What Is Postmodernism?
Throughout history great events and ideas have ushered in great changes in the way people live and think. The invasion of the Barbarians brought an end to the Roman dominance of Europe, ushering in the “Dark Ages.” The resurgence of classical Greek and Roman learning in the 1500s brought about a change in history commonly labeled the Renaissance. The rapid advance of technology and the industrial revolution brought about what we refer to today as the modern era.
Each of these eras has certain distinctives by which it is defined and delineated from other eras. In the Middle Ages, feudalism was the main form of government, during the Renaissance, nation states came about, and in the modern era democracy swept across the world. In the Middle Ages, Catholicism was the main religion of Europe. Accompanying the Renaissance, though, was the Protestant Reformation, in which great portions of Europe changed their religious belief system. In the modern era, many rejected a traditional belief in God and adopted the “faith” of secular humanism.
Many believe that we, living in the new 21st century, are seeing the birth of a new historical era, one with its own distinctives in government, religion, and economic systems. I wish to explore the new worldview which many believe will dominate the thinking and ideas of this new “postmodern” era, the implications it may have on the lives of those living under it, and the appropriate responses we as the church of Jesus Christ need to make to it in order to declare the timeless gospel of Christ to the many who still desperately need its freeing power.
Reaction to modernism.
Much of postmodernism must be understood as a reaction to modernism, which began approximately with the Renaissance in the 1500’s. In the 1500’s the Scientific Revolution transformed the way western men looked at the universe around them. Led by men such as Galileo, William Harvey, Copernicus and Isaac Newton, this movement established the scientific method as the method by which absolute scientific laws about our universe could be discovered and reaffirmed. It ushered in a period of exploding understanding about every aspect of the world in which we live, including our own bodies, diseases, plants and animals, minerals, planets and stars.
In the 1600’s the Protestant Reformation transformed the way much of Europe viewed not only God, but also man in his relationship to God. No longer did men have to go through a priest to be reconciled to God, but each individual could seek God for himself. The emphasis upon faith, personal prayer, study of the Scripture, and personal accountability to a personal God changed the way men viewed themselves. No longer did they see themselves as servants to the church, but now as co-heirs with Christ of the Kingdom of God. Each individual, as a child of God, had dignity and value in himself because of the dignity and value God placed upon him.
In the 1700’s, beginning with American independence, the Democratic Revolution began to radically reorder the foundations upon which governments rested. No longer did Kings receive their legitimacy from the divine right of succession, but from the consent of the governed. The people of nations began to petition kings for more voice in the decisions of government, and in several cases the people overthrew their rulers to establish republican forms of democracy. The result is that modern era governments have been dominated by democratic principles.
In the 1800’s, all of these changes, the application of newly discovered scientific laws, the value placed upon the individual person as a creation of God, and the freedoms afforded these individuals by democratic governmental policies, launched the Industrial Revolution. The replacement of craftsmen by machines, principles of mass production, accumulation of capital and its investment, the creation of a labor force through the urbanization of huge chunks of the population, all combined to move the center of production from the rural farm to the urban factory, fundamentally changing the way people worked and the way societies produced goods.
These four huge revolutions combined to produce the 1900’s, the twentieth century, the consummate period of modernity, the 100 years from 1900 to 2000, in which more change occurred in the world than had occurred, many would argue, in the whole history of the world up to that time. In 1900, man could not fly; by 2000 men were routinely flying into space. In 1900, coal and wood were the two main sources of fuel; by 2000 nuclear energy powered not only many of our homes and factories, but also our ships and submarines. In 1900, antibiotics had not yet been discovered; by 2000, polio, tuberculosis, dysentery, malaria and many other diseases had either been eliminated or controlled. In the twentieth century the television and the computer were invented. In 2000, democracy was the most common form of national government, Christianity is the largest worldwide religion, and capitalism the most widespread economic system. Gene Edward Veith, in his book Postmodern Times, summarily describes the modern age. “Generally perceived as positivistic, technocentric, and rationalistic, universal modernism has been identified with the belief in linear progress, absolute truths, the rational planning of ideal social orders, and the standardization of knowledge and production” (42).
As communications, transportation, governmental systems, scientific knowledge and other aspects of the modern era have brought about a standardization, a uniformity, an order to the world, the worldview of postmodernism has arisen as a reaction. Postmodernists have seen the unity and standardization of many aspects of life in the modern world, and have not found the answers to the meaning of life. Scientific truth has not solved the problem of immortality. Economic prosperity has not solved the problem of poverty. Democracy has not resulted in righteousness and justice. Communication and transportation have not bridged the isolation of people from other people. Postmodernists, then, reject the “truths” of the modern era, embracing a random view of the universe in which truth is relative, order is oppressive, chaos is freedom, and reality is personally determined. “Indeterminacy, anarchy, mutants, absence, surface, antiform…” are some of the values of postmodernists identified by Veith (44).
“Faced with the inherent meaninglessness of life,” continues Veith, “modernists impose an order upon it, which they then treat as being objective and universally binding. Postmodernists, on the other hand, live with and affirm the chaos, considering any order to be only provisional and varying from person to person” (42). “Modernists believe in determinacy; postmodernists believe in indeterminacy. Whereas modernism emphasizes purpose and design, postmodernism emphasizes play and chance. Modernism establishes hierarchy; postmodernism cultivates anarchy. Modernism values the type; postmodernism values the mutant. Modernism seeks the logos, the underlying meaning of the universe expressed in language; postmodernism embraces silence, rejecting both meaning and the Word” (Veith 43).
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