Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

96
Absent Moral Foundations
To be sure, pluralism exists in various forms around the globe, and for most has no
connection whatsoever with postmodernity. Still, what affects the wealthy West does
affect the rest of the world in a variety of ways, not least of which is economic.
Contemporary Western nations are to no small degree a product of forces long at work
undermining Judeo-Christian foundations. For decades, the transcendent authority of the
Bible has been attacked and steadily undermined by both the modernists and the
postmodernists, leaving Western societies with no accepted basis for morality. Even the
laws that have been the foundations for Western societies have changed to accommodate
cultural trends, as is the developmental nature of jurisprudence over time. Newbigin
frequently suggests that the plausibility structures, or accepted norms of Western society,
remained rooted in a Judeo-Christian morality until about the 1960’s, when significant
cultural changes began re-shaping cultures and governments.
Modernity rejected transcendent authority but
tried to preserve some universal moral criteria.
Postmodernity rejects both transcendent
authority and the possibility or even
desirability of universal moral grounds. So,
no ethical stance can be deemed final and
universal on the basis of any allegedly
scientific description of the human being.
Historical and cultural relativism pervades
human ethics as much as human religion
(Wright, in Taylor, 2000:94).
The ethical ‘toothless-ness’ promoted by the postmodernists can [potentially] lead to
a nihilistic breakdown in societal order, leading to outright civil unrest and disorder. The
creation of such a moral vacuum can open the door for Totalitarian governments that
promise to restore civil and moral order, but seldom deliver the way people had hoped.
Germany after WWI is a classic example of what can happen in such a socio-political
vacuum. The financial distress Germany experienced following the war led also to moral
breakdown, with growing social unrest and violence, making possible the rise of Hitler
and the Nazi party. In this moral vacuum, the Nazi’s manipulated nearly the entire,
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa