The Bible in the Crucible of Postmodernism

Introduction

"God is dead" were the famous words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. But his thought has been only one among the many philosophies that have arisen throughout human history. The harmfulness of such ideas, however, has its roots in the philosophy of the ancient serpent (Genesis 3:5), which caused the communication between the Creator and the creature to be interrupted. Even so, God had already devised a communication plan that would include means, methods, and forms for communication to be restored (Hebrews 1:1).

Throughout biblical history, God's longing to communicate with the fallen race is anticipated, even when it rebelled and disobeyed. Such was His love that at the peak of His revelation He decided to send His only begotten Son (John 3:16, Hebrews 1:2), now embodying the good news of salvation.

Through Christ, God tells the world that He is not dead, that He "lives forever and ever" (Revelation 4:9), that His message can still save "to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25). Thus, this paper will briefly examine the development of God's message throughout biblical and secular history, including the rise of humanist, modern, and postmodern philosophical currents. Finally, some concerns will be raised regarding the prophetic message entrusted to the Adventist church today, which has the great challenge of proclaiming the truth in the face of these secular philosophies.

The Biblical Message in the Sacred Record: Old Testament

It is in the Holy Scriptures that the message God wants to convey to His children underlies. And the biblical text that best summarizes this thought is found in the book of Hebrews; there the author points out: "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" ([emphasis added] Hebrews 1:1-2).

Four important points can be drawn from the above. First, that God's communication to His children has been constant, "many times"; second, that God has used countless methods to approach the fallen race ("many ways"); third, that God used unique individuals called patriarchs and prophets to achieve this purpose; and fourth, that God ultimately decided to send His own Son to deliver His message personally (Matthew 2:33-39).

In the Old Testament, God spoke to Adam, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9); to Noah, He promised that "I will establish my covenant with you..." (Genesis 6:18); to the patriarch Abraham, He promised to make him great and commanded him, "Go from your country and your kindred..." (Genesis 12:1); to Moses, He spoke through the burning bush, saying, "Moses, Moses!" (Exodus 3:4); to the people of Israel, after the Egyptian slavery, He promised: "I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God." Also, the role of the prophets was paramount throughout the Old Testament, repeating a message of comfort and warning: "Turn back, turn back from your evil ways" (Ezekiel 33:11). The message would reach a limit; the Scriptures summarize this when they say that God "sent prophets to them to bring them back to the Lord. These prophets warned them, but they would not listen" (2 Chronicles 24:19).

The Incarnate Message: New Testament

Centuries would pass in prophetic silence until, in the words of John, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). God was not content with merely speaking to the patriarchs and using the prophets; the inspired message declares that "Jesus took humanity that He might reach humanity where it is. The Bible must be given in the language of men." In the rich language of the New Testament, Jesus is presented as the bread of life (John 6:48), the true vine (John 15:1), the living water (John 4:14), the door (John 10:9), the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). The gospel had arrived!

The Message of God and the Apostles

After Jesus, it would be the apostles who would be responsible for spreading the gospel; however, it was the apostle Paul who was the most forceful, and he spoke of not being ashamed of the "gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). However, since the Jews rejected this gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of God had to take another direction. Olson states: "Since the Jews, who were originally chosen to be God's people, rejected Jesus, God rejected them and established the Christian church as his people." Christianity, therefore, became the legacy of "that one embodiment of the will of God in this world."El mensaje de Dios en la cristiandad primitiva

The Message of God in Early Christianity

Deiros summarizes the history of the Christian church by saying that the first century was the "foundational apostolic" century; the second century was that of the Greek apologists; the third, the century of persecution in the Roman Empire; the fourth, that of the state church. Thus, during these first centuries, the biggest problems that the message of God would face were the infiltration of heresies, the introduction of Hellenism, debates about biblical doctrine; but the great problem had to do with the Roman Empire and the papacy. The former constituted the greatest enemy of Christianity... even threatening its very existence; the latter launched persecutions against Christians that were even worse.

The Message of God in the Middle Ages

Doctrinal disagreements, religious intolerance, points of view regarding who should interpret the Scriptures... all this favored the emergence of the Middle Ages. Thus, the message of God that promised to give comfort and freedom in Christ (John 8:32) was chained and confined, replaced by a 'pseudo-message' of punishment and eternal torment in hell for the infidels who did not adhere to the new liturgy of the nascent church: the Roman Catholic Church.

Religious Obscurantism

Religious obscurantism can be defined as that stage in history where people were prevented from knowing the truth about something; a stage in which the Roman church had total control of society, curbed knowledge, saying that science and knowledge were a threat. Religion "became increasingly gloomy, oriented almost exclusively towards death..."; they were "times of pain, death and disorder, the Christian cult, instead of focusing its attention on the victory of the Lord in his resurrection, began to worry more and more about death, sin and repentance.

God's Message: Reformation, Renaissance, and Modernism

Of course, all of this would provoke a tremendous reaction in the thinking minds of that time; but the changes would not take place until centuries later with the arrival of the Reformation. It was the reformers whom God would use to "reshape" the message that the Church had deformed. The emphasis of these heralds was the need for the illumination of the Spirit."The Roman Church taught that only the priest could interpret the Word of God, while the Reformers openly promoted the study of the Bible, affirming that all believers could be taught its truths through the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. Luther's emphasis on justification by faith led him to speak much about the work of the Spirit in this regard."12

In fact, Donner notes that 'at the end of the Middle Ages there wasn't just one protest movement, but two. One was the cultural, intellectual, and artistic movement we know as the Renaissance; the other, the Protestant Reformation'¹³ which challenged medieval culture and the hegemony of the church, thus breaking the religious mold that had been formed over a thousand years.

Similarly, while the Reformation fought for the preaching of God's message concerning the depravity of man and his need for salvation in Christ, the Renaissance emphasized the value of human beings and their intellectual capacity. Thus, the latter, the Renaissance, gave way to Renaissance humanism: the beginning of the Modern Age in which man becomes an autonomous being, 'a person who has left behind the tutelage of the church and religion, who is master of his own destiny.'¹⁴ And with the arrival of modernism, all the other 'isms' that remain to this day would also arrive, of which those that would do the most damage to the Christian faith and the message of God would be the Enlightenment and secularism (which will be discussed later).

God's Message versus Enlightenment and Rationalism

To understand the effect of the Enlightenment, we must place ourselves in the context of the people of that time (16th century). For them, there was no doubt that God had created the universe according to the biblical account of Genesis. According to Olson, 'there was no doctrinal formula of the literal truth of all parts of the Bible, nor was there any serious concern to prove the literal truths of the Bible'¹⁵; that is, everything was taken for granted, not only the creation, but also the stories of Noah, Abraham, Moses, the people of Israel, the prophets, Jesus and the apostles... In all of them, God was the actor and director in the broad drama of history that moved from creation to redemption, and from there to the final consummation.¹⁶

The Enlightenment (17th century) only admitted the natural light of reason in the solution of human problems.¹⁷ For its offspring, rationalism, human reason was considered fully competent to discover and define religious beliefs without any supernatural aid or divine revelation. It was this latter current that shaped liberalism and anti-supernaturalism, 'as occurs in humanism or agnosticism... In the eighteenth century, the dominant influence and spirit in the Enlightenment was rationalist. Its religious expression took the form of deism and agnosticism.'¹⁸ The Enlightenment, on the other hand, also brought with it the emergence of the scientific method of hypothesis, testing, and observation, which gave way to naturalism¹⁹; whose philosophy is that anything that could be explained rationally constituted a valid and acceptable explanation. Therefore, God's miraculous interventions in history would be ruled out²⁰; and by not being sure if God intervenes in history, the question then arises as to whether God really exists.

Questioning the Existence of God

This agnosticism was followed by a series of philosophical discussions, some denying the existence of God and others attempting to justify it: 'If God exists, how can you prove it?', 'If the universe is a great machine, machines do not arise on their own, it must be the product of a superior intelligence.' This was the reason why, from Emmanuel Kant to Karl Barth,in the last century, methods were devised to prove the existence of God.²¹ Although it had its peak, that 'modern' way of thinking that dominated the 19th century, for some contemporary thinkers, has already become obsolete.”²² And in chronological terms and intellectual dominance,²³ this is how modernism gave way to postmodernism.

The Postmodern Challenge to Christianity

Shenk summarizes the topic of Postmodernism as follows: [it is] 'the most important philosophy that has shaped society since the mid-1980s.'²⁴ Dockery, for his part, mentions that postmodernism is a series of assumptions about reality that goes beyond relativism and impacts literature, dress, art, architecture, music, the sense of what is right or wrong, self-identity, and theology.²⁵

To be honest, postmodernism works in more subtle ways than modernism in past centuries. Contrary to modernism, it does not assert that Christianity is a farce, or that God does not exist; rather, postmodern thought does not believe that Christianity is the only truth; there may be other truths; moreover, truth can be defined by each individual and by the community to which they belong.²⁶

Secularization Assaulting Christianity.

Modernism as a system of thought was relegated, but the same cannot be said of secularism, and of the process of secularization, whose trace and origin can be traced from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the present day, in the life of each person. Secularism, a close cousin of postmodernism, dissociates religion from everyday life, or in some cases sees it as something optional. For Blamires, thanks to secularism, there is no longer a Christian mind [consciousness]: 'The modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion (morality, worship, spiritual culture) but rejects the religious point of view of life, which puts all earthly matters within the context of the eternal, the point of view that relates all problems (social, political, cultural), the doctrinal foundations of the Christian faith, the point of view that sees all things here under the terms of the supremacy of God and the transience of the earth, in terms of heaven and hell' (trans. a).²⁷

The secularized Christian prays in private, but in practice acts secularly; the church is no longer the place to nourish and sharpen the intellect; Christian culture has been lost.²⁸ Rassi says: 'Many contemporaries can be better described as practicing secularists, living unexamined lives, focused on the routine of work and temporal pleasures, distracted by the entertainment provided by secular media and occasionally moved by disaster or pain' (trans. a.).²⁹

The Adventist Message versus Postmodern Secularism

Such has been the effect of secularization that the assertion that the Christian church was the preserver and proclaimer of truth is now ignored, if not rejected.³⁰ Therefore, the point has been reached of asking whether the Adventist church has escaped these currents, and if the answer is affirmative, then one must also ask whether these postmodern thoughts have affected its prophetic message and mission. For those who point out that it has not, Anderson responds that it is not true that our members have largely escaped postmodern trends... 'anyone who lives on this planet is challenged to accept the postmodern version of reality.'³¹ But if this were not enough, the wave of postmodernism and secularism has given rise to another dreaded trend within Adventism; this is liberalism. Liberalism has simply given rise to two positions currently present in every corner of Adventism: conservatives and liberals.³²

The Rise of Liberalism and Conservatism in Adventism"

For the former, the apocalyptic message must be proclaimed at all costs. In Knight's words, for this group the zoological preaching³³ must prevail over the others, 'we must denounce the beast', 'we must proclaim the study of the Spirit of Prophecy', 'we must return to the faith of the pioneers', 'we must be vegetarians'³⁴, they declare. For the latter, the liberals, the Adventist worldview regarding its exclusive message and mission is a mere notion that, apart from being conflictive, is very elitist. Sabbath keeping could be determined based on personal preferences; buying or selling on the Sabbath can also be justified; taking care of one's health is not necessarily something spiritual; and preaching the particular doctrines of Adventism are 'only useful options for the world'³⁵; 'as long as one thinks of Christ and his grace', the affirmations of Adventism regarding a unique mission do not matter as much.³⁶

Conclusion

Adventism is a prophetic movement called to proclaim the last message of salvation on this earth. However, one of its greatest challenges to preaching the truth and carrying out its mission has to do with both postmodernism, secularism³⁷, and its own structure. Knight states: 'We have departed from the clear biblical teachings... [but now] the time has come to reverse this trend.'³⁸ Today, Christianity, seen in true Adventism, is the antithesis to counteract secular and postmodern thought, which, to tell the truth, has a positive side, as it highlights a renewed interest in the spiritual and social aspects of life, the celebration of cultural or religious diversity³⁹, which presents a precious evangelistic opportunity.

B.B. Beach, speaking of ways we can reach the current generation, declares: 'we need to provide them with information, help them find meaning, multiply church services and 'scratch where they itch' (trans. a).⁴⁰ With this, he encourages that as a people, Adventists change their structure of thought to reach those with postmodern thinking⁴¹, because their message of yesterday [of Adventism] is the same as today, and it is also for the public of tomorrow, it only needs to be contextualized in its presentation.⁴²

Brinsmead is right when he says: 'The Adventist contribution is not the only teaching; its contribution is its strong eschatological awareness, its roots in the O.T., its holistic perspective of man and its deep respect for the law of God. God has wonderfully imparted his grace to the Adventist people... The gospel must be the end of traditional Adventism.'⁴³

The Adventist church does not carry a distinctive message, the church is the message itself. The message of the Advent to the whole world in my generation should not be just another cliché within Adventist jargon: the Message must be preached with strength and power.

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