PLURALISM/EPISTEMOLOGY
Dealing with the postmodernist approach to faith can create a problematic quagmire for the Christian apologist who accepts the biblical revelation of Jesus Christ as authoritative and exclusionary concerning the possibilities of acquiring relationship with God. The narrow approach of Christianity assumes there are exigent truths that prevail universally from the comprehensive, conservative vantage point. With these givens, acceptability in an inclusive or pluralistic framework becomes tenuous at best. The prevailing need arises to create a foundational language whereby communicative procedures may be developed between the restrictive view of the literalist hermeneutic, and the postmodern views of pluralism, as the appropriate expression of relational qualities between alternatives formats of religious communities and belief systems. Exclusionary ideology may be a secondary alternative mode for the postmodern philosopher.
The difficulty with postmodernism and Christianity is best viewed within the matrix of propositional truths reality. The postmodern rejection of religious universals leads to an acquiescence concerning tolerance of belief systems that are acceptable for individuals within external paradigms. Judging the qualitative value of religious postulations can enter into a nebulous reality that denies the arbitrary creation of canonical standards whereby evaluations may be adduced. The abject rejection of reasonable measures has produced a modern conundrum for the practical apologist who aspires to demonstrate Christianities superiority through doctrinal equivalency.
Postmodern thought has created a need for the redrawing of communicative boundaries, if dialogue is to be engaged in between the conservative Christian community and the postmodernist perspective. The starting point seems to have shifted away from statements of factually analytical composites into the arena of demonstrability through enactments. The postmodern demand for authenticity, sincerity and negation of standards has reduced the presentational encumbrances of doctrine into the acceptable mode of activated faith. Community concerns, interdictionary action, supernaturalisms power encounters: all create the necessary foundational approach to an apologetic that assumes activity prior to authentication.
As such, posits of truth that are essential to a proper expression of Christianity become subordinated in the first linguistic function. Insertion of meaningful interactive operations serve as opportunistic pathways, designed to create an assumable position for truths assumptions to make the transitional lead from external posits to internally acceptable deposits. In this structure, demonstration prior to deduction, Christianity is granted a rich heritage as to the positional potentiality of assertion, advancing the intricate dialogue to a positional place of preeminence. Not by argumentative dissertation though. Rather, through direct touch ministries that is confrontational in their enactments of change agencies, affecting the present reality of the communicant.
Ironically, the postmodern challenge has pushed Christianity to the brink of the pre-modern realities through which the church assumed the position of domination by means of militated conflict. The theological posits of skirmish may prove to be beneficent to the churches methodological approach to the divine measure of purpose. Instead of acting lethargically via cultural superiority, post-modernistic threats may prove to be the effective key for the churches revitalization and reassertion into the communal activities of human experience.
