The President of the NACC Visits Postmodernville

"Captivating Truth" by Dick Alexander
from the president’s NACC sermon
Christian Standard, September 26, 2004

Some who encounter postmodernism embrace it, as we saw in Jonathan Huddleston, "Confessions of a Postmodernist" in The Christian Standard, September 12, 2004. Others appear to sense that there is something wrong, but in an attempt to correct that wrong, end up capitulating to postmodernism without seeming to realize it.

I noticed this in Dick Alexander’s NACC sermon. To be fair - and I am nothing if not fair - I must acknowledge that Dick is trying hard to deal with postmodernism, and it’s not an easy thing to deal with. For example, his conclusion that "any person or church that wants to can bring the world a captivating truth by wrapping it in sacrificial love" is good, if we keep in mind that the world can reject truth even when it is wrapped in love.

Mr. Alexander also has a good grip on the problem. He says that people "may not even believe that such a thing as universal truth exists" and that "There is even antagonism to the idea that there could be absolute truth." That’s just what Postmodern Jon, as I’ve called him, said. (See the article mentioned above.)

But when he attempts to solve the postmodern problem, the president of the NACC begins to stumble. Rather than rejecting postmodernism, he attempts to carve out a little nest for it, and then hopes to keep it in that little nest so as not to damage the Christian faith.

Alexander begins by questioning "human logic."

Let’s pause for a little timeout to think about that phrase. There is good logic, and there is faulty logic. I tend to think that when we reason correctly, we are exercising a capacity that we have by virtue of being created in the image of the God Who once said, "Come, let us reason together." Just a thought - back to the ball game now.

When Dick questions "human logic" what he says he means is "All have biases; no one is completely objective." Quite so, but the question is: where do we go with this. Where Alexander goes is down a road that, if traveled to it’s destination, would carry us off the map of Christianity. I don’t think Dick intends to go all the way down that road, but roads have a way of leading us on and on.

The city at the end of this road looks something like this:

Now I realize we must use logic here, but think through this one carefully. God spoke clearly, but we just don’t understand. Truth exists, but we can’t know it. As Dick goes on to say, "None of us is right; Jesus is true." (Italics in the original.)

It is completely clear from the context that "none of us is right" means "none of us knows" the truth. He continues by saying, "If truth, a sense that we are right, becomes our power trip, we make truth an enemy."

While there is certainly no reason to have a "power trip" over knowledge of the truth, especially when the truth in question is revealed from God, you have gone a long way down the road to Postmodernville once you agree that we cannot know the truth. You don’t help put humility into Christians by taking knowledge out, for without knowledge there is no Christian faith.

There is an oft-made distinction between knowledge and exhaustive knowledge. If Dick is just saying we cannot have exhaustive knowledge of the truth, his point is well-taken. But he never makes that important distinction. There are really just two possibilities here: either we can know at least some truth, or we cannot. The former is the position of Jesus, and the latter is not. Knowing the truth does not make us better than others, but it does make us able to teach others, even though we should do so with humility.

At this point in his discourse, we "see Dick run" toward Postmodernville, but then stop and try to back up just a little, because he goes on to say, "Christianity is not true because we want it to be. It is not true because it works. It is true because it is rooted in historical facts – in reality."

Then we are treated to a lot of good talk from Dick on the importance of truth to the Christian faith. He makes this very "preachable" statement about the apostles, "They understood that if the resurrection of Christ is not true, nothing else matters; but if the resurrection of Christ is true, nothing else matters." To be precise, the resurrection is a fact, or it is not. A statement that describes a fact accurately is true. I don’t mean to quibble - his point is well-taken. But I have to wonder: is the statement "Christ was raised from the dead according to the scriptures" a truth that we fallible humans can know? And if we affirm that truth, are we right?

Dick later seems to draw a line-in-the-sand for postmodernists when he says, "Without the truth of God, this world is a strange, mad, painful place. Truth is a friend." But again I have to say, this implies that we can know that truth, and that, knowing it, we would be "right."

So Dick, are we heading toward Postmodernville, or not? It’s hard to tell. Sometimes I hear things like, "to know God fully we must know him truly." In order to know God truly, don’t I have to know true statements about God?

This brings us to what has become the centerpiece of all attempts to fuse Christianity and postmodernism: the claim that for the Christian, truth is a person. Dick puts it this way:

The payoff for all this is what Dick says later, "postmodernism is not all bad for Christianity." How can this be? Because "While our neighbors have abandoned the idea of truth, they have embraced the importance of relationships."

See how it is? You can have your postmodern cake and eat it too!

I checked a recent political science textbook and found that "ideology" is a term with many meanings. But a fairly standard one is this: "An ideology is any more or less systematic set of ideas about human nature, history, society, economics, government, and the relationships among these things."¹ While Christianity is certainly more than this, it is not less. It is chock-full of ideas about all these things, and more! And they all fit together to form a systematic set. Unless you are kowtowing to people wallowing in the morass of postmodernism, what is the problem with affirming this?

The teaching of Jesus is filled with precepts, ideas, and ideals. I believe He is the fellow who said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." True precepts and ideas are part of the Christian faith - you can’t know Jesus without them. It is not stretching things at all to say that if you can’t handle a few precepts, then you can’t know Jesus.

Christians need to give up on the task of trying to carve a little niche into the Christian faith that will accommodate postmodernism. Jesus is the truth by being One Who only and always spoke the truth. Those truths He spoke, both in person and through His apostles, are universal, timeless, and unfailing. It’s postmodernism that needs to be adjusted here, not the Christian faith.

1.    David E. Ingersoll, Richard K. Matthews, and Andrew Davison, The Philosophic Roots of Modern Ideology, Third Edition (Prentice Hall, 2001), p.8.