Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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‘modernize’ the nation.
To be sure, confusing modernisation with Westernisation is easily done, as the two can
be very difficult to differentiate. There are many examples of cultures that have deeply
embraced modernity, while they have only marginally embraced Western culture. Among
these examples are: Japan, China and a host of other Pacific-Rim nations. The ongoing,
massive contemporary industrialization of China is certainly rooted in modernism, but
China is hardly westernizing, leaving little doubt anymore that a culture can modernise,
without Westernising.
To conclude, the failures of modernity are obvious to many -- yet modernity continues
to prosper around the globe. Modernity has given mankind many good things, but has
also unleashed unimaginable horrors and the potential for our own self-destruction.
Modernity is simply not the grand solution to all mankind’s problems. However, since
humanity will not turn from its rebellion against the God of the Bible, men will continue
to embrace, however foolishly, the only agenda that seems sensible.
Romanticism
Against the growing tide of modernity, inevitably came a more human, feeling
movement. Followed the Renaissance and Age of Reason, came the Romantic, counterintuitive
climate, which stressed the “role of mystery, imagination and feeling” (Brown,
1968:109). It is important to consider Romanticism, for here we see the early roots of
postmodernism, but hardly the extremism. In fact, it is this historical pendulum swing in
reaction to radical modernity that gives us our first insights about the anti-modern, and
anti-rational extremism of the postmoderns, still many years in the future.
Romanticism arose during the 18th and 19th Centuries, and was so complex a
movement that historians have never reached a consensus about it. The movement began
in Germany and England in the late 18th Century, first sweeping Europe and then moving
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa