Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary
Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary
Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
92<br />
Chapter IV<br />
Postmodern Pluralism<br />
A major aspect of postmodernity is the pluralism it endorses, and which will likely<br />
be the single most lasting effect of the already passing postmodern cultural wave.<br />
Postmodernism promotes ‘truth’ that is elusive, polymorphous, inward and highly<br />
subjective. As far as postmodernism is capable of clarity, it favours relativism and<br />
pluralism, and is hostile to concepts rooted in uniqueness, exclusivity, objectivity, and<br />
transcendent truth. Christians in the West are often confused and threatened by religious<br />
pluralism, because they have long considered themselves the dominant religious group:<br />
but no more, for pluralism has become a requisite social quality.<br />
Postmodernism lacks a single organising principle and exemplifies the innate<br />
multiplicities of pluralism. Postmodern pluralism wages war with totalities, and any<br />
hegemony of a singular, unified perspective. It encourages liberation from order and<br />
stability, preferring instead nihilism and chaos. Postmodern pluralism brings the margins<br />
to the centre and pushes the centre to the margins. What was once ‘mainstream’ becomes<br />
antiquated, irrelevant and intolerant. Orthodoxy is considered the puppet of the powerful<br />
and the expression of great intolerance for the marginalised. Postmodern pluralists argue<br />
that true freedom is available in the non-traditional and de-centralised. To be singular in<br />
culture and religion is simply wrong. Only the multi-dimensional and plural is good, for<br />
there are only choices, not right and wrong.<br />
Academia under modernity focused on the search for ultimate corresponding truths,<br />
while some streams of academia under postmodernity are obsessed with deconstruction,<br />
unreality, plurality, and political correctness. So-called modern religion was centred in<br />
dogma and antithesis; but postmodern pluralistic religion claims sin does not matter, that<br />
all paths lead to God, for love is all that matters, and truth matters not.<br />
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, <strong>South</strong> Africa