addressed.[footnoteRef:103] The Book of Hebrews mentions that, after having spoken at various occasions in a variety of ways, in the last times God has most perfectly spoken in and by means of His Son.[footnoteRef:104] The Incarnation of Jesus then becomes the most comprehensive media of Gods speech. When Jesus spoke, he spoke as the One who creates, sustains, redeems, and judges. He is both speaker and message. He is the media and the mediator. [103: This is not to say the only recipient. However, most of Scripture is addressed to those who are in some connection with the church, whether the church in the time of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and today. This does not mean that all of the members in this community are believers, for They are not all Israel which are of Israel (Romans 9:6 AV).] [104: Hebrews 1:1-3. Guthrie notes that the writer of Hebrews presupposes that both he and his readers accept the fact that God has spoken to man. This is another reason that Scripture is written as a whole to the church as the message of Scripture requires faith to understand it. Guthrie adds: Does this mean that the letter has no relevance for those who do not accept that God has spoken to man? The answer must be yes. Faith not only in the existence of God, but also in the communication of God is taken for granted. It is one of the planks on which the whole argument of the letter rests. It is useless to read further if God makes no revelation to men. See: Donald Guthrie, Hebrews: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 15, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 66.]

It is through Scripture that the church learns and understands all of the ways God has revealed His metanarrative. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, who is the teacher of the church who brings to remembrance everything Jesus had taught them (John 14:26). John 15:26 refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth whom the church confesses: And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets;[footnoteRef:105] [105: The Nicene Creed. In: Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 11.]

Because the Holy Spirit abides in the believer, God speaks from within as well as without. By these means, the church will be brought to perfection, or telos. This telos isnt the telos of God, but the telos of a creature who has become everything that God has purposed him for, without defect.[footnoteRef:106] Even so, the relationship will be personal. This is because the God who speaks to humankind is personal and expects a personal response. [106: The Greek and its cognates have a number of meanings, both general and technical. Here, the meaning is as Kittel describes to mean: completion as a state, perfection. See: Kittel, TDNT, 49. Combining these ideas theologically and biblically leads to the successful completion of Gods foreordained plan. Something reaching its would then be completed as designed.]

The Audience of the God who SpeaksGod Speaks to the church through the media that have just been described, with the Scripture today being the primary medium. Not only this, but the church also acts as the means by which Gods speech is shared. Part of this sharing is internal to the church itself. When Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:6 that he planted and Apollos watered, he places Apollos in the place of one who nurtures believers. This is one of the two functions of the church. In the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20, the Apostles are commanded to teach the converts to observe everything which Jesus had commanded them. So God uses those whom He has chosen to the ministry of the Word and leadership to speak to the believers the Word of God for the purpose of their growth in the faith. The preparation of the flock is of the first priority. Jesus prepared His Apostles for three years and taught them what they needed to know before sending them out into the world. Michael Horton notes: Before we can serve, we must be served.[footnoteRef:107] God has to speak to the church before the church can speak for God to the world. [107: Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life, 212.]

In the church, the Word spoken elicits a response from the church. The church responds by glorifying God in doxology and worship. It responds confessionally in the Reformed tradition. In this the conversation is completed. God speaks the Word, and the church speaks its response. This is the proper order.God also calls the church that has been served to serve and evangelize. This is the work of planting which Paul describes himself as doing in 1 Corinthians 3:6. In the Great Commission, it is stated by make disciples and baptizing. So God uses the church as the media to bring Gods word to the world. The church is tasked to proclaim the words of judgment and the hope of salvation provided by and in Jesus Christ. This is the message of Scripture. Michael Horton observes that the Great Commission does not begin with Go but rather All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.[footnoteRef:108] This of course means that the church is to obey her Lord in how this task is carried out. [108: Michael Horton, The Gospel Commission: Recovering Gods Strategy for Making Disciples (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), 21. The provided translation is Dr. Hortons.]

The Apostle Paul in Romans 10:14 ff. sheds further light on the churchs task of proclaiming the metanarrative (gospel) of the God who speaks, in particular to how He has spoken savingly in Christ. The purpose of this proclamation has already been stated by Paul in verses nine and ten. This is that by means of the proclamation that people will come to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and subsequently confess that Jesus is Lord which is the firstfruit of faith.[footnoteRef:109] The resurrection should be seen as representing all of the kerygma as the proof of its validity.[footnoteRef:110] The belief in the gospel of Christ vindicated by the resurrection and the confession of Jesus as Lord were at the core of early Christian belief[footnoteRef:111] as they should be today as well. [109: It is important to see the chiastic structure of these verses. Verse nine taken by itself would seem to indicate that the order is first confess the Lordship of Christ and then believe that God raised Jesus from the dead.. However the chiastic structure puts the emphasis upon which is in the middle of the statement. One should notice that verse ten is in reverse order of verse nine completing this chiasmus. What is in the middle of the statement is saving faith. Confession flows from faith, not faith from confession. See: Douglas J. Moo, Romans, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000), 332.] [110: Romans 1:3-4 essentially do the same thing. By his mentioning the birth and resurrection, Paul is including everything in-between.] [111: Luther sees belief and confession as inseparable. He states: it is impossible to be saved if one does not confess with his lips what one believes with his heart. See: Martin Luther, Luthers Works, Vol. 25: Lectures on Romans, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 25 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 90. ]

This metanarrative needs people to proclaim it. Even though the church does not create saving faith, it becomes the means of saving faith that God uses. This is because God has sent preachers to publicly declare the gospel.[footnoteRef:112] It is by means of the speech acts of men whom God has sent for this purpose to begin the process of the new creation in those awakened to faith, a faith which comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). [112: The Greek participle means to make an official announcement, announce, make known, by an official herald or one who functions as such or to make public declarations, proclaim aloud. See: William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 543.]

The original heralds of the Gospel were the Apostles themselves. However, this role in the church was not limited to the Apostles. Neither is it the exclusive domain of the clergy. The Scriptures indicate that Phillip was used to evangelize the Ethiopian Eunuch, the Samaritans, and others (Acts 8). This is just one example of many. What is important is that whosoever acts in the role of herald or evangelist be properly called for this function. This also means that these people must be properly prepared for this function. The Apostles when ordaining the first seven deacons set requirements that these people be full of the Spirit and wisdom (Acts 6:3). As Jesus trained His Apostles to proclaim the message, it is the role of the church today to do likewise. The Spirit comes from God. But the church has to make the disciples who apprehend the metanarrative of God in order that they might know what to proclaim. This primarily is the role of those who are called to be pastor/ teachers in the church (Ephesians 4:11).Because Jesus is the Lord of the church, it is His message that is to be proclaimed. As Paul states in 2 Corinthians 4:5: It is not ourselves that we proclaim. Rather we proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord.[footnoteRef:113] So whatever the church does in its ministry of proclaiming Christ in its preaching, teaching, apologetic, and evangelistic ministries must take in account that Jesus Christ as head of the church calls the shots. The roles of nurturing and evangelism which Paul brings out in 1 Corinthians 3:6 have already been mentioned. Following this is the role of God who makes the increase. The church needs to concentrate on the tasks God has assigned and not try to usurp the part which God has reserved for Himself. [113: In the Greek, the word for ourselves () is placed forward for emphasis. The message is not about us. The Greek word translated rather () here is a strong adversative. It serves in the sense of completely replacing the first idea with the second. So this verse is a strong affirmation that the Gospel is all about the Lordship of Christ and not about something less like our perceived needs.]

It is necessary to realize that proclaiming the gospel is difficult. It has always been difficult. When one reads the Book of Acts he or she reads of imprisonments, beatings, and executions for the sake of the Gospel. Jesus promised as much to His followers. This must be seen as the consequences of faithfully proclaiming the good news today as well. It certainly is the case in much of the world, even if persecution is more subtle in America at this particular place and time.Further, unbelief is the natural state of the unregenerate. Isaiah calls out in 53:1 Who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? (AV) Earlier, Isaiah had been commissioned after seeing the vision in the sixth chapter of the Lord high and lifted up with a rather pessimistic ministry. Verse nine says: and He said: Go and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. (AV) This verse is quoted by many New Testament authors concerning the rejection of the Gospel[footnoteRef:114]. Oswald notes of Isaiah: This, then, was Isaiahs commission, as it is of all servants of God, not to be successful in a merely human sense but to be faithful.[footnoteRef:115] [114: Matthew 13:14, Mark 4:12, Luke 8:10, and Acts 28:25 quote Isaiah 6:9. John 12:40-41 quotes 6:10 as well as Isaiah 53:1 to explain why people rejected the message of Jesus. Paul alludes to it when he uses the word blinded and then quoting Isaiah 29:10, 13 to explain in Romans 11:7-8. ] [115: John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 139, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), 189190.]

The Means of Understanding the God who SpeaksHow can one properly understand the message of God, if the fall has caused every human to repress the truth of God according to Paul in Romans? The role of the Holy Spirit within the church has already been mentioned. But how is one brought into the church?The other means of understanding the metanarrative of God is faith. St. Anselm says about the matter: Man cannot seek God, unless God himself teaches him; nor find him, unless he reveals himself. God created man in his image that he might be mindful of him, think of him, and love him. The believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand: for unless he believed he would not understand.[footnoteRef:116] Behind this seems to be a statement by Augustine Crede et intelligas (Believe that you may understand).[footnoteRef:117] Faith is then the means to the Christian epistemology by which one can understand the voice of the God who speaks. Faith is the guide to purpose and meaning in life as Paul states: For we walk by faith and not by sight.[footnoteRef:118] The faith of understanding is what the preachers and teachers of the Word are to proclaim from beginning to end.[footnoteRef:119] Romans 10:17 tells us that Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. [footnoteRef:120] [116: Saint Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury and Sidney Norton Deane, Proslogium; Monologium; An Appendix, In Behalf of the Fool, by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 3.] [117: Augustine of Hippo, Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, in St. Augustin: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. John Gibb and James Innes, vol. 7, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 184.] [118: 2 Corinthians 5:7, AV.] [119: , (Rom 1:17 BGT)] [120: The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), Ro 10:17.]

The differences of the metanarratives between Descartes and that of the God who speaks could not be more pronounced. Kern, commenting upon Augustine noticed that Augustine begins with the Latin credo (believe) and Descartes with dubito (doubt). He adds: These two statements offer us the two alternatives on which we can ground our thought and our teaching.[footnoteRef:121] Postmodernism agrees with modernism in its skepticism of knowledge and exceeds it in that it doubts doubt itself. [121: Andrew Kern, Credo" to "intelligam" or "dubito" to "cogito". http://www.circeinstitute.org/2012/07/from-credo-to-intelligam-or-dubito-to-cogito]

The mortality and limits of Descartess thought have become evident. However, the speech acts of God are not. Hodge in his Systematic Theology speaks about Gods speech acts (decrees) as serving His single purpose.[footnoteRef:122] These speech acts are also eternal,[footnoteRef:123] immutable,[footnoteRef:124] efficacious,[footnoteRef:125] comprehensive,[footnoteRef:126] foreordained,[footnoteRef:127] and spring from Gods perfect freedom of will.[footnoteRef:128] It is only because God condescended to humankind to reveal himself to us in temporal and spatial categories that we can apprehend who God is. Human beings live in space and time. Augustine saw both time and matter as being contemporaneous events in creation.[footnoteRef:129] God transcends them both. Yet we can correctly apprehend the person of God in part and presume that which is part of the hiddenness of God is consistent with His revelation. [122: Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 537.] [123: Ibid.] [124: Ibid, p. 538.] [125: Ibid, p.540.] [126: Ibid, p, 542. Hodges own words are The Decrees of God relate to all Events.] [127: Ibid, p.543.] [128: Ibid, p.539.] [129: Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, in St. Augustins City of God and Christian Doctrine, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Marcus Dods, vol. 2, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 208.]

God, by making Himself known through speech acts is personal in relation to us. God is not wholly other and unknowable.[footnoteRef:130] Neither is it necessary to posit with Karl Barth that God is at the same time both wholly revealed, yet wholly hidden.[footnoteRef:131] The God who speaks is not an abstract unifying principle,[footnoteRef:132] but personal. [130: Cornelius Van Til, Immanuel Kant. The Cornelius Van Til Audio Library] [131: Cornelius Van Til, Karl Barth. The Cornelius Van Til Audio Library.] [132: Cornelius Van Til, Greek Philosophy 2. The Cornelius Van Til Audio Library.]

So it is indeed a monumental task to preach and teach the metanarrative of the God who speaks in a culture who wishes to silence all metanarrative claims. In fact, it would be impossible if it were not that the God who speaks is also the God who seeks. Anselm talked about the seeking of man for God with the starting point of faith rather than reason. But a better starting point is this God who seeks. Ephesians 2:8 talks about faith being a gift of God. If so, the starting point of understanding is the God who speaks and seeks, who by grace provides the knowledge of saving faith to His elect.

Part One SummaryThere is some common ground between the Christian and postmodern worldviews, even if they are only surface ones that might provide some common ground to develop a means of approaching the postmodern with the gospel. They are:1. Both deny the university validity of the modernist metanarrative.2. Both are open to acquiring knowledge beyond the means of scientific truth.3. Both believe in the idea of humility.There are many contrasts:1. The Christian believes in a metanarrative, the postmodern doubts there is one.2. The Christian believes individual freedom comes from serving Christ; the postmodern seeks freedom from external constraints.

3. The Christian believes in God as the absolute authority; the postmodern denies this and seeks authority from within the individual self.

4. The Triune God is over and center of the Christian worldview; the postmodern is self-centered and makes his or her own reality statements.

5. The Christian believes in absolute truth; the postmodern does not.

6. Faith in Christ, which is a gift of Gods grace is the means of acquiring true knowledge; the postmodern doubts knowledge as well as its verifiability.

In part two, three methods presenting Christ fo the postmodern world will be examined.

Part 2Approaches to Presenting Christ to a Postmodern Culture

Chapter 3: The Way of Accommodation

In fulfilling the mandate to teach and preach Christ to the world, what is the best way to reach the American postmodern to Christ? It is evident from the overview of the first two chapters that there is a wide gulf between postmodern culture and the traditional teaching of the church. Three approaches will be presented in chapters 3, 4, and 5. In this chapter, the approach of reaching the world by translating the metanarrative of the Scripture to the current understanding of the postmodern will be presented. This is the way of accommodation. In chapter 4, a confrontive approach will be presented. In chapter 5, an accommodative approach which is a hybrid of accommodation and challenge will be presented.The Dangers of Accommodation: AssimilationThe dangers of assimilation must temper any attempt at accommodation. The Scripture clearly shows the danger of assimilation. The lack of covenant faithfulness to Yahweh led Israel to mix the true religion with that of their pagan nations against the strict commands throughout the book of Deuteronomy to avoid this. By the time of Ahab who married a priestess of Baal, this religious mix was demonstrated by the fact that Ahab and Jezebel[footnoteRef:133] had some children named after Baal and some after Yahweh. The northern kingdom was carried away in exile as Gods direct punishment and are known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Other than a few who escaped to Judah and came to Josiahs Passover [footnoteRef:134]and some of the poor who were allowed to stay and intermarried with other races to form the Samaritans, the identity of these Israelites died. Their genes passed on, but not their special identity. In other words, they lost their salt and became assimilated. [133: The Book of Revelation weaves in the story of Jezebel was a warning to the churched not to incorporate pagan elements into their worship and lifestyle. (Rev 2:20), ] [134: 2 Chronicles 35:17 implies that some of Israel was present. Also one can see from the Gospel of Luke of the widow named Anna who was of the tribe of Asher. (Luke 2:36) A remnant was spared from assimilation. If one looks at Josiahs reformation, it was designed to return Judah and the remnant of Israel to true worship. This involved restoring of their identity and removal of foreign cultus which threatened this identity.]

The Dangers of Assimilation: GnosticismAssimilation arose as a danger in the early church in various forms of Gnosticism. The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible says: Gnosticism was applied collectively to the majority of those 2nd-cent. movements that called themselves Christian (or borrowed heavily from Christian sources) but were rejected by the mainstream of Christian tradition (represented in such fathers as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius.).[footnoteRef:135] What is important to note here is that many of the Gnostics called themselves Christian. The Anchor Bible Dictionary adds: General name for various social groups which were not content with orthodox practices and beliefs otherwise widely accepted. [footnoteRef:136] Gnosticism was a hodgepodge of different belief systems thrown together. Christianity and Greek philosophy were major components, but other religions and philosophies were mixed into the soup.[footnoteRef:137] [135: Moises Silva and Merrill Chapin Tenney, The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, D-G (Grand Rapids, MI: The Zondervan Corporation, 2009), 777.] [136: Kurt Rudolph, Gnosticism, ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1033.] [137: Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 873.]

Christianity, Gnosticism, and Hellenism in many ways had a shared vocabulary, and the struggle between them was in a sense a definition of terms and whose definitions would prevail. This war of language and meaning is characteristic of postmodernism as well. The definition of words is again an open struggle, on in which the church must express itself and maintain its identity. This is a culture war at a much deeper level than that of morality alone.There has been a resurgence of interest in gnosticism in todays postmodern world. One of these gnostic works is the Gospel of Judas which presents Judas in a more positive light. Of this renewed gnostic interest, Ron Bigalke notes: The reason is that it is compatible with the postmodern spirit of the age that rejects historical truth. The spirit o