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 | | Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effects of Postmodernism in the Church by R. Scott Smith, J. P. Moreland (Foreword) ISBN-10: 9781581347401 ISBN-10: 1-58134-740-5 ISBN-13: 9781581347401 ISBN-13: 978-1-58134-740-1 Paperback 2005-11-08 Crossway Books Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description The latest clarion call in the never-ending cavalcade of “what’s new” in the evangelical world is the confident assertion from some quarters that the church needs to embrace “postmodernism” if it is going to engage postmoderns effectively. Pastors trying to break down the often indigestible subject matter of postmodernism into bite-size chunks in order to equip their people to engage it, and teachers who are aiming at giving their students a working knowledge of the way postmodernism is impacting the church will find a good deal of help from Smith. Scott Smith and I agree on a lot. We share a deep commitment to Jesus Christ, a love of the Bible, and a passion for the church. We also agree that we’re currently living in a liminal time, and it’s those “boundary times” when people look most closely at the beliefs that underlie their practices. So, we’ve all got some things to figure out right now, including what we can really know and the certainty with which we can state our claims in a pluralistic society. I appreciate Scott’s voice in this conversation. He is a careful reader of my work, and he writes with a gracious and generous tone. Interlocutors like Scott will be a helpful challenge to all of us in the “emerging church.” I consider him a friendly critic and a brother in Christ. Scott Smith is uniquely suited to enter the Emergent conversation with this helpful volume. Not only is he an analytic philosopher with a razor-sharp mind who has specialized in analyzing postmodernistic views on the relationship between language and the world, but he is also a man who cares for the lost, loves the church, and has an ability to communicate complex truths to people in the pew. Every leader in the new Emergent Movement will want to read this fascinating book. They simply will not find a more engaging, knowledgeable, balanced, and kind treatment of their concerns, ideas, and practices. Scott Smith’s study challenges us to take seriously the truth claim of the gospel both in how we proclaim it in words and in how we manifest it in our personal and community lives. | ||
Reviews | ||
A Must Read for Every Evangelical Pastor Smith provides a well written, well thought out and reasoned argument against post-modernism thinking in Christianity, and its effects on the "emerging church." He provides the reader with an excellent survey of the theology and logic of the most prominent post-modern thinkers, including evangelical post-moderns. Afterwards, Smith systematically refutes post-modernism thinking and logic as it pertains to Christianity. At the same time, Smith recognizes critical issues that post-modernist Christian writers discuss, which the modern church needs to address. This book needs to be mandatory reading for each evangelical pastor, and those in seminary to combat the prevailing post-modern thought permeating throughout our churches, universities and seminaries. | ||
Great response to the Postmodern movement in the church This is an excellent and fair response to the movement that is taking over in many Christian circles. R. Scott Smith has well articulated his analysis and some correctives that he believes need to take place. This could be read by those are familiar with the Emerging Church, and I think even those who belong to this movement would have to conclude that Smith was really fair in his assessment. I really liked his last chapter, "Objective truth," where he really nailed it on the head regarding Postmodernism. Several times I found myself saying "Yes" because he said exactly what I've been thinking. Two books that I would recommend in conjunction with this are DA Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church as well as Greg Koukl/Francis Beckwith's book on Relativism. Put all three of these together and the Christian has plenty of information to think through the Emerging Church issues. | ||
Not sure Smith's truth "matches with reality" The best parts of this book are the chapters which summarize Brian McLaren, et al. I know a couple people who came away from this book agreeing more with the "New kind of Christian" than with Smith's so-called "Truth." No wonder, for not only are the first chapters the best chapters, they are the most accessible for the average "lay audience" that Smith is targeting. The following chapters, containing the critique, assessment, and counter position, are much more philosophical in language and style--and at the same time, less convincing. Smith's position is basically correspondence theory. That is, a proposition is true only if it corresponds to the "real world." If you buy into this view to begin with, you will enjoy this book as a "much needed corrective." But if you don't, you will find the insistence of trying to match every thought to "the thing itself" very annoying and unconvincing. Not to mention, you will also be classed as a relativist. For having presented such a fair representation of McLaren's views, I would have thought Smith's critique of the same views would have been much better. He defends his own foundationalism as not having to be as extreme as McLaren makes it out to be, yet pushes postmodernism to extremes that Smith admits McLaren himself doesn't go to (i.e., that nasty "R" word, relativism). Really, this book should be called, "Truth versus the New Kind of Christian." The argument, of course, is that McLaren's views inevitably end up as relativism when followed to their logical conclusion, whether McLaren admits it or not. I am not convinced that Smith's philosophical acumen has done the better job of matching up the "New Kind of Christian" to reality. Although he tries to give postmodernism a fair shake and "objectively" demonstrate his position, it is obvious that Smith has already labeled it from the beginning. Consider the very first two words of the introduction: "CHRISTIAN RELATIVISTS." If you find Smith's philosophical rigor convincing, however, I offer one warning: skip chapter seven, in which he assesses the effect of postmodernism (i.e., relativism) on Christian beliefs and ministry. Half of his arguments unwittingly end up countering Christian doctrines, such as the incarnation, rather than postmodernism. (I wonder if Smith had some of his students contribute for this part of the book....) His reasoning falters a bit in this chapter and becomes more transparently fearful of relativistic postmodernism. The essence of Smith's position is "justified true belief": * First, we must believe a proposition. * Second, the belief must be justified. That is, there must be sufficient evidence to accept that proposition. * Third, the belief must be true. That is, the proposition matches up with reality. According to Smith, McLaren and postmoderns have thrown out the baby with the bath water because they incorrectly interpret the second statement as requiring "absolute certainty" rather than just sufficient evidence. My issue, however, is not with the second statement, but the first and third. How do we know when a belief is true, versus simply having evidence? Smith makes it sound simple by saying we match it up to reality itself, and defends the idea that we all have access to the same reality. We truly know what a ball is, because we can compare our concept of a ball to a real ball in front of us. Okay, maybe this is fine for balls, tables and dogs. But it becomes much harder for most other things in life, such as abstract ideas or history. What, for example, is the "reality itself" that Smith compares his concepts of postmodernism? Or, Smith states that we can know as truth of history in his example of the O.J. Simpson trial. We can know that Simpson was acquitted, because we have official court records to that fact. But why does Smith never comment about what we can know about the murder itself? According to him, shouldn't we be able to compare Simpson's testimony to the real event itself, and know the truth of his innocence or guilt? I was very pleased to see Smith take up these questions in his final chapter. But I was not surprised to be disappointed. Smith almost seemed unaware that he slipped from comparing history to "the thing itself" (his third axiom) and switched to comparing things to "the evidence" (his second axiom). Evidence of an event is obviously not the same thing as the event itself, no matter how objective it is. And I would question the objectivity of any evidence. The more disturbing aspect of the book, however, is the first presumption: that faith is about how well we formulate our beliefs as propositions, and how well we prove these propositions to be true or false. We have grown so accustomed to the Christianity of modernity, to a set of properly held empirical beliefs, that we spend our time arguing who is right and who is wrong, rather than loving God or our neighbor. Since we all begin with the same, objective reality, failure to arrive at the same conclusions becomes an intellectual and spiritual failure. Anyone not trained as a philosopher or theologian and who does not properly reason through their propositions objectively, is condemned in the modern Christian world as intellectually lazy, and is viewed as worse than the modern day tax collectors. I am not trying to abandon the intellectual pursuit of truth. I only think we need to learn the difference between pluralism and relativism, and stop trying to stuff God into the tiny little box of objective truth and propositional thought. We need to think of God as truth--and love, and beauty, and mercy, and justice, and...--rather than Truth as god. In the end, this book does not effectively counteract the emerging church or postmodernism, it only reinforces the ideas of those already opposed to new kinds of Christians, all the while waving the banner of "Objective Truth." | ||
Terrific Addition to the Conversation This makes for a wonderful book if you are investigating the claims of the Emergent movement. It also turns out to be a great read if you are interested in a relatively short defense of our ability to know objective reality in light of the postmodern view that we are "stuck" inside our own language. Smith ably shows what the core philosophical commitments are for post-conservatives and leaders in the Emergent Church movement, and then shows the logical consequences of those views. Much of the debate over and with the Emergent movement and post-conservatives hinges on whether the postmodern commitments they hold have orthodox or heterodox consequences, and after a great deal of survey, explanation, and philosophical explication, Smith comes down squarely on the side of heterodoxy. Smith, in the midst of what I think is overwhelming critique, maintains an irenic spirit and does his best to present the other side fairly and clearly, quoting often not only from published works, but email correspondence as well. This is a wonderful addition to a growing and critical trend in evangelical theology and praxis, and deserves to be read not only as a sound piece of philosophical work, but as an example of helpful, even friendly, critique. | ||
A much needed corrective It has always been a temptation for the Christian church to slavishly copy the latest trends of the day. While there is a place to present an unchanging message in new forms and expressions, it is decidedly unwise to simply seek to be relevant, at the expense of truth and good doctrine. One new movement in American Christian circles is the emergent - or emerging - church movement. While a relatively new and somewhat diverse group, this movement can be described as a critique of the traditional way of doing church, and a call for the need to embrace much of postmodernism in order to be more effective. One of the main books by a leading figure in this movement, Brian McLaren, is the 2001 book, A New Kind of Christian. Thus the title by Smith. He offers here a critique of the emergent church movement in particular, and postmodernism in general. In short, argues Smith, while we have made mistakes in the past, and while postmodernism is not to be totally rejected, we pay too heavy a price in uncritically accepting and adopting postmodernist ideas. Especially of concern is the postmodernist attack on the very concept of truth. Smith argues that the Christian community dare not give up on the concept of objective, propositional truth. To do so would be to abandon the distinctives of the Christian gospel altogether. While there are a number of good Christian critiques of postmodernism, and at least one excellent book-length treatment of the emerging church movement (D.A. Carson's 2005 volume), this is one of the few books to nicely bring the two subjects together in a single, readable volume. Smith is to be commended for his irenic yet forceful critique of the dangers of this latest trend to bewitch the Christian church. | ||