Re: Why post-Christian?

I had earlier offered the following quotation for comment:
>>
>> This age into which we are moving has been called post-Christian, meaning
>> that the Christian faith has lost control over the conduct of life. The
>> reason for this is not the rising power of sin; the reason is our failure to
>> show how the rising powers of science can be applied to the purpose of human
>> existence when this purpose is found in Christ. The blame does not rest on
>> the evil of scientific civilization; the blame rests on those of us who have
>> responsibility for interpreting the revelation in such a way that the powers
>> of civilization can be brought into its service. This we have not done.
>>

On 6/3/04 2:15 AM, "Jim Armstrong" <jarmstro@qwest.net> wrote:

> There seems to be a thread of validity appearing here and there in this
> statement IMHO. And I agree that there is some culpability that can be
> assigned to some within the Christian community who struggle with
> interpreting revelation with reasonable fidelity.
>
> That said, however, in the statement offered for comment, words like
> "control of life" and "powers of civilization" portray the landscape in
> a context of a power and authority struggle. I think that's the wrong
> framework and is itself symptomatic of part of the cause of much of the
> loss of influence and attractiveness in the world.
>
> ...or so it seemeth to me. JimA

OK, I concede that there may be a bit too much "control and power" language
here. However, the idea that there is a power struggle lurking beneath the
surface of science/religion discussions may not be very far from the truth.
One way of describing the power struggle aspect is to pose the question: Who
gets to decide what is "true" about such things as the formational history
of the universe; observation-based science or text-based theology?

What I found more interesting in the quoted paragraph was the author's
challenge to bring modern, scientifically-minded civilization into the
service of a concept of human purpose built on God's revelation in Christ.
As I see it, the message in this paragraph was, in effect, "If our
civilization has become post-Christian, don't blame science as if it were
the cause of a rise in sin, blame those of us who have failed to bring
science into the service of God's revelation in Christ."

Howard Van Till
Received on Thu Jun 3 20:45:14 2004