Pentacostalism in the postmodern age

Postmodernism dangers: extreme subjectivity, relativism, lack of absolutes, nihilism

Modernity:

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
cogito ergo sum --i think, therefore i am

-thinking is the foundation beyond which there is none
-upon thinking lie all human knowledge
=> everything could be erroneous
=>human subject(self) has become the foundation upon which evrything else rests

Immanuel Kant(1724-1804)
1) inherent categories
2) confidence in unfettered human reason
=> enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity

G.W. Hegel (1770-1831)
-dialectic
-struggles between a thesis and an antithesis (analogy of master and servant)
-recoprocal relationship, to produce synthesis and renewal
-positivity, confidence, bold use of intellect

Friedrich Nietazche(1844-1900)
-reality does not exist
-no identities, no god, no selves
-our wills create/invent reality

How modernity influenced Protestant thought:
-theological liberalism and higher criticism
-Fundamentalists in early 20th century

Strucuralism
-Kantian idea
-regardless of time and place, human understanding follows general formulae by which meaning is derived or produced from the experience of reality; all perspectives were united by these general formulae

Post-structuralism
-such unity does not exist and every perpective is different

Jacques Derrida
-every perspective of reality is nothing more than interpretation

Edmund Husserl(1859-1938)
-create the term "phenomenology"
-to observe the data of the world on their own terms as they present themselves to us
-bracketing presuppositions and assumptions during the observing
-assumption "colours" the observing process
-introduce the sensitivity to allow others to present themselves on their own terms instead of redefining them on ours

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
-Husserl intend to discern things' essential features; while Heidegger reconceived the Being itself--to reconceive epistemology as an ontological act
-knowing notonly involve the reception of raw data but the recpetion and recognition of a relation
-things present to us not only "present-at-hand"(vorhanden) but "ready-to-hand"(zuhanden)

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002)
-embracing traditions--which manifests itslef in us as presupposition, assumption and prejudice-is the true way of knwing and mode of being-in-the-world
-elevating particular and local over the universal

Dale Irvin has pointed out that one of the strengths of Pentecostalism is its ability to localize or particularize itself

more humble perspective: all human knowing is hermeneutical--interpretation is the mode by which humans accumulate knowledge of the world(text, tree, person of God)

=>through language---linguistic turn in philosophical hermeneutics

recalling structuralists:
Caresians of their day arguing for universal rules or formulae by which human intellects in any time and place could undrstand the data of the world
claim of metaphysics, transcendence

Derrida responded to the structuralists by climing that "there is nohing outside the text"

the definition of postmodernity is still in progress, but is essentially determined by modernity--it defies full defeinition because it marks hte boundary zone between modernity and something else yet emerging. Postmodernity is this boundary zone

Postmodernity:
local instead of universal
marginalized instead of the elite
community over hte individual
arts and humantiies instead of sciences
knowledge never complete

=> closer to Pentecostals and charismatics, more appreciate liturgy and ancient forms rather than the latest and greatest advances in worship or theology

What does it means of Christianity?
- distinction between sacred and secular
- a respect and discern for the autonomy of the secular
- witness, communivates the personal dimensions of the encounters with the Divine

Positive features of poststructuralism
- benefit of unmasking hidden political,cultural and religious assumptions
- truth is intersubjectivity which is covenantal correspondence
- human existence is hermeneutical: human is to be an interpreting being

1) postmoderns are skeptical of expects but appreciative of tradition-early church
2) postmoderns emphasize the inclusion and empowerment of the marginalized
3) postmoderns tend to be as spiritual as they are rational
life- a journey of miracles!