For truth sake [2 John 2] : an evangelical response to postmodernism

Abstract

Mohler (1995:84) states that, “Evangelicals will do well to measure this emerging worldview inch by inch.” Because of its hermeneutical principle of deconstruction and solidarity at the expense of absolute truth and morals, the challenge that postmodernism poses to gospel proclamation has to do with the question of revealed truth. McGrath (1996:366) defines postmodernism’s challenge as “an endemic aversion to the question of truth.” If, as postmodernists are fond of reminding us, there is no metanarrative or objective standard demanding universal truth, then proclamation of the gospel faces stiff opposition. The postmodern break with foundationalism creates uneasiness, and not simply because it questions truth. More disturbing than that, as Cobb (1990:151) states “it undercuts every quest for certainty.” Thus the challenge before the evangelical church is to preach doctrinal truths rooted in the biblical metanarrative that Jesus is the Truth.