Page 13 - Empowering Missional Artists - Jim Mills.pdf

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the orignator of the ‘god is dead’ thesis. After his famous postulation he declared, “Indeed this

has been such an enormous shift even the philosopher’s blade has dug into the heart of theism.”

(Ibid) Nietzsche had the foresight to warn his following of the absolute disorientation that was

subsequently to come upon them: “Who gave us a sponge to wipe away the horizon? What

sacred games will we need to invent? Is there any up or down?” (Ibid) Nietzsche’s hypothesis

established the grounds for the rampant philosophical pluralism, which saturates our postmodern

world today

Essentially, it was his work that led to the ‘lost center of cultural molding’ (Ibid) according to

Zacharias and challenged the age-old meta-narrative (grand story) that reigned originally over

the pre-modern and into the modern era during the significant spread of Christianity. Modernism

consequently pursued knowledge without “knowing who we are or why we exist.” (Ibid, 23)

Without a grand story or meta-narrative, we not only did not know who we were or why we

existed but we had no starting place to determine the value of man. The postmodern is living in

a world where there is nothing precious and no value is to be found worth living or dying for.

This unfolding major worldview shift has influenced every stratosphere of life: philosophy,

education and academia, the media and the arts, commerce and finance, politics and religion.

“Christian scholar Thomas Oden was one of the first to chronicle these changes” (Veith 1994, 27)

maintaining “that the modern age lasted exactly 200 years – from the fall of Bastille in 1789 to the

fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.” (Ibid) Whether this defines precisely the beginning and

introduction of post modernity, the fact remains, it has been generally recognized by Christian

theologians, writers, and thinkers that we have entered into a new epoch in our history. Gene

Edward Veith, Jr. suggested that the “assumptions of modernism, including those that have

th
bedeviled the church in this century (20 century) are being abandoned.” (Ibid) He went on to
say, “Christians can rejoice at the dawn of the postmodern age.” (Ibid, 19) However, not every

Christian scholar embraces his optimism. Many believe we are in a major crisis as all meta-