Most of us have either spoken or heard the words, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Now what may often be a harmless little phrase is generally used to signify that something or someone who is unattractive to one person may well be considered attractive to another. Now there are some of us here today, certainly the one behind the pulpit, quite thankful that this is the case, else we would have lived a long life of singlehood. Yet the phrase, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, when it is soberly analyzed, has a more serious side to it that I would imagine few of us, including myself until this week, have ever really considered. In the language of another, what it tells us is that there exists no objective standard for beauty. No standards in the realms of symmetry and proportion and color and those other dimensions of aesthetics that constitute what is genuinely beautiful. What it tells us is there exists no objective standard for beauty. What is beautiful and pleasing to the eye depends on the observer. What may be beautiful to you may not be beautiful to someone else, and what one perceives as ugly may be truly exquisite to another. I pause to note While it may be true that this kind of close analysis of what seems to be an innocuous phrase While it may be true that this analysis is nitpicking at a phrase that has helped many of us, perhaps, get through life, particularly through our insecure teenage years, yet what this little phrase implies is becoming more and more the worldview of America today. The problem is, though, it is not being restricted to beauty. In the language of another, it is becoming more and more common to read that truth as well as morality, as well as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Truth and morality are not something objective, not something which exists apart from us. Rather, truth and morality are what, in the language of our generation, are what works for us. This emerging perspective says, that there are no standards, no foundations for truth. Truth is relative to individuals or cultures. Now two days, two Lord's days ago, we began a review of Errol Hulse's booklet, Postmodernism, Attack on the Heart of Biblical Christianity. I have two remaining copies. Ron, would you come and get one for Jeannie? She has not received one, obviously. No. Has anyone, is anyone else not, we have one remaining copy. Two large days ago, we began to take up postmodernism attack on the heart of biblical Christianity. Now, I pause to clarify one aspect of Hulse's title. What does he consider the heart of biblical Christianity? Well, if you carefully analyze the book, the answer is this. He considers the heart of biblical Christianity propositional, absolute truth which is inscripturated in the Bible. That's the heart of biblical Christianity. Propositional, absolute truth, the inscripturated Word of God. The title is a concise and clear presentation of the default world view of our culture. A worldview epitomized by the often heard response, whatever. A response that signifies the insignificance of a choice made between alternatives with no concern or with no governing concern for truth or morality with each person doing what works for him or what works for her, whatever is now this generation's emerging mindset. Who cares about anything? Do what you want, and I'll do what I want. Ultimately, it does not matter. In the language of David Wells in God in the Wasteland, there are no structures of meaning that transcend personal preference. In this territory, distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, decent and indecent, have not merely collapsed But they have become irrelevant. Distinction between good and evil has been replaced by the distinction of having and not having. That is, as Wells develops, the putting away of absolute structures of meaning and truth and morality has given rise to rampant consumerism. For what else is there left in life to do but to have and to experience like the rich fool of Luke 16? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die! Well, again, two weeks ago, after an introduction, to which we're going to return in a few moments, Two weeks ago, we considered the three major periods of intellectual history. The first is the period called pre-modernism. Pre-modernism spans that time from the birth of philosophy in Greece around 600 BC, through the Renaissance and the Reformation, up to the 18th century French Enlightenment. pre-modernism was that period of intellectual history that was eclectic, that is, it included a mixture of things. It included all kinds of paganism, it included the classical rationalism of the Greeks, and it included biblicism. But for all of its diversity, for all of its eclectic mix of things, there was a common thread of belief. And that was the common thread of belief in the supernatural and in absolute truth and morality. The second period of intellectual history, broadly speaking, is called Modernism. That is the period from the Enlightenment, generally dated at the French Revolution, 1789, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And I would ask you, why is the Berlin Wall so important to modernists? Well, it's because most modernists saw in Marxism and Communism their ultimate savior. And when the Berlin Wall collapsed, their savior died. and modernism died. During this period, the 200 years between the French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, belief in the supernatural was largely discarded and man's reason, science, education, industrialization, and technology were viewed as saviors to deliver man from poverty, crime, war, disease, and a multitude of other plagues upon mankind. Humanistic rationalism We are more common with the designation secular humanism. Humanistic rationalism proclaimed the autonomy of man, the native goodness of man, and salvation by reason and social reform. The universe was a closed system beyond which there was no supernatural, and the job of man was to discover and to apply fixed natural laws that were within this closed system. The third period of intellectual history we surveyed is called postmodernism, the period we are now in, in our own generation. The horrors, the brutality, the wars, the continued poverty, ever-escalating crime, epidemics of disease, epidemics of addictions, accelerated problems of all sorts in the 20th century have shattered modernity's dreams with the result that their former gods, reason, science, education, and technology have been viewed or are being viewed now with increased skepticism and doubt. More and more of western thinkers have come to doubt the capacity of the gods of modernism to remedy man's ills. The late 20th century has seen, thus, an increasing skepticism relative to even the existence of answers and the existence of absolutes in science, in nature, or in anything else. The rising or emerging mindset in postmodernism is that life and the world are thus inherently chaotic, meaningless, and purposeless. This way of thinking is called postmodernism. It is the default worldview of our generation, and again what I mean by the word default is it's the only one left. Everything else has been tried and has failed. Postmodernism is all that is left for fallen man to look to. Now, before moving forward to review Hulse, and I'm not sure how much of Hulse we'll get to this morning, I want to ask you to open your Bibles again to Romans chapter 1. And as you do, I want to direct your attention to the word buoyancy. The word buoyancy signifies the tendency of something to rise to the surface as when that something, perhaps an inflated ball or perhaps a rubber raft, is submerged in the water. That which is buoyant has to be deliberately and continuously held under the water so as to overcome its native and relentless tendency to float. If you give up suppressing it, it's going to immediately rise to the surface again. If it is not held down, it's going to emerge again. Now, the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 1 that certain truths about God, note verse 20, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, what the psalmist calls in Psalm 19.1, the glory of God. Paul tells us that these certain truths which God has made evident to men, truths which are evident within them, note verse 19, truths which have been clearly seen, Being understood, that tells us that the message is getting through. The truth is registering. There's no fault with the revelation. Being understood through what has been made since the creation of the world, these truths which in the context are being set out to justify the wrath of God, These truths are inherently buoyant. Just as they are inherently evident, inherently clear, and inherently understood even by fallen man, they are also inherently buoyant. They have a power within them, a relentless native power to cause them to rise to the surface. Note again verse 18 of Romans 1. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress The truth. The truth that God is the Creator to be thanked and worshipped. The truth of God as Creator which is sufficient to cause men to seek and honor God, Men suppress that truth. Literally, they hold it down. The present active participle means they're always doing it, and they must always, because if they don't, it immediately comes to the surface. They suppress it. They hold it down. They deliberately push it down so as to silence it, so as to refuse to deal with the truth, which is, note again verse 20, clearly seen Note verse 19, "...made evident to them," again verse 19, "...it is evident within them," again verse 20, "...it is understood by them." Fallen man really has a problem in his rebellion because this is a buoyant truth. This body of truth represented here in Romans 1. that God is Creator, that His Godhead is being proclaimed and revealed in the theater of creation. It is truth that has been proclaimed through what has been made. And we could add, in light of Romans 2.15, by the work of the law in the conscience, this truth is buoyant by nature, lest to itself It always arises within the soul. Left to itself, it pervades the knowledge of every man. Left to itself, it demands of the knower who understands it, it demands that God be honored. What do men do? Verse 18, they suppress the truth. They struggle to overcome the upward force of the truth and they must keep doing so because the truth is all around them in creation and within them in conscience. Leave that truth alone and it will come to the surface and demand that one live in view of his accountability to God. Men must exert themselves to hold it under the surface of their consciousness. They must deliberately hold it down so as to keep from admitting the truth and living by its demands. It is like unto men trying to put, as it were, the knowledge of God in a box. so that it cannot be heard. The knowledge of God is always broadcasting, always communicating, always revealing. And man does as it were, man goes and gets his box and seeks to put the knowledge of God in it. They take that box, put that box in the bottom of some closet, but in time, It begins to be heard again. And it is as it were, they take that box down perhaps into the basement of their house. They drill through the concrete. They bury the box under the basement floor. They go back upstairs and close the door. But soon, They hear the sounds again because the knowledge of God is always broadcasting. It's broadcasting externally and internally. It's always broadcasting, always speaking. And they soon hear the sounds of the knowledge of God from within that box again. And now what do men do? Now men begin to create other noise. To deafen themselves. They create other noise. They turn up the noise or the so-called music of sin, the noise of worldliness, the noise of man-made philosophy and religion, so as to exclude from their consciousness the knowledge of God. The nature of the knowledge of God is like unto the tinnitus in my ears. For four and a half years, it hasn't stopped. Night and day, 24-7, there is this constant ringing. And the only way there's any relief is to neutralize it with other noise. That's what sinners do with the knowledge of God. They have to neutralize The noise, as it were, of the knowledge of God with the noise of their sin and the world and man-made religion. It's like unto a certain dashboard light in my van. It often times comes on and it just stays on. It's telling me that the washer fluid is low when it's not. And I can try to put things over that part of the dashboard and look away, but every time it seems my eyes come back and there's that light again. It's relentless. Generally, I hit a pothole, something happens and it goes off, but it's a relentless light. It's like trying to sleep in the daytime. In most cases, notwithstanding your best efforts, there is a glow of the sun. that infuses that room. So it is with the knowledge of God that Paul is speaking of here in Romans 1. The point is that men must hold down the truth because of its inherently buoyant nature And they endeavor to do so, note again verse 18, in, or I believe the preposition is perhaps more accurately rendered, by, it can be rendered either way, in or by, in or by unrighteousness. And we need to understand that. They don't suppress the truth in or by intellectual ignorance. Never believe that. The problem is not in their mind. It's not an intellectual problem. It's not a revelation problem. No, in or by unrighteousness tells us that this suppression of the truth is fundamentally a moral, a heart, a sin problem. Thus, don't be daunted by all the high-sounding, specious philosophies that many in our generation seek to intimidate you with. They're just blowing smoke. The problem's here. They suppress the truth by unrighteousness. And their unrighteous suppression of the truth takes the form of substituting or exchanging the truth of God for a lie, and worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. Note verse 25 in your Bibles. As Paul develops the nature of this suppression, he's saying that what these men do, they're going to believe something. What they do is they make a substitution for that which they're trying to hold there. They make an exchange. They exchange the truth of God for a lie. And they worship and serve, they are going to worship and serve someone or somebody. They worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. Rather than submit to the claims of God's truth, they give themselves over to speculations, verse 21, deceitful philosophies, man-made religions, effectively trying to cover their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears so that they will not hear what God is broadcasting to them in the theater of creation and conscience. And this depraved progression The progression of suppression, followed by substitution, then leads, verses 24-32, to reprobation. At some point, God's had enough. And He gives them over. Note how many times in the final paragraph there's the language, and God gave them over. Verse 24, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity. Why? Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Verse 26, for this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions, and then homosexuality is described. Verse 28, as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind. Now concerning post-modernism, we need to realize that post-modernism is simply the latest trendy attempt at suppression. In a way it's no big deal. It's just fools out there concocting something else by which they cover their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears. It's the latest trendy attempt, the latest cheap and useless substitute for the knowledge of God. It's the latest illustration and perhaps the most graphic and ludicrous one of verse 22, professing to be wise, they became fools. And when you try to understand what they mean by deconstruction, Remember verse 22, they are fools. It is the latest attempt by fallen men to suppress the truth and to exchange it for something else. It is the latest noise to deafen. It is the latest form of rebellion against what men know of God. It is, as Holst says, like unto simply another tree of the garden behind which men are trying to hide from God. Well, with that bit of extended introduction, and we may come back to it again on the third message, Let us turn now to Hulse's little booklet to page 3. We are going to review this book. But I must say, when I read this foolishness, it sends me back to the Bible. We'll follow now as I read several extended sections. I will have to pause and inject scripture lest we lose our minds. Beginning in page 3. Postmodernism defined. Utterly basic to Christianity is the sovereignty of God. The Almighty orders and designs all that comes to pass. Yet He is not the author of sin. He is working out everything according to His purposes. I pause to give some proof text of that that perhaps you've already thought of. Psalm 103, verse 19, the Lord has established His throne in the heavens and His sovereignty rules over all. Ephesians 1 at verse 11, where Paul writes of God, quote, who works all things after the counsel of His will. Isaiah 46 at verses 9 and following. Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been. My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure, calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my purpose from a far country, truly I have spoken, truly I will bring it to pass, I have planned it, surely I will do it. That is the language of absolute sovereignty governing all that is. As Hull says, there is a big story which gives an overarching explanation of the world as we know it. This can be called a meta-narrative. In the Greek, meta means alongside, or I'll add, with. It is simply a preposition speaking of that which is closely attached to Accompanying something else with or alongside. What is a narrative? A narrative is an account of events. It is the record, the story, the account of people and places and happenings. A narrative is history. Going back to Hulse, used in this context, Metta conveys the idea of an overarching purpose that gives meaning to everything in the universe. Over all the particulars of life there is a grand design and purpose for everything which originates in the heart of God. There is an explanation in all of history. Now again, I pause quickly to give a few proof texts. Jesus makes clear. that all the particulars of life are comprehended by the sovereignty of God when He tells us not even a sparrow of the field falls to the ground apart from his father, and that the very hairs of our head are numbered. He's arguing from the least to the greatest. All things in life, all things in history are superintended by the counsel and the purpose of God. And further, allowing theology to inform this final statement, there is an explanation in all of history. What is it? The explanation in all of history is the glory of God manifest through the completed redemptive work of Jesus Christ. That is where all of history is going. All of the particulars of history are brought together in that purpose The glory of God manifested to the entire universe through the completed redemptive work of Christ. That is the overarching purpose of the narrative of history from creation to the second coming of Christ. Hall says this is foundational to our correct understanding of God and the Bible. And I would add that without dominion, rule, sovereignty, along with omnipotence, there is no such thing as deity. These are inherent qualities to deity. We cannot have a God who is not sovereign. Those two ideas are antithetical. They don't go together. And thus, dominion rules sovereignty and omnipotence. That's foundational to our understanding of God. And it's foundational to what is revealed about God in the Scriptures. The pulse goes on. The postmodernist denies that there can be such a thing as a meta-narrative. Instead, the postmodernist believes that each person constructs his or her own narrative or reality usually depending on one's own community of knowledge. Most people have been used to thinking in terms of two competing meta-narratives. The Christian one, which consists of the revelation of God in the scriptures, and the humanistic, rationalistic one of science, evolution, and progress. Now what we must understand is that postmodernism denies both of them. Postmodernism denies both, and postmodernism identifies with the mindset of the first postmodernists of the Bible. I pause to ask, except from you with whom I've discussed this, Who's the first post-modernist of the Bible? There is one. And what he says epitomizes this absurdity. Who's the first post-modernist of the Bible? That's a good guess, and I'll simply say that's not the one I had on my mind, but I understand why you say that. He may be the second one. This one predated Pilate. You're referring to what Pilate says, what is truth? Yeah, that's a good guess. Mike? Well, that's a good guess too, and I wouldn't deny that. I'll simply say that's not the first postmodernist I had on my mind. Well, let me give you a hint. We spent 111 messages considering his postmodern thought. Solomon. Now what about Solomon identifies him as the first postmodernist of the Bible? Exactly. Turn to the book of Ecclesiastes just for a moment. 30 plus times Solomon concluded as he went from one thing to the next in life, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. In chapter 1 and verse 14, I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after win. What is crooked, that is, what is deficient, what is broken, what is in need of repair, cannot be straightened. And what is lacking, that is, what is incomplete, cannot be counted. And then in chapter 2 at verse 11, "...thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done, and the labor which I had exerted. And behold, all was vanity and striving after wind, and there was no profit under the sun." Well, obviously I can't re-preach this this morning, but if you remember what those conclusions meant, They represent postmodern thought. Vanity of vanities. Everything is transitory, everything fails you, and thus you are frustrated time and time again. There is no meaning, there is no purpose, there is no fulfillment under the sun. That's the mindset of postmodernism. And Solomon describes just how far he took his explorations under the sun. Solomon, thankfully, was awakened to what we might say was above the sun and realized the folly of his postmodernism. Well, following Mr. Hulse at page four in these last couple of minutes, He says the Christian meta-narrative has been discounted by the world for a long time, but it is only in the last quarter of the 20th century that the humanistic, rationalistic one has been questioned radically by the postmodernists. The Jewish Holocaust, Solzhenitsyn's revelation of the Stalinist regime's horrors, and the Gulag archipelago, genocide in Africa, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, the ecological crisis, global warming, the AIDS epidemic, and the abuse of political and military power all bring deep-seated disillusionment. No belief system is to be trusted. Indeed, one belief system seems as valid as the next. This attitude has encouraged relativism and bred a fixed aversion to claims of absolute truth, which is the heart of biblical Christianity. Simply stated, the essence of postmodernism is that there are no fixed absolutes. And I pause simply to note again, there's their first contradiction. They make that an absolute. Following on page 5, as Hulse now summarizes intellectual history more briefly than we did, beginning in the 60s and 70s, the Western world has gradually moved philosophically from modernism to postmodernism. For about 200 years, the Enlightenment shaped the world's thinking with its emphasis on human reason coupled with optimism for human ability and human achievement. in its arrogance, the modernist view bypassed God and His revelation, the Bible, which led to the collapse of morality. In other words, which led to the very things that undid modernity or modernism. Postmodernism is fiercely antinomian. Right and wrong is a matter of human opinion, and therefore my view is as good as yours or that of the next man. The result is the slide of Western society into the abyss of lawlessness. This is seen in the breakup of the family, rising divorce rates, and overcrowded prisons, and we could go on and on, and I put in my own margin some of the absurdities now coming out of the judicial system, where there is no right and wrong, no matter what the law even says. Pulse goes on. Christian scholar Thomas Oden maintains that the modern age lasted 200 years, from the fall of the Bastille in 89 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The French Revolution exemplifies the triumph of the Enlightenment, the pre-modern world, with its feudalism and spiritual hierarchies. was put to an end with the fall of the Bastille. The monarchy imprisoned its political opponents, but their liberation heralded the exaltation of the rights of man. During the course of the Revolution, the goddess of reason was installed in Notre Dame Cathedral. Christianity was then relegated to the past. Human reason would take the place of God. Later, mankind would see this idea climax on a massive scale, and here is what the modernists were really looking to, Marxist communism and Stalinism. That was their ultimate messiah. But their ultimate messiah fell in 89. The enchantment of modernity is characterized by technological messianism, enlightenment idealism, quantifying empiricism, and smug fantasy of inevitable historical progress. But there was a problem, and the problem was, again, the 20th century. By the last third of the 20th century, modernity was being scrutinized and increasingly rejected because the Savior was failing. Notwithstanding great expansions of knowledge, technology, the sciences, and economic prosperity, the last third of the 20th century have witnessed the problems of mankind not only persisting, but worsening, and thus the arising of postmodernism. Finally this morning, note the four elements of it, and next week I'll endeavor not to go so much in the introduction and get to the first of these. Four elements. four components of this latest substitution for the knowledge of God. Number one, the matter of deconstruction. The essence of deconstruction is that there is no objective meaning behind words. Thus, you can rightly ask, it depends on what the meaning of is is. You have a meaning of is? I have a meaning of is? So what? Your meaning is no better than mine, and vice versa. There is no objective reality behind words, and where that really goes is to deny the authority of the Bible. That's what they're after. They could care less about literature and about what's in tomorrow's newspaper. What they hate is the Bible. And if you can pass off this foolishness of deconstructionism, then you can erode confidence in the scriptures which consist of propositional revelation behind which there's objective truth and it's to be believed. The postmodernists can't stand that idea. Then there is moral relativism, no absolute right and wrong. There is pluralism. One value system, one philosophy or religion is just as good as the other. Don't judge any as superior to the other. The cousin of pluralism is multiculturalism. And then finally there is existentialism. The idea is that my feelings, what works for me, is the end game. If it works for me, nothing else makes any difference. That's existentialism. Well, God willing, I'll try to hold myself to this, we'll begin exactly at deconstruction next week as we try to critique or to review this newest tree behind which men are trying to hide from God. Let's pray. Father, we thank You that in Your grace, You have not only revealed Yourself to us in the theaters of creation and conscience, but Father, that in Your saving purposes, You have revealed Yourself to us through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we thank You that You have granted the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we might be saved from our guilty suppression of that truth that has been broadcast to us since the creation of the world. Father, we thank You that You have not only granted and revealed sufficient truth for men to honor and seek God, but You have granted truth in the Gospel whereby men may be pardoned. whereby their guilty records may be acquitted, and whereby their depraved natures may be cleansed. Father, again I pray that as we make our way through this review, that our confidence in Scripture would be renewed, and that, Father, we would be renewed in speaking forth the gospel of Jesus Christ to guilty sinners who have their fingers stuck in their ears and their hands over their eyes. Lord, give us confidence that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. To everyone who is yet suppressing the truth by their unrighteousness, to everyone who will repent of such and cast themselves in faith upon Christ Jesus, we ask in His name, Amen. You are dismissed. And Lou, where should we meet? Stay down here? Alright. We'll begin here at 1035. Please be very careful during our transition period. Try to keep down any talking in here as people prepare for worship. If you've got to talk to someone, perhaps go outside.