And the ongoing struggle between modernism in its death throes and postmodernism represents the latest opportunity for the church to learn and hopefully apply this truth.
Postmodernism represents an all-out assault on truth, knowledge and meaning.
It is largely an antagonistic reaction to the modernism which has prevailed for nearly 200 years. Since the time of Descartes and Newton, the philosophy of modernism held that knowledge for mankind was certain, objective, good and accessible to the human mind. Thus, the advent of modernism meant that reason had dethroned revelation as the major channel of knowledge about God and the physical world in general. This in turn guaranteed the certainty of the knowledge the scientist or theologian gained through his studies and observations, and it rendered the modernist worldview decidedly optimistic. Belief in the inevitability of progress due to the positive contributions of education and science gave birth to a utopian vision of the future in which mankind would subdue and harness the powers of both nature and human nature.