Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

the modernists, and especially the Higher Critics. “Many religious traditions typically
float in a historical never-never land, immune from a threat that might follow from
historical inaccuracies or, for that matter, the absence of any link to historical events in
the world of space and time” (Nash, 1998:9). Christianity has for centuries attempted to
meet its critics in the historical, here and now, battle for truth. Pre-eminent apologist,
J.W. Montgomery, argues that a “nonfactual religion, of course, is not capable of factual
defence; but Christianity, grounded in the fact of God’s entrance into human history in
the person of Christ, is the factual and defensible religion par excellence” (Montgomery,
1978:30). Montgomery adds:
The church of the New Testament is not an
esoteric, occult, Gnostic sect whose teachings
are demonstrable only to initiates; it is the
religion of the incarnate God, at whose death
the veil of the temple was rent from top to
bottom, opening holy truth to all who would
seek it (Montgomery, 1978:38).
Christian philosopher, William Lane Craig, believes Christianity should not realign
its witness to the world -- especially not in accordance with the present postmodern fad.
“Such a realignment would be not only unnecessary, but counterproductive, for the
abandonment of objective standards of truth and rationality could only undermine the
Christian faith in the long run by making its call to repentance and faith in Christ but one
more voice in the cacophony of subjectively satisfying but subjectively vacuous religious
interpretations of the world” (Craig in Cowan, 2000:183). Arguing the case for
Christianity using postmodern standards will only make it weaker in the process, in effect
accommodating to the same subjectivities and relativisms as the postmodernists.
Postmodernity does require an apologetic response, but not one that abandons reason in
the process.
Postmoderns contend there is no objective truth, only subjective truths. For them,
knowledge of reality is a mental, and social construct developed via our earthly
experiences. The postmodern contends there is no single way of determining truth, and
therefore, classical-evidential apologetics are irrelevant. The classical-evidentialist
response to the postmodern has been that their contentions are self-defeating; in effect, a
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa