The Postmodern Revival

Ever since the Enlightenment, the ensuing project of modernity has tried to apply the universal
laws of reason to understanding God, the world, and our place in it. Our community, coming to life
in the second half of the 19 th century is also essentially a modernist experiment. With its strong
emphasis on the power of human reason, the Enlightenment said, “Sapere aude” – “Dare to think”.
Following the suit, emphasizing the reasonableness of biblical doctrine and God’s revelation we
have said, “Read the Bible for yourself!”, unaware of how difficult and impossible even it is to get
rid of all the cultural baggage we bring to reading the Bible from the very beginning:

“For example, if you want to find out what the Bible says about any hope of life after death, a page
of Bible references that you have written down for yourself as you have been reading will be of
more direct help than a lot of comments made by someone else. This is because you will have
been looking at the original material, uncluttered by what other people, with their own ideas, might
want you to think.” 1

This represents a hermeneutical problem because at every time, even if we speak the original
languages (Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek), we are not looking at the original material. For our reading,
we depend, in one way or another, on other people’s work and scholarship whether we realize that
or no.2 Just as there is no such thing as a self-made man 3, so there is no self-made Bible reader or
theologian. It is therefore much more helpful to admit our dependence on others, take their
influence and expertise into account, and admit our worldviews:

“Finally, we recognize that several far-reaching disciplines should be incorporated in biblical

interpretation: history, philosophy, theology, language and linguistic studies, literature, rhetoric,
sociology, and anthropology among others. While concern for biblical interpretation must remain
primarily the concern of the communities of faith, we cannot adopt the mindset of Tertullian and
try to shield the Bible's interpretation from the broader interdisciplinary questions raised by the
perspectives of the various disciplines. Thus, the early church serves as an important window, not
only for positive insights for contemporary hermeneutical matters, but also as a means to avoid the
pitfalls and failures of the past.” 4

This insight, the difficulty of leaving aside one’s presuppositions and preunderstanding, has been
brought to our attention much more acutely with the coming of postmodernism. Postmodernism
has had a lot of bad press, and in our community often stands for all that’s wrong with and
despicable about the world. But is postmodernism really the enemy? I do not think so. The enemy

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is still our inclination toward evil (Genesis 6:5) no matter which paradigm happens to be dominating
the society.

The Postmodern Moment

The very nature of postmodernism makes it difficult to provide its definition. Therefore James K. A.
Smith suggests it is best to understand postmodernism as anchored around three slogans that are
often invoked in defining the cultural or philosophical postmodernism:

“There is nothing outside the text” (Derrida). Postmodernity is “incredulity toward metanarratives”
(Lyotard). “Power is knowledge” (Foucault).” 5

Smith argues these bumper sticker slogans really mean something different than what they are
commonly taken to mean. Jaques Derrida’s focus on the text is liberating especially for those who
subscribe to the sola scriptura principle. Definitely something any Christadelphian can readily affirm.
He also emphasizes the point that there are different interpretative communities. We have certainly
cherished our tradition of interpretation from the very beginning of our community, but the process
needs to continue with each generation interpreting the same texts afresh, so that God’s word
could be heard anew. The fact of different communities reading the same texts does not mean
each and every one is equally correct or wrong. It means each individual and each community
contribute their reading to a public forum where interpretations can be discussed and evaluated.
Francois Lyotard’s suspicion of metanarratives 6 does not mean there are no narratives able to
provide a sense of guidance and meaning, and it does not mean there is no truthful narrative out
there. Quite to the contrary, it means we need to recover the story-like character of Christianity
and stop thinking about it as mainly a heap of disparate abstract ideas and beliefs. It also liberates
us to recognize our narrative as one among other competing narratives. If this seems to be too
challenging, then we have no claim to the heritage of early Christianity that struggled earnestly to
find a place for itself in the marketplace of ideas of that world (see Paul on the Mars Hill in Acts
17). Finally, Michel Foucalt’s recognition of the power with which we are shaped and educated by
the surrounding culture is not so different from the insight of Paul (Romans 12:1-2) and has been
confirmed ever since the arrival of the mass media. The necessity this represents to truly focus on
people’s character and discipleship (on which more will be said below) should be clear enough.

Even though skeptical of language (it prevents us from perceiving the things as they really are),
knowledge (claims about absolute knowledge are suspicious because they are often used for
particular and oppressive interests), and metaphysics (the ability of reason to analyze the ultimate
reality turns out to be fairly meagre), postmodernism turned our attention towards the value of
experience (that escapes the totalizing categories of knowledge and reason), and most importantly,

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it turned our focus away from epistemology (the theory of knowledge) towards ethics (that within
the postmodern paradigm allows others to exist without any attempt to master them by getting to
know them and impose our ways of knowing on them).7

It is the ethical turn that I find most helpful feature of postmodernism. After the Second World
War, our community seems to have focused largely on the establishment of the state of Israel,
without reflecting on the horrors of the Holocaust as was the case for most continental
philosophers and theologians. Is it because fulfilled prophecy has greater value than countless
human lives? This gap in moral and theological reflection consequently prepared a fertile ground for
the closing of the Christadelphian mind.8

In the meantime, the world has changed, and as a result of several different parallel developments,
the modern world came to believe there is now a separation between our private and public lives,
in which religion was relegated to the private sphere, and politics was designated as the only valid
form of public discourse. However, in the ancient world the modern divide between religious and
secular was basically non-existent.

Thinking about the religious and secular, there are two extremes to be avoided. One extreme
believes that the very secularization is inherent to Christianity and especially to its Protestant forms.
Taken to its extreme form, the modern concept of religion should stop existing altogether because
it has been made manifest in the world in the secular sphere. At least, that’s where, on this
interpretation the movement of history is headed. The coming of Christ, his incarnation, means that
a human being reveals God. The kenosis (the self-emptying) of God (based on the hymn found in
Philippians 2), means God’s death. Ultimately, God emptied himself into the world, died on the
Cross and left us with the secular, with the human alone.

The other extreme believes that in order to make God’s Kingdom possible, Christians should engage
in propagating their views in as many areas of human life as possible, and if given the chance, even
take the governing positions to do “God’s will here on earth as it is done in heaven” (Matthew
6:10). By doing so they would like to reverse the clock and go back to the days of Christendom
when Christians ruled the world and imposed their morality and worldview on everybody.

If you are well-versed in contemporary theology might have recognized behind these descriptions
the Death of God theology, represented by thinkers such as Thomas Altizer and Paul Van Buren,
popular especially in the 1960’s, now largely represented by what is called Radical Theology. 9 The
other description would broadly correspond with the Evangelical camp that has allied itself with
some politicians whom they see as divinely appointed and instrumental in bringing God’s kingdom
to earth, and who have been labeled Power Worshippers in a recent book.10

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If we could redeem the idea, and I believe postmodernism can paradoxically help us to do just that,
it would be of great benefit for the future growth of our community that seems to be helplessly
looking for its proper place in our postmodern society. Should we become relevant, intelligible,
contemporary or what? Despite the negative outlook that has been predicting the demise of religion
for some time, religion has proven itself able of constant renewal. 11 Will Christadelphians have the
ability to reinvent themselves, to be ourselves also in this century? Dave Burke has recently averred
that our community does not have a culture of revival. 12 If we think we have recovered all Truth
(from a postmodern perspective a very suspicious claim), and we know the schedule of Jesus’
coming back, there are two possibilities: a) we have no time for revival or b) we need a revival to
hasten Christ’s return. It seems we have mostly opted for the first option. Nevertheless, in light of
the fact that we are still waiting, is it unreasonable to hope for a revival before Jesus comes back?

As Aristotle discovered long time ago, most of the time, the right mean is found somewhere in the
middle, between two extremes that we want to avoid. This is obviously a gross simplification of
Aristotle’s thinking since he never says that in each and every situation the right course of action is
going to be found right between the two extremes. At times we may lean a little bit more toward
one or the other extreme, in order to determine what is the right and good course of action in each
situation. But still, we definitely do not want to give our allegiance to one of the extremes that is
not God. Remember the words of Jesus about serving two masters (Matthew 6:24)?

Our public life and our religious life must be held together, often in tension with so many desires
and duties that are imposed on us, either from within or from without. But it is in that tension that
fruitful solutions and applications of our faith to everyday situations may arise.

Post-Christian Moment

As communities living in a post-Christian world, and I prefer to point this communal aspect of the
task, since that is the original context of Jesus’ audience, who thought about themselves as much
more connected to their communities than we normally do, we have been given a task by Jesus
and later furthered through the mission of Paul and his letter writing - to become a community of
character and a community of witness. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon put it this way:

“The confessing church has no interest in withdrawing from the world, but it is not surprised when
its witness evokes hostility from the world. The confessing church moves from the activist church’s
acceptance of the culture with a few qualifications, to rejection of the culture with a few
exceptions. The confessing church can participate in secular movements against war, against
hunger, and against other forms of inhumanity, but it sees this as part of its necessary
proclamatory action. This church knows that its most credible form of witness (and the most

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“effective” thing it can do for the world) is the actual creation of a living, breathing, visible
community of faith.” 13

We do not have to make the whole world Christian, and we most likely never will. But character
and witness interplay and both form the bedrock of Christianity and its narrative of which we
become a part when we get baptized and commit our lives to following Jesus. As mentioned above,
coming out of the modern era, we have gotten used to appealing mainly to reason in order to settle
arguments about beliefs and church practice. The one able to muster greater intellectual strength
through argument or political maneuvering would impose his position. The entire apologetical
enterprise is predicated on the assumption that the intellectual and reasonable nature of religion is
its primary aspect that is accessible to all in a very detached and impersonal way. As if we could
separate ourselves from the messy reality, pretending we deal only with bare facts and that we
have no other options, without considering the harm and injury done to those on the other side of
the debate. Much less emphasis has been put on discipleship, character formation and personal
needs of each individual and community as one of the tools in our efforts to spread the gospel of
the Kingdom. Having the right message, needs also rightly formed people of character and witness.
Luke Timothy Johnson makes the point this way:

“Being a "truthful witness" with regard to God's word cannot be a matter of accuracy in prediction
or analysis -being objectively "right" but rather a matter of personal integrity. The witness must be
faithful to the truth as the witness sees it, must speak consistently with that vision, must embody
that conviction in manner of life, and must enact the word in behavior. Witness is valuable, indeed
indispensable, to the degree that it truthfully states and embodies a human being's perceptions
from that person's limited perspective. In this sense, every witness is needed, for no human
perspective can speak for all others. Witness is falsified, therefore, not because it fails to
correspond to the objective facts, but because it fails the test of personal integrity…” 14

Character and witness, in my opinion, could also move many people beyond the old divide between
faith and works. One is useless without the other. Having only character but no witness is useless.
Having only witness but no character is equally pointless. You need both the inward (or character)
formation of faith by being “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29) and the outward
(witness) aspect of faith where, hopefully, the two will interact: “If one of you says to them, "Go in
peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good
is it?” (James 2:16). In some quarters of our community there seems to be real fear of losing the
doctrinal focus for “the social gospel”. Often based on a caricature rather than on real
understanding of this late 19 th and early 20th century movement,15 people who oppose including any
sort of social action as part of our witness to Christ fear we will lose the rational nature of Christian

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belief. Postmodernism can help us realize there is rationality behind everything we do. It is just a
different set of reasons.

Stanley Hauerwas often makes the point that while before Constantine (the pre-Christendom era),
it was a courageous act to be a Christian. After Constantine (the Christendom era), it was a
courageous act not to be a Christian. This widespread acceptance of Christianity has caused a lot of
problems, and both character and witness have been largely forgotten, even in the Church itself.
Our task is not to gain, possess and rule the world. Remember the poignant words of Jesus
(Matthew 16:26). The task is to be transformed into moral beings by practice of virtues so that they
become our second nature.16

We trace our theology back to the early Anabaptists, who bravely faced persecution from both
Catholics and the Magisterial Protestants (Lutherans and Reformed). 17 Convinced that following
Jesus meant going against the grain of the establishment, they were willing to stand witness
despite the dangers they faced. In more recent days, we can look at thinkers such as Danish
philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. His assessment of the cultural situation of his day goes like this:

“When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to preach. Among “Christian nations,”
however, the situation is different. What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious
illusion, the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians. So if in
this situation Christianity is to be introduced, first of all the illusion must be debunked. But since
this vain conceit, this illusion, is to the effect that we are all Christians, it looks indeed as if
introducing Christianity amounts to taking Christianity away. Nevertheless this is precisely what
must be done, for the illusion must go.” 18

Being a Christian is about freedom. Not absolute freedom of some French existentialists, 19 but
freedom within the limits provided by the communities we belong to. We are living in a society that
has placed us in a position of real “resident aliens” where we can face the society and its claim on
us, in all spheres of life, and give our faithfulness freely to the one and only God of the Galilean
prophet called Jesus. This way we could reconstruct our public theology and public witness based
on a transformed character, and so become a witnessing presence once again. While rational
defense of Christianity will continue to have its place, it turns out this is not equally convincing for
everybody. There are many existential questions we need answers for and these can be also
answered and addressed.20 With the coming of the postmodern era, many people are no longer
convinced by the classical arguments for the existence of God. It is not to be understood as a result
of their sinfulness or the sign of the last days (2 Peter 3:3). It should propel our reflection on how

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we engage with our contemporaries because a lot of scoffing we face may be actually caused by
our own inarticulate witness that instead of coming across as clear speech, resembles babbling.

Kierkegaard, whom we have just mentioned, had this vision of bridging the gap between the events
in the Bible not by using reason but by making a leap all the way to the year 30 CE. This results in
an inescapable dilemma. I can become a contemporary of Christ through the witness of the Spirit
but I cannot become contemporary of the historical Jesus himself. As a result, the findings of
historical criticism cannot be avoided by appealing to the Christ of faith. 21 In order to appeal to
Christ, however, the historical scholarship helps us in our quest for an ever better and clearer
image of Jesus, who is the Christ. Who was this Jesus of Nazareth that we believe is the Lord and
Messiah (Acts 2:36)? Paul would seem to be aware that while we will see clearly until later (1
Corinthians 13:12), there remains space for both appreciating the results of human intellectual and
cultural endeavors (Philippians 4:8) and spiritual vision (1 Corinthians 2:13-16; 2 Corinthians 5:16).

Concluding Thoughts

Postmodernism doesn't lead to relativism concerning knowledge, truth or ethics. Precisely because
it shows us the interrelatedness of all knowledge, of all truth claims and ethical statements, it tells
us that there is some essence (existentialists were wrong after all when they said "existence
precedes essence") that is out there for us to be discovered. What remains sure is that certainty
has become elusive, because of the shifting nature of our ability to perceive and analyze the world.

What does it mean to be postmodern and Christian at the same time?

It means to be open. From our point of view, it is about being receptive of the manifold wisdom of
God (Ephesians 3:10) that can, as described by Roman Stoics be perceived in all that is true
(Philippians 4:8). Paul does not limit the goodness only to those who are already part of the Jesus
movement. His vision seems to be working on a much larger scale that can be seen in his
interaction with the Greek and Roman intellectual worlds of his day, for example, Acts 17:16-34
where he sympathetically reflects pagan beliefs, deals with the subject of idol worship very politely,
and appeals to the Athenians to examine afresh the evidence for divinity. Paul would be the first
person to oppose any gnosticizing tendencies in the church of having any private, secret or higher
knowledge available to a select few (1 Corinthians 1:5). Everyone created in the image of God and
member of the household of God has something to contribute - children, people with bodily or
mental impairments, women and men. Because of the fall, nobody is a perfect embodiment of the
image of God, except Jesus. The rest of us are on our way to be transformed and learning
together. It seems therefore logical that all may - and must - contribute their irreplaceable
experience to our growing together into one body (1 Peter 2:5)

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It also means having the courage to question received traditions. We can only look at Jesus
criticizing the way the tradition of the elders took the place belonging to the word of God (Mark
7:7). The Bible, even though we may not like the idea, is a result of a long tradition and the
different processes involved at every stage fallible, imperfect human beings whose perception of
God and the world may not be binding on us, especially, if what they are saying does not testify
about Jesus (John 5). As a result, proper distinction between the descriptive and prescriptive parts
of Scripture must be made, looking at the one who reveals and models God's character for us and
which we are to witness to the society (Acts 1:8).

Instead of having the Bible as the unquestioned foundation, and sitting at her feet, we need to
recover the personal experience of conversion and holy living, while sitting at the feet of Jesus. This
characterized the early Church. Anything else that would like to put other foundation than Christ (1
Corinthians 3:11) would be idolatry. The greatest temptation is to extol the Bible much higher than
the one about whom it testifies (John 5:38-40). This can be avoided using all sorts of biblical
scholarship (progressive or conservative) that can help us put the Scriptures in their right place as a
testimony to the real thing, Jesus. The Scriptures can be viewed in at least four different ways:

A) The Bible is identical with the Word of God. The Word of God is the text on the page.
B) The Bible is not the Word of God but provides access to it through the record of God’s
redemptive acts in history. The Word of God is identified with the events through which
God accomplishes his will in history.
C) The Bible is not the Word of God but is identified with God’s ultimate revelation in Jesus.
The Bible provides us with an access to this living Word revealed in Christ.
D) The Bible is not the Word of God. It becomes the Word of God in proclamation and in
faithful hearing of it.22

Notice that none of these views calls into doubt the revealed and inspired nature of the Bible. The
mechanics of the revelation or appropriation will be different but despite these different views on
the Bible, the basics of the Gospel focused on Jesus’ life, his teachings, his death, his resurrection
and the coming Kingdom are not threatened by postmodernism. On the other hand, the way this,
and many other controversial issues we consider uncertain details are treated, and especially the
people involved, only divide and hurt several of our Brothers and Sisters and contribute nothing to
edify the body of Christ.23 They remain unsolved problems and open wounds creating an ever
widening gap within the Brotherhood. The breach could be closed through dialogue and discussion
if done in openness that characterized Jesus and intellectual honesty that ought to be one of our
primary character traits. The solution is not telling some apparently strong in faith to keep quiet
and go with the flow (Romans 14:22). Paul would not have us stay weak in our faith forever. He

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wants us to grow stronger together through welcoming one another as Christ (Romans 15:7). Jesus
as we have him depicted in the Gospels never looks first at person’s credentials or doctrinal purity.
He looks at the person the way they are first before dealing with her problems or needs. We
urgently need an equal dose of gentleness and co-understanding when dealing with these
questions.

The postmodern revival could help us to make a deep dive into a new view of the world and God's
involvement in it. It is a view that many of us already have but cannot or do not want to see and
admit. It may be because we afraid to be honest to ourselves or honest to God. 24 As the world
changes, so we change too. Before we notice, people shift their views and move on, leaving their
community behind if it no longer answers their questions or if they stay, it is often for fear of not
having a community other than the one they grew up in. The process can be confusing, painful and
disorienting and we need more people prepared to “read the sings of the times” that have nothing
to do with Israel, Russian, Turkey or Iran but rather with our lives, our communities, and our
society. So that when the process of finding out another way of looking at the Bible, the world and
ourselves starts and someone needs help to find his way through, we will have enough people
capable of providing guidance and orientation. Because it is often believed there are only two
options in that situation:

A) Atheism/Agnosticism
B) Fundamentalism

And this is definitely not true. There is a lot of middle ground on which one can build up his faith
again. Of course, the process goes much more smoothly in company of others.

In conclusion, we like to think about ourselves as having the Truth. But right at the beginning we
spoke about the postmodern questioning of the big stories because the history has shown us again
and again that people are very good at telling themselves stories that are false. Postmodernism, as
I see it, can be used as a great tool to tear down false idols of certainty. 25 Whether that idol of
certainty is money, politics, sex, religion or even Godself, it must and will be questioned by the
society we are immersed in. If we and the society refrain from exercising this task and stop being
an interpretative community of both character and witness, we invoke the dangerous consequences
of modernistic, totalizing concepts that dominated much of the 20th century.

Nobody, absolutely nobody feels good about being wrong. But as Jesus makes clear, finding,
recovering or making the Truth your own, can be truly liberating experience (John 8:32). And so it
was for me when I got baptized some 10 years ago. I believe in and remain hopeful for the future
of our community, for a revival and a future of continuing the labor of the apostles by bringing the

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good news, embodying God's gospel colony here on earth - the loving, non-violent, moral,
witnessing gospel colony of Jesus and the coming Kingdom.

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1
Morgan, Tecwyn. Understand the Bible: Work It Out for Yourself . (CMPA: Birmingham, 2006), EBL: Chapter 1.
Available for reading here.
2
I deal with this at length in another paper here. Suffice it to say that in order to read our Bibles in June 2020,
we stand at the end of a process that involves a) the event described; b) the interpretation of the experience; c)
the formulation of the experience; d) the oral transmission; e) the writing down of what was transmitted; f) the
formation of the canon; g) the translation process; h) and our “I” or “self” shaped by a particular culture reading
the text.
3
You can immediately guess the phrase was coined during modernity as it expresses its high esteem of
independence and self-sufficiency. Whether in business or other aspects of life, there is not escaping the fact we
need others and rely on other for our existence and being.
4
Dockery, David S. Interpretation Then and Now: Contemporary Hermeneutics in the Light of the Early Church .
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1992), EBL edition: Chapter 6.
5
Smith, James K. A., Who is afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucalt to Church. (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006) EBL: Chapter 1.
6
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota, 1984). Part of the book can be read here.
7
Davie Martin, Tim Grass, Stephen R. Holmes, John McDowell, and T. A. Noble ed. New Dictionary of Theology:
Historical and Systematic. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 689.
8
Noll, Mark. Scandal of the Evangelical Mind . (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994). This is an evangelical
account of a process which in many ways found a parallel development in our community as well.
9
Jackson, Lee Ice and John J. Carey ed., The Death of God Debate . (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967).
Available at Open Library here.
10
Stewart, Katherine. The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (New York:
Bloomsbury, 2020).
11
Reaves, Dylan. “Peter Berger and the Rise and Fall of the Theory of Secularization ,” Denison Journal of
Religion (2012): Vol. 11 , Article3. Available for download here.
12
You can watch the talk here.
13
Hauerwas, Stanley, and William H. Willimon. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony . (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1989), 46-47.
14
Johnson, Luke Timothy. Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church . (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), EBL edition:
Chapter 8.
15
Minus, Paul M., Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer. (New York: Macmillan, 1988). Available at Open
Library here.
16
Wright, Tom N., After you Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. (San Francisco: Harper One, 2010).
17
Eyre, Alan. The Protesters. (Birmingham: The Christadelphian, 1975).
18
Kierkegaard, Søren, and Charles E. Moore. Provocations: Spiritual Writings. (Walden, NY: Plough Publishing
House, 2014), 402.
19
Think about the early Sartre who argued for a radical view of freedom initially but later in life became a
Marxist as he tried to resolve the interplay between individual and social influences on our lives and he found
the Marxist framework particularly helpful.
20
Williams, Clifford. Existential Reasons for Belief in God. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011).
21
Tillich, Paul., A History of Christian Thought: From its Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism . (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1968), 472.
22
Tate, Randolph W. Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated Approach . (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2014), 223-224.
23
This for me includes debates around evolution, LGBTQI+ issues, inspiration and inerrancy, position of women
in the church etc. In each of these areas, healthy amount of debate is still lacking before anyone can make
these matters questions of fellowship.
24
Robinson, John A. T. Honest to God. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963).
25
Rollins, Peter. Idolatry of God: Breaking our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction . (New York: Howard
Books, 2013).