Apologetics for Postmoderns
by Douglas Groothuis
If a Christian apologist of postmodernist stripe were to stand on our
equivalent of Mars Hill today, he or she might say something to this
effect, something quite different in spirit from the apostle Paul's original
address (Acts 17:16-31).
People of Postmodernity, I can see you speak in many language games
and are interested in diverse spiritualities. I have observed your pluralistic
religious discourse and the fact that you use many final vocabularies. I
have seen your celebration of the death of objective truth and the eclipse
of metanarratives, and I declare to you that you are right. As one of your
own has said, "We are suspicious of all metanarratives." What you have
already said, I will reaffirm to you with a slightly different spin.
We have left modernity behind as a bad dream. We deny its rationalism,
objectivism and intellectual arrogance. Instead of this, we affirm the
Christian community, which professes that God is the strand that unites
our web of belief. We have our own manner of interpreting the world and
using language that we call you to adopt for yourself. We give you no
argument for the existence of God, since natural theology is simply
rationalistic hubris. We are not interested in metaphysics but in
discipleship.
For us, Jesus is Lord. That is how we speak. We act that way, too; it's
important to us. And although we cannot appeal to any evidence outside
our own communal beliefs and tradition, we believe that God is in control
of our narrative. We ask you to join our language game. Please. Since it is
impossible to give you any independent evidence for our use of language,
or to appeal to hard facts, we simply declare this to be our truth. It can
become your truth as well, if you join up. Jesus does not call you to
believe propositions but to follow him. You really can't understand what
we're talking about until you join up. But after that, it will be much
clearer. Trust us. In our way of speaking, God is calling everyone
everywhere to change his or her language game, to appropriate a new
discourse and to redescribe reality one more time. We speak such that the
resurrection of Jesus is the crucial item in our final vocabulary. We hope
you will learn to speak this way, as well.
Having criticized the postmodernizing tendencies of three Christian writers
in the previous chapter, the inadequacies of the above approach should be
readily recognizable. It has no apologetic nerve; it is sapped of
argumentative and evidential support; it has nothing unique or even
provocative to say to postmoderns. If so, how ought we to communicate
the Christian message to those imbued with postmodernist beliefs?
Biblical Apologetics: Arguing Truth in the Marketplace
Scripture makes a distinction between the proclamation of the gospel, the
defense of the gospel and the communal manifestation of the gospel.
Christians who subscribe to postmodernist ideas absorb the defense of the
gospel into proclamation and manifestation, given their views on
language, truth and rationality. However, F. F. Bruce's classic book The
Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament thoroughly demonstrates the
early church's passionate apologetic impetus. He notes that "Christian
witness in the New Testament called repeatedly for the defense of the
gospel against opposition of many kinds - religious, cultural and
political."1
Bruce observes that when Paul speaks of himself as imprisoned "for the
defense of the gospel" and when Peter speaks of being "prepared to make
a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you,"
the Greek word is "apologia, from which we derive the words 'apology,'
'apologist' and 'apologetic."2
The apologetic emphasis in the New Testament inspired the "age of the
apologists" in the second century A.D., when Christian intellectuals began
to fight back against false charges and repression. For writers such as
Justin Martyr and others, Christianity . . . is the final and true religion, by
contrast to the imperfection of Judaism and the error of paganism. Not
only does Christianity provide the proper fulfillment of that earlier
revelation of God given through the prophets of Israel . . . it also supplies
the answer to the quests and aspirations expressed in the philosophies
and cults of the other nations. It was divinely intended from the beginning
to be a universal religion.3
It is still intended to be a "universal religion," even in a day when
universality is equated with antiquated or even dangerous metanarratives
of totality and hegemony. An apologetic for the people of postmodernity
must place the concept of truth at the center of all its endeavors. The
term truth is so subject to abuse, dilution and distortion, it is incumbent
that apologists define and illustrate the term, and engage post-moderns
according to it. As I mentioned in earlier chapters, biblical truth is, as
Schaeffer nicely put it, "true to what is"; it matches reality and it calls us
to embrace God's reality with all of our beings. It is also revealed,
objective, absolute, universal, antithetical, systemic and momentous, and
it has intrinsic value.
The Hidden Dangers of Relevance
Because of the postmodernist redescription of truth, apologists must be
wary of working to make the Christian message relevant to the felt needs
of non-Christians. What is relevant to those enmeshed in postmodernity is
not, typically, the biblical view of truth or biblical truths themselves. Our
operative term ought to be engagement, not relevance. The performer
Madonna is the apex of relevance to many postmoderns, but the protean
princess of sexual seduction offers Christians nothing positive from which
to draw for evangelistic or apologetic endeavor. Rather, we must
dynamically engage the thinking of postmoderns with intelligence,
sensitivity and courage.4
As Douglas Webster notes, our situation often demands that we
"renegotiate the presuppositions" of our audience and not cater to its
truth-decaying tendencies.5
When people are asking the wrong questions, or not asking questions at
all, Christians need to introduce new concepts and suggest new ways of
thinking. This means that we must reorient the discourse toward the
nature of truth and the truths of reality, and away from human
constructions, personal preferences and tribal leanings. Thomas Merton
speaks of the insecurity of "being afraid to ask the right questions -
because they might turn out to have no answer." This results in a sad
condition of "huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer
to a question we are afraid to ask."6
Christians must shine the bright light of truth by raising penetrating
questions and giving satisfyin