Early Experience with Modernism

Growing up in small town Indiana, no one exposed me to modernism.  Without anyone telling me, I read the Bible as literal.  Everything happened in it just like it read.  When I was twelve, my dad took us all off to Bible college in Wisconsin when he was thirty-five years old, but he was never some theologian.

I interacted very little with modernism in college or graduate school.  When I wrote papers, I provided alternative views to my position, so I read a little modernism then.  Faculty did not assign modernist books to read in a fundamentalist college.  The modernist books, I must admit, I used to pad my bibliographies, quoting them in selective fashion.

My theological separation divided the saved from the unsaved.  People either received or rejected Jesus Christ.  I did not categorize someone a modernist.  He just rejected the truth, an unbeliever.  Modernism held no attraction to me.  If someone was a modernist, through my lens he was just an unbeliever.

More Mature Understanding of Modernism

In graduate school, I took a class, History of Fundamentalism, taught by B. Myron Cedarholm, because the normal teacher, Richard Weeks, was ill.  In that class, I heard how that fundamentalism began as a movement in response to modernism or liberalism pervading and then controlling religious institutions.  Modernism invaded Southern Baptist seminaries and the Presbyterian, Princeton Theological Seminary.  None of this still mattered much for me.  It registered as something written on paper, because I had no experience with it.

After marriage and a move to the San Francisco Bay Area to evangelize and then start a Baptist church, I came into recognition of modernism in a personal way, listening to a liberal radio talk show.  I listened to the Ronn Owens Show and his interview with Uta Ranke-Heinemann, a female liberal theologian from Germany.  She wrote, .Putting Away Childish Things: The Virgin Birth, the Empty Tomb, and Other Fairy Tales You Don’t Need to Believe to Have a Living Faith.

On a regular basis, I then encountered modernists in the San Francisco Bay Area.  They went to modernist churches in almost every religious denomination.  They often didn’t reject the Bible.  Instead, they viewed scripture in a mystical way, not taking it literally.  Modernists likely denied the supernatural aspects of scripture.  Many times they allegorized the Bible to make it more malleable for their liberal cultural and social causes.

The Arrival of Postmodernism

As years passed, progressivism turned from modernism to postmodernism.  Now postmodernists can make modernists seem at least moderate, if not conservative.  Postmodernists rejected modernism.  Rather than reinvent the wheel, I ask that you consider what I wrote in 2021:

Modernism then arose and said revelation wasn’t suitable for knowledge. Modernists could point to distinctions between religions and denominations and the wars fought over them. Knowledge instead came through scientific testing, man’s observations, consequently elevating man above God. Man could now do what he wanted because he changed the standard for knowledge. Faith for sure wasn’t good enough. With modernism, faith might make you feel good, but you proved something in naturalistic fashion to say you know it. Modernism then trampled the twentieth century, producing devastation, unsuccessful with its so-called knowledge.

Premoderns had an objective basis for knowledge, revelation from God. Moderns too, even if it wasn’t valid, had human reasoning, what they called “empirical proof.” Postmoderns neither believed or liked scripture or empiricism. This related to authority, whether God or government or parents, or whatever. No one should be able to tell somebody else what to do, which is to conform them to your truth or your reality. No one has proof. Institutions use language to construct power.

Postmodernism judged modernism a failure, pointing to wars, the American Indians and institutional bias, bigotry, and injustice. Since modernism constructed itself by power and language, a postmodernist possesses his own knowledge of good and evil, his own truth, by which to construct his own reality. No one will any more control him with power and language.

Dangerous New Acceptance of Modernism

Jordan Peterson

Modernists today very often stand with conservatives on certain principles.  When I hear him talk about the Bible, and he does very much, Jordan Peterson sounds like a modernist.  In recent days Peterson appeared in a new series on the Book of Exodus and apparently he wrote a book soon published on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  He talked about that in a podcast.  In his conversation on Exodus, his interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in a talk about the book of Jonah, Peterson in recent days pushes his modernist position on tens of thousands of especially young men.

What excites many about Peterson’s talks is that he even talks about the Bible at all.  He acts enthused about scripture.  Peterson thinks the Bible is very important.  He puts great effort into communicating his modernist position and interpretations of the Bible.  Almost five years ago, I already warned about Peterson, still hoping he might change.  He hasn’t and today he’s doubling down on his modernistic approach.

Modernism Versus Divine Verbal Plenary Inspiration

Jordan Peterson does not comment on the Bible like God inspired it.  When I say inspired, I mean verbal plenary inspiration.  God breathed out every word and all of them in the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16-17).  Perhaps I will put more time into exposing the false interpretations and teachings of Jordan Peterson sometime in the future.  In the meantime, please know that Jordan Peterson does not expose what Genesis, Exodus, or almost anything in the scripture actually says.  He leads people astray with his false doctrine.

Don’t get me wrong.  Peterson says many good things.  You and I can rejoice in that.  I’m happy he agrees with freedom of speech.  He rejects a cancel culture.  Peterson accepts a patriarchy.  He does not, however, proclaim an orthodox view of God or the Bible, even though he refers to scripture all the time.