Profile of a Culture: Chapter 2

Question for Consideration:
“As people who are part of a modern Western culture, with its confidences in the validity of scientific methods, how can we move from the place where we explain the gospel in terms of our modern scientific worldview to a place where we explain our modern scientific world view from the point of view of the gospel?”

First we must establish a place of mutual understanding. Do we agree that science and academia embody the language of our modern Western culture? If so, how do we apply this language in terms of the gospel? And how do we objectively gauge our own culture in order to navigate its postmodern landscape?

Given Newbigins' historical accounting of the birth of modern Western culture; a.k.a. the “age of reason”, what is your view of the “enlightenment” he refers to? What would mark such a moment in history to spawn this genesis of thought? Newbigin postulates it is nothing short of a “conversion” experience. What are your views here?

Overview:
The author offers us some insight into what fostered this Cultural Revolution, and lists the influences of Greek sciences, metaphysics and Aristotle thought as chief contributors. Institutionalized educational facilities called universities arose. Classical Renaissance ideology proliferated. The Reformations theological and political conflicts, new science; Bacon, Galileo, Newton, and Descartes philosophy all contributed. The secret of knowledge had been discovered; translated - knowledge is power. If one can control the knowledge, one could control the world. Knowledge was the new blood lust. I say knowledge, not wisdom. Religious creed was dethroned and the science of cause and effect reigned in the stead. Determinism and Newtonian physics were the new masters, impeaching the framework of Divine purpose, order, faith and free will. This new reality substituted the spirituals. In this new world God was found to be obsolete; if one continued to believe at all. Analysis supplanted faith whilst focus was being shifted from the Creator to the creation. Immanuel Kant’s “Dare to know” became the new anthem; lyrics reminiscent of that encounter in the garden where satan says to Eve; “you can be like God, knowing…” - Genesis 3:5. Somewhere in the mid eighteen hundreds, man had become the new gods.

Quote:
“The assumption of these chapters is that the gospel provides the stance from which all culture is to be evaluated.”