Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

claim that truth can be found through science. Their view of the world was forced to expand, leaving
people with the new problem of “whose truth is right?”
Ethical, religious and moral relativity would have been a foreign concept to a modern, because it
was commonly held that “truth” was not “relative to individuals and cultures, but instead is universally true
and applicable to all people” (Smith 23). Postmodernists, on the other hand, are more accepting of “ethical
relativism” and pluralism and generally do not affirm one truth as universal. As a result, it is becoming
harder for Christians to reconcile the objective truth expected in Christianity with the postmodern context
in which they live (Smith 13).
In postmodernism, focus is shifted away from science and is placed upon language. According to
Smith, postmodernists think that “a real world exists, but all we can know about it is what we know by our
talking about it” (Smith 30). Because everything that humans can hold as truth has to be constructed with
language, we therefore construct our own truth. Because language is different (and used differently) across
cultures, truth cannot be the same in every culture. For example, a Hindu may have no concept of why a
god would “die for our sins” when it is supposed to be up to us to improve our karma for a better rebirth.
Judeo-Christian scripture comes from a very specific culture which many in the West only understand
through tradition and study, not personal experience. Therefore, we must construct meaning for ourselves
through the use of scripture. In a scriptural context, a Postmodern Christian would view scripture as a
product of its time; a time when people were uneducated about things like medicine or genetic diseases and
more prone to believe in something if it seemed miraculous. How does one reconcile this in an age where
doctors can perform the same healing that Jesus did through modern medicine? Thus, less emphasis is
placed on Jesus’ divinity and more emphasis is placed on his moral teachings and how they apply today.
A good way to voice the postmodern mindset is to say “even if objective truths exist… we cannot
know them as such” (Scott 15). Though some like to label the Emergent Church Movement as a
“postmodern” movement, this would be a wrong assessment. Rather, the ECM is a discussion that is trying
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