Finding Christ in the Postmodern Matrix

In this entire month, the topic is Christianity and the postmodern puzzle. And you might be puzzled right now as you listen to that topic, but, this morning, our speaker, Doctor Craig Hazen is going to introduce the subject, and then, next week, we'll have another discussion from Troy Lambert from actually over here at Riverside Reformed Baptist Church. And then December 16th and December 30th in your bulletin, you'll actually see the handout for the rest of the month. But we are especially excited to have Doctor Craig Hazen here this morning from Viola, where he serves as the director of the Christian Apologetics Program and is associate professor of Comparative Religion and Apologetics.

And I had the opportunity to hear him at a conference that I attended recently called Life in the Mind Conference, and he just, did such a great job. I wanted to invite him to come out. And speak to us now. There are some materials available from Dr.

Craigin as we're done if you want to hit the information booth. There's CDs and books that he has contributed to or written, and also we are making available a book that's just come out, edited by Dr. Piper, The Supremacy of Christ in the Postmodern World, and that book will be just around the corner of the booth, and that's only $5 by the way. And so you can drop $5 in the basket and take that book.

It's an excellent resource. Let's open in prayer. And then we'll give Dr. Craigin the remainder of our time.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this, this time to be here in your presence. And to gather together, Lord, around the truth that we know in the gospel. we thank you, Lord, that you have made a clear, Lord, the basic truths that will lead us towards heaven.

And we just ask, Lord, that your Spirit will fill each one of us and fill Dr. Hazen, Lord, as he ministers to us and helps us wrap our minds around what can be a difficult subject, but a very important subject. Lord, help us to see, Lord, the importance of maintaining Our Lord, the character of your word. In a world that is largely denying truth, denying absolutes, and Lord, the encroachment of these views, even in the church.

We pray, Father, Lord, that you would just arm us with Lord, the things that we need to give an answer for the truth that lies within us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Would you please welcome Doctor Craig Hazen.

Thanks, Mike. If Hey, thanks so much for having me here. This is, any church bold enough to have a series on something called postmodernism is, is, is an A grade in my book, any day. This is This is tough stuff.

In fact, you can guarantee something if you're in the academic world and you read books that you, you're just having a terrible time understanding. Generally, it's an academic person trying to work around something in the world that's just completely obvious to everybody else. And so you read books that go on and on and on and on, you're still not sure what the author is trying to get at. You can guarantee they're trying to work.

They have a particular theory, usually it's some ungodliness that they want to support, and they find ways to argue around it so that nobody can really understand what they're saying. In my view, on a practical level, and trying to study this thing we call postmodernism, that's mostly what's going on. So it can be a very difficult subject to understand. But I'm, I'm thrilled you're doing it.

Hey, I'm delighted to be here. this is a great place, really. I get to preach in churches about half the Sundays a year. This is exactly the size I like them, sometimes you get those huge auditoriums, people don't even look at you in those huge auditoriums.

They look at a screen, and so you're trying to make eye contact with people and they're making eye contact with the screen, so I caught on to I started talking to the camera. This is glorious, it's good to be back home. I, I've been in San Diego for about a week. I was holding a big conference down there.

I went to SeaWorld. Never been to SeaWorld before. In fact, I had my kids come down and go with me. See, I never go to these places during the summer when there's crowds.

I, I have a real phobia of the whole, huge crowds. Actually, I have a phobia of waiting in line for things for 2 hours is what I really have a phobia of. So I'm down at SeaWorld and, and man, they've got a lot of smart sea creatures down there, really. It's, it's amazing.

And, but I was disturbed by the end of the day, very disturbed. I think it was my own doing though, because at lunchtime, my kids were hungry. So, they, they wanted some food. So we went to a burger stand and they all got burgers and I went for the healthy alternative, a fish sandwich.

I couldn't help but think that I had eaten. An underachiever of some sort. It's a little disturbed Well I teach at Viola University and although it's not the beginning of the year, we started off the year with a bang and, and here's, here's one of our college admissions essays. Yeah.

Right? Students have to fill out an application. They have to write an essay so that they can turn it in and, and we check them out to see if they're worthy of coming to Biola University. By the way, Biola is 100 years old this year.

I that's something. It's very rare for a Christian institution to maintain a rigorous stance on the inerrancy of Scripture for 100 years. And Viola, God bless them, have been, we've been able to do that. Here's, here's an admissions essay.

I am a dynamic figure often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I've been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees. I write award-winning operas.

I woo women with my godlike trombone playing. I cook 30 minute brownies in 20 minutes. I'm, I'm an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru. Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon basin from a horde of ferocious army ants.

I play bluegrass cello. I was scouted by the Mets and on Wednesdays I repair electrical appliances free of charge. I don't perspire. I bat 400.

My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children, trust me. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA.

I sleep once a week. When I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. Well, while on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small, who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

On weekends to let off steam, I participate in full contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I breed prize winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin.

I have played Hamlet. I have performed open heart surgery. I have spoken with Elvis, but I have not yet gone to college. Yeah, we, we let him in.

That's This is, this is actually not just some goofy beginning, but this really is a vision of the postmodern world. People can invent themselves in any way that they'd like. Madonna is actually a perfect example of this. We haven't seen her around much recently, but during her heyday, Madonna would reinvent herself every year or two.

And this is the, the, the, the fleeting image of identity in the postmodern world. You can, you can invent yourself over and over again. It reminds me of a 1983 Nobel Prize winning novel, by, entitled I Rigoberta Menchu, which had all kinds of falsehoods and dubious material in it, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter that there were actually, there was made up stuff in, in something that was supposed to be not made up.

But because it was trying to move forward, and help the oppressed people in third world countries. It just didn't matter to the literary community. It reminds me of that person who Oprah had on a year or two ago, James Fry. His little book called A Million Little Pieces, right?

Turns out it was supposed to be autobiographical, but turns out there was what, page after page of misleading information in it, and downright lies, stuff that didn't happen, but it really didn't matter because what was most important was the point. the, the end was justifying the means in both of these cases. And this is part and parcel with the with the postmodern world. I suppose if you, if you really want to get at it, what we're talking about in this whole postmodern thing is, is there reality?

And can we know it? Is there reality? And can we know it? Reminds me of a seminar I took with Dallas Willard, a tremendous Christian philosopher at the University of Southern California.

Yeah, I guess if you're a Trojan fan, go Trojans. they beat UCLA yesterday. It's big stuff. Poor Missouri though.

I was really rooting for Missouri to beat Oklahoma. But besides that, Dallas Willard at USC, I took a special seminar on postmodernism with him one time, and basically we spent two weeks attempting to discover whether the chocolate doughnut was there or not. I kid you not, the first day he came in, we're actually having some snacks or something, they brought in some breakfast. There were some chocolate donuts.

He went over and grabbed one, put it where we could all see it, and he goes, This is what we're going to discuss for two weeks, whether that thing is there really, and whether we can know it. Actually, it's fascinating, really, the whole history of, of human thought deals with things like this and postmodernists have a particular take on whether that doughnut is there or not. And whether you could know it if it was. Well, these things all boil down to some interesting, I think, scriptural issues, and let me, let me hit one of them.

It's in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verses 3 through 5. Let me give a scriptural frame for some of this. 2 Corinthians chapter 10. I'll look at verses 3 through 5.

This is perhaps one of the greatest spiritual warfare passages. Anytime I hear a sermon on spiritual warfare, a series on such, the pastor is certain to hit on this particular passage. I think often it's misunderstood, though. I think this is a spiritual warfare passage, but very often, the center point is missed by the expositor.

Listen to what Paul says. He says, for though we live in the world, By the way, when he says world there, he's not meaning sinful fallen world necessarily. He's simply meaning the physical world, right? Though we live in the world of physical place.

We do not wage war as the world does, right? We don't wage war in a physical way. we're not, we don't use nuclear weapons or bows and arrows or anything in our warfare. It's not a physical warfare.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage the wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they, that is the weapons we use. Have divine power to demolish strongholds.

in fact, a a Greek rendering of the Greek here would be, they have, they have special power, power through God to demolish fortresses. Power through God to demolish fortresses. I don't know about you, but I want me some of them weapons, that sounds incredibly powerful. On the contrary, these weapons have divine power to demolish strongholds.

Now, The whole Interpretive key to this verse is what are those strongholds that we're destroying? See, we're trying to figure out what the weapons are. The key to understanding what the weapons are is to understand what it is we're destroying. And Paul tells us in the next verse, God bless him.

He says we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take every thought captive, make it obedient to Christ. we demolish arguments, and every pretension, every pretentious thought that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Now that may not warm your heart, but to a Christian academic guy, oh, this is great.

we cling to a verse like this. Some of you don't think us pointy headed people really are very valuable to the church, but the apostle Paul thought we were valuable. Oh, we love him. Oh, this is great stuff.

We demolish arguments. Paul is actually making a call that we go out and we tear down fortresses. We, we demolish arguments, right? Arguments that is.

Not angry bickering. We're talking about academic thoughtful arguments that are set out to block people's knowledge of God. It is our duty. It's a great spiritual calling to go out and use whatever we've got to tear down those things so that people can have direct access to knowledge of God.

That's a great spiritual calling is to tear down those arguments that block people's knowledge of God. There are many arguments out there that block people's knowledge of God. Some people think that Darwinian evolution blocks people's knowledge of God, and it does for so many people. They think, Well, Scripture says that God created life and caused it to flourish on Earth, and we think there are completely natural explanations, and we don't need to include God in our framework at all.

That idea needs to be torn down. And how do you do that? How do you tear down an errant idea like Darwinian evolution? How do you do that?

Do you do you just sit around and go, I wish it were gone. Oh, please go away, you could pray. And I don't think, I think we can do it any time. I don't, I don't think that's what the passage is talking about here, but I think we can pray certainly that that's probably step number one.

But the apostle Paul is addressing something a little more specific. If we're going to tear down a bad argument, what are the weapons we have that are powerful through God to tear those down? Counterarguments, godly arguments, understanding God and His created world in so deep a way that we can offer counterpoints and come against these arguments and tear them down. They are very powerful.

We've seen it happen. We've seen it happen. I don't know if you've seen a good Christian debate everywhere, a really godly, thoughtful, well-trained Christian debates, say an atheist or a person who doesn't believe in the resurrection or a Darwinian, we generally win pretty well. In fact, it's, it's usually not even pretty to watch.

Why would that be? Well, it turns out that I don't know, we actually have the true picture of reality. That's helpful in a debate. when the, when the guy, when the fellow you're debating really doesn't have a good picture of reality, it's nice to have a clear picture of reality for which all of the evidence comes in to support, right?

It's, it's, it's a tremendous thing. So Why are these issues important? Because the apostle Paul thinks they're important. If we can tear down things that block people's knowledge of God, we're doing a great service to evangelism because people have a better shot at direct access to seeing God for who He is, and what is what his saving gospel is all about.

So this is very important stuff. Now, postmodernism, interestingly enough, is a very clever work of the devil in my estimation. Why? Because it's not just a single argument like, let's, let's divert them.

Let's divert these spiritual seekers by getting Darwinism into the picture, or let's divert them by talking about the Jesus family tomb in Jerusalem. we found the bones of Jesus. Let's divert them on these specific issues. Postmodernism is especially nefarious in that it pulls the rug out from under all knowledge.

Pulls the rug out from under all knowledge. According to most postmodernists, and it's a very difficult thing to define, so it's hard to make blanket statements, but according to most postmodernists, the big problem is you really can't know anything. You're thinking, but wait a minute, I know that guy up there, Craig Hazen, he's up there speaking right now. Really?

How do I'm not Dharma. In Buddhist thought that would be a mathematical flashes. There's really no substance here at all. See, that's a view of the world that millions of people hold.

Right? If you're a Buddhist, and you're in the particular school of Buddhism, you might believe that I don't exist. There's no substance to me whatsoever. I'm like a mandala, a sand painting, I can be wiped away with one motion.

See, that's a worldview about what's going on here. maybe that's what's really happening. That idea needs to be torn down. Postmodernism basically pulls the rug out from everything because it collapses.

Our reliance on knowledge and certainly if you're the devil and you're thinking, hmm, how can I really be impactful in the modern world for my evil thoughts and deeds? I know I'll put up the biggest blockade I can between people and their knowledge of God. And I do that by saying you can't know anything, so don't think you're knowing God when you can't know anything. Well, I know I'm seeing the puzzled looks on your faces already.

This is what goes on when we talk about postmodernism. You go, wait a minute, I think I know stuff. Yes, you do know things, and them with great certitude and don't let anybody fool you. And guess what?

So does the postmodernist. One could ask, well, wait a minute, how does the postmodernist know that postmodernism is true? there's a little problem there. See, the postmodernist lives in a schizophrenic world.

It really matters a lot when he is in the 7-Eleven paying for his Slurpee, right? And he wants, he doesn't want to pay $7 for the Slurpee. He wants to pay 79 cents. But what's reality about anyway, $7.79.

What does it matter? What matters, the postmodernist only has, 79 cents in his pocket, you see, reality comes crashing in on several levels. Well, some of the speakers who we're going to be following in the series will be focusing on some of those things more in depth, but let me, how do we get in such a weird place where some of the brightest academics in the scholarly world have, have just been drinking deeply at this very weird well we call postmodernism. Let me see if I can address this a little bit, and in doing so, it will get slightly technical at places.

Don't be daunted. I think you'll pick up most of it. but there's no way to deal with this stuff without getting at least a little bit academic. in order to really know about postmodernism, you first have to understand what modernism is because postmodernism purportedly comes after modernism, right?

I'm not sure those distinctions are even helpful when you boil it all down. I'm not even sure postmodernism is post anything. Postmodernism is supposed to be a reaction against the thing we call modernism. But I think postmodern ends up being really a hyper modernism in my view, but that's for another discussion.

One scholar has called modernity, the modern world, the, the quest for certainty, right? The quest for certainty. We live in the modern world. And really, this would characterize the period of time after the Enlightenment in Europe and America, the period of time after the Enlightenment, the, the 1700s would be the time when the Enlightenment came sliding into home in Europe and in North America.

And during the 1800s in the 1900s we were, we were the modern world where science and logic and mathematics, they ruled the day. People thought that they could really wrestle the universe into existence, right? There's not a thing we can't know with great certainty about the universe because we've got science. It's really a scientistic mindset.

So and it's a quest for certainty and a quest for progress, we can make our way just through our careful investigations and clear thinking. That would be a modernist mindset. The postmodernists come in and say, I don't know about all that stuff. really, postmodernism is the end of the quest for certainty.

The end of the quest for certainty, the postmodern would stand up and say, all that stuff you thought you knew for sure. I'm pretty sure you don't know it for sure. I know that sounds weird, but that's the, that's really the basic logic. I'm pretty sure that you don't know it for sure.

The end of the quest for certainty, and there are many reasons this, this ambiguity came rushing in. Let me give you a few reasons why this may have happened. Again, I'll run through, I'll run quickly through 7 points, hopefully keeping them less than less technical as I possibly can. Number 1, the Enlightenment vision of unleashing reason's power in pursuit of universal knowledge and technical mastery of the world has failed.

Now this, this is a reality. if you read 19th century literature, people were pretty hyped up about stuff, man, we've got steam power now. we can, we've built a railroad across the United States. We have a telegraph.

I can communicate to somebody across the Atlantic by tapping the little switch, and sending Morris code. This was phenomenal, in the 19th century. All these, but these, these technical things. And, and technological advancements gave people perhaps a false sense of themselves.

And And there's this idea in the 19th century and into the 20th century that we can master nature has ultimately failed, hasn't it? if you think about it, these great technological advances, the steam engine, the telegraph, the daguerreotype, which turned into the photograph, these were marvels of the 19th century. Well, all of these technical advances also as they move forward led to some rather bad news, these same technical processes could lead to the development of, say, nuclear weapons and improvised explosive devices and and poison gas bombs and napalm, and in other words, we were so optimistic about our technical mastery that we didn't see the terrible consequences that might lead from from these technical advancements, but we began to see the fruit of them in the 20th century, right?

So we, we now cower, back when I was growing up, we would have those nuclear weapons drills, duck and cover, like that was going to help.

So this 19th century idea that mastering the universe through our technology began to go down and our Well, we began to see that as a failure. 2. The social situation of people in a cosmopolitan media saturated environment makes a unified worldview untenable. What do by that?

if you're in the 19th century, and you lived in Minnesota, you live, you live in a little house on the prairie. Right? And your neighbors move in, guess what? They're going to look like you.

They're gonna talk like you. They're gonna read the same King James Bible you do. In fact, the only thing that looks foreign around are the occasional Indians who might wander by, you don't quite understand them, but everybody else you felt a real common culture with. Not so today.

It is a madhouse out there. I know in Riverside, it's pretty crazy, isn't it? It's even worse in Los Angeles. There are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than probably anywhere in the world.

And I used to teach at UC Santa Barbara, and I bring my students down in vans to Los Angeles when I was doing a world religions course because I could take them. To spots around Los Angeles and basically show them all of the world religions almost in their native habitats. it's like a zoo really. Some of these religious groups would import materials from the old country and build temples and things made out of stones from, the Indus River Valley and so forth, to make it as completely authentic as possible.

Man, this ain't the Little House on the Prairie anymore. It's, it's a, it's a crazy world out there. And so this uniformed thinking that we seem to have in the 19th century isn't a reality anymore. And this has led to an undermining of our modernist ideas.

So a unified worldview is untenable, right? If you have a, you think we're all going to be thinking alike, that's just not a reality anymore. 3, the diversity of religious and philosophical perspectives available to people today makes the notion of one's absolutely true religion or philosophy unacceptable. this is, this is very difficult situation.

Again, you go and you do the world religious tour of Los Angeles, and you say, wow, how can I possibly know which of these is true? There are so many choices. It leaves many people in a state where they go, coming to the truth. About absolute ideas like God.

The soul salvation. And so forth. Understanding the purpose and meaning of life from a religious standpoint is an impossibility because there are so many choices out there, and then human beings believe so many different things. It causes a lot of people to throw up their arms and just say, We cannot know the truth about these things.

We just cannot know the truth. And you see that really is postmodernism coming into full flower, isn't it? We can't know it to be true. we can, by the way, we can know it to be true.

In fact, stick around for, the sermon at the, what is it 10:15, then we'll talk about the truth of all of, the Christian position as opposed to postmodernism. Number 4 would be this, our cosmopolitan and pluralistic environments do not allow for a fixed sense of personal identity. Or one best way of life. Now I mentioned that earlier with regard to Madonna.

Madonna is like a chameleon, she changes her whole persona every several years, right? And so we have a, we have a problem today fixing our identity. This is one of our biggest problems in youth culture. Who am I?

Who am I? they see so many messages on television. They have so many different kinds of friends from different cultures. They get so many messages in the mainstream media and through iPods and internet and so forth.

It's very difficult for them to really grab onto an idea and lock into it, especially an idea about identity. Who am I? In fact, I'm convinced that This personal identity being fluid and flexible, and, and people not wanting to commit to anything is one reason, for years and years, young people say the word like so much. Like I'm totally like, it's like, I don't know, like, like, like, like, like, it's like like, like, you see, have you ever heard this?

Have you ever puzzled, been puzzled at this strange form of communication? It's like I totally don't like know that like. Notice that that really represents something. It represents a lack of commitment to reality.

Everything's like everything's a representation. Nothing's real. Everything's like something else. But you can never like lock into something real.

So like means that everything is an approximation or a relationship. You can never really nail down anything with much certainty, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like. So the post this postmodernism may have emerged from this problem of being able to lock in to a sense of personal identity or one best way of life. There are many ways to live out there, many ethical systems, and it's just a matter of choosing one because they're all about the same.

And that's a big problem, but postmodernism has emerged out of that cultural trend. Another cultural trend that postmodernism has grabbed onto and used in order to get itself going is number 5. Language is ultimately a contingent creation of human beings. It cannot represent any objectively knowable reality.

What does that mean? Good heavens. this is where it gets so complicated. if you really want to get into this, you need to read, You need to read a, an Austrian philosopher by the name of Ludwig Wittgenstein, right?

And not just his philosophical investigations. You need to start with his Tractatus logico philosophikus, right? Start with the Tractatus and then move through his life into the philosophical investigation. I'm just trying to wow you with philosophy, names, but really this is why it gets complicated because there are some early 20th century philosophers who laid the groundwork for this, and Wittgenstein really was an expert in how does language relate to reality.

And this might be the most important issue in postmodernism. Remember that chocolate doughnut I had up here earlier? You can all imagine it still that chocolate doughnut sitting there. I guess it would be better if I had a real chocolate doughnut.

Anybody have one in your pocket? No, it's OK, because it seems weird talking about an imaginary chocolate doughnut when I'm talking about postmodernism. Here, here's a clicky thing. Well, the clicky thing.

It's not as dramatic or romantic as a chocolate doughnut, but here's a clicky thing. Is it really there? It might be. but really, the only way we can talk about it is using language, right?

And language is contingent and fluid, and, it changes all the time. Right, and language isn't very helpful in many cases because language sits over here and reality sits over here, and there's really no ultimate connection between them. Is that clicky thing really there? It's got a chocolate doughnut.

All right, now the Hey. Oh, This does work better because it's, it's much more dramatic with chocolate doughnut. See, the only way we as public creatures, right, people in community here can, can begin to think about that chocolate donut is to use language. Language, but language is the big problem because language has no ultimate connection between itself and reality.

So ultimately we can't really know anything in a public way, in an objective way. I can, I can claim that the chocolate donut is there. I can develop chocolate donut songs. I can do a chocolate donut dance.

I can, we can begin to worship the chocolate donut. We can, we can develop all kinds of things. But ultimately, at the end of the day, that's just my gig. I'm all about the chocolate donut.

You see, I can talk to myself about the chocolate donut. You can believe if you'd like, but we can never connect in terms of reality as to whether the chocolate donut is there because we would have to use language in order to communicate, and language has no relationship to us. The solid real world. Are you confused?

You should be. There's certain things I teach on where if you are not confused, I'm not doing a good job. When I teach on Buddhism or postmodernism, if the people look like, oh, I totally get it. I'm, I failed.

Now, here's the big, the reason you're confused is because I know the chocolate donuts there, and the chocolate donuts. See, we have knowledge about this. We have, we have firsthand knowledge about this. In fact, in a public setting, we are all encountering the reality of the chocolate donut.

So we can actually claim we are fully within our rights to claim that we know the chocolate donut is there. And what, we're not the crazy ones, folks. I know the chocolate donuts there. the chocolate donuts there.

I have to write thick books with lots of words that are almost incomprehensible to demonstrate to the world that the chocolate donuts really all about our language. See how goofy it is. what that chocolate donut in some respects. let's, let's represent God here, again, we're worshiping the chocolate donut.

But if I want to know God, if I want to know God, it's not all about my language. God is real. I can know that he exists. He, he does not exist in a vacuum.

He's not, he's not a figment of my imagination. I can know him. He has a tremendous trail of evidence. As to his existence, we can know him.

We can know Him as we can know Him better. We have more evidence for the existence of God and especially the incarnation of Christ and His death and resurrection than we do about the chocolate donut and the chocolate donut sitting right in front of us. So, don't, don't let them, don't let them push you around out there. They'll claim that language is the big problem that we can't communicate properly about a chocolate donut because language has no connection ultimately to reality.

That's nonsense. I can make a claim about the chocolate doughnut being there, and you can observe, and we can have all kinds of ways to verify that claim. Language has a solid connection to reality and God designed it that way. Number 6, there's only 7 of these, so I'm almost done with it.

Number 6, written texts do not have a determinate singular knowable meaning or truth value. Written text. This is a big part of postmodernism too, because it deals with texts and writings. And the big name here is Jacques Derrida.

Jacques Derrida, a French literary theorist and philosopher who actually taught at UC Irvine for a number of years. He died just a couple of years ago. But Jacques Derrida would talk about deconstruction. You can really never know what a text means.

Right? And it's certainly you can make the immediate connection to the Bible, but it doesn't just apply to the Bible. It applies to any text like the Constitution of the United States, who can really know what the Constitution means? it, each reader brings something different to the table when they encounter the Constitution, don't they?

Yes, but what about the intent of the original writers of the Bible or of the Constitution or of, the Red pony, or any other book you happen to be reading? We can encounter those, and we do bring something to the text, but there is an intent of the author to communicate something. Jacques Derrida would say we can never know what that is. It is hopelessly ambiguous.

Hopelessly ambiguous. The 7th issue in postmodernism, these are all issues that led up to the full flowering of postmodernism. Number 7 is following on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, what we call truth is not a function of verifiable evidence or sound logic, but of power relationships that masquerade as neutral means of enforcing order. What's all that mean?

At the end of the day, this is primarily through the work of Michel Foucault, a French writer in the mid-19th century. Basically said knowledge, forget about it. Knowledge is all about power. Knowledge is all about power.

Some people think knowledge leads to power. Fuca say power leads to knowledge. See, it's all about power relationships. The reason I'm claiming the chocolate donut is there and that it's, that's reality, because I hold the microphone, I have the power.

And I've mesmerized you into thinking that the chocolate donuts, see, my power has led you to the knowledge of the chocolate donut. Nonsense. The fact that the chocolate, the chocolate donut has given me all the power to talk about the chocolate donut because there it is. See, the reason it's persuading you and you're not thinking I'm a nutcase is because you see it too.

Hey, a chocolate donut. but ultimately in postmodernism, power is everything. It's all about struggles for power. Knowledge means nothing.

I guarantee if knowledge means nothing, Christianity is toast, folks. Christianity is a knowledge tradition. We claim to know things about the universe. We claim to have in our hands the grand story of all that ever was, is, or will be.

We claim to worship a God who existed eternally before everything else and spoke all of this into existence. If postmodernists are right, we can never know that to be true. That's simply our language game. That's simply our intuition, our inner feelings.

It can never be known publicly or objectively. And you can see how postmodernism ends up pulling the rug out from under some of our most cherished beliefs. I'll stop there and see if you have any questions, and no, the chocolate doughnut is mine. I'll be very impressed if you could ask some questions because this is a tough subject and But fire away.

I know church usually isn't the place where you interrogate the speaker, but I'm a college professor, so go for it. Yes sir. How I'll repeat for the for the tape. How do they address the fact that we can make bridges that don't fall down?

They are schizophrenic. They live in two different worlds. Clearly, do you really want to drive over a bridge designed by a postmodernist? engineering theory, physics, that's all a language construct, you can't trust that for a second.

See how weird that is? how do postmodernists get to postmodernist conventions? Do they actually get on airplanes? wouldn't it be a little bit risky.

Very good question. Yes. Yeah, how do I see postmodernism and postmodern theory affecting college campuses and the environment on college campuses? It is, it is in North America the creed of the major college campus.

It's the creed. Now understand, you're gonna say, wait a minute, how can a university which is set up to, to bring knowledge and and the pursuit of knowledge to our culture and society, how can they be the people who are most dedicated to the idea of pulling the rug out from under knowledge? I don't know. It's, it's the weirdest thing ever.

Really. In fact, it's fun to go on college campuses and actually do traditional Christian apologetics, to go on a college campus and say, what? I have excellent reason to believe that Jesus Christ was, was crucified by a Roman execution team and came back to life on the 3rd day. And the evidence is clear and compelling that that actually happened.

Students look at each other and they go, Tell me more about that, because I want to be able to grab something real. All I get is this ambiguity and that we can't really know anything. And yet at the same time, my teachers are trying to teach me things that I'm responsible for that I'm supposed to regurgitate in essays, and, and multiple choice exams. And guess what?

Suddenly reality becomes everything when they mark my answers wrong. It's the weirdest situation, I kid you not. And, and it's, it's, it's irrational at the same time, the whole postmodern enterprise is irrational. Postmodernism basically says there are no absolutes, there are no universal narratives.

There are no overriding stories. There are no absolutes. See the problem there? If I'm saying to you there are no absolutes, what have I just done?

I've just, I've just stated with great emphasis that there is an absolute, and that absolute is that there are no absolutes, which is logically incoherent. In in philosophy we call that self-referentially incoherent. Right? It's completely, it's irrational.

Our greatest, our greatest points of knowledge production and dissemination are actually based on irrational ideas. It's, it's really a strange ballgame. So it is, but, but, but we turned the tables on them because it turns out that 11 thing we've identified is that students on college campuses and high school campuses, almost any public school, they're really hungry for objective knowledge. They're hungry for somebody to come in and say, what?

Forget about that nonsense. I know something to be true. And it turns out to be the most meaningful thing that anybody can possibly get their hands around. God exists.

And he wants a relationship with you. Oh, they, they jumped at it because the postmodern world has, has, has done its job. In beating the idea of objective knowledge out of them, but deep down they long for it. Because they are created in the image of God.

And somewhere down inside, there's some spark that says, is God out there? And can I know him? Another question. Yes, How does postmodernism deal with morality?

As you can imagine, not very well. Not very well. In fact, one gets the impression after reading key postmodernists. That the whole enterprise is trying to get around the law of God so that they can just do whatever they darn well please.

I think at the end of the day, that's, that's what it's all about. you try to figure out why would they spend their lifetime writing this irrational nonsense to justify in their own hearts the evil that they want to do and to propagate it among people they associate with. So morality, no, no concept of objective morality can stand in a postmodern milieu or a postmodern environment., if you have a moral system, let's say you walk into a postmodern conference and you say, Hi, I'm a Christian.

I believe in the 10 Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, and I follow those as best I can.

What would they say? They actually say good for you. That's exactly, yeah, good for you. That's your game.

That's your language. That's your, that's your personal culture. Good for you. Just don't impose it on me.

See, that's what but there's no objective or overriding morality. There's nothing that counts as morally true for everybody. Yeah. as, As well.

Church Yeah, thanks, thanks for bringing that up. I know others will be talking about that a little more in depth in weeks to come, but let me give you a a an introduction to that so you can sink your teeth into what they have to, to say to you. There is a postmodern move in the church. we have to be careful here.

Sometimes we get too reactionary to change in the church and say that looks different, and we throw a label on it. We call it postmodern or emergent or something, right? It's scary. They're, they're chanting and they're lighting candles, and they've got holes in their jeans and their hair looks funny and their guitars aren't even in tune, it's weird stuff.

notice everything I described there is a stylistic element. There's a, there is out there a postmodern style of doing worship. what, I don't have any problem with that. I don't have any problem with new styles.

In fact, some of it's attractive and interesting. They're trying to go back to what the ancient church believed, and they're trying to, they're trying to take rituals that have been lost and very meaningful to Christians past and bring them in and use them in order to grow closer to God and worship Him with all their heart and be great disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. No problem with those stylistic elements. But If you probe a little more deeply and ask the right questions, you'll find out what they believe about the things of God.

And if it turns out you get the message that what, we just can't get too hyped up about like, we're certain that God exists, or, or we can really have knowledge that that Christianity is true. We got to be really careful with that stuff. That's a red flag. Notice that has to do with knowledge.

The key to discerning whether a particular church body is moving in a stylistic direction only, or in a direction that undermines the gospel is to look at how they handle knowledge. There are some churches that have all the stylistic elements of postmodernism. And yet they've got leaders who are just dynamite thinkers, and they go, there's no way we're going that other direction, right? Where there's no way we're going to undermine the basic knowledge components of the gospel.

We're going to, we, we, we think there's excellent reason to believe in God and the whole Christian story. And we're, we're going to fight tooth and nail for that. We just do things a little bit differently. That's one direction.

The other direction is, well, who can really know, we invite Buddhists in and Muslims, and we just all worship together because at the end of the day, it's really hard to know what's ultimately true. And the most important thing is is that we just hold hands and sing songs and move in the same direction. That's trouble. That that's obviously a serious undermining of the gospel.

and I, I've caricatured two positions. There are, there's a spectrum of the way that plays out. It's our job as knowledgeable Christians to help guide these emerging churches, they call them, these emerging churches in the right direction. If they want to use new and funky stylistic elements in their worship, we need to say, God bless you.

Let's just make sure we're solid in scripture. We're solid in our knowledge of God, and we're solid in the gospel. Then, employ whatever style you think is, is going to really move you in that direction. We got to watch out for the folks who are undermining the gospel by pulling the plug on knowledge, like we can't really know these things.

So let's not get too uptight about them. Thanks for bringing it up. I'm sure others will be fleshing out those issues in weeks to come. Another question.

The book is true, no doubt about it. The Bible turns out to be true, and by the way, it's not true just because I said it's true. It's not just my language game. It's objectively.

I think there's excellent reason to believe that the Bible, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, are indeed the inherent word of God. Excellent reason. Notice I didn't say I believe or I have faith that that's true. I do, but I think there's excellent reason to believe that we can give public square arguments that support that idea and support it well to the point of giving a proof for it.

So we are, we are a people of a knowledge tradition. We know things, we claim to know things. I claim to know God. And guess what?

I'm certain that he exists. I'm certain on many levels. And I'm certain that Jesus is His only Son, and Jesus is the only way to the Father. That's it.

The only possibility. There are many ways to Jesus, but there's only one way to the Father, and that's through Jesus. Our Heavenly Father, our great King, what a joy it is to know you, and to serve you. What a joy it is that you do not leave us stranded in this point in history.

Without a witness. We pray for these churches that are going in wrong directions. We pray that you would show them through your scriptures, by the power of your Holy Spirit, that they need to cling to true knowledge of the true God and your saving gospel, Father. Help us to be, help us to be light in a dark world.

Help us to guide our brothers and sisters who might be going in the wrong direction. Bless us, Father, in Jesus' name. Thank you for this dear group of people. Amen.

My daughter. Yes, Thank you so much, Dr. Hazen. Just make sure you eat the doughnut outside of the auditorium.

Cause there are no food or drinks in the auditorium, at least in our community, that's just a a thing we do here. So, yeah, Now, thank you so much. We appreciate you guys coming out. Dr.

Hazen will be speaking in the 10:15 service as well, so I encourage you guys to obviously be here for that. next week we would invite you to come back as, Troy Lambert from Reformed Baptist Church over here in the corner will be speaking on postmodernism and the church. And so he will be getting a little more into the emerging church issue that Dr. Hazen was introducing there in the Q&A time.

And, so I would encourage you guys, to come back for that. we'll have about a 15-minute break here and then I'll, our 10:15 service will begin. God bless you guys.