A Pre-Modern Reflection on the Modernist Roots of Postmodernism

Romans 12:2 says: 'Be not conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, for your proving the will of God – the good, and acceptable, and perfect.' Culture is the expression of a shared spirituality grounded in a worldview. How can we understand the spiritual dynamics of contemporary western culture and its internal clash of cultures? How can understanding the times help us in our discipleship, apologetics, and evangelism? This lecture will engage with art, music, song lyrics, film and architecture, as well as philosophy, as we trace the logical and historic line of descent from a pre-modern Christian culture through scientistic modernism to nihilistic postmodernism. We will explore the ways in which the modernist rejection of God creates an inherently unstable and disintegrative form of spirituality and see that the more consistent with this spirituality one tries to be the further one sinks into the mire of postmodernism.