FOCUS October 2016

1
| P a g e F O C U S O c t o b e r 2 0 1 6

FOCUS October 2016 Vol. 4 No: 4
Post Modern World Scenario A

Christian Response, Rev. Dr. M. J. Joseph, Kottayam- Page 15
Cover Photo: Post Modernity and
its Challenges to Christianity Modern Painting of Jesus Christ
A Publication of Diaspora FOCUS
An Intimate Realization of God, Dr. Zac

Varghese, London - Page 18
Editorial, Post Modernity and its

Challenges to Christianity - Page 3
Post Modernism and its Challenges to

Christianity, Lal Varghese, Esq., Dallas Page 20
Post Modernism and Christianity, Rev.

Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum - Page 6
Preserving the Timeless While Adapting to the Times - Revd.

Dr. Lord Griffiths, Page 22
Random Theological Insights Post

Modern Context, Rev. Dr. K. V. Mathew, Kottayam, Page 9
Post Modernism, Rev. Shiby Varghese,

Kottayam - Page 11
Mar Chrysostoms Life Story, A Review,

by Dr. Zac Varghese, London - Page 25
2 | P a g e F O C U S O c t o b e r 2 0 1 6

Editorial
Postmodernity and its Challenges to
Christianity
Although we live in everyday realities of a postmodern world,
what is postmodernity or postmodernism is a question for
which no one seems to give a clear crisp answer. Without
knowing what this trend or movement means, how can we
consider its challenges to Christianity? With this in mind, we
invited various authors to give their takings on this important
theme.
How did we arrive at this point in our postmodern existence?
It was not a Bing Bang moment, which brought us to
postmodernism or postmodernity. It was a slow process of
moving from the pre-modern times through modernity to a
postmodern world. It was a gradual process, a continuum.
Religious ideas determined the entire life of the people in the
pre-modern times. God is considered as the be all and end
all of everything. We read in the prologue to St. Johns
Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God but the darkness has not understood it (Jn 1:
1-5). Everything in life from birth to death was centred on
religious thoughts and rituals. Representatives of religious
institutions occupied highest rank in the society. Thus
priestly classes (Brahmins), gurus, bishops, priests,
medicine, men and witch doctors belonged to the highest
rank in communities. It is important to remember that the
ideas of pre-modernity are still prevalent in the present day
in certain cultures and traditions; we still respect and honour
priestly order and hierarchies. We still see all sorts of people
making the sign of the cross and other gestures before
entering a football match or an Olympic event.
without the hegemony of religion. In pre-modernity, the

overarching story was God, whereas in the modernity, the
overarching narratives were the results of rational debates,
scientific investigations and logical conclusions. Modernists
stressed the importance of the individual and the power of
their mind to reach out to truths relating to many mysteries
of the nature to extract energy and other resources for the
benefit of humanity. People begin to learn to depend on their
own innate abilities to solve problems of the natural world to
make life more comfortable. Many begin to believe that
human needs are not beyond human help and ingenuity.
Secularisation became a competing force and displaced
religion from the public square.
The supreme confidence of the modernity to solve human
problems begun to collapse with two world wars, economic
down turns of nineteen thirties and later times, collapse of
the market economy, population explosion and mans in
ability to feed, clothe and provide shelter for everyone,
breakdown
of
political
systems,
decolonisation,
environmental crisis and a whole host of health-related
issues. For all these issues modernity do not provide an
adequate solution. Hence there is a realisation that human
needs have become beyond human help. It is in this loss of
confidence that we begin to see the emergence of
postmodernism or postmodernity.
The modern period begins from 15 century with the rise of

scientific ideas, and experimentation. Reason and logic ruled
the minds of enlightened people. Renaissance created new
momentum in every field of human activity. Thus modernity
is identified as the Age of Reason in the European culture.
Martin Luther, Calvin and other reformers challenged the
power of the Catholic Church through reasoned arguments
about theological concepts and church dogmas, rituals, and
sacraments. The Bible has handed down to the ordinary
people in the pews to read and study and hence there was a
wealth of different understanding about scripture. People
begin to reach out to God from their personal perspectives.
When Rene Descartes pronounced his famous dictum, I
think therefore I am, he was trying to figure out of a way of
understanding God and related life issues through reason
and logic. Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Schleiermacher and
such philosophers believed that rationalism must be used to
dissect out ideas, and particularly Christian theology, and
this period is known as the Enlightenment era. It was
considered to be the golden period of the western culture.
th
The advance of science and technology gave an amazing

confidence to people to liberate themselves from the
clutches of religion and its power dynamics; people
genuinely came to believe that they could manage things
Postmodernism sounds like a philosophical or political

ideology or a system with a defined structure as we find in
Socialism, Communism or Capitalism, but a clear definition

is difficult to find for postmodernism. It can be considered as

a trend or movement that influenced arts, architecture,
literature, religion and in other fields over the last sixty years
or so. The universal emergence of these changes can be
considered as postmodernity; it probably refers to an
identifiable period. Some people are not comfortable with
the adage of ism to the word postmodern. The distinction
between postmodernism and postmodernity is for the
experts to debate, but here we consider it as one great shift
in the attitudes that happened to a whole number of human
activities such as liberation and counter cultural movements
in arts, architecture, religion, postcolonial politics,
globalisation, music, pop culture, fashion industry,
communication, literature, and even the use of language in
texting and the social media. Postmodernism probably
indicates a challenge against high modernist culture. AntiVietnam war movement, Black power struggles and
liberation, gay and lesbian
culture, anti-elitist culturedattitudes, psychedelic experiments, ecological awareness,
liberation and Dalit theology are all parts of these
postmodern polychromic changes with certain shades of
anarchy. It is very difficult to find a comprehensive definition
to accommodate all the things that are happening around us
in our current globalised postmodern situation. Therefore,
postmodernity is possibly an umbrella term, which covers
many changes that happened or happening in the society
since the Second World War.
Although it is difficult to pin down or define postmodernity
we can identify few characteristics of this movement and
then consider how it has become a challenge to Christianity.
The following are some of its characteristics:
1. Postmodern space is occupied by multiple voices
claiming its rights to present reconstructed truths or realities;
according to them truth is not found, but created. Therefore,
it is not easy to receive competing voices without losing a
single important authoritative voice. This is a problem for a
theocentric person. There was a loss of authority.
2. It has no respect for metanarratives. One of the reasons
for this rejection is that metanarratives are often considered
to be the cause of religious violence and ethnic cleansing.
Postmodernists strongly reject any kind of all-encompassing
universal explanation through stories. There is no single
unifying worldview for them. However, the people of the
Book rely on metanarratives for their spiritual journey, for
Christians the Bible is their guide and the voice of the
Almighty God. Postmodernists challenge foundational
concepts. They reject the idea that among many beliefs
there is a single irrefutable foundation.
3. There are no moral absolutes. They have no foundational
values that are objective and universal. Representation is a
form of domination of suppressing the other, and the less
privileged people. There is a need to respect differences and
everything must have a space for its way of life. In the
postmodern mind there can be no universal moral or ethical
laws. Individuals shape their lives by their own spiritual
impulses. They build for themselves their own spiritual
environment. It is a love of God and not love of religions.
John Caputo suggested that there are many different ways
to love God, but without laying special claim to an exclusive

possession of The Truth. They see love of God as love of
truth, goodness and beauty. Experience of love is a
condition of human existence.
4. Ideas are cultural creation and culturally sensitive.
Knowledge is a human construct. The world we live is the
result of sociological and political conveniences that prefer
certain facts that suit our intentions and immediate needs.
5. There is no such thing as objectivity. Universal values are
objectives, whereas the way people make choices is
subjective.
6. Texts have no intrinsic meaning; it can find meaning
through the readers and their contexts and in this
interpretative-reading the author is dead. Post modernists
are deeply suspicious of ideas and propositions because
these have been used to oppress people. Religious scholars,
pulpit preachers, religious gurus and missionaries have used
and continue to use convenient scriptural interpretations to
win hearts and minds of people to subjugate them, and wipe
out many traditional tribal communities. For these reasons,
for postmodernists, there are no foundations or fundamental
truths.
It is indeed a protest against conviction and
certainties of modernity. Karl Barth suggested that that there
can be no ground or givenness to theological reflection.
Based on the above characteristics, it is now possible to see
how postmodernity challenge Christianity. It challenges
Christianity both positively and negatively. Some Christian
theologians think that it is a godless relativism and it is a
cancer against the gospel. The postmodern economic
ideas are producing consumerist philosophy everywhere,
and this is particularly significant in our churches; it is out
there to meet spiritual consumer demands. The body of the
Gods mission (missio dei) is cut to fit the needs of the
church-administrators to attract people to churches to
create wealth for pet projects. Instead of cutting the coat to
fit the body, we are asked to cut the body, the church. There
are many examples of this happening in churches such as
viewing the Eucharist on the box, virtual fellowship on the
cyber space, gay/lesbian marriages, spiritual supermarkets
and selling Christianity through televangelism, etc.
Metanarratives are important to Christians, Post modernity
wants to reconstruct these and make it into to a collection of
snippets, which are only relevant in its historical contexts of
time and space. But these stories are there for us to
internalise and see its relevance in our own lives. The story
of Ruth in the Old Testament is lived out every day in the
refugee crisis of today. We need to learn to internalise these
stories to make them our own. This aspect is often missing
in our apologetics for faith formation. They have inbuilt
timeless truths in healing a fractured-world. There has been
tendency in many Christian denominational churches to
interpret biblical texts to suit their own particular needs, and
our problem has been asking others to see our self-styled
interpretation as universal truths. Maybe postmodernity is
challenging Christians in a positive way to live out the gospel
as it was intended.

Therefore, it is up to us take the positive benefits emerging

from postmodern thinking. It is good to question the
modernists know-it-all attitude. Modernity sought to attain
rational certainty according to single centre Knowledge with
a capital K and worldview. We should have the humility to
appreciate the mystical aspects of the experience of God
and His continuing revelations fitting to the needs of our
present conditions. Karl Barth emphasised the importance of
mystery in his writings. It is good to realise that God is not a
noun, but a verb. The work of God is the essence of God. It
is in the activity of God with humanity that we discern the
truth and this would allow us to polish and revaluate the truth
from our constant relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Postmodernity is reminding us that we have been
legitimizing our own interpretation of the scriptures for too
long. Our evidence for justifying our so-called puritanical
behaviour and creating exclusivism is often based on
selected biblical verses and our interpretations of them.
Postmodernity is certainly challenging this behaviour. Karl
Barth left us a question for reflection: How can the mystery
of God be captured through the formulae of any humanly
conceived master plan?
Therefore, postmodernity wants to kill religious institutions
and all their power structures and games they play; in its
place, it wants to revive spiritual experiences. They see
religion as an experience, which cannot be explained by
propositions. It is about loving God in spirit and truth.
Religion should move from an ideology to praxis. It is not all
about orthodoxy, but about orthopraxis. Post modernists
also values margins of the society because it is in our
dealing with margins, which decides the true morality of a
community. Jesus Christ valued people on the margins:
poor, widows and orphans. Christian life begins in faith,
move towards love of God and the neighbour and configure
it in here and now by hopeful openness to the other with an
I-Thou attitude. God becoming human being in order to
enable humanity to become reconciled with God is at the
heart of the Christian faith; it is not about orthodoxy of the
past, but an on-going response to divine mystery.
We recommend the articles by Revd. Dr. Valson Thampu,
Revd. Shiby Varghese Revd. Dr. M. J. Joseph Revd. Dr. K. V.
Mathew, and Lal Varghese, Esq. They deal with the subject
in great depth. It is with an amazing insight that Revd. Dr.
Valson Thampu opens his article by saying: One of the
ironies in modern history is that Christianity played a major
role in creating postmodernity. Karl Barth, for example, was
ever intent on calling into question a self-satisfied and
complacent, comfortable, bourgeois Christianity of the pews.
His voluminous writings points towards a postmodern
theological leaning. Bonhoeffer also argued for a religionless Christianity. Revd. Shiby Varghese gives a detailed
exposition on Postmodernism and introduces all the major
players and thumb nail sketches of their contributions. On
the other hand, Revd. Dr. M. J. Joseph gives us a pastoral
understanding of the theme from the philosophical heights to
the grassroots. He recommends a re-reading of religious
texts and recommending a movement from crude religiosity
to spirituality. He says, The boundary of spirituality is not
between religions, but between love and hate, justice and

injustice, truth and falsehood. Lal Varghese, Esq. on the
other hand highlights some of the negative aspects of
postmodernism. Revd. Dr. K. V. Mathew gives us the
Christian hope and assurance that we need not be frantic
about these passing clouds of the human psyche. The
Church had an apologetic tradition that had sustained the
faithful in similar context. K. V. Mathew Achen examines our
faith in God, significance of Jesus the Christ, and the
legitimacy of Christian Life. These articles are well crafted
for us to a get a glimpse of the vast postmodern realities in
which we live and move. The editorial board is greatly
indebted to all our esteemed writers.
Professor Joe Arun , who has written extensively on
postmodern challenges to Christianity, had the following to
say about postmodern challenges: It is hard to see any
precision in the arguments of postmodernism, for it refuses
to settle down to one single meaning by which one could
characterise it. Ideas are to be kept dynamic, constantlyreimagining and reinventing themselves, always changing to
historical circumstances. To this extent, postmodernism
practises what it preaches. But it is idealistic or unrealistic to
imagine a social life without certain foundations from
religious faith and belief in an order that in some sense puts
humanity at ease. Without fundamentals and foundations,
life cannot be imagined; even it was the case that every
foundation may have received its basis from some dominant
and hegemonic ideology. However this supposition does
not stand the test of empirical analysis. People need moral
principles on which life can be structured and lived. But what
we can learn from postmodernism is that one needs to look
at every institution and ideology critically, as there is always
a danger of their betraying the people they promise to
represent.
Therefore, Let us select what is good in
postmodernity and apply them in our lives.
1
Reference:
1. Joe Arun, 2007. Death of representation a postmodern
challenge; Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological reflection; 71: (4),
262-270.
The Editorial Board
http://www.issuu.com/diasporafocus
http://www.scribd.com/diasporafocus
Disclaimer: Diaspora FOCUS is a non-profit organization registered in
United States, originally formed in late Nineties in London for the
Diaspora Marthomites. It is an independent lay-movement of the
Diaspora laity of the Mar Thoma Church; and as such Focus is not an
official publication of the Mar Thoma Church. It is an ecumenical journal
to focus attention more sharply on issues to help churches and other
faith communities to examine their own commitment to loving their
neighbors and God, justice, and peace Opinions expressed in any article
or statements are of the individuals and are not to be deemed as an
endorsement of the view expressed therein by Diaspora FOCUS.
Thanks. www.facebook.com/groups/mtfocus
E-Mail: mtfocusgroup@gmail.com

Post Modernism and Christianity

Rev. Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum
One of the ironies in modern history is that Christianity
played a major role in crafting Post-Modernity. It is not a
direct or simple correlation, like a hen brooding over eggs.
It is, nonetheless, a fact of history that the Post-Modern
worldview took shape in the so-called Christian West.
More than any other faith, Christianity has a historical
genius. That is at once its strength and weakness.
Whatever is rooted in history -unlike what springs up from
myths- has the strength of truth and its affinity to the
human condition. At the same time, whatever emerges
from within the matrix of history is also bounded by time.
Time is under the yoke of entropy. Whatever exists in
time, as Soren Kierkegaard said a century and a half ago,
is at risk of degenerating over time and turning, within
itself, into its opposite.
authority. Modernity has come to define the human

condition since the Enlightenment.
Modernity, said Nietzsche, is a period of unbelief. But this
is not really true. Modernity is a period of re-located belief.
Man came to repose his faith in material resources, in
unlimited progress, aided and abetted by science and
technology. Modernity evolved for itself the dogma that
man can understand and value only what he himself
creates. Unlike the Psalmist who refuses to put his faith in
horses and chariots, the modern man reposes faith only in
horses and chariots and insists that man can live by bread
alone. Of course, given that technology is the defining
element of Modernity, horses were replaced by oil and
chariots became Tomahawk cruise missiles. Bread
increasingly acquired an electronic flavor. (There are many
who can live without cereals but not without serials).
Preaching gave way to advertisement, fullness of life was
sought through unlimited consumption and self-denial
gave way to colonial subjugation of weaker races and the
unconscionable exploitation of man by man.
Modernity and Christianity are two gigantic mountain
ranges. It is not easy to map their correspondence. Yet, it
is possible to determine if the two mountain ranges exist in
the same continent. In that sense, we may sense their
kinship.
Christianity, as distinguished from the biblical faith, is at

best a quasi-human entity. Religious establishment is
man-made, even if it is erected on the foundation of
revealed scripture. If the relationship between the two
were a safe and simple one, there would have been no
place for Prophets in the Old Testament. Whatever is
man-made has the genius to enslave human beings. What
is God-created, in contrast, is a domain of human
freedom. One of the sobering truths of history is that man
becomes, invariably, a victim, sooner or later, of his own
handiwork. This insight exists in an intuitive, inchoate
fashion, in the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11: 1ff).
Modernity is an epic story of human achievement. It is the
grand narrative of man coming of age, which he has been
doing at least since the Renaissance. The striking features
of modernity are: (a) the autonomous, self-accentuating
individual (b) a culture of Narcissism (c) a willful return to
nature, in retreat from God (d) the rise of technology and
the presumption of human self-sufficiency and (e) the
rejection of Providence in favor of Progress (e) the
ascendancy of individual freedom over traditional
Post Modernity is to Modernity what Ecclesiastes is to the

Book of Psalms, so to speak. This is only analogically, and
all analogies have their limitations. The dark, brooding
Psalms notwithstanding, the collection as a whole are
cheerful, affirmative and optimistic. When we move from
Psalms to Ecclesiastes, it is like hitting a dark tunnel. Its
refrain, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, comes upon us
like a brooding cloud cover.
I have been hearing the Word proclaimed and the
message preached now for half a century. Not once have
I heard anyone addressing this abrupt change in tone and
texture.
Why does this strange book, Ecclesiastes,
standing in the company of a host of others that underline
faith- project such a dark and nihilistic shadow?
This is similar to what Post-Modernity does vis--vis
Modernity. It casts an aura of suspicion on the
Metanarrative of Modernity, indeed of all Metanarratives. It
unfurls a cloud of skepticism over everything: over
historical truth, over the possibility of purpose in life, over
human nature, over the validity of inherited truths and
dogmas. It plucks man from his habitat of certitudes and
casts him in the clear and leaves him, without a tinge of
mercy, to fend for himself under a barren sky.

That is not, T. S. Eliot, would say, such a bad thing. It is

only when everything else fails him that man turns to God
or thinks of his eternity.
Here I must allude to a problem. We use words, especially
when we think through the medium of English, without due
semantic sensitivities. Just as, in India, wedding and
marriage are used -most regrettably- as synonyms, the
words eternity and immortality also exist on the
landscape of vagueness.
Christianity was preceded by Greek antiquity, which marks
the dawn as well as ascendancy of philosophy. The
relationship between scriptural wisdom and Greek
philosophy is too vast a subject to be reckoned for our
immediate purpose. Suffice it to say that the maximum
reach of the philosophical goal was the attainment of
immortality. The eternal was not the domain of
philosophy. Human beings lived perforce in a passing and
perishable world. Like the vision of Ecclesiastes, nothing
that pertained to human efforts and achievements
endured. In contrast, nature was endless, or immortal,
because it was the domain of cyclical repetitions and
renewals. Individual seasons died and departed, but, in
the cyclical march of time, each season assuredly
returned. This was not true of human life or predicament.
As Job says, a felled tree could be expected to sprout into
life again from its stump; but a killed man could have no
such hope. He disappeared forever.
Jesus words, Come to me all you, who are weary and

heavy laden . . . (Mtt. 11: 28) could well be addressed to
the Post-Modern human predicament. Today individuals
are atomized, encased in impregnable aloneness. The
scope for sharing meaning and purposes with others is all
but vanished. Meaninglessness- according to Viktor Frankl
(Mans Search for Meaning), the worst of all modern
afflictions- torments him continually. Add to that his
incapacity for significant action under the canopy of a sky
from which the metaphysical scope has disappeared.
Cynicism of the metaphysical, as Hannah Arendt points
out in The Life of the Mind, empties the physical too of all
significance. This leaves the human predicament vacuous
and empty of substance. Not surprisingly, the plight of the
Post-Modern man is punctuated by boredom and
depression. Skepticism, as against faith, is a climate of
existence, which necessarily dwarfs the human. Faith, in
the biblical vision of things, is the principle of human
growth and empowerment. If you have faith as large as a
mustard seed, as Jesus truly said, you will ask this
mountain to move, and it will. Faith, in non-metaphoric
words, empowers. Empowerment, in the spiritual lexicon
of the Bible, is healing.
Situated in such a predicament, human beings could not

attain physical immortality. They could, however, aim at
attaining undying, or immortal, significance. Each person
would surely die; but his words and deeds could live on, if
he so lived. [Is there an echo of this in Jn. 11: 26, or is the
similarity merely accidental?] The craving for immortality,
ironically, arises out of the awareness of being fleetingly
temporal.
The problem with Post Modernism is that it does not spare
even immortality from the ambit of its skepticism.
Historically, we are today where the humankind was in the
wake of the fall of the Roman Empire. That earthshattering development, taking place, no doubt, over a
period of time, precipitated an acute crisis and opened the
Pandoras box of skepticism. The words, Vanity of
vanities, all is vanity could well have been on the lips of
many in its wake.
This is the hallmark of the Post-Modern human
predicament. It denies the validity of all truth claims, and
doubts the basis for all certitudes. It harbors a disparaging
attitude to the past, on the apology of the unreliability of
its accounts. It robs the individual of all metaphysical
props and puts the burden of existence, unmitigated, on
his fragile shoulders. The consequences are there for all to
see, and it can be quickly enumerated.
What, then, are the challenges that Post Modernism

throws at Christianity?
The eye of faith, incidentally, sees the human predicament
in terms of opportunities. That applies to challenges as
well.
Every challenge is also a veiled missional
opportunity. In this respect too, the empowering dynamic
of faith is too obvious to require any explanation or
illustration.
Jesus, says the writer of The Letter to the Hebrews, is the
same yesterday, today and forever. What this means is
that the context, spread on the axis of time, will continue
to vary. But there is a fixed, unchanging point in this
turning, changing world: Jesus, the author and perfecter

of our faith, is that enduring, unchanging point: the handgrab of eternity amidst the temporal flux. Even as the
historical context varies, we have a firm foundation on
which to build the mansion of our life, as the parable of the
two builders (Mtt. 7: 24-28) testifies.
It is not Christianity, therefore, that has to face and
negotiate Post-Modernist challenges: it is church. Put
more accurately, the question is if church today is (a)
aware of these challenges and (b) prepared to, or
preparing itself to, face them.
This warrants an aside. There is a problem inherent in
religiosity. The conservative character of every religion
makes it, unless spiritually renewed from time to time, a
regressive, backward-looking force. This is aggravated,
further, by the attitude of protection and preservation.
Jesus was aware of this. So he has proposed a different
approach. The essential spiritual duty is neither to
preserve nor to abolish. It is to fulfill (Mtt. 5: 17). A
defensive mindset makes us stay anchored in the past,
making us deaf and blind to the challenges and
opportunities of the present. An abolitionist animus makes
us bulls in the China shop of religion.
While the matrix of human existence continues to change,
the core human needs do not. Jesus tell us upfront what
that need is. Every human being needs to attain and live
life in all its fullness. Every Post-Modernist feature of the
human predicament robs him of this irreducible human
right. Life being a dynamic and integrated thing, it cannot
but become a burden if it loses its fullness or wholeness. A
motorcar, with just one of its tires punctured, offers us a
ready illustration. Everything else is perfect. But the entity
is incomplete. Never mind that it is incomplete only to the
extent of a puncture. Incompleteness is the thing, not its
extent. If a million parts comprise an aircraft, and one of
them is missing, it shall stay grounded. Life is a million
times more complex than an aircraft. Completeness, or
wholeness, or fullness, is the bottom line. It is nonnegotiable.
The challenge, if you like, is to re-orient human nature and
predicament from its willful preference for part-ness, to
life in all its fullness. This is the paradigmatic task. This is
something that church, drawing neither from its tradition
nor from material resources, nor human genius can even
attempt to do. That is because church, in and by itself, is
incomplete. Jesus is the head of the church.
The primary challenge before the church is, hence, not
that of going out and winning human beings lost in the
jungle of Post-Modernity. It is to be truly the bride or body
of Christ. Vis--vis Christ, church faces this challenge.
Vis--vis the world, church is poised for exciting
opportunities. To the extent that church faces the
challenge of being Christ-centered, it will see

opportunities. To the extent that it does not, it will see only
problems and dangers and prefer to stay behind closed
doors.
According to Dostoyevskys Grand Inquisitor, the
perennial challenge before the world is to combine bread
with freedom. Man does not live by bread alone. Freedom
is as basic to us as bread is. But, our progress through
history has driven a wedge between bread and freedom;
so much so, one has to choose between the two. Secular
dispensations will always offer bread at the expense of
freedom. This contrived incompatibility between bread
and freedom stems from founding human existence on the
partial. That was why Jesus had to come to set the
captives free (Lk. 4: 18). We cannot claim the benefits of
wholeness, while remaining obstinately on the foundation
of the partial. So, Zacchaeus is asked to come down from
the sycamore tree. He has to abide in Jesus.
The Post-Modernist world is peopled with the likes of
Zacchaeus. We have everything to live with. But we are
sick unto death. The words uttered to the church at
Ephesus reverberates in the corridors of the human
predicament: One thing you lack Just one thing! That
takes the joy out of everything.
So we are back with Ezekiel. Son of man, will these
bones live? Church has to heed and answer that
question.
But, hark! The mighty wind is gathering itself in the
distance from all corners. It will blow over the people like a
whisper of hope. Like the still, small voice that the Prophet
heard. The voice that, soaked in tears, spoke in defiance
of human logic at the tomb of Lazarus: Lazarus, come
out! Hear, Oh, Israel..
Editors Note: Revd. Dr. Valson

Thampu is an ordained Minister
of Church of North India; he is
an educator, theologian, who
was the former Principal of St
Stephen's College, University of
Delhi, from 2008 to February
2016. He is a prolific writer and
has authored many books. He is
also a translator of books from
Malayalam to English, and has
received prestigious awards. He
was also a member of the
National Minorities Commission
and currently, he is a patron of
the Abundant Life. This is an exclusive article written for FOCUS.

Random Theological Insights Post Modern Context

Rev. Dr. K. V. Mathew, Kottayam
Before we reflect on theological insights let us have a
quick glance through the nature of post modernism. It is
a passing thought-wind that created some disturbances
in the erudite mind of the West. However, its vibrations
make not a few repercussions in the world all over. Post
modernism questions all sources of authority, absolute
claims including faith affirmation. That may be the
reason why FOCUS wants to identify challenges to
Christian Faith in this context.
living spirit in us. We believe that we are created in the

image and likeness of God [Gen.1:26] by which we
experience the Divine. It does not mean that we become
God. In other words we only share the divine qualities of
creativity, care, concern and love for the other in
order to preserve the integrity of creation.
We need not be frantic about these passing clouds of

the human psyche. The Church had an apologetic
tradition that had sustained the faithful in similar
context. Let us examine our faith in God, significance of
Jesus the Christ, and the legitimacy of Christian Life.
FAITH IN GOD:
By faith we affirm God as the very foundation of
existence. This affirmation is nurtured by the Church
and its authority is the Bible. Remember, that the Bible
is the faith testimony of a people who lived at a
particular period [circa 2000 BCE to the early century
CE], and that too in a corner of the earth. Biblical writers
had their own worldview and they had their limitations.
Today we have to approach the Bible from our own
worldview and exegete its word accordingly. New
insights and paradigms govern our mode of thought and
that should be our guide while interpreting the biblical
word.
How do we now affirm and understand God today?
He [She, It] is not like an individual sitting above the
clouds. God is a generic term, not a personal noun and
God has no name at all except those which the human
attribute. It is through our consciousness that we
become aware of God. God is to be acknowledged as
cosmic mind and we are endowed with similar mindconsciousness with which we do realize the divine
reality.
Can we see our face without a reflector or a selfie; how
do we know about our own DNA; have we knowledge
about the intricacies of quark and lepton except
through a science media? These questions affirm that
knowledge of any kind is transmitted through and
confirmed by our mind-consciousness realized as
Subject-I-Thou-Object interaction.
Divine knowledge is worked out through a process of
image-in-ining between cosmic consciousness and
self-consciousness; to borrow an Indian term we may
say paramatma and jeevatma supreme spirit and the
God the Creator may be understood today as a verbal

noun. Creation is its visible evidence the verbal act of
God. This is a faith affirmation confirmed by our IThou relation with the cosmic consciousness.
Energy is the creative power of the cosmic mind. Bios
[Life], Theos [Divine Mind], Cosmos the quintessence
of creation is activated by this energy. It energizes,
keeps it alive, maintains and preserves life in cosmos.
The living human also is energized by the divine energy.
The cosmic mind-consciousness when it becomes
active in human, such human we call the children of
God, servants of God et al those who share the life
in the divine.
In short the Christian faith is built on a communion with
the supreme self and the human self. Both share the
same divine energy that sustains the universe. We

testify to this knowledge that the world may be guided

and steered to its divine destiny.
The Significance of Jesus the Christ:
According to Christian faith Jesus of Nazareth is
acknowledged as a great divine paradigm for the world
[Cosmos]. Many in the Church and outside recognize
him a model for the divine truth. His disciples witnessed
in Jesus the interaction of I-Thou constants,
meaningfully becoming active especially in the crisis of
the cross experience in life.
Good News was the message of Jesus, which was the
announcement of Gods rule over cosmos. Its possibility
is freely available to those who image-in the divine in
their own consciousness, provided they humbly
discover the inbuilt source along the Jesus Way. He
invited people irrespective of caste, creed and culture to
follow His way so that justice, peace, love and joy may
prevail in the world of ours.
Legitimacy of Life
God the invisible is not a tangible reality. It can only be
expounded in terms of analogical language. Pneuma
[Gk.], Ruah [Heb.], the two biblical terms mean Spirit
the source of life. Concretely speaking it stands for air,
breath, wind etc. though invisible but experiential. The
sacred unpronounceable four letters in Hebrew [YHWH]
means an eternal dynamic presence of the divine spirit
with us. Our faith in this dynamic spirit legitimizes our
faith stance.
The spirit of God was in Jesus. The same legitimate
spirit was promised, nay granted, to the disciples, a
constant companion and guide to those who followed
the Way of Jesus. It is this Spirit that provides
continuous energy and power to us who struggle to live
the life of Christ. Jesus who overcame the power of
darkness and the forces of death promised to be with
us. As we live now, we live by the power of the living
spirit of Christ. In a sense we follow Jesus, the first born
of new humanity as a proleptic sign [an experience
prior to the actual] of a coming parousia the presence
of the divine with the new creation. Let this be the vision
and beacon as we encounter challenges in future to
Christian faith.
Editors Note: Rev. Dr. K. V.
Mathew, is a renowned theologian
and former principal of Mar
Thoma Theological Seminary,
Kottayam, Kerala.
A Note on Orthodoxy Cognate

PAGE Society
The United Orthodox Christian Witness
George Alexander
The Orthodoxy
Cognate
PAGE Society (OCP) is a
Pan-Orthodox society for
the promotion of Orthodox
Christian unity and faith
established in the year
2007. It is registered under
the TravancoreCochin Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies
Registration Act, 1955. The major objective of OCP
Society is to promote Pan-Orthodox Conciliarity
and engage in different activities that promote
Orthodox Christian unity with ecumenical respect.
The
Society
provides
equal
importance
to Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches and
firmly believes that both the Eastern Orthodox
Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches are
the true heirs to the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church of Christ, which were the Church
of the apostles and the Holy Fathers. The Society's
motto is Seeking United Orthodox Christian
Witness.
The OCP Society has made several achievements
since its founding in 2007. It operates OCP Media
Network, the worlds largest Pan-Orthodox
Christian News Portal with a monthly outreach of
more than two million people worldwide along with
Orthodox news services, journalism. It also
engages in various Pan-Orthodox research
projects, Pan-Orthodox networking, publications
and charity activities. The OCP delegations have
been fortunate enough to meet several eminent
Orthodox Christian leaders as well as represent the
Society at several international Pan-Orthodox
Conferences. The Society has also been involved
in a number of social welfare activities since 2007.
Public Relations & Information Services Department
Orthodoxy Cognate PAGE
Society Established under the Travancore Cochin Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies
Registration Act, 1955. Registration No: A.455/2010
Website: www.theorthodoxchurch.info
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ocptweets
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodoxy_Cognate_P
AGE_Society

Postmodernism
Revd. Shiby Varghese
Introduction
Postmodernism is a social and cultural event.
Postmodernism is philosophy, lifestyle, architecture, politics,
feminism, science, art, cinema, literature, music and
spirituality. Postmodernism is a vast term, which employs
the current historical, social and cultural epoch.
The discontent towards modernism led to the emergence of
postmodernism. The experience to postmodernism is related
to cultural and linguistic contexts. The prefix post to the
modern is one of critical thinking, leading either to a
continuation or a rejection. Often, it is a critique of all that is
associated with modernism. This paper is an attempt to
explore the philosophical and theological premises of the
turn from modernism to postmodernism.
Postmodernism
The phenomena of postmodernism cannot be understood
apart from modernism. Postmodernism doesnt have a
single definition; rather it cannot be defined. Postmodernism
is the intentional upsetting of the epistemologies of
modernism. It resisted the harsh logical propositions of
rationality and revolted against the universal human
experience. Postmodernism is neither harsh nor static; is
dynamic and flexible.
Postmodernism is a living condition with certain assertions.
Postmodernism brought an epistemological turn with
modernity and filled the gaps constructed by modernity. It
is a reconstruction, a reinterpretation, and an attempt to
give meaning. Postmodernism opens up the discourses of
constructions and deconstructions of space, language,
texts, archaeology of knowledge, archives, arts, aesthetics,
identity politics, bio-politics, body politics, media-politics,
bare-life, institutions, practices, rituals, music, rhythm etc.
According to Stanley J. Grenz, rejection of modernity begins
from the consistent identification of postmodern thought
with deconstructive relativism. Linda Hutcheon asserts that
post moderns initial concern is to de-naturalize some of the
dominant features of our life; to point out to those entities
that we unthinkingly experience as natural(capitalism,
patriarchy, liberal humanism) are in fact cultural; made by
us, not given to us.
Enlightenment-The
Modernity
Epistemological
Context
of
Enlightenment was an intellectual, social and political

movement has its origin in rationalism and empiricism.
Enlightenment overturned the method of perceiving
knowledge and understanding. Enlightenment was the
creation of a new framework of ideas about human society
and nature, which challenged existing conceptions rooted in

a traditional world-view, dominated by Christianity.
Enlightenment placed human reason at the center of history
and elevated humankind by
means of optimistic
anthropology. There were two fundamental widespread
conceptions of reason namely reason as a faculty of
criticism and reason as power of explanation. Enlightenment
constructed a scientific worldview, which began to dominate
through the social institutions and social practices.
Enlightenment rationality or Modernity elevated humankind
to the center of reality.
Michel Foucault envisages modernity as an attitude rather
than a period in history. Modernity is often characterized in
terms of consciousness of the discontinuity of time: a break
with tradition, a feeling of novelty, of vertigo in the face of the
passing moment. By attitude he means a mode of relating
to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain
people; in the end a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too,
of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks
a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task.
Modernity declared rational self as the site of understanding
and rejected the irrational selfs. Knowledge is achieved
through rational disciplines such as science, philosophy, and
mathematics. Modernity assaulted all narrative knowledges.
Science with its objective truths and legitimate claims
captured the place of local narratives. Every human
phenomenon was explained meta-narratively from the
perspective of the European white male-biased outlines.
Modernity was about conquest: the imperial regulation of
land, the discipline of soul, and the creation of truth.
Modernity-Modern Science
The genesis of the Enlightenment lies in the early
seventeenth century, perhaps socio-politically in the Peace
of Westphalia (1648) that ended the Thirty Years War, and
intellectually with the scientific works of Francis Bacon,
Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.
Francis Bacon used the method of experimentation not only
to understand the universe but also to rule the nature.
Bacons vision of humans exercising power over nature by
means of the discovery of natures secrets was the new
perception of modern age.
Galileo by his mathematical enterprise and Isaac Newton
with his law of motion gave new theories to understand the
physical world. Modernization brings with its industrialization
and urbanization gave way to capitalism and individualism,
the erosion of meaning, the endless conflict of polytheistic
values, and the threat of iron cage of modernity.

Modernity- Modern Philosophy

Rationalism-Cartesian Doubts
Enlightenment was the product of philosophical revolution
inaugurated by French thinker Rene Descartes, the father of
modern philosophy. He writes, The basis of knowledge is
reason and mathematics is the ideal form of knowledge.
The French philosopher introduced doubt as the first
principle of reasoning. According to Descartes the three
basic ontological realities are mind, extension, and God.
Rejecting the sense experience as the foundation of
knowledge, Descartes makes it clear that the only certainty
is ones own self and hence he formulated I think, therefore
I am (Cogito ergo sum).
For Descartes ones own thought and experience becomes
absolute and authoritative in the Self or Subjectivity. He
concludes that Self is reason embedded which is distinct
from body but they are logically inseparable. Descartes self
is a powerful form of individualism and a defense of
individual authority and autonomy.
Empiricism
John Locke, the founder of empiricism, opposed reason and
capitalized knowledge on sense experience as the locus of
understanding. He argued Mind at birth is a clean slate or
tabular rasa. His method of understanding is psychological
but it is not based on logical reasoning. According to Locke,
text produces meaning, which is a psychological act. Mind
establishes a relationship with text and text imparts meaning
to the mind.
Beyond Rationalism and Empiricism: Kantian Revolution
According to Immanuel Kant, empiricism and rationalism
both had failed to explain knowledge because both of them
were based on a common assumption concerning the status
of objects. For both schools of thought, things as objects of
knowledge exist external to the mind. The proper view
according to Kant is knowledge begins with experience, but
doesnt necessarily originate from it and ends in reason.
Hence, the epistemological enquiry of Kant is
transcendental, that calls knowledge independent of
experience as a priori.
Kants notion of Enlightenment opens the theoretical
discourse of modernity. Kant wrote in his famous essay
What is Enlightenment?(1784): Enlightenment is human
leaving his/her self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the
incapacity to use ones own intelligence and is self-caused.
For Kant, Enlightenment is a gradual process through
which not only individuals but even an entire public attains
maturity and increases its self-understanding through
critical reflection and open communication.
Kantian
Enlightenment places the situation of the individual subject
at the center of moral, political and social thought.
Modernity celebrated the grand narratives such as
universalism and liberalism. Social theorists A. Kroker and D.
Cook argue that modernity is characterized as the search for
a theory of representation. All events and experiences of

human life were subjected to extreme rationalization. This
had great influence in the art of interpreting texts. Text was
considered not only as literary work but also as scientific
format, which demands critical study.
Modernism is characterized by variety of dualisms that are
intrinsic to its understanding: universal-particular, natureculture, mind-body, reason-passion, subject-object and
public-private (Graham Ward). Modern thought includes
binaries and polarities. Modernity operates on totalities that
embody truth.
Modern Theological Methods
Modern theology accommodates Enlightenment project.
Modern theological method is a disastrous capitulation of
the essentially secularizing tendencies of rationality of
Enlightenment.
The systematic approach of Hegel and Schleiermacher is a
meditation of religious thought to a secular world. Liberal
Protestantism of Albert Ritschl, Adolf Harnack and Ernst
Troeltsch and demythologization of Bultmanian schools
leading to extreme anthropocentrism and finally Paul Tillich
method of correlation is an equation of religious and
secular wisdom.
Responses to Modern theology
Liberation theologies or contextual theologies challenged the
classical, dogmatic propositions of theology as it was
metaphysical and essential in its principles and foundations.
Classical theism was seemed to be a derivative of Greek
metaphysical, epistemological and ontological pursuits,
which separated life realities into dual entities such as richpoor, white-black, men-women, male-female, Western
European-non-European etc.
Liberation theologies emphasized the other-side of realities
like black, women, poor, Latin American, Asian African,
Dalits, Tribals and other subaltern groups.
Death of God movement-Traditional understanding of God,
the classical theism, was challenged by death of God
movement of Nietzsche, Mark C Taylors deconstructive
theology, post liberal theology of Hans Frei and George
Lindbeck, Radical orthodoxy movement of John Milbank etc.
From Modernism to Postmodernism: Epistemological,
Ontological and Linguistic Shift
Incredulity towards Metanarratives
Jean-Francois Lyotard defined postmodernism as an
epistemological condition
incredulity towards
metanarratives or the decline of grand narratives. Lyotard
designates them as master narrative or metanarratives
because they are overarching, synthesizing stories that can
give coherence and meaning to local stories and practices.
He found that modern world speaks in metanarratives.

In a postmodern world, Lyotard witnesses the celebration of

little narratives: the most inventive way of disseminating,
and creating knowledge, and that they help to break down
the monopoly traditionally exercised by grand narratives.
mental process and is evident in both human language and

social institutions.
Subjectivity and Otherness

Epistemological issues centered on postmodernism
reconstructs the notion of subjectivity, the ethical issues with
the demise of metaphysical, foundational approaches to
morality finding them inadequate to pluralism and sociopolitical issue related with question of otherness.
Stanley J. Grenz contents that postmodernity embraces the
narratives of particular peoples and celebrates the diversity
and plurality of the world without attempting to discover
grand scheme into which all of the particular stories fit into.
Post modernity showed us that there is no one unified
uniform universal system of knowledge to bind human
beings. Postmodern world delegitimizes the absolute
legitimized normative models and patterns of knowledge.
Emergence of New Social Movements
New social movements such as feminist, ecological, decolonizing
movements
of
Asians,
Afro-Americans,
Aboriginals, Dalits, Adivasis, started the process of making
new social knowledges against the metanarratives and
universal class identity of the proletariat. Postmodernity
questioned the messianic faith and liberative hope of grand
narratives.
Linguistic and Textual Discourses as StructuralismPost-structuralism
Postmodern world bought a paradigm shift in the
understanding of language. Language thought and taught to
be the communicating medium of modernity. But for
postmodern world language constructs thought and
meaning. Frameworks of meaning are constructed within
historical languages by the language using community.
Language constructs the world-view of human beings. The
process of understanding is mediated into the self as
linguistic event.
Structuralism
Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of modern structural
linguistics separated the codes of language (la langue) from
its usage by an individual who externalizes the underlying
`system (la parole). Language is there in advance; we never
speak through language, but language speaks through us.
Language has both signifier and signified; signifier is the
abstract and signified is the reality.
Structuralists, therefore, argue that we do not order our
language according to our semantic needs, but we are
always already structured by the particular way in which our
language as linguistic system works. Language constructs
and constitutes the human consciousness, experiences, and
practices in universal structures. Structuralism asserts that
an objective, universal cultural system structures the
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a cultural revolution ignited in French
history after the Student revolt in May1968. Aftermath of
revolt questioned the legitimacy of institutions beyond state
and capitalism to the social institutions that creates
knowledge, shape identities, makes grand visions, and
proclaims utopias. The existential philosophy and Marxian
ideology, which prepared the ground for, a cultural
environment
that
sustained
structuralism
started
degenerating. A new mode of social life and experience was
growing in the intellectual womb that gave birth to the
movement called post-structuralism.
Post-structuralism is an extension of post-Marxian, postcommunist Left standpoint that emphasized rebellion and
deconstruction rather than social reconstruction. Poststructuralism shares a linguistic position similar to
structuralism. But it doesnt share the scientific vision of
structuralism. Post-structuralism is aware of the pitfalls of
brackets and binaries of structuralism and highlights the
unstable patterns of linguistic subjective social order.
Structuralism engages in a constructive linguistic discourse
whereas post-structuralism has a deconstructive method of
doing social discourse. The chief exponents of poststructuralism are Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
Michael Foucault
Knowledge as Discourses of Power
Foucault understands knowledge as power. He attacked the
foundations of morality-often classified as a cultural historian

but preferred to be an archaeologist of knowledge. Foucault

is more Nietzschean than any other philosopher, influenced
by the writings of Hegel-Marx-Nietzsche and Freud.
Instead of asking foundational questions like What is human
nature? Foucault asks functional-historical questions like
How has the human nature functioned in the society?
Foucault argues that there is no original or transcendental
signified(Kantian)to which all signifiers can ultimately
refer. Foucaults works is based on the trinity of knowledge,
power and truth.
Language discourses: Language as the world and discourse
as the something representing the world-discursive
formation-formation in institutional language practices of
power.
Genealogy: New Epistemic discourse against hegemonic
truth claims of reason-how reason is constructed-targets
grand unifying theories of society, history and politics.
Discourses on Body
Power is diffused through society and power is a productive
network, which operates, in the social body. Foucault
highlights the significance of the body by showing that body
is the locus of control and discipline in modern civilization.
Modernity considered body as inferior to mind. In the
ontological discourses body is the locus of experiences.
Foucault shows that body is located in social relations,
controlled by power and knowledge. He further adds that
history has made its imprint on body by its rules, laws, legal
and medical practices.
Jacques Derrida
Deconstruction of Texts
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) is the father of modern
deconstruction. His philosophy of deconstruction is his
strong
opposition
to
authoritarianism
whether
epistemological, social or religious. In the place of old
Enlightenment Jacques Derrida makes the advantage with
new Enlightenment. He rejects the idea of things having a
single basic meaning based on reason alone. Derridas
deconstruction embraces fragmentation, conflict and
discontinuity in matters of history, identity, and culture. To
put it in a nutshell Derrida says deconstruction is the
affirmation of the coming of the other constructed by the
old Enlightenment.
Derrida is the most prominent theorist of textuality. The very
meaning and mission of deconstruction is to show that
things--texts, institutions, traditions, societies, beliefs, and
practices of whatever size and sort you need--do not have
definable meanings and determinable missions, that they are
always more than that any mission would impose that they
exceed boundaries they currently occupy.
into social thinkers Nietzsche and Marx. Kantian centeredself retained in existential vision was replaced by
deconstructive
self-nodded
in
relations.
Derrida
deconstructed modern metaphysical worldview shaped by
the scientific archives of logo centrism and phono centrism.
Deconstruction as a method of transcending the available
forms of philosophizing is a type of intervention, destabilizing
the structural priorities of each particular construction.
Deconstruction, to Derrida argues, is an analysis, the
objective of which is the sedimented structures which form
the discursive element, the philosophical discursivity in
which we think.
Deconstruction is not an enclosure of
nothingness but an opening to the other. Rosemarie Tong,
a feminist social theorist, argues that deconstruction is antiessentialist not only in viewing the search for universal
definitions as useless, but also in actively challenging the
traditional boundaries between oppositions such as
reason/emotion, beautiful/ugly, and self/other as well as
between disciplines such as art, science, psychology, and
biology.
Deconstruction is not an uncritical method.
Deconstruction takes a critical attitude toward everything,
including particular ideas or social injustices as well as the
structures upon which they are based, the language in which
they are thought, and the systems in which they are
safeguarded.
Conclusion
In this an attempt was made to sketch the different
theoretical, philosophical premises played in the emergence
of s postmodern world. Postmodernism can be everything
and anything but the explanations given to it matters.
Postmodernism challenges the traditional world, its
arguments, explanations, or postmodernism explains the
betwixt, the in between-gaps in human life.
Books Referred:
Stanley J. Grenz A Primer on Postmodernism. Cambridge:
William B Eerdsmans Company.1996.
Jean-Francois Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A report
on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington ns Brian Massumi.
Miineapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
John D Caputo ed. Deconstruction in a Nutshell-A
Conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham
Press, 1997.Paul Rainbow Foucault Reader .New York:
Pantheon Books, 1984.
Editors Note: Rev. Shiby

Varughese Pallathu is a
member of the faculty
of The
Mar
Thoma
Theological
Seminary
Kottayam.
Deconstruction traces its roots from the structuralism and

post-structuralism, which extends from Kant to Saussure

Postmodern World Scenario: (A Christian Response)

Rev. Dr. M. J. Joseph, Kottayam
Heavy rain reminds us of challenges in life. Never ask for a
lighter rain but just get a better umbrella. There is so much
truth in the above statement. The topic chosen for the present
issue of FOCUS Journal, Christianity and Postmodern
Challenges enables us to search for the relevant avenues at the
grassroots level for Christian obedience. We need to address
the issues of life in the light of the Spirit of Truth has given to us.
In Christ, God has commissioned us to live as experts in
goodness, but simpleton in evil (NEB-Rom.16:20)... The
patterns of this world are quite appealing to the young and the
old alike .The missiological task of the Church is to enable
people to discern the will of God in each generation and to
know what is good, acceptable, and perfect. Dare to be
different is a faith slogan.
Have we taken a value-based decision for the common

good? What are the theological options before us?
dialogue between legacy and tradition is not creatively

addressed. One may notice a paradigm shift in all realms of
knowledge, particularly in religious sphere. In Christian theology,
one may notice radical shift from the traditional formulations of
doctrines. In the postmodern era, the relation between doctrine
and life is important for a relevant affirmation of life for all. One
may notice a shift to learn more about other faith traditions and
ideologies for an authentic grasp of what we believe. Let me
quote Dr. K. C. Abraham, former director of SATHRI: Concepts,
doctrines, and symbols of other religions, particularly Hinduism,
were used freely and critically by Indian Theologians to interpret
Christian faith. There was a serious search for an Indian face of
Christ for dismantling the foreignness of Christianity. Profound
was their recognition that Christ reality was greater than formal
Christianity and that Christ was present but unacknowledged by
the religions and cultures of people in India. This has led to the
emergence of URI and other inter-religious movements, which
uphold the values of plurality in faith affirmations. All the
religious Scriptures are for mutual edification and spiritual
upliftment. The concept of One Holy Word and Many Versions
has come to stay with us- a norm for the postmodern religious
thinking. To quote Dr. Abraham Karickam, the director secretary
of Asia-URI region, Methodologically, the Intertextual study of
the Holy Book is the most contemporary form of the study of
Holy ScripturesDifferent Holy Scriptures are components in a
continuum with close links There will be voice of dissent in
the Christian circles about such a view. Plurality is being widely
accepted as integral to Reality. The theme of the WCC10th
Assembly, God of life, lead us to justice and peace is indeed a
theological understanding of faith experience. One may notice a
paradigm shift from an Christological to Theological
understanding of Christian mission in the contemporary world.
Swami Agnivesh, delivering the 14th M. A. Thomas Memorial
Lecture at ECC, Bangalore (2007), said, What we need is not a
uniform, and regimented world, but a united world, a global
community that is spiritually strong enough to admit and
transcend differences and turn them into means of enrichment
rather than items of offence and mutual alienation. Religious
pluralism has come to stay with us in the modern theological
thinking. What the religious pluralism asks is to approach other
religions with deep respect in understanding the mysterious way
God guides his people all over the world (Fr. V. F. Vineeth). In
the postmodern religious world, we need to speak about the
spirituality of religion, which speaks of relationship among the
people. The theological task is to interpret Christ in relation to
others for a holistic understanding of mission, which has three
pillars: Communion with God, compassion for people and
passion for justice. All these concerns are important for us to
respond to the postmodern challenges.
Called to cross the borders:
Re-reading of the religious texts:
It is quite imperative that our outlook should be beyond our own

borders. Isaiah, the prophet, has warned us long ago to do what
is right: Enlarge the limits of your home, spread wide the
curtains of your tent (Is.54:2). In the postmodern world
scenario, there are several unanswered questions about faith
and its practices. The authority of the Bible and the traditions,
which we have inherited, are being questioned. A meaningful
A movement from religiosity to spirituality is the need of the

hour. The boundary of spirituality is not between religions, but
between love and hate, justice and injustice, truth and
falsehood. When Christians address God as our Father, there
is no grain of truth to
say that God is only the God of a
particular community or religion. The postmodern secular
challenges have taught the Church to remain vigilant in dealing
Paradox of our time:

Let me quote a few lines from the Paradox of our Time (authoranonymous) to illustrate the paradox of our time.
We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers;
Wider freeways, but narrow viewpoints;
We spend more, but have less;
We buy more, but enjoy it less.
We have more degrees, but less sense;
More knowledge, but less judgment;
More medicine, but less wellness;
We have learned how to make a living, but not a life;

We have added years to life, but not life to years;
We have spilt the atom, but not our prejudices;
We have higher income, but lower morals;
These are days of two incomes, but more divorces;
A time when technology can bring an electronic letter to you
The question before us is this:

with the totality of human affairs. It is quite legitimate for a rereading of all the religious Scriptures and traditions. If Jesus
Christ is the New Adam, all people on earth have to affirm their
common humanity for the establishment of Gods Kingdom
(divine will) on earth. The concept of One God and One Creation
should be affirmed for common good. The ecological problems
of today are basically a question about life. All the resources of
the religions in the world have to be pooled together for
common good and a better tomorrow. One religion or one
ideology alone will not solve the problem of environmental crisis
today. The encyclical of Pope Francis under the title, Laudathe
Si- 2013 (I praise Thee) is an ecological and ecumenical
document for the whole humanity. The message of St. Paul in
Rom.15: 7 require the churches to remain in frankness and
openness. Accept one another as God accepted us in Christ
(Rom.15:7).The Rig Vedic slogan, Let noble thoughts come to
us from all quarters has much in common with the vision of
Is.19: 23 and Rev.21:19-27.The call is to transcend the
boundaries of caste and
creed for a better tomorrow.
Rabindranath Tagore may call it, the crossing of narrow
domestic walls within each of us. A few lines from a Philippine
song composed by Sawa Tome will illustrate it clearly:
The song compels us to say without a ray of doubt that we

become dust on the day when we cease to be illumined by the
radiance of forgiveness and reconciliation. The postmodern
challenges of Christian faith enable us to search for radical
Christian obedience. For this, a bold initiative in costly
discipleship is required. Risking Christ for Christs sake (Dr.
M. M. Thomas) should be the mandate for Christian
involvements in a plural world.
Global is not universal:
Wheres the line between love and hate,

Wheres the line between the North and the South
Wheres the line between man and woman,
Where is the line between you and me?
The line is me, the line is you..,
The I culture of today has to be become we culture as we find
it in the Lords Prayer. We lack mutual appreciation and
adoration. The Pauline exhortation, counting others better than
yourselves and looking to each others interest must become
the code of ethics. In spirituality, self-hood is good; but not
selfishness. The postmodern questions urge us to affirm that
every one of us is part of a continent, a part of the mainland;
none of us is an island.
Secular spirituality is to be considered as an expression of New
Humanity in Christ. The New Humanity in Christ is not the gift of
Christians to the world, but Gods gift to the whole world. There
should not have any hijacking of God or Christ by the Christian
faith traditions. In the post-modern society, secular spirituality
assumes religious overtones. After the Nuclear Holocaust in
1945, a school was built in Nagasaki. At the time of its
inauguration the children of the school sang a song affirming
their commitment to the basic pillars of religious faith for the
survival of the future humanity. Excerpts (transl.) are quoted
below:
Let us build the northern side with love to block the wind of
Fate
Let us build the southern side with patience to destroy hatred
Let us build the eastern side with daily rising of the ray of faith
Let us build the western side with the beautiful enchanting hope
Let its roof be eternity and its floor be humility.
The concept of a global villager may appeal too many and make
sense in a techno-savvy world. But the word global may not
comprehend the universal (Dr. Ninan Koshy). It is only a
geographical pocket where something wonderful and attractive
is happening. The concept of globalization may create many
myths around us. It is to be remembered that globalization is
only an economic process. It is incapable of uniting the rich and
the poor, the strong and the weak. There is no compassion in
the globalization process as marginalization takes place at all
levels. The unskilled has no place. Remember the poor is not
the slogan of the players. Globalization may speak of some
part of the world where a few significant changes have taken
place. The Information Technology particularly the Social and
the Print Media have revolutionized the postmodern worldview
today. The result is the uncritical welcome accorded to the very
concept of economic globalization as the panacea for all the
illness of the world. We must be concerned with the whole of
human life and of the whole world. In a globalized world, we
must have a dream to make all the nations of the world
prosperous and happy. We need to promote GDH as well as
GDP in the whole world. The words of Dr. C. T. Kurien, the
noted Indian Economist, are worth recalling with regard to India
and other developing nations. To quote: India is an island of
prosperity in a sea of poverty If anyone walks around the
neighborhood of ITPL in Whitefield (Bangalore), he/she will get
the impression that India has come of age and it could be
compared with New York City or Singapore. The global scenario
is quite impressive and it tempts us to forget the grass roots
realities. Will the Church think of the prevailing social realties as
its theological challenge for a meaningful response?

The imitative culture of the people particularly the Youth without

a critical review or judgment is a noted phenomenon, and it has
become the fashion of the day. The information technology
takes us nearer to a world culture. The social media like Face
Book, Twitter, etc. have played their significant role for social
get together for a common cause in different parts of the world.
The Wall Street Movement in the US was indeed a protest
Movement (2011) that is considered to be the seedbed for the
emergence of several social movements at the local level. But
the net result is to be critically evaluated. The ardent search for
a space in social change is a lesson for the Church too. The
search for a virtual space for everyone is really a gospel
mandate for the empowerment of the least, the last and the lost.
The commodification of everything including water and air has
also come to stay with us. It is important that we need to ask
the basic core question whether all that we learn from the IT and
the social media contribute to
a healthy communication
process in our societal living. IT is only a tool to make greater
communication among people all over the world. The very idea
of ones physical presence in the field makes a difference. When
God took his decision to save the world, he took a human flesh
in Jesus Christ. It implies that Gods concern is best
communicated by active involvement in the social contexts. The
Electronic Churches in the West and Tele medical care are only
effective tools for greater grasp of the reality, but can never
replace the human face. In a globalized world we should aim at
corporate survival by creating just structures and value systems.
In a post modern society, a critical participation of the Church
in social movements is necessary.
Living in the midst of a consumer culture:
In a cyber culture, the transfer of culture takes place along with
the transfer of technology. The three pillars of Cyber culture with
its intellectual legacy are rooted in FOOD, MUSIC AND MOVIE.
The youth and the adult of today embrace a consumer culture
uncritically and they create their own islands or ghettos. There
is no point in despising it out rightly. What is required today is to
obtain the capacity to judge our value systems. We should
critically appreciate and participate in the Economic philosophy
of Privatization, Liberalization and Marketization for social
transformation in the world around.
Modern man is easily led to the hidden traps of a consumer
culture and his needs are very often made into wants. The
great temptation is to appreciate the package rather than the
product. Having has superseded the question of existence
spoken in terms of being. Appearance has eluded the mind.
There should be a conscious effort to break the deadlock of
Tina Syndrome in all the spheres of social life (Tina is a Geek
word for expressing the idea that no other alternative is possible
. There is place for asking legitimate questions as a means for
social empowerment. One should know that huge is not great.
Great is that which is nearer to truth (by Tagore- displayed in
the London YMCA wall). This is the religious truth for today.
In summing up:
The identity crisis experienced by the Youth in work places
cannot easily be ignored. The opportunities provided by the
Multinational Companies very often make the youth vulnerable.
In a mobile culture, the life styles of young men and women
have undergone radical changes. The given name of a person
has undergone changes. For example, John will be known as

Johnson and Eli will be called Elizabeth! How do we restore the
self-hood of the future generation? The imposition of one
cultural identity on another individual is to be encountered. What
matters in life is not money. The writer of the letter to the
Hebrews has rightly warned us with a message: Keep your
lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you
have (Heb.13:5) .It is to be remembered that contentment is the
state of the heart rather than the statement of accounts. To run
after easy loans and plastic money often lead people to
bankruptcy and depression. All that glitters is not gold! The
human face of science and technology has to be discovered in
our search for the highest. This is indeed a challenge before us.
The words of wisdom uttered by St, Paul years ago still hold
good: Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is
commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything
worthy of praise, think about these things. (Phil.4:8). In the post
modern scenario of the world, the age-old morals and values
have to be taught and affirmed.
The immortal words of Rabindranath Tagore be remembered:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come
out of from the depth of truth; Where the tireless striving
stretches its arms toward perfection; Where the clear stream of
reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead
habit; Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening
thought and action; Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let
my country awake. In this prayer, there is a search for the
Unseen. The vistas of the skyline alone will create a sober mind.
The concept of a borderless world is the only hope of the world.
The spirituality of the cave of the heart makes the humans ecofriendly and make the markets people friendly. The seeds of
hope have to be sown in the barren lands of relationships
across the digital divide. The vision of a horizon must take us to
the joy of discovery. There are more things to be discovered
than the ones already known. What we have traversed is only
the beginning of a pilgrimage. It is through ones commitment to
the eternal truth- satyam, sivam and sundaram- uttered by the
sages of the past make life holistic. This is the challenge before
us.
Editors Notre: Rev. Dr. M.J.

Joseph, M.Th., D. Th, is the
former
Director
of
the
Ecumenical Christian Centre,
Bangalore. He has also served
as Professor and Principal, Mar
Thoma Theological Seminary,
Kottayam, India. As a former
member, Faith and Order
Commission of the World
Council of Churches, he is
widely known for his ecumenical
and ecological contributions. He
has served as Secretary Board of Theological Education,
Senate of Serampore College (University). He currently
serves as Convener, Ecological Commission, of the Mar
Thoma Church. Dr. Joseph has also authored several
articles, poems and books available both in English and
Malayalam languages. E-Mail: drmjjoseph_65@yahoo.co.in

An Intimate Realization of God

Dr. Zac Varghese, London
In God, where are you? by Fr. Gerard W. Hughes SJ, I
came across a familiar caricature of God; God as good old
Uncle George. Uncle Georges relatives used to take their
little children to meet him every Sunday. This narrative has
the following framework: Uncle George is the family
favourite, enormously wealthy, highly influential and is loved
by all. He has a white beard, gruff voice, and lives in a large
mansion. At the end of their Sunday visits he turns to the
children and says, I want to see you here every Sunday
dears, and if you fail to come, let me tell you what will
happen to you. He then leads them to the hidden
underground cellars of his beautiful big mansion. The heat
becomes intense, the smell of burning flesh noxious, and the
children hear hideous screams. Uncle George opens a steel
door revealing blazing furnace into which little demons are
hurling men, women and children.
The children are
frightened; they have never ever imagined anything like this
can be hidden in such a beautiful mansion; they have never
seen any such horrible things even in their worst nightmares.
He tells the children with a devilish delight in his eyes that
the furnace is the ultimate destination if they do not visit him
regularly and obey his instructions. And then he leads the
children back to their parents. The children, filled with fear,
are taken back to their own homes in the evening. On the
way, one of the mothers leans over and asks, dont you love
Uncle George with all your heart and soul, mind and
strength. Remembering the furnace the children answer,
Yes, we do. They are conditioned to obey Uncle Georges
orders, but in their hearts they consider him a monster, but
dare not admit this to themselves, their parents or to anyone
else. Fr. Hughes goes on to say in this beautiful book: We
become what we worship. If we worship a God who is
primarily a God of judgement, whose main interest lies in our
failings and inflicting suitable punishment, we become that
to ourselves and to others. We become people of the law,
hardliners,
intolerant,
self-righteous,
condemnatory,
practising a Christ-less Christianity and calling it orthodoxy.
Different version of the above picture of God is familiar to all
of us. This is the kind of deliberate distorted images of God
that we often pass over to our children and then we blame
children of having a problem in reciting, God is love. Many
such deformed images of God can dominate our lives. Some
of the Old Testament stories and narratives have a tendency
to create an ever-lasting fear in our mind. Postmodernist are
challenging such uses of these stories. Abraham taking
Isaac to slaughter is a difficult image to come to terms with;
seeing Christ crucified is not also an easy image. When I was
nine years of age, one Good Friday itinerary preacher in our
village church made me believe that I shouted for the release
of Barabbas; I ran all the way home crying my heart out at
the unbearable shame and guilt on my part for being in the
part of the crowd which crucified Christ. The scene was so
real to me; it haunted me for several days, I still can
remember the agony of it after all these years. It will take a
very long time to move from childhood acceptance of what

have been taught to real experiential understanding of a God
of love and mercy through the life and mission of Jesus
Christ. Although faith is the basis of a religious life, for many
it is the fear instilled in them, which is the motivating force;
fear of judgement and damnation; fear of fire and
brimstones. For me, it took nearly seventy years to have the
courage to write the following simple, uncomplicated, image
of the Lord that I came to know and love gradually. This
time, the encouragement came for writing this reflection from
reading an email that I received on the New Years Eve from
a gentle, God-loving, friend of mine who expressed a caring
and deep felt concern for his seven grandchildren growing
up in the United States. Knowing him, I thought that he had
no reason whatsoever for such a concern because his
blessed grandchildren are living in the everyday realities of
Gods loving care through their interaction with their parents
and grandparents.
I
was able to think so because I had the following image of
God for the last few years, as I started to have a meditative
life through the grace of God, as a great and loving
grandfather sitting in his magnificent chair looking out into
the world and beyond, and I as a little mischievous boy
pulling his magnificent flowing rob and making a nuisance.
Although he has many things in his mind, he always has time
to look behind the chair for me and to give me an
encouraging nod. This hide and seek game has been a
wonderful experience, I do wrong things and then hide, then
God misses me, but he comes after me and finds me in my
fallen and sorrowful state; I cannot look up, I am looking
down with the burden of guilt on my back as a naughty
school boy before his headmaster. God restores the
relationship, things are normal again for a while. Then again
it is my turn to go and hide from him because I am busy with
my own things and I am comfortable in my new situation for
a while and particularly boasting about my meditations and
private prayers, I have other companions and things to
engage me in the place of my God; then something
happens, an internal alarm bell rings, it is my turn again to go
to him and disturb him when I need something from him very
badly because I cannot hide from him any longer. I hide, but

he always seeks and finds me. On reflection, life has always

been like that for me. The biblical story can be summed up
as a story of going away and coming back or exile and
return. The story of the prodigal Son demonstrates this so
vividly.
Jesus himself played a hide and seek game with his earthly
parents when they took him to the Temple; his parents lose
contact with him for three days, while he was doing his
heavenly Fathers business in the Temple. Here was a
young boy breaking away from parents, but his parents were
willing to accept this as part of his growing up. After an initial
dressing down from his parents for his escapade Jesus went
down to Nazareth with his parents and became obedient;
and he advanced in wisdom and age. Then again after his
baptism at river Jordan he disappeared to wilderness for
forty days and emerged after dealing with Satan and his
temptations for his great ministry. In all this he was
constantly in touch with his Father and understanding his
Fathers will to declare the manifesto for building the
kingdom of God through the sermon on the mount. It was
through ordinary everyday events in Nazareth and Galilee
that Jesus showed us Gods extraordinary love and
involvement with human condition. It is only when God is
presented to us in human affairs and conditions that we
begin to long for God.
I find great comfort in this image of God as lovable Father,
instead of fearsome judge and executioner, an image
developed from my childhood experience of living in a Godfearing family with a wonderful maternal grandfather. It took
almost a lifetime to recognise God in ordinary things of life
and to realise that God is not a caged bird living within the
unbreakable codes of theological formulations of words and
phrases. I now see things as Gods grace and favour, for me
it is simply a grace and favour existence to see God as the
God of everyday experience. This image has given me a
freedom to go and pull on his flowing, seamless, robe when I
need his attention. In this image I do not have to worry about
intermediaries, it's me and my God. I am sure, this is all what
God needs from us, to be like children; in this state of mind
we will have the freedom to play hide and seek or any other
happy games with him. This innocence of faith is possible for
all of us now because of the revelations in Jesus Christ of a
loving and dependable God. Therefore, we can be totally
sure that he will find us through his unconditional love and
abundant grace. The blessings and happiness of this
abiding, indwelling experience of God is a gift far and above
any other gifts that one can wish for. This gift is available to
us regardless of the circumstances that we find ourselves;
this is the source of our God-given freedom and happiness
even in the midst of discord. But I also realise that this
freedom comes with a built in responsibility for the common
good of others around us. A longing for God is our first step
in our blissful spiritual journey. In Psalm 42 we see the
expression of such a longing: As the deer pants for the
water brooks, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul
thirsts for God, the living God.
I recently read an interesting story from the autobiographical
sketches of Chrysostom Valiya Metropolitan, who, God willing,
would be celebrating his 100 birthday in April 2017. In 1939

after passing his degree examination from the UC College,
Alwaye, before his ordination as a priest, he decided to appear
for an interview for becoming a missionary with the Ankola
Mission. But he developed very high temperature on the day
before the interview; worried about this his father informed the
interview panel that his son would not be able to attend the
interview on that day. Then Thirumeni remembered the
newspaper report of how Subash Chandra Bose addressed a
Congress rally with very high fever, against the advice of his
doctors. This incident prompted Thirumeni to attend the
interview against the advice of his father. One of the panellists
questioned the accuracy of his illness and claimed that by
attending the interview on that day, he made his father a liar and
hence he is not eligible for the job; the logic was sound, but
Thirumeni then described that he was encouraged to attend the
interview by the example of Chandra Bose. This prompted one
of the panellists to ask Thirumeni a very penetrating question:
Who is your guide and who do you follow, Chandra Bose or
Jesus? At this point, as thing were getting hot, Rev V. P.
Mammen who was the chairman of the panel intervened and
said, When we see God of the Church, this young man sees
God in everyday situations and human interactions. Thirumeni
has been doing it all his life. God of the Church is the problem,
all religions own God as their own and no others. The
expressions like God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are
problematic. God is not a caged bird, but a bird in flight. Karl
Barth wrote, God would not be God, if there was a single point
where God was absent or inactive. Intellectuals try to see God
as cosmic intelligence or cosmic conscience and so forth. But
ordinary simple human beings see God in their day-to-day
experiences. Without Gods action, humanity is unable to be
what it ought to be. How can the mystery of God be captured
through the formulae of any single humanly conceived master
plan? Silesius wrote: Christ could be born a thousand times
in Bethlehem, but all in vain until He is born in me. This is
indeed the experience of St. Paul of living in Christ, and living
with Christ and living for Christ.
th
We read in the Ramayana how Lord Rama removed evil from

the world through his epic battle with Ravana. He of course
destroyed all the evil in his path, the sin and the sinner at one
stroke. Apart from, supposedly, cursing a fruitless fig tree, Jesus
did not curse any one. Instead he brought love, healing and
blessings. He hates sin, but not the sinner; sin is the separation
from God; sin is a thing that we do for which we cannot thank
God for. From the Old Testament to the New Testament we see
this change in emphasis. As we evolve and grow under his
abundant grace, God is giving us a more refined means to have
a relationship with him through images and modalities available
to us from everyday life in our families and work places.
Perhaps, my grandfather image of God is just a beginning of
such a rudimentary infantile understanding. I appreciate and
honour others who understand God at another level or at a
much more mature level. Maybe postmodernists are challenging
us to come out of our comfort zones. We are all in this journey
together; let us give a helping hand to those who need a little
help in this pilgrimage. The desire for the divine is a necessary
step for us to go forward in living together in harmony with
peoples of other faiths and other understandings. To think about
God therefore, is to remain open to new thoughts and new ways
of being in the world. St. Paul reminds us that we are in the
world and not of the world.

Postmodernism and its Challenges to Christianity

Lal Varghese, Esq., Dallas
Culture, society and civilization are intermingled and
cultural influences are unavoidable for religions to survive
in this world. Human beings are born in a specific culture
and everyone proudly treasures his or her cultural
heritage. Culture is the totality of the shared values,
beliefs and basic assumptions, as well as collective
behavioral patterns emerging from them. Christianity as
a social phenomenon, wrote theologian Lesslie Newbigin
has always and necessarily been conditioned as to its
outward form by other social facts. In a multicultural
society, some people are anxious about shifting cultural
beliefs, civil rights, and religious liberty. Postmodernism
poses several challenges to the basic principles of
Christianity in the realms like sexuality, same-sex
marriage, transgender rights, and religion in the public
square, and the authority of the Bible, and the creation of
world.
Eusebius, the greatest Christian theologian of the 1st
century in his book The History of the Church from
Christ to Constantine noted that there were different
types of Christianity like Jewish Christianity, Greek
Christianity, Syrian Christianity and Roman Christianity.
Therefore, Christianity was culturally sensitive from its
very inception. Christianity was formed as a religion after
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem
and obtained its name at Antioch, but came into its fullorganized existence after the 1st century only after
undergoing persecution. All the Apostles except one were
martyred, the fist 13 Bishops of the church in Jerusalem
also martyred. It survived the great persecution of the
early century, which was the greatest challenge a religion
could ever face in this world. In 4th century when
Constantine recognized Christianity as the official religion
of the Roman Empire, it embraced the political and also
the social culture of the earlier Roman period. From there
it spread to all over the world and established itself by
embracing the socio-political culture of each community
in which it is established.
the gay community for treating them differently. In other

words, as Christians we have to embrace the
postmodernism without sacrificing the culture of the
Christian religion.
Openness and tolerance that rejects all moral
absolutes are the mandates of postmodern ideology.
Moreover, postmodernism is gaining a clear and growing
consensus in multicultural societies of the West.
Consequently, Christians of the modern day face unique
challenges as we seek to communicate the gospel in a
compelling way. In order to speak to others with a
conviction that its true for me because I believe it;
Christian communicators must understand and critique
the foundations of postmodern relativism.
At the heart of the issue is whether or not objective truth
exists. Objective truth means truth that is independent of
individual or cultural belief. When something is objectively
true, like the existence of moon or sun, its true for
everyone regardless of whether they acknowledge it or
not. Objectivity assumes that we all live in one reality,
even though we may experience it differently or have
different beliefs about it. Those of us who believe in
objective truth think that we have a common base from
which to discuss what is true and what isnt, because we
all live in the same real world.
Postmodernism is an ambiguous term to define and it

should be distinguished from postmodernity, while the
later refers to the result of objective factors of our
contemporary culture of the age like the buildings, the
communication system, the entertainment media etc.
Postmodernity the term in itself describes the current
condition of the culture of the society of the day, while
postmodernism refers to the value systems and theories
that evolved along the cultural factors to support them. It
will be difficult to tackle postmodernism, as value
systems, which do not have the concrete reality like a
building or communication or entertainment. Pope
Francis recently said: The Church needs to apologize to

Postmodernists deny this shared objective reality.

Instead, they claim that different cultural groups live in
different realities. To them, a peoples reality is their
perception or interpretation of the external world, and is
not the world itself. Postmodernists claim we are really
creating truth as we interpret. We are not discovering
truth, but creating it. According to postmodernists, a
thing is true because they believe it; they do not believe it
because it is not true.
As Christians, we accept the reality of both subjective
and objective truth, and we believe that we can discover
both through a combination of our own reason and
revelation. The Bible teaches we can come to know a
love that transcends knowledge (Eph. 3:19), and that
relationship with God goes beyond mere statements of
facts about God. This is subjective or experiential truth.
But the reality of subjective or experiential truth in no way
rules out the reality of objective truth. Postmodernists, on
the other hand, think all truth is subjective. The Bibles
emphasis on historical revelation (1 Cor. 15:13-15),
doctrinal propositions (Rom. 10:9), and natural revelation
(1:18-20) presume that objective truth exists. This places
Christians in direct opposition to postmodern thinking.
Postmodernists hold that when modernists or religionists
advance objective truth, they do violence by excluding
other voices; that is, they regard other worldviews to be
invalid. Thus the ideas of truth and reason marginalize the
vulnerable by scripting them out of the story. Truth
claims, we are told, are merely tools to legitimize power.
Michel Foucault writes, We cannot exercise power
except through the production of truth. For
postmodernists, truth claims are really mere propaganda
intended to dismiss other views by calling them
superstition or nonsense. Thats why, in postmodern
culture, the person to be feared is the one who believes
he or she knows ultimate truth. The dogmatist, the
totalizer, the absolutist is both naive and dangerous, not
to mention arrogant.
Postmodernists call Christianity to accept all beliefs as
equally valid, thus introduced the idea of pluralism in the
religious world. They propagate the ideas that instead of
one truth, we have many truths. Pope Franciss recent
call to the Church to apologize to gay people, some
Christian denominations initiative in appointing women
as clergy and bishops, gays and lesbians as clergy are
examples of this embracing nature of mentality. But
conservatives do not accept this embracing nature of the
Church and they split themselves from the main line
churches like happened in the Episcopal Church in the
USA. The time has to prove whether Christianity will
adhere to this embracing nature.
Openness without the restraint of reason along with
tolerance without moral appraisal is the new postmodern
mandates for Christianity to follow. Only In the

postmodern climate of openness and tolerance, beliefs
become barriers against genuine dialogue about spiritual
and moral truth.
Postmodern subjectivism also inhibits a deep
commitment to ones own beliefs. Since faith is rooted in
the practical matters of personal taste and experience,
people tend to adopt and abandon beliefs according to
the demands of the moment. After all, when truth is a
human creation rather than something independent of
ourselves, we may casually move on to some new truth
whenever it suits us. Postmodernists use this tricky area
to change several faithful believers in to their fold.
To sum up the characteristics of postmodernism are
pessimism, which results in loss of enthusiasm, loss of
confidence, multiple voices, which results in a plurality of
thoughts vying for the right to reality, and finally denial of
objective truth by saying that any objective truth can be
discovered or experienced. The Christian faith is
grounded in the books of the Old Testament, and the
New Testament, which describes in detail the life, the
death of Jesus Christ on the cross and the resurrection
on the third day and our faith and hope of returning of
Jesus Christ in the fullness of time.
Christianity must also learn to survive like the earlier
Christians survived the persecution and emerged as a
religion. Christ also had His own challenges from the
society in which He lived, preached and ministered. He
has to give up His own life for the cause He stood for,
after all it is the purpose of the God in Heaven that Christ
should die for the people to redeem them from their sins.
As society grows, culture shifts with the introduction of
modern thoughts, communication system, technology,
Christians must learn how to survive in the postmodern
world without sacrificing their faith and belief. It may be
embracing the idea of postmodernism or accepting what
is good in it or rejecting the whole idea in itself, but we do
not know which will be the best options for the
Christianity to survive in this postmodern world.
Editors Note: Lal Varghese,
Esq., is mainly practicing in
U. S Immigration law for
more than 25 years in
Dallas. He is the legal
counsel and member of the
Legal Affairs Committee of
the
Diocese
of
North
America & Europe of the
Mar Thoma Church. He can
be reached at E-Mail:
attylal@aol.com, Telephone:
(972) 788-0777 (O), (972)
788-1555 (Direct)

Preserving the Timeless while Adapting to the Times:

Revd. Dr. Lord Leslie Griffiths
[The following is a sincere effort in putting together my
understanding and appreciation of some of the important
aspects of Lord Griffiths three talks at the 34 Mar Thoma Family
conference. This is not exact transcript of his talks, but this is
what I thought that I heard. Lord Griffiths should not be blamed
in any way for any unintentional inaccuracies occurred in my
reporting of his talks. I very much hope that this would be of
some help to reignite the memories of those who were at the
conference and also of help to those could not attend. Lord
Griffiths ministry over the last fifty years, in the postmodern era,
shows how to face the postmodern challenges; he adapted his
ministry to fit the needs of different cultural contexts and times.
His ministry is also an example of keeping the church and the
affairs of the state in the right balance and not separating them
into watertight compartments. The theme of the Conference is
of special interest to the FOCUS Movement because it was
the theme of the first FOCUS seminar at Santhigiri, in 1999,
under the leadership of all the Bishops of the Mar Thoma
Church. I offer this transcript in memory of Rt. Revd. Dr.
Zacharias Mar Theophilus Suffragan Metropolitan. Dr. Zac
Varghese, London.]
th
Lord Griffiths opened his talk on the above theme on the

morning of 27 August by describing how he met one of our
young people, Ray Koshy, at the breakfast that morning.
Ray was a member of the Boys Brigade, Lord Griffiths is its
president, and as such they have an oblique connection. Ray
gave Lord Griffiths a copy of a daily Bible study that his
grandfather had owned. Lord Griffiths referred to the
meditation assigned for 27 August in that spiritual guide,
which said, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Wake up.
With that he asked the audience to wake up and listen,
which they did quite attentively. He then described how he
came across a few members of the Mar Thoma Church at an
ecumenical gathering, for Lent talks, at Harrow in 2014 and
another member at a meeting at Chesham.
th
th
From that he went on to describe the young reception

committee that he had met at the conference when he
arrived, and about the young man who guided him to his
bedroom at the center. This was none other than our brilliant
Tarun Alexander, who was walking in front of them with their
luggage and talking continuously; therefore, Lord Griffiths
and Lady Margaret could not see Taurns face but noticed
the three words on his Tee-shirt, Faith, Hope and Love.
This amazing speaker organized his discourse around these
three words and opened up the theme: Preserving the
timeless while adapting to the times.
He spoke about the Wesleys Chapel, built by John Wesley,
where he works as a minister and the congregation, which is
made up people from 55 national backgrounds with 24
languages. His work at the Chapel demonstrates that
multiculturalism is possible, and there is an abundant
opportunity to share the cultural-spiritual-capital available
there. It is also a place of pilgrimage for 70 million
Methodists worldwide.
He talked about his early life in a Welsh village in a single

parent family with his mother and younger brother. His
mother was not a chapelgoer, but she sent her two children
to Sunday school. His mother said, she is not going to be
the reason for the preacher to preach. She was the best
mother and the best person in the world for Leslie and his
younger brother. She cared for an Irish lady, Mrs. Readie,
who was a widow and poorer than her, and invited her for
Sunday tea every week; in that hospitable gesture she used
up the entire butter ration available for the week; Mrs. Readie
was treated like a princess. He recited William Blakes poem
on Garden of love to show how churches have done well in
controlling people, it also depicted the chapel life in which he
grew up.
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not, writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their
rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
Blakes protest to the repression of desires as operated by
conventional Christianity meant that chapel doors are shut to
their real needs, and people are not free to act. The images
of graves and priests wearing black dress patrolling the
chapel yard provided an image of prison and the lack of
freedom. It is now time to wake up from this oppression.
When Leslie passed his Eleven Plus exam, not a mean task,
thirty poor working class mothers of the chapel community
decided to put away one penny a week each to support the
young Leslie for his Grammar school education. From there
he went to Cambridge and to Haiti, a wretched nation on
the earth, as a Methodist missionary, then a Methodist
minister and became its president and then a member of the
House of Lords. He mentioned so many fascinating stories
during this journey, which had a bearing on the theme. Faith,
hope and love sustained him from the beginning.
Faith: He spoke of the meaning, qualities, and necessities of
faith hope and love in a bewildering world of no faith; we live
in a world of no faith. We live in a secular and materialistic
world. Materialism is like a drug. Flight from faith is quite
considerable. As faith is declining, it is important to reclaim
faith. This is a moment of challenge for the faith community
to show what it means to have faith. Faith is the risk that

you take in your life. He gratefully remembered how his wife

helped him in his faith journey.
Hope: What is hope in a world, which is despairing? What is
hope in a world of despair? How can we watch this? Is there
any hope for human existence? The killings in the city of
Aleppo and other Syrian cities and Iraq are horrible. The
resultant refugee crisis in Italy and other Mediterranean
countries are difficult to sustain. He then talked about a
Greek word used in the New Testament, which describes
hope in terms of pity, empathy or compassion, which is used
12 times in the New Testament; we see this in connection
with the story of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.
Jesus had this compassion. We use the expression: you
are bowels of mercy when you feel someones pain. You
feel that you are kicked on your stomach; it is a physical pain
that you feel when you see someone in distress. We should
feel in our guts the pain of others and have compassion. Let
there be no compassion fatigue. The doctrine of hope is this
compassion.
Love: Love is like a penny if you spent it, you end of
having more. Today, love has become a romantic fantasy;
it is self-gratification, people meet in the Internet and
immediately develop sexual relationship without really
knowing the other person. Real love is rooted in the interest
of the beloved. Prioritizing the interest of the beloved is at
the heart of a loving relationship. Love that comes your way
when you love others is amazing. This is the program of
what it is to be a Christian. God did not love one particular
group of people, but he loved the whole world. Gospel
imperative is love and that is the faith all about.
Hans Kungs book On Being a Christian; was one of the
books that he read when he returned from Haiti. This led him
to speak about his experience of Haiti. The 2010 earthquake
in Haiti killed 274,000 people; it is one of the poorest
countries of the western hemisphere. Although it got
independence in 1804, other countries rejected them and it
never developed; yes, the People of Haiti were poor, but not
poor in Spirit. They had humor, resilience and courage.
Roman Catholics in Haiti had a version of the Liberation
theology. It was not the polished theology sent from Rome.
Liberation theology starts with the Bible, people and priests;
it is the theology of the people and not of the church. It
empowers people in theological understanding: it is a
bottom up theology. Cambridge theology that he learnt was
different; it was about methodology, original texts,
interpretations, and philosophy. The Liberation theology is
about giving people tools to sort out their day to day
problems. It is doing the gospel and not theorizing. Hans
Kung in On Being Christian is talking about the theology for
educated people. Educated people go out on an intellectual
search for building truth foundations and formulae. We
should not be treated like children, but grown up, not to
impose beliefs and punishments. Theology is about doing
things and doing the things the right way and with right kind
of tools. People should behave as grown up and have a
grown up faith. Faith is doing the best from the information
that you have. Faith is the risk you take in your life. Faith is
an empowering agent.
The Second Talk: He started his second talks by stating the

circumstances of his appointment as a lecturer at Lampeter,
a new college under, University of Wales, in Medieval
English. Inadvertently, he became a mentor to students and
a sort of unofficial university chaplain for their spiritual
needs, which led him later to Methodist ministry. But he was
not an ordinary domestic chaplain; he spent of 50% of his
time for conventional roles of a parish priest and the other
50% for representing people as their spokesperson in the
outside world for highlighting and representing them to
achieve social justice.
At this time, he became a colleague of Revd. Dr. Donald
Soper who used to speak regularly at the Speakers corner
at Hyde Park. His advice was, when you are out there
make it look like that you are enjoying it, otherwise the
English people will have the decency to make you suffer.
Lord Soper also told him that that the job of a preacher is to
keep the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper on the
other, and relate what is in the newspaper to the Bible and
what is in the Bible to the newspaper.
Then he talked about his outward facing ministry, political
involvements and how he got to sit on the labor benches in
the House of Lords. Politics is too important to leave to the
politicians. He talked about the importance of the voluntary
work in the UK, but governments should not take advantage
of them.
He facilitates people to understand how
democracy works by inviting people to meet him at the
Lords. Politics and religion are not separate entities. He
explained how he engages people through radio through
religious programs. It allows him to offer a spiritual view
through Radio 4 and Radio2. He presented the Thought for
the Day for seventeen years, Daily Service, and such
programs. Brian Redhead of the Today Program fame once
told him that he is reaching out to more people in one
broadcast than John Wesley did throughout his life. You
need different voices to reach out to people because the
audiences and their tastes are different.
Education: He spoke about his role as the chairman of
Central Foundation School for boys and girls in Islington and
Tower Hamlet; Islington had a very poor record for GCSE
examination results, but pass rates continued to increase
over the last three years; in 2016 it was almost equal to
Eaton and Harrow, but it is a local state school. In the Tower
Hamlet schools for girls he has taken steps to avoid, Islamic
radicalization.
Haiti experience: He and his wife, Margaret, went to Haiti
in August 1970. They worked initially in Hong Kong for few
months. Then the call came for them to work in Haiti, he
thought his French might help him, but later found out that
the peasants in villages did not speak French. He had to
learn their lingo. The experience he gained over ten years in
higher education in England did not help him much. He had
talents and abilities, but the job in Haiti disempowered him,
but this disempowerment was the secret of his success in
subsequent life; it helped him to build a new way of relating
to people. Initially, he was clever and arrogant, but was not
able to do anything. The poor people in Haiti taught him

humour, their culture and their way of doing things. They put
him together and made him whole again. He said in utter
humility that Haitian peasants showed him the way; they
reunited him with the poor boy that he had been in the
beginning of his life in that Welsh village. He continues to
help people of Haiti in many ways because of his position in
the House of Lords, re-establishing diplomatic relations and
so forth.
Youth Work: He also helps young people because the post
war generation have done away with many opportunities for
the young people, and disinherited them, particularly with
the Brexit success. Brexit was a kick in the stomach of the
young people. He became the voice of the marginalized
people; his words are heard in places where others cannot
reach. For representing his people in the outside world, he
spent 50% of his time, the other he spent for the routine
parish work as expected of a priest. We are not listening to
the young people. There is a wedge between socio-political
and religious world, we must get in there and engage them.
Wesleys Chapel: He ended the talk by describing the
stories of Joseph from Sierra Leon and Christine from
Rwanda. These two young people were caught up in tribal
wars and genocide. Christine lost all her family including her
infant son. They became peace workers for the United
Nations and they met in London became members of the
Wesleys chapel. They decided to get married; then they
visited Christinas hometown in Rwanda and by a miracle
she was able to get united with her ten-year-old son, whom
she thought had died. He was brought to London and
baptized in the Wesleys Chapel. The whole world is indeed
his parish at Wesleys Chapel; these rich and varied
experiences demonstrate how a personal faith helped him to
help a little bit in making this world a better place.
The Third Talk: Our young people also joined for his 3 talk
on Sunday and he told many more stories. In January 2013
he went to Haiti for the 40 anniversary of his ordination. He
spoke about his ordination on 21 January 1973. His
experiences brought to our attention those things that you
believe in matters. He talked about the events of his
ordination in Haiti. Many people blessed him by laying-onof- hands from many countries and many rites. It was the
week of prayer for Christian Unity. Secretary to Papal
Nuncios was there too. He jokingly established that his
ordination is valid and possibly more valid than many others,
including the Mar Thoma Church. The two leading clerics
who re-commissioned him were his students, it gave him
great pleasure.
Then he explained his joy in meeting
Colbair; he was a little boy that he picked up from the street,
when the boys mother died, was blind with congenital
cataract. He arranged surgery and then he gained eyesight.
This boy lived with Griffiths family for a while. He is now a
successful businessman with a family and he came to pay
his respect and gratitude for what they gave him, a new life.
rd
th
st
The talk ended with another memorable story about inner

city black boys from East London.
He talked about
educational programs and scholarships for inner city boys,
who always exchanged expletives because of limitations in

language skills, to go to posh public school. He talked about
philanthropists who are truly men of God whose right hand
does not know what the left hand is doing. He described the
educational problems of black inner city kids. Then he talked
about Loui, who had witnessed murders and gang fights.
One night Loui and his friend were attacked; Loui escaped,
but his friend, Esai, died. Loui had to identify the
perpetrators of this crime to the police and also in the court,
he was frightened. Lord Griffiths visited Loui the next day.
Lord Griffiths was about to leave after exchanging few
comforting pastoral words, then the telephone rang. Loui
said to his friend on the other end of the phone, ye man,
call me later. I got my reverend with me now; he is the
man I need now. That was an amazing moment;
sometimes, it is the young person who teaches an older
person manner. Loui said, You are going to say prayers
with me arent you? After three weeks Loui came back to
the chapel, marching down, with 30 young people singing
the gospel songs all the way. He read Psalm 121: Lift up
my eyes to hillswhere does my help come from? The
Lord will watch over your coming and going both now
and for ever more. There were tears all around when he
finished, but through the tears they could see the rainbow.
How can we see the Lord when we cannot see our
neighbor?
Lord Griffiths talks and stories have timelessness and it will
stay with us forever. It was a joy to share his fellowship,
kindness and humility. The Mar Thoma community is grateful
to Lord Griffiths and Lady Margaret for all they have done for
us. May God empower them more and more for their very
special kind of ministry.
Editors Note: Lord Leslie Griffiths, Baron Griffiths of Burry

Port, (born 15 February 1942) is a Methodist minister and
life peer in the House of
Lords, where he sits with
the Labor Party. Griffiths
became a local preacher
in the Methodist Church of
Great Britain in 1963. He
completed a Master of
Arts
in
Theology
at
Fitzwilliam
College,
Cambridge in 1969, while
training for the ministry at
Wesley House. He spent
most of the 1970s serving
the Methodist Church of
Haiti, where he was ordained, before returning to Britain
to serve in ministries in Essex and Golders Green. In 1987
Griffiths completed a PhD from the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London. He served as
President of the Methodist Conference from 1994 to
1995. Since 1996 he has been Superintendent Minister at
Wesleys Chapel, London.

Mar Chrysostoms Life Story A Review

Dr. Zac Varghese, London, UK
On 16 July 2016, I had an amazing opportunity to visit
Emeritus Metropolitan Mar Chrysostom at his retirement
residence at Maramon, overlooking the fast flowing and very
beautiful Pampa River. I am very grateful Revd. Saju
Papachen who arranged this meeting. There were three
other people, one lady from Houston and two others from
Bangalore. Thirumeni recollected the time he spent at
Canterbury in 1954 for studies immediately after his
consecration. He also reminded of the need for a Mar Thoma
Centre in London for greater exposure of our Church in
Europe.
th
Once amazing reflection on Mar Chrysostom by Revd. VP

Mammen summarised the life of this great bishop for me.
Revd. Mammen was interviewing him for the missionary
work in Karnataka in 1939 (Page 95). He was not very well on
the day of the interview; therefore, his father informed the
interview panel that he is not physically fit to attend the
interview. Then he was challenged by an experience of
Subash Chandra Bose, who attended a crucial meeting
against doctors advice. Mar Chrysostoms thinking simply
was that if Subash Bose could do it then young Philip
Ommmen (his given name before becoming a bishop) also
could face the interview panel. During the interview Revd. V.
P. Mammen made the following comment on him, When
we see God of the Church, Philip Oommen sees God
through ordinary people and their day to day existence.
This is the man who became a bishop of the Mar Thoma
Church in 1953 with the name Mar Chrysostom. This is the
measure of the man who has been an ordained as a priest
on 3 June 1944 and a bishop of the Mar Thoma Church on
23 May 1953. By the grace of God Thirumeni is continuing
his priestly ministry actively in his 99 year. This is indeed an
amazing life and I once wrote an article on him entitled
Peoples Bishop. He experiences God in everyday
interactions with people from all walks of life: intellectuals,
illiterates, theologians, politicians, porters, field workers,
social workers and reformers, priests and missionaries, rich
and poor people. He is not the bishop of an institutionalised
Church and transcended all those restrictions and he is an
amazing free spirit. It is this free spirit that we meet in this
book.
rd
rd
th
At the end of this meeting Thirumeni very kindly gave me a

copy of his book on his life story, Athmakatha. The
following is my immediate, inadequate, short reflection on
this book. I finished reading this book at one stretch in one
day, often with tears in my eyes. My immediate reaction was
that the book should be translated and made available to a
wider readership because it is not like any other
autobiography. In this book Thirumeni is giving us a guided
tour of his spiritual journey so far. He describes amazing
people that he met thus far and how through various
incidents he was able to experience the presence of God in
his interactions with people and nature.
On seeing a photo of Gandhiji with CF Andrew, he told a

friend in Karnataka that CF Andrew loved people first and
then preached the Gospel. Thirumeni is very critical of our
mission strategies of preaching the Gospel and then trying to
love those people after their conversion. Thirumeni throws
many such challenges. He sees humour in many situations in
life and he has the amazing ability to express them with deep
reaching theological insights. People often get carried away
with his jokes, but here is a very serious man behind those
jokes who studied human nature and it vulnerabilities. There
is an urgent need to translate this book into English and I
very much hope that Thirumeni would take necessary steps
to do so.
Dr. Zac Varghese, London, U.K., was
the director of Renal & Transplantation
Immunology Research of Royal Free
Hospital and Medical School in
London. He is an Emeritus Professor
and supervisor for doctoral studies. He
is also a prolific writer on religious and
ecumenical issues; he continues to
work relentlessly for the common
good of the worldwide Mar Thoma
Diaspora communities.

FOCUS October 2016

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

FOCUS October 2016

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

1

FOCUS October 2016 Vol. 4 No: 4

Post Modern World Scenario A

A Publication of Diaspora FOCUS

An Intimate Realization of God, Dr. Zac

Editorial, Post Modernity and its

Post Modernism and its Challenges to

Post Modernism and Christianity, Rev.

Preserving the Timeless While Adapting to the Times - Revd.

Random Theological Insights Post

Post Modernism, Rev. Shiby Varghese,

Mar Chrysostoms Life Story, A Review,

without the hegemony of religion. In pre-modernity, the

The modern period begins from 15 century with the rise of

The advance of science and technology gave an amazing

Postmodernism sounds like a philosophical or political

is difficult to find for postmodernism. It can be considered as

to love God, but without laying special claim to an exclusive

Therefore, it is up to us take the positive benefits emerging

between religions, but between love and hate, justice and

Post Modernism and Christianity

authority. Modernity has come to define the human

Christianity, as distinguished from the biblical faith, is at

Post Modernity is to Modernity what Ecclesiastes is to the

That is not, T. S. Eliot, would say, such a bad thing. It is

Jesus words, Come to me all you, who are weary and

Situated in such a predicament, human beings could not

What, then, are the challenges that Post Modernism

challenge of being Christ-centered, it will see

Editors Note: Revd. Dr. Valson

Random Theological Insights Post Modern Context

living spirit in us. We believe that we are created in the

We need not be frantic about these passing clouds of

God the Creator may be understood today as a verbal

testify to this knowledge that the world may be guided

A Note on Orthodoxy Cognate

Enlightenment was an intellectual, social and political

and nature, which challenged existing conceptions rooted in

Modernity- Modern Philosophy

a theory of representation. All events and experiences of

In a postmodern world, Lyotard witnesses the celebration of

mental process and is evident in both human language and

Subjectivity and Otherness

but preferred to be an archaeologist of knowledge. Foucault

Editors Note: Rev. Shiby

Deconstruction traces its roots from the structuralism and

Postmodern World Scenario: (A Christian Response)

Have we taken a value-based decision for the common

dialogue between legacy and tradition is not creatively

Called to cross the borders:

Re-reading of the religious texts:

It is quite imperative that our outlook should be beyond our own

A movement from religiosity to spirituality is the need of the

Paradox of our time:

We have learned how to make a living, but not a life;

The song compels us to say without a ray of doubt that we

Wheres the line between love and hate,

The imitative culture of the people particularly the Youth without

has undergone changes. For example, John will be known as

Editors Notre: Rev. Dr. M.J.

An Intimate Realization of God

very long time to move from childhood acceptance of what

he always seeks and finds me. On reflection, life has always

would be celebrating his 100 birthday in April 2017. In 1939