Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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Postmodern Assault on Time
Finally, the postmodern assault on foundations also includes the intentional
undermining of traditional connotations about time, something nearly all of us take for
granted. Western epistemological foundations have long been founded upon the lineal
notion of time -- that there is a beginning and ending, that life is un-repeatable and that
death is somehow final -- notions that all originate in the biblical worldview. This attack
on the long accepted notions of time is part of the postmodern, deconstructive and antifoundational
character. Because postmodernity endorses an anti-historical and anti-linear
historiography, it accords with pre-modern, animistic, Pagan and Eastern worldviews,
which makes the postmodern, eclectic blending of beliefs and worldviews all the easier.
Michel Foucault argued the modernist framework was a vain illusion, an invention of
history and language -- all products of power relations. Postmodernists also argue that
reality and time are not limited to the transcendental boundaries that Western
metanarratives have imposed upon society, especially those derived from the Bible.
Postmoderns (again) believe such notions require deconstruction, so the human mind may
once again soar freely, and that after deconstruction, a better way of thinking may be
established. For postmoderns, things like cyber reality are credible alternatives, where the
bending and blending of different dimensions of time and reality, make fantasy and reality
the same. This relativistic denigration and disorientation of time, opens wide the door for
Westerners to embrace Eastern, and/or pre-biblical concept of cyclical time.
The long-accepted notion of linear time originates in the Bible, which makes clear that
time is not cyclical: rather, that time has a beginning and an ending. The Bible introduced
the linear progressive notion, and has for millennia challenged and changed the cyclical
time notion. Because postmoderns are incredulous toward traditional meta-narratives like
the Bible, they seek to deconstruct them and the notions they promote. Postmoderns thus
encourage the embrace of non-traditional notions, such as those found in Eastern
philosophies and a host of other pre, and non-biblical notions, which are rooted in a time
cyclical worldview. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of the medieval humanists, return
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa