A few years ago, one of my college professors recommended the book Dominion and Dynasty: A theology of the Hebrew Bible by Stephen G. Dempster. I bought it a while back, but hadn't gotten around to reading it until this summer. It is taking me a while to get through because something always seems to come up to keep me from reading, but there was a passage in the part that I have read that I found interesting. While discussing the various ways people interpret Scripture, Dempster touches on the debate between modernity and postmodernity. I thought I would share it here because 1) it is a balanced perspective on an issue where people often choose sides, and 2) it points to the fact that although we may find that aspects of our society and its philosophy (whether it be modernity, postmodernity, or some worldview that has yet to come on to the scene) coincide with aspects of our faith, we must be careful not to fall into the errors that man-made philosophies naturally contain.

Theologians sailing in the waters of contemporary western culture have to avoid two opposite errors: they have to navigate between the Scylla of modernism and the Charybdis of postmodernism. The error of modernism is 'objectivism', that is, the idea that individual subjects can attain the entire, value-free, truth when examining an object -- they can see it as it really is; while the error of postmodernism is 'subjectivism', the idea that, because observers are never value-free or objective, they see the object according to their subjective perspective -- they see it not as it is but as they are (and therefore never really see it). A truly Judeo-Christian epistemology will navigate between these extremes of radical objectivism and radical subjectivism. Human beings can know truth because it is revealed, but it is always accommodated to their understanding and always filtered through their own particular context. Factors of culture, place, time, society, education, experience and the effects of sin on the mind colour the truth. Paul remarks in his first letter to the Corinthian church that Christian believers see through a glass darkly in the present life. His observation illustrates the truths of both modernism and postmodernism held in tension, while avoiding their errors: we see (modernism) through a glass darkly (postmodernism). [p. 16]