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WHAT OF OUR LCA NOW IN POSTMODERN TIMES? How
well are we as a Lutheran Church coping with drastic changes in our culture
today? A feature of The Lutheran is that it tries very hard
to present stories of success to celebrate. There are many, and they give
necessary encouragement. But where is
our church then completing the picture and showing where a confessional church
today has to be counter-cultural, alerting our people to the struggle this
poses also in world Lutheranism? With
people everywhere desperate for meaning, purpose, identity and relationships,
are our own members confident that the LCA has a clear direction, and that they
are in a church with a future? We can
try comparing another mood 38 years ago. Something
from the Past It
was an atmosphere of great euphoria in 1966 when the merger of two former
Lutheran synods took place. There were
tremendous blessings to celebrate with a union based on agreement in biblical
teaching. From that arose a confidence
that the LCA could now impact the community with a united Lutheran presence and
with great mission prospects. This now looks like having been an ill-founded
confidence. Our former synods had not
been in the position to recognise the extent to which a confessional church
must address the ideology of the day with its Confessions. Only then, with clear biblical guidelines to
deal with the world (John 17:16-17; 1
John 2:15-17) which we “are not of” and in which we need to be “sanctified by
the truth” can we hope to be pro-active in our cultural setting. And the spirit of the modern era, secular, humanist and arrogant, had not been clearly
discerned. Hence the fledgling LCA was
unprepared to face also the postmodern
era waiting on its door-step. The
tragic consequences became apparent only some years later. A
year after the merger, in 1967, Hermann Sasse provided an article for Christianity Today (03/03/67) with
reflections on the 450th Anniversary of the Protestant
Reformation. He drew attention to the
revolution that began in the neo-pagan Renaissance, and that would later come
to destroy “the basic concepts of human life and thought” as in “right and
wrong, good and evil, vice and virtue, keeping and breaking the law, justice,
guilt, sin, judgement, punishment, satisfaction.” These basic concepts are a
“recognition of standards and principles that are not made by man but are given
to him . . . [a] phenomenon that the
Bible calls the law written in men’s hearts (Rom. 2:14,15) . . . Not the
violation of eternal laws . . . but the denial of the existence of such laws
(underlining mine)—this is at the heart of the great revolution that began in
the quiet studies of writers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx and
Nietzsche . . .”(p 4). Here
Sasse pin-pointed one of the main tenets of postmodernism, soon to be
popularised: “There are no absolutes”.
Truth and moral values as in God’s law become relative to what society
feels like making them. He foresaw the
extent to which this claim was directed towards language, and therefore against
Scripture. From the early 1950s, then, he wrote numerous articles in defence of
the sola Scriptura, this defence
against the background of philosophical and cultural attacks though church
history to the time of writing. Here
was a warning to the church. Two
years after union, in 1968, this intellectual revolution sparked a succession
of student riots in universities. The social revolution that followed spread
quickly and globally. Incubating
already in the 1930s, postmodernism then emerged between 1960 and 1990 as a
cultural phenomenon. It rocked the
churches, unprepared. The
quote from Sasse’s article, leads on to what he says about the effect such
changes have on the church. “History
shows that the disintegration of a civilisation, the decay of nations, the
moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the world in which the earthly church lives,
always are reflected in the life of the church. (underlining mine) This is naturally so because the members of
the church live in the world and are, as weak and sinful men, exposed to all
the temptations of the world . . . This explains the strange role clergymen
have played in all revolutions,” including also “the theoreticians on our
theological faculties.”(4) In
the ensuing years our church distanced itself increasingly from Sasse’s
influence. Now, over 3 decades on, the
mood in our church has changed drastically to an uncertainty about where it is
heading. Merely celebrating all the
positives can mean avoiding the battle.
Maybe it needs the statistics in the June issue of The Lutheran to bring us down to earth—even to our knees in
humility and repentance. Some
significant Features of Modernism and Postmodernism I
can lay no claim to being an authority on modernism or on postmodernism, and
realise the danger of making generalisations that are simplistic. My deep concern, however, is that expressed
by Grenz: “To reach people in the new postmodern context, we must set ourselves
to the task of deciphering the implications of postmodernism on the gospel.”(A
Primer on Postmodernism, 10). The
postmodern, however, needs to be seen in relation to the modern era that it
rejected. The modern era is generally
said to begin with The Enlightenment. The Renaissance
had already begun elevating humans to the centre of reality. But in the 18th
century this great confidence in human potential increased with scientific
rationalism emerging. At the same time
the attitude to God/god is diminished from theism to deism until he is denied
completely in a mood that was secular and materialistic. The 20th century emerged with a
‘secular religion’, humans one with nature, but individualistic and with a much
inflated optimism of their potential.
To what extent were our Lutheran Churches in Australia in a position to deal
with the effects of this for their people?
We need to answer this in order to understand our church better today. Grootuis
considers that “postmodernism is, in many ways, modernism gone to seed, carried
to its logical conclusion and inevitable demise.” (Truth Decay, 40) On the one hand, we see humanism move into
self-deification in New Age. M. Scott Peck has shown the extent to which
narcissism plagues marriages and our society as a whole. This infatuation with self prevents the
person from relating meaningfully with others and, still more, relating to any
Higher Power, or even to reality. (A World Waiting to be Born, 127ff) On
the other hand, postmodernism is a violent reaction against modernism. I can’t express it better than to quote
extensively from Gene Veith, Postmodern
Times. Referring to the blowing up
of the modernist symbol, the Pruit-Igor housing development in St. Louis, he
writes, “secular postmodernism concentrated on the explosion.” This “new
secular solution is not only to blow modernism to smithereens but to explode all stable forms, including
Christianity.” (39) It aimed to
dismantle or to deconstruct all the
self-sufficient pretence of the modern era.
Classical rationalism gave way to scepticism and a denial of all
absolutes. This
“is a world view that denies all world views.”
“Truth is only a construction of language” (49) needing to be
deconstructed. Ethical values are
therefore also relative, determined by a social group or by individuals for
themselves (often the most powerful lobby group). There is therefore no distinction between what is holy and what
is profane. Such a distinction would be
irrelevant. Meaning “is a social construct . Societies construct meaning through
language.” “Institutions are really
‘masks’ for a sinister conspiracy.” (53f)
“Language constructs meaning.”
On the basis of these assumptions “deconstructionists develop a
‘hermeneutic of suspicion’. They
approach a text not to find out what it objectively means, but to unmask what
it is hiding (underlining mine).
Assuming that language is the arena of all power, deconstructionalists
seek liberation from this power by disrupting the authority of language.”
(54) This is to mean the death of
self. Even “the word ‘we’ is a form of
‘grammatical violence.’” (77) In trying
to dismantle humanism, the human is deconstructed, lost. (71ff) “Chaos is embraced.” (73) Life becomes meaningless. The
fundamental claims of postmodernism are such a brazen attack on basic Christian
dogma that it becomes irresponsible for the church not to expose them. This is a human philosophy (or sum of
philosophies) that blatantly rejects the Word of God. It has filtered through our society with the media picking up its
appeal to the Old Adam and seizing the mind of our culture. In flattering the ego with the right to create its own truth and mode of behaviour,
it is cutting our society off from any point of reference beyond the self. Authority of any kind is being
undermined. The process is one of
slow (or not so slow) comatising of any
awareness of what is happening when evil is called good (e.g. decadence is now
meant to be good with Decadent biscuits). Sexual aberrations become one of the fun
diversions from a blinded search for meaning.
This comatising is also affecting the faithful, and the great question
for the church is: How much are members being helped pastorally to understand
what is going on, rather than just saying something is bad? Do we realise how fragile people are when
the ego has been conditioned? It is
this conditioning then that our imparting of the Gospel needs to meet. What
Psalm 36 says “concerning the sinfulness of the wicked” is finding global
appeal in a form not known before, but still also in the context of God’s
sovereignty: There is no fear of God before their
eyes. For in his own eyes he flatters himself
too much to detect or hate his sin. . . and does not reject what is wrong. And even this is a situation
in which God is still sovereign: Your love, O Lord reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the skies . . . Your righteousness . . . Your justice . . . How priceless is your unfailing love!
(vv1-7) Direction has been offered Charles
Colson claims that ”we are embracing the world rather than exposing its folly”
and then quotes Luther: If I profess with the loudest voice and
clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that
little point which the world and the devil are attacking at that moment, I am
not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of
the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all battlefields besides, is mere
flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. (Who speaks for God? xi) Have
we as a church been where the battle against the world and Satan need to be raging, or is so much of our
‘confession’ merely profession of Christ?
Is the church clearly targeting that point where the truth of the God’s
Word is attacked by human hubris in
postmodernism? Only when this is done can it rightfully deal with the effects
in cultural practice. And then
Scripture is also given its rightful authority. We install worm and virus protection before all our programs and
files become infected. It is the
ideology underlying our very complex postmodern culture that first needs
vetting. Otherwise the biblical
hermeneutic will be infected even before we try to address cultural and even
doctrinal issues with Scripture. How
many of the doctrinal statements presented for the church to consider are
corrupted by a postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion? This is the issue to address first. Luther
and the Lutheran Reformation Fathers went to the heart of the issue uniquely
also for Christendom today. They dealt
with the human condition, original sin and the fallen and restored human
nature, the factors basic to discerning all philosophies of every era. It is here that the interpreters of
Scripture themselves must submit to the scrutiny of infection by human
ideology. That vetting Luther has set
up for us in his Bondage of the Will
when he clarified human capacity under the sovereignty of God and his saving
word. When we get this right, all other
relationships coram Deo fall into
place. Vital
also, at this point, is to distinguish the postmodern human ideology from other
expressions and outcomes of the culture.
Only then can the church have clear scriptural parameters for
distinguishing where it has to be counter-cultural and where it is free to live
and work within the culture for us to carry out our Christian vocation,
ministry and mission. There are aspects
of our culture that can be embraced in worship, fellowship, education, mission,
etc., just as there are others that have to be opposed. This is the vast field the church must work
hard in, so that members come to think both confessionally and laterally in the
society into which God has placed them. We
have a faithful confession to realise and uphold amid two diverse directions in
the global spectrum of the Lutheran family.
Colson draws attention to one Lutheran Church body’s consideration of
homosexuality as “second to none in rationalising away biblical fidelity”. (The
Body, 243-244). J.A.O. Preus III, in a
chapter on Sources of Lutheran Dogmatics: Addressing Contemporary Issues, with
the Historic Christian Faith, writes from the perspective of another Lutheran
Church body: [T]here are huge, global issues of which
we remain ignorant and even unconcerned.
We have barely paid attention to the challenges brought by a veritable
paradigm shift in the philosophy of language, by the claims of postmodernism .
. . and many more such challenges. We
must avoid becoming parochial and thus irrelevant. We have too much to contribute to these debates to keep ourselves
ghettoed off to one side, dealing merely with our own peculiar issues. (Horton,
Ed., 41) How
are we as a Church faring? Finally,
how well have we as a church coped with postmodern pressures to let God-given
absolutes become relative to human inclination, e.g. God’s truth, law,
holiness? We must consider this because postmodernism regards all dogma of the
church, as being a repressive exercise of power. I can raise only a few issues briefly. 1. Scripture. The
great attack on Scripture within the church strikes first in exegesis and
hermeneutics. We need to recognise the
arrogance over against God in the secular claim that all language is reduced to
being a human construct, giving to the individual or to the society the licence
to create meaning. Driven by
scepticism, this then becomes a vehicle for exercising power within a society,
and this against any regard for Scripture as an absolute truth. The
church has not been immune to this. An
example of the subtle use of manipulative power can be seen in an analysis of
the document distributed officially through the LCA in 1992, and entitled, Women and the Ministry. It is not for me to judge whether that power
was consciously intended. The
most recent document of the CTICR, Controverted
Matters in the LCA Debate on the Ordination of Women deserves comment
also. It provides a picture of the
havoc postmodern relativism has created in the church. The ability to make a faithful confession on
the sola Scriptura is in
tatters. To begin with, pastors and
laity are presented with something the CTICR itself cannot resolve. Five statements on “Exegetical Issues” all
start with “We do not agree on . . .”
This is what we are to set out from.
In the next section, “Hermeneutical Issues”, the first point begins with
socalled agreement on Scripture as “the inerrant and authoritative word of
God.” However, even that agreement is
put in question in the next sentence.
Nowhere in this document is there any indication that scriptural interpretation
has been vetted for infection by the relativism of postmodern philosophy. This becomes all the more clear when
cultural conditioning cannot be openly dealt with (see Appendicies). To what extent are we meant to regard
ourselves immune against the attacks of what our Lord calls, the world in our interpretation of Scripture? How well have pastors and laity been
prepared to deal with this issue? A
Lutheran Church places itself in grave peril when it concedes the authority of
Scripture to the scepticism of a postmodern hermeneutic because authority in
the church rests in this Word of God in Christ, the Head of his church. When this authority is eroded, so also is
other authority in the church, and with it discipline. The church becomes dysfunctional and victim
to further “biblical infidelity”. The
church is also then gagged when it needs to voice a faithful confession of
Christ Jesus as Lord and Saviour in a counter-cultural situation. How much, even now, is the LCA as a church
able to exercise the power to confess at the ‘coal-face’ of the world? 2. The
Law. When
God’s law is no longer regarded as a holy absolute, how much have we been
intimidated into an antinomianism? This
can affect the political function of the Law as restraint of the wicked
and protection from human self-destruction.
Postmodernists are literally confronting God for their own annihilation
in chaos. (Is this removing all
restraints from the old adam?) Are we even considering all that this
implies in the disintegration of our culture and the attack of Satan and the world on the church? The
theological function:
to bring people to a knowledge of their sin.
What about the ‘soft-pedalling’ on sin?
Here, I believe, lies a major issue for the church. Wherever there is teaching about sin that
does not relate original and actual sin to the prevailing ideology and culture
as it impinges on all of us, this tends not to be taken on board as it should
be. Such teaching can even be reacted
against as forced or irrelevant, or also as applying only to others. This then results in a ‘church culture’ of smugness
and presumption or unrecognised pride.
It is quickly sensed by anyone outside of that ‘church culture’, as
phoney and to be avoided. The church
culture itself then breeds a ghetto mentality open to nepotism and other
abuses. Did we deal with the way
rationalism and individualism rubbed off on us in the modern era? Are we dealing in our present era with the
way that relativism hinders a repentant confession of sin and a bold confession
of faith? The
Third Use of the Law:
as “God’s merciful help in the performance of the works which we are
commanded.” (Bonhoeffer). Because of
the cloud that has been made to hang over this function as being legalistic,
has a mentality developed which now resorts to Rick Warren and his “church
marketing” in “40 Days of Purpose”?
This “Adventure” (!) is at least very conscious of the desperate search
today for meaning and purpose and often brings blessing in helping to fill the
void because it takes this aspect of the culture seriously. (Underlying this, however, is a dangerous
legalism, not able to deal with the ego.) 3. The
Gospel Enough
has been said about the sin of presumption infiltrating Christian life through
the pressures of a world arrogant
against God today. But it is just this
factor of sin-awareness which needs to provide the starkest contrast to the
overwhelming grace of God in Christ in the Gospel. Here then comes the joy of sharing how much God loves us, how
amazing his rescue strategy and package was, his victory for us in Jesus’ death
and resurrection. This is where the
right kind of enthusiasm can now overflow in a glorious praise of God! The
two contrasting absolutes in the Law and the Gospel then clarify the
forgiveness received in a faith that has ignited the dynamic of the Reformation. How much have these absolutes been upheld
among us in a way that our people could relate readily to them out of the
vulnerable cultural situation in their daily lives? I ask this question fully aware of how culpable I am. To
what extent has the Gospel ‘been made more palatable’ by dumbing down sin,
repentance and judgement? (The whole
issue of dealing with this pastorally is another issue because of the way our
society leaves us with so many people burdened with guilt.) So-called “Gospel Reductionism”, which
reduces all norms of the Christian faith to the Gospel, has shown us, among
other things, how much the truth of God’s love has been misrepresented. 4. Discipleship One
Christian attribute endowed by the Holy Spirit and a source of great joy (Isaiah
11:2-3), is being removed from the LCA by the LPH Small Catechism. It is the
fear of God, removed from Luther’s explanations to the Ten
Commandments. This is a radical
alteration of a confessional book of the Lutheran Church. It becomes a concession of the truth to
secular psychology only because it is counter-cultural and there is not enough
confessional strength to teach and uphold the fear of God for what our Lord
shows it to be. It is the opposite to,
and an antidote to counteract, every other human fear (Exodus 20:20; Luke
12:4-7). Substitutes like ‘honour’ and
‘awe’ do more harm than good because they undermine the understanding of the
believer as both sinner and saint, and because they avoid human sinfulness in
the face of God’s holiness. Fear of God
is a God-given blessing resulting from the Gospel of forgiveness (Ps. 130:4;
119:38). Fear of God is the beginning
of wisdom (Ps. 111:10; Prov. 9:10) and one can only wonder how many foolish
decisions are made and foolish actions carried out in the church through this
undermining of truth by postmodernism. Paul
indicates fear of God as important in mission motivation in view of the
final judgement by Christ (II Cor. 5:10-11).
How much then is our mission suffering without this motivation accompanying
that of the love of Christ (v 14)?
Similarly, our mission cannot afford to lose a quality that counteracts
pride and presumption (Ps. 36:1-2). When
our mission today can ensure that we meet others, knowing that we identify
equally with them as sinners in need of God’s grace, and both as recipients of
God’s love, then we can share a “human
deconstruction” for which we offer God’s reconstruction with Christ Jesus for
us and in us by his Spirit. This is a
victory in God’s love devoid of all human pressure for its power—merely the
word of witness spoken and shown. Here
fear of God, faith and praise of God combine in a joyful partnership (Ps.
40:3). 5. Praise of God Much
of what is written here may deal with Law and sin and may appear negative and over
critical. However, it is in this area
that we see much of the elusive attack of postmodern philosophy on the
Christian faith. Only when this is
exposed are we able to appreciate the Gospel in all its glory and power, and
this then to the greater praise of God.
It is this praise of God that is also able to recognise, and not demean,
the holiness of God in our worship of him. The
New Testament is very clear that Christians are called on to suffer for their
faith, and to rejoice in this (Rom. 5:3; 1 Peter 4:13), rejoicing that we can
participate in the sufferings of Christ.
With Paul and Silas there were songs of praise to God at midnight (Acts
16:25)! Have we as a church really
suffered the shame involved in resisting what is really a violent postmodern
attack on our Church’s confession of God in Christ as the Truth, and the attack
of scepticism on his Word--this both within our church and beyond it? From the humble wrappings of a faithful
confession, fearless in the fear of God, there emerges a deeper joy and greater
praise and glory of God. How
we now express this faithfully in our culture is the next package to unwrap,
with great blessing in it! Gordon Gerhardy, 22/06/04. References Colson,
Charles. 1985, Who Speaks for God?
Tyndale House, Wheaton, Illinois. _____________ 1992, The
Body: Being Light in Darkness. Word
Inc., Dallas, Texas. Grenz,
Stanley S. 1996, A Primer on
Postmodernism. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan. Groothuis,
Douglas. 2000, Truth Decay. Defending Christianity against the Challenges of Postmodernism.
InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois. Horton,
Michael S., (Ed.). A Confessing Theology for Postmodern Times. Crossway Books, Wheaton Illinois. Peck,
M. Scott. 1994, A World waiting to be
Born. A Search for Civility, Arrow Publishers, Great Britain. Sasse,
Hermann. 1967. Sin and Forgiveness in the
Modern World. Reflections on The approaching 450th anniversary of the
Protestant Reformation.
In Christianity Today, Vol. 11, March 3, 1967. Veith,
Gene Edward, Jr. 1994, Postmodern Times.
A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture. Crossways, Wheaton Illinois. Zacharias,
Ravi. 1996, Deliver us from Evil. Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrat- ing Culture. Word Publishing, Dallas London Vancouver
Melbourne.
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