Kevin Stilley

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October 21, 2012 by kevinstilley

Postmodernism – select quotes

All statements are false.
~ Gorgias

Sooner or later politics will be faced with the task of finding a new postmodern face. A politician must become a person again, someone who trusts not only scientific representation and analysis of the world, but also the world itself. He must believe not only in sociological statistics but also in real people. He must trust not only an objective interpretation of reality, but also his own soul; no only an adopted ideology, but also his own thoughts; not only the summary reports he receives each morning, but also his own feelings.
~ Vaclav Havel, in a speech at the World Economic Forum in 1995

Post-modernism means the end of a single world view, and by extension, a “war on totality,” a resistance to single explanations, a respect for difference and a celebration of the regional, local and particular.
~ Charles Jencks, in The Post-Modern Reader, page 12

Homo mensura.
~ Protagoras

Marilyn [Monroe] once was asked if she believed in God.  With a flirtatious grin she said, “I just believe in everything—a little bit.” This “Monroe doctrine” might be the defining doctrine of postmodern times.
~ in Is Jesus the Only Way?, page 15

Postmodernism defies definition because we’re right in the middle of a cultural phenomenon still unfolding before us—it’s a moving target.
~ Peter Sacks, in Generation X Goes To College, page 116.

But perhaps the best candidate for postmodernity’s byword is given us by Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, the grunge rockers many observers rightly contend are emblematic of Generation X culture: “Here we are now / entertain us,” says a line from “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a lyric that hits upon the domination of entertainment values in contemporary culture, spanning politics, education, and even religious institutions. Indeed, one might modify Nirvana’s lyric along the lines of Descartes to say, “I am entertained, therefore I am.”
~ Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes To College, page 118

Generation X is not a thing; it’s the lack of a thing, the lack of a positive theory, or an opinion about anything. They don’t believe in anything, and everything is up for grabs.
~ Lloyd, quoted by Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes To College, page 139

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Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Philosophy, Quotes Tagged With: Derrida, emergent, Lucan, Lyotard, Postmodernism

April 26, 2011 by kevinstilley

Authority For Evangelicals?

Question: I am concerned by what I see in the modern church. It seems that evangelicals no longer claim the Bible as their authority for faith and practice. What do you think?

Answer: In order to answer this question I think we have to look at historical developments in the Western church during the last century. Classical 19th Century Liberalism asserted that reason (man) was the authority for theological truth claims. During the 20th century a number of theological movements (Fundamentalism, Neo-orthodoxy, Pentecostalism) all developed as a reaction to such “authority” claims made by classical nineteenth century liberalism. Fundamentalism said, “No way, the proper authority for belief and practice is the Bible.” Neo-orthodoxy said, “No way, the proper authority for belief and practice is one’s personal [crisis] experience with God.” Pentecostalism said, “No way, the proper authority for belief and practice is the Holy Spirit.”

So, those who have been called Evangelicals have always been pretty diverse when it comes to what they have believed about the ultimate authority for belief and practice. And, Evangelicalism today has become so diverse that the nomenclature is almost meaningless; — What is Evangelicalism? Consider the following quote from David Wells;

As evangelicalism has continued to grow numerically, it has seeped through its older structures and now spills out in all directions, producing a family of hybrids whose theological connections are quite baffling: evangelical Catholics, evangelicals who are Catholic, evangelical liberationalists, evangelical feminists, evangelical ecumenists, ecumenists who are evangelical, young evangelicals, orthodox evangelicals, radical evangelicals, liberal evangelicals, Liberals who are evangelical, and charismatic evangelicals. The word evangelical, precisely because it has lost its confessional dimension, has become descriptively anemic. To say that someone is an evangelical says little about what they are likely to believe (although it says more if they are older and less if they are younger). And so the term is forced to compensate for its theolog¬ical weakness by borrowing meaning from adjectives the very presence of which signals the fragmentation and disintegration of the move¬ment. What is now primary is not what is evangelical but what is adjectivally distinctive, whether Catholic, liberationalist, feminist, ecu-menist, young, orthodox, radical, liberal, or charismatic. It is, I believe, the dark prelude to death, when parasites have finally succeeded in bringing down their host. Amid the clamor of all these new models of evangelical faith there is the sound of a death rattle.

The sound of death is hard to hear, however, given the rumble of the large numbers that the evangelical movement has attracted and the chorus of voices being echoed from the cultural pluralism that surrounds it. The pluralism is providing insulation from criticism and reality. It is not hard to see that the disappearance of a center of values in culture is now paralleled by a disappearance of a theological center in evangelicalism.
— David F. Wells, No Place for Truth, p.134

Filed Under: Blog, Church History, Quotes Tagged With: Ecumenicism, emergent, Emerging Church, evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, liberalism, Orthodox, postmodern

April 24, 2009 by kevinstilley

Relevant Theology – Select Quotes

The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent.
~ Madeleine L’Engle, in “A Circle of Quiet”, (NY: HarperCollins, 1972), page 111.

Filed Under: Blog, Quotes, Theology Tagged With: Christianity, Ecclesiology, emergent, emerging, relevant, Theology, Worship

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