“I am proposing to use two relatively neutral, descriptive terms, Oneism and Twoism, in order to avoid applying a narrow theological system that only a few of us could affirm. These terms seek to express the only two bedrock options found in Romans 1:25: either the worship and service of creation understood as closed, homogeneous system, or the worship and service by creation of the transcendent ontologically other Creator.”
(Peter Jones – The Aquila Report) We are living in a most disorienting time, especially since someone said that orientation is knowing where the East is! When I came to the States in 1964, the threat from the East was not spiritual but material—atheistic Marxism and a fear of the disappearance of religion altogether, predicted by Ludwig Feuerbach,[1] Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud….
The 1960s Death of God theology seemed to represent in North America the final triumph of secular humanism.[2] In 1967, the sociologist Peter Berger did note the “overall decline in the plausibility of Christianity,”[3] but what few saw, including Berger,[4] was also the demise of secular humanism. In 2008, in an article entitled “Secularization Falsified,” Berger had changed his mind. Religion had not been declining. On the contrary, in much of the world there has been a veritable explosion of religious faith.[5]
What had created this unexpected situation? Philosopher David Harvey believes he knows: “The moral crisis of our time is a crisis of Enlightenment thought.”[6] And “assumptions of secular humanism” have been undermined by Postmodernism.[7] “The irony is delicious,” says theologian Don Carson. “The modernity which has arrogantly insisted that human reason is the final arbiter of truth has spawned a stepchild that has arisen to slay it.”[8] An informed observer called this postmodern critique “a rage against humanism and the Enlightenment legacy.”[9]
Postmodernism had brought an end to secularism in the oddest of ways. The French thinker, Lydia Jaeger, notes that “L’irrationalisme postmoderne est, en fait, l’ultramodernité: la modernité poussée jusqu’à ses conséquences logiques extrèmes”[10](Postmodern irrationalism is in fact ultra modernity, that is, modernity pushed to its logical extreme consequences). For her, the ultimate contribution of autonomous reason (postmodernism) is the lucid observation that reason has no reasonable, objective grounds on which to stand. Such deconstruction raises a serious question: where does Postmodernism lead our culture? The answer I propose represents the body of this article. Many now believe that grounds for existence can only be found in the irrational, in the age-old metanarrative of pantheistic Oneism.
Related:
Purpose Driven Dismantling of Christianity
Research