LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 77

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CONVENTION ESSAYS AND BIBLE STUDIES
the greatest human need? Obviously, it will be the need for
truth, the need for transcendence, and the need for something to believe in that is bigger than the self. The Nation
of Islam has been able to effectively reach the AfricanAmerican community because they know what they believe.
Louis Farrakhan is most certainly not a wishy-washy, sensitive, baby-boomer, postmodern relativist.
Rather than seeking to accommodate the culture, I believe we should display the same courage recently demonstrated by the Southern Baptist Convention and counter
the culture.20 To do that, we as a church body are uniquely
positioned. We did not sell out our doctrinal integrity to the
modern culture of rationalism. We have refrained from ecumenical relationships that would have compromised doctrinal truth. We have remained a confessional church. We
know what we believe and why we believe it. We hopefully
still know the difference between Law and Gospel and are
able to identify those distortions that muddy the message of
pure grace. We have never been ashamed to declare that
our Lord Jesus is the only Way, and the only Truth, and
the only Life. To remove from our shelves or marginalize
those ingredients of our doctrinal theology and practice that
identify us as a church committed to unashamedly profess,
proclaim, and defend truth is strategic foolishness.
Doing biblical evangelism in a postmodern age provides
a uniquely fascinating challenge. We have the pure Gospel.
Let’s understand it and proclaim it. We are stubborn and
hard-nosed when it comes to issues of truth. Let’s not be
ashamed of it. The culture says there is no absolute truth.
Do we have the courage to joyfully challenge it? Will we be
considered politically incorrect and mean-spirited? Yes, but
so what? Why would we want to be popular in an irrational
age?21 If we are more concerned with being faithful to the
truth handed down to us than with being popular among
postmodernists, God will most certainly grant us the grace
to reach the casualties of this chaotic age!
Donald G. Matzat
Host, “Issues, Etc.”
KFUO Radio

Notes
1. Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, explains postmodernity: “Modernity has given way to postmodernity, which is simply
modernity in its latest guise. Claiming that all notions
of truth are socially constructed, the postmodernists
are committed to total war on truth itself, a deconstructionist project bent on casting down all religions,
philosophical, political, and cultural authorities”
(Boice and Sasse, Here We Stand [Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1996], p. 61).
2. Gene Edward Veith in Postmodern Times echoes the
same sentiments. He points out that for postmodernists, truth claims are actually “power plays.” He
writes: “For the deconstructionists, all truth claims
are suspect and are treated as a cover-up for power
plays. Reason, objective truth, science, and all ‘Western claims to serenely self-aware rationality’ are challenged ... Deconstructionism represents a new kind of

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relativism, one that is intellectually sophisticated,
theoretically grounded, and methodologically rigorous
... Today’s universities, while ostensibly devoted to
cultivating truth, now argue that truth does not exist.
This does not mean that the universities are closing
their doors. Rather, the universities are redefining
what scholarship is all about” (Postmodern Times
[Crossway Books: Wheaton, IL, 1994], pp. 56–57).
3. David Wells writes: “The right of each individual to
his or her own private thoughts and beliefs is held to
be both axiomatic and inviolable. So it is that the particularities of evangelical faith—the things that make
it different—are dissolved. Modern culture grants me
absolute freedom to believe whatever I want to believe—so long as I keep those beliefs from infringing
on the consciousness or behavior of anyone else, especially on points of controversy” (God in the Wasteland
[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994], p. 27).
4. Dr. Mohler writes: “Indeed, in many denominations
and churches, notions of orthodoxy and heresy have
become ‘conceptual emptiness.’ The boundaries have
vanished. The very possibility of heresy is dismissed
in many circles within Protestantism” (Here We
Stand, p. 61). On my daily radio program, I interviewed an ELCA theologian who had written an excellent article on the subject of justification. When I
asked him how the Lutheran understanding of justification differs from the Roman Catholic understanding, he responded, “Well, that’s their truth.” So while
Lutherans have their truth, Roman Catholics have
their truth. Even though the propositional statements
defining that truth are contradictory, to the postmodern thinker, that makes no difference. Both are true.
5. Christ consciousness: “New Age idea taken from eastern mysticism and Gnosticism that each person possesses the ‘divine spark’ which we must realize or attain” (William Watson, A Concise Dictionary of Cults
and Religions [Chicago: Moody Press, 1991], p. 52).
6. Henry Knight writes: “In contrast to modernity, the
postmodern world is happily populated by a host of
particular claims, with an accompanying diversity of
cultures and beliefs. The particularity of Jesus Christ
is in itself not problematic to postmodernity. It is the
claim that Jesus is of universal redemptive significance that it finds difficult—a ‘scandal of universality’ ” (A Future for Truth [Nashville: Abingdon, 1997],
p. 70).
7. David Koresh and Waco, Marshall Applewhite and
Heaven’s Gate, Betty Eadie’s “Embraced by the
Light,” Helen Schucman’s “Course in Miracles,”
James Redfield’s “The Celestine Prophecy,” Elizabeth
Clare Prophet and the “Church Triumphant and Universal,” Jose Silva and “Mind Control,” Deepak
Chopra, and Marianne Williamson all appreciate
Jesus. The primary guru of the New Age movement,
Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, taught that the “Christ archetype” could be activated and encountered via active
imagination or visualization. People today choose
Jesus to be their spirit-guide. As they visualize him,