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But I want to come to the final two isms, and I have deliberately left very small time for them. Postmodernism is the next ism on the list. The per- term postmodernism is used in contradistinction to modernism, which isn't surprising. Modernism is now getting old fashioned, so it's a funny thing to call it modernism, you'll see. Uh, but in its heyday, modernism, uh, was and is the basic assumption that reason is the sufficient and only guide to the discovery of truth. The final arbiter as to what is true and what is not true. In theological terms, therefore, reason therefore must be allowed to stand over the Bible. Reason has to decide, man's reason, what, if any, parts of the Bible are true. Reason cannot simply accept the Bible as God's revealed truth and seek humbly to understand it. You'll see, that is the old modernist claims, and many students were brought up in their theological faculties under the domination of modernism. That was the whole approach to Bible. Anybody that believed in a miracle because the Book of Kings said one took place was thought to be, uh, well, on the way towards an asylum. You'll see. Intellectually incapacitated. Reason was to be the arbiter. Now we've moved, in some circles at any rate, into postmodernism, which at least has the, the, uh, goodness in it that it confesses that modernism's claim is not true. Reason is not adequate to discover the objective truth about anything, let alone whether there is a God or not. So you may applaud the fact that postmodernism says that reason by itself isn't sufficient. It cannot find out, uh, uh, ev- uh, uh, eventually the objective truth about anything. Insofar, therefore, as it contradicts modernism, it's good, but then it gets even more disastrous as it goes on. But now it tells you that in the area of religion, there is no objective truth. We couldn't know it even if it were there. All we can have is our opinions. You think it's this way? Well, you're entitled to your opinion, my man, so long as you don't say that my opinion is wrong. Yours is equally wrong or wrong, right or wrong, who knows? You can't say. And mine is equally right or wrong. So you're entitled, because you're a human being with civil rights, to believe what you like. Would be wickedness of me to say you were wrong. That is not, uh, to be tolerated. That's the one thing that isn't to be tolerated. But otherwise, everybody's view is to be tolerated, equally wrong or equally right. You can know no certainty about anything. You'll see. Now, when applied to religion and when taught in the schools, of course, that is devastating, isn't it? It is applied by certain theologians to the study of the Bible. For this doctrine has, has, uh, exercised itself very prominently in the area of the interpretation of literary texts. And amongst the literary critics, as is said nowadays, you cannot know what the intention of any author was when he wrote his work. You can't know that. And there is no one opinion about what the, the, the meaning of the work. Every person is entitled to his and her view. There's no one right opinion. It's anybody's guess, and you can't say anybody's wrong. Good news for students, I suspect they could pass university degree examinations and tell their examiners that, uh, the examiners' views didn't matter. They were entitled to their own view. Marvelous, isn't it? When that's applied to Bible, of course, it becomes exceedingly serious. Says we cannot know what the author's intention was. We cannot be sure that any interpretation is the right one. Any interpretation is right or wrong, as you please. That is an extreme view, of course. The, uh, Christian response? Well, if you had the time, you could point out that, in fact, so far from being modern, that view is as ancient as ancient could possibly be. Though it is now the latest craze, it, uh, is a form, gone wild, a form of skepticism, which was long ago advocated by certain Greek philosophers, and I cite you from them there, Xenophanes, and in particular Pyrrho of the fourth century BC. Pyrrho declared that things are equally indistinguishable, unmeasurable, and indeterminable. For this reason, neither our acts of perception nor our judgments are true or false. Neither. Therefore, we should not rely upon them, but suspend judgment, come to no final conclusion about anything. Do you see? That's what the skeptic says all those centuries ago. Postmodernism is another modern version of that. It ain't modern at all. Do you see? Pre-ancientism would be a good word for it. Hmm. Julian Marias, the hi- historian of philosophy, points out in his book on skepticism, Greek skepticism, he says postmodernism, like skepti- skepticism, as a philosophical thesis, is contradictory, since it affirms the impossibility of knowing truth. It says you can't know the truth, but then claims itself to be true. It says to you, you can't know the truth about anything. Marvelous. Well, what you just said, you can't know the truth. Is that true? Of course, philosophically, it defeats itself. It's a nonsense. You see, that skepticism as a thesis refutes itself in the very act of being formulated. And in practical life, of course, postmodernism is false. The fact that we do not know everything, say, about the universe or about our family, does not mean that we can know nothing for certain about them. Even you married men don't know everything about your wives, do you? Not what they're going to give you for your birthday next, even. But, uh, to say that on that ground you can't know anything would be just plain stupid, wouldn't it? Life would become impossible if you apply- tried to apply this philosophy to the practicalities of life. When it comes to the Bible, of course, postmodernism is false again. The one major thing to be said at once is that the Bible is not the record of man's trying to find out God, coming to man's own opinions. It is the record of God's self-revelation to man. And God has the infinite ability, being God, to communicate and get his message. That's number one. We ought to have the humility, however, to observe that Christians over a number of things in interpreting the Bible disagree. What does that mean? Doesn't mean that there's no objective truth. It means that we are limited in our capacity to understand and must be patient and humble as we constantly seek to understand more nearly and more closely. We can certainly know what the author's intention was in many a book, because the authors tell us what their intention was. You will notice it in John twenty verse thirty one and one Peter five twelve and Luke one four and so forth. You can also notice it by the sheer power of their logical, the flow of their thought, and in literary historical books, you can come a great deal towards their purpose by studying the literary structure of the book. But I don't propose to say anything more about that. I- it is a very abstruse philosophy. You should know, however, that if your children attend literary studies in their schools, in their senior years, they may well be taught postmodernist methods of interpretation of literature. And this laid down to them as the real modern thing. Now they found out the reality about things that you can't know anything about the meaning of a book. And, of course, people will then transfer what they've been told at that level of dealing with literature to the Bible. And we need to inoculate some of our young people before they meet the poison of the absurdities of the position, logically and educationally, and then to the other and positive side that the Bible is God's word, and God has given us his spirit that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. But I come finally, and I ask you to give me just ten minutes, though I shall only go over five minutes over time. I'd like to say, talk to you about hedonism. In the course of my talks today, and especially in the first one, I gave the impression, maybe, that any cu- thing that comes from paganism is by definition bad. So when I talked to syncretism, I talked to things that had been taken over into Christendom from paganism, and the things I mentioned were bad, and somebody very acutely and intelligently asked me afterwards about my methodology. Are you saying that if anything is from pagan sources, it is by definition bad? Are there no good things that come from paganism? Well, there are lots of good things that come from paganism, is my answer, you see. Spent many years teaching it anyway. I mentioned even in my first lecture that some of the terms and the concepts that people used in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth centuries in thinking about the Trinity and the relation of Father to Son, and so forth and so on. Concepts and terms that we as evangelicals still use. The terminology, the concepts were taken from Greek philosophy. You'll see. English wasn't the invention of Christians. No? I find it very useful to know. And to think. Mm-hmm. Eh, when it comes to the whole logic of thinking, what is a definition as distinct from a description? How would you define something? Well, in Europe, at any rate, it was the Greeks who taught us how to begin to, to, to systematize our thinking, didn't they? If somebody asks you, please define what an ice cream is, it's no good saying, well, an ice cream is something that little boys like. Well, it's perfectly true. That's only one of the things about ice creams. It isn't a definition, it's just a description. How would you define it? And when in the spiritual area of theology we want to make definitions, it's good if we know what a definition is, as distinct from a description. It was the Greeks, the Greek philosophers, who first taught us to think in that way. Marvelous, great heritage we have from them. The Greek philosophers also, uh, thought a lot about morality. Indeed, it wouldn't perhaps be an exaggeration to say that some of the Greek philosophers thought more about morality than Christians do, at least than some Christians do. When the Bible says, on the one hand, there's none that seeks after God, it's not meant to be an absolute statement, is it? For other passages, such as we quoted, God appointed the bounds of habitation if men might feel after God and and find him. The Greeks are evidence of it. They sought, some of them sought very hard to find the truth about the universe, and then the truth about morality. And how could a man live a just and a moral and an upright life? An interesting topic, therefore, among the Greek philosophers was, what is life's highest good? The Latin for it is the summum bonum. I throw that in without further charge. Uh, the highest good, summum bonum. What is life's highest good? You see, if you're going to be sane in life and sensible, the philosophers, the Greek philosophers taught, you must have an aim in life, and surely the most sensible thing is to aim at the highest good. But then what is the highest good? How would you recognize it if you saw it? Aristotle said, well, you could start by arguing this way. The highest good is a something that you would seek as an end in itself, and never as a means to an end. Example, money is not bad, is it? I hope it isn't. Not bad. And we have to go and make money and seek money. But nobody in his right mind seeks money as an end in itself. You seek money as a means to get other things that you think are good. Yes? To buy a car. But you don't buy a car just as an end in itself. Surely you don't. You buy a car because you want to get to places. Yeah, you want to get to work, for instance. Hm. Why do you go to work? Because I go to work to get money. Oh, wait a minute. I see. You had to have money to buy the car to get to work, to get the money. No, in fact, I go, I go to work to get money to buy food and clothes. Oh, I see. Well, why do you buy, want food? Well, you had to keep alive. You must be alive, you get very weak if you don't get food. I see. And why did you want to keep alive? Well, you said I, I have to go to work. Oh, wait a minute. And then you say, no, no, no, no, no. I, I, I go to work so I need money to get the children. Oh, I see. Yes, that's a very good thing. Why do you want to get educated? Well, if they're not educated, they won't get a good job. And if they go and get a good job, they won't get any money. And if they don't get money, won't be able to buy a car. If they don't have a car, they won't be able to go to work to get the money. We seem to be going around in circles, don't we? Ha. You see, you seek for one good thing, and it's good, but now you find it isn't an end in itself. It's only a means to some other end. What is the thing that you seek as an end in itself? And if there are several such things that are ends in themselves, well, the highest of those, the summum bonum. What is it? Aristotle said the summum bonum was happiness, though he had very strict definition of what happiness was. The Stoics said the chief good in life was to live according to reason. The Epicurean said the chief good in life was pleasure. I once had a class of students in the university at a very humble level. I was trying to teach some elementary Greek philosophy from a historical point of view. We came across this question of the summum bonum. I did my best to explain what a summum bonum is, or was thought to be, you see, what it means. And I had several believers in the class. I thought this was an opportunity to, for these dear believers to, to witness for the Lord. So in kindly fashion, I said, now, if that's what a summum bonum is, anybody here confess to having a summum bonum? What is the summum bonum in life? What should be? What is the thing that life is all about, the highest good that you seek for its own sake? And I was hoping my Christian students would get up on their hind legs and say, ah, what would you have said? Ah, thank you very much, yes. Yes, to please the Lord. This is surely the highest good that we seek for its own sake, to please God, man's chief end, do you see, is to glorify God and then to enjoy him forever. What did Epicureans mean by pleasure, however? You should notice that they weren't a lot of debauched people. They were very gracious people, Epicureans on the whole, very sedate, quiet, lovable, kindly people. Their idea of pleasure was, do you see, uh, to avoid all activities that would lead to a disturbance of your mind and emotions and lead to unrest and anxiety. So they didn't engage in politics, they largely withdrew from the world, they were very cultured, of course, they had a lot of slaves to see after them, and uh, they enjoyed great tranquility. And on the philosophical side, they uh, uh, uh, chose the doctrine of the early Greek atomic theorists, like Democritus and people like that, who first thought of the idea that the whole universe is composed of atoms and space. They were the early preachers of evolution, were the, uh, atomic theory people, you'll see. Marvelous in discovery that, just to think it up with your brains, the atomic theory, rather less sophisticated than our modern atomic theory, but hundreds of years before Christ, they thought it up, did the Greeks? Marvelous. But anyway, the Epicureans took this over, and they clung to it because they saw in it a release from fear. The atomic theorists taught that man is made up of atoms, his body and his soul, and at death the atoms fly apart, the atoms of his body and the atoms of his soul. There's nothing left. There's no soul living on to face a final judgment. It was the glory, therefore, of the system that there was no God to be feared, no final judgment, and man could live in pleasure without fear of the gods and the torture of conscience. That was their idea of fear. There are many folks nowadays who live in the world, yeah, they're not. They're not debauched either. But they do hope in their hearts that there's no God, and therefore they like the theory of evolution, because in the end, there's no God, no final judgment to be faced. What would you say to them? You wouldn't say, would you, well, these people, they like pleasure, so let's emphasize the fact that God has a lot of pleasures for them. Perhaps you would. Yes, God loves pleasure. God's a lovely God, isn't he? All the pleasures he's given us, multitudes of things to enjoy, and not only the pleasures of satisfying our hunger or other desires, but walk down the street and suddenly you'll get a beautiful fragrance from a rose or something that you weren't expecting, you weren't desiring it, but God gives it to you all of a sudden, beautiful fragrance, all for nothing. What for? Well, just for the sheer joy of it. Pleasure of it. God's like that, isn't he? Loves giving us pleasure. But you could also point out to the Epicureans, there must be a judgment. Why? Because God believes in pleasure. So how does that follow? Well, because in this life, millions of people have been robbed, not only of pleasure, but of their very lives. Does it matter? How can anybody accept it doesn't matter? There will therefore be a judgment, and you ought to clap your hands at that, that one day there will be a judgment and Earth's wrongs will be put right. But it's not only the unconverted that need to listen to the, to Greek philosophers here, is it? It's we Christians too. What is our summum bonum as Christians? It is true that at the right hand of God there are pleasures forevermore. That's true, isn't it? And it's not wrong if we seek them. I want to suggest to you in these closing moments, somewhat arbitrarily, here there lurks a little danger. It could happen in our modern world that we get influenced by the attitude of the world. The Bible says that in the last days, not that men shall be ple- lovers of pleasure, it says they shall be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. That's the trouble. Not the pleasure, but they love the pleasure more than God. We could be beguiled by ordinary natural pleasures, couldn't we? And to go for the pleasure rather than God. I tell you what, even within our spiritual experience, we could go for the pleasure and judge our church life, our spiritual life, first and foremost by whether we get pleasure out of it. So the whole thing is organized to give pleasure. And should God at any one stage begin to be a bore, and start talking about boring subjects like theology, well, too bad for God. Because our summum bonum is pleasure. That would be a mistake, wouldn't it? We must never make summum ba- pleasure the supreme good. True pleasure comes when we're seeking something else, and that something else must be the will of God. Witness our blessed Lord, upon whom all our eternal pleasures depend. He delighted to do God's will in general. When it came to Gethsemane, he did not come skipping into the gar- garden saying, I enjoy being made sin, you know, I've been looking forward to this, I do love this. Of course he didn't. For our sakes and for God's sake, he put first the will of God. Did it bring pleasure or pain, life or death? And in our modern age, we need to recapture the vision, don't we? When so much evangelicalism is falling to the temptation of thinking they will keep the young by entertaining them with pleasure, first and foremost, and letting it be the criterion, instead of making the will of God the criterion and the pleasure to come in consequence. Thank you for your attention. I hope that the notes may be helpful to you. Read them as best you can with an open mind, and where you see I'm wrong, pray for the sinner that he might be converted from his ways. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank thee for this opportunity to think together about thy word and some of the issues involved. We pray now that thou wilt give us grace in it all, to love thee with all our minds and to seek thee with all our hearts and to serve thee with all our strength. Make us in our day and generation people that know the will of God, know what the people of God should do. Help us to take to ourselves the whole armor of God, that we may stand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Infuse us, we do beseech thee, with the glory of thy person and the wonder of thy salvation, that unashamedly we shall be moved to take it to the world. Give us some understanding, we pray, and compassion for the lost, a desire to understand them and to know where they sit, that we might frame our words as we preach thy word, words taught us by thy spirit that will be understood of men and women and get to their hearts and get to their conscience and be used of thee in a great harvest of redeemed. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.