p. 147-148: “most postmodernists are not skeptics but nonrealists. Knowledge for them is not difficult but easy: just assent to the language game in which we find ourselves–unless we deem it a totalizing metanarrative.”
p. 148: “Scripture repeatedly promises that confident knowledge of God is possible for humans rightly related to their Maker (see Romans 8:15-16).”
p. 149-150: “…some Christians supported slavery and female subjection as perpetual and God-ordained institutions when, in fact, they do not appear as such in Scripture itself. The postmodernist ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ calls us to reevaluate such claims to see if they may be based more on the vested interests of the powerful than on truth itself. But this hermeneutic of suspicion itself must presuppose that the true can be separated from the false according to wise judgment. So, if we look back at the interpretation of Scripture held by the Southern slave owners and traders, we discern that their reading was adversely affected by their investment in the institution of slavery. That is, both their hermeneutic and their racist views were wrong, false and out of alignment with reality. The hermeneutic of suspicion cannot properly function without the concept of objective truth.”
p. 151: Dorothy Sayers: “In the world it calls itself Tolerance; but in hell it is called Despair. It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin which believes nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for.”
p. 152: “…cognitive apathy is strengthened in the contemporary world by several defining features of postmodernity. This apathy is not only justified in the name of tolerance, as indicated by Rauch, but also encouraged by the endless diversion supplied by a culture of entertainment.”
p. 153: Pascal: “If our condition were truly happy we should feel no need to divert ourselves from thinking about it.”
Ichthus77 