Postmodernism
Quote: William Stacy Johnson: The Gospel is not a foundation:
It is time that we recognized this foundationalist way of thinking for what it is. In its Christian guise, it represents not the strength of faith but the result of a faith that has lost its nerve. The Christian Scriptures set themselves up not so much as truth claims to be defended by...
(25 Aug. 2011)
Quote: William Stacy Johnson: The fear of postmodernism:
…this new mode of postmodern rationality is frightening to some Christians. They find it frightening because they have completely succumbed to a one-sided objectivism out of a deep-seated fear of the dangers of relativism. Without an objective and infallible source of meaning, so their reasoning...
(25 Aug. 2011)
Richard Bauckham and the Western Christian tradition (briefly):
Reading through the London School of Theology’s Open Learning module on Hermeneutics, I came across a good quotation from Richard Bauckham regarding the potential that time-honoured interpretive traditions have for creating an illusion of permanence and absoluteness: The sheer length and...
(17 Apr. 2010)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the question about other religions:
In Brian McLaren’s better future Christianity is a force not for distrust, hatred and conflict between the world’s religions but for peace, tolerance and understanding. For most of Christian history the underlying Greco-Roman imperial mindset has generated 1) anxiety, 2) paranoia, 3) a...
(13 Apr. 2010)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the question about sexuality:
The chapter in which Brian McLaren tackles the ‘sex question’ reaches the conclusion that a new kind of Christianity must get beyond the impasse of the modern church’s preoccupation with homosexuality and ‘begin to construct not just a more humane sexual ethic in particular...
(8 Apr. 2010)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: What Do We Do About the Church?:
The second part of A New Kind of Christianity is called ‘Emerging and Exploring’: a number of mental doors have been opened in the first part of the book; now it is time to pass through and see what is on the other side. The sixth question is ‘What Do We Do About the Church...
(15 Mar. 2010)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the question about the violence of God:
Brian McLaren asks, thirdly, ‘Is God Violent?’ We can eliminate the effects of the Greco-Roman distortion of the biblical narrative, we can read the Bible as a library rather than as a constitution, we can bring into the focus the stories of God as good creator, passionate liberator,...
(10 Mar. 2010)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the second question:
McLaren’s second question is ‘How Should the Bible Be Understood?’ He lists three broad reasons why we need a ‘new approach to the Bible’. First, fundamentalism in its various varieties has, to our repeated embarrassment, made the Bible an enemy of science; secondly,...
(8 Mar. 2010)
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the first question:
The first question has to do with the overarching storyline of the Bible by which, consciously or otherwise, we make sense of Christian existence (33-45). The traditional plot, McLaren argues, has six elements: 1) humanity begins in the perfect condition of Eden; 2) we have fallen from that...
(7 Mar. 2010)
Katongole: How postmodernism hurts Africa:
In ‘Postmodern illusions and performances’, the fourth essay in A Future for Africa, Emmanuel Katongole argues that postmodernism is unlikely to prove the blessing for Africa that many had hoped. He accepts that it continues to have some usefulness as an intellectual style that casts...
(3 Jun. 2009)
