Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XXII/Final)
We ought to understand that technology and art are not easily
separated and both are to some extent inseparable from questions of
epistemology and morality. Additionally, if we grasp that socially conservative
attitudes toward the arts and culture (while inconsistent) cannot be divorced from
their larger cultural narratives surrounding epistemology and previous
generational progress and values, it behooves us (lest we be swept away by
these powerful cultural forces and heavily promoted arguments) to apply the otherworldly
and non-conformist ethos of the First Reformation to the present day. Our
culture is in crisis and thus to many, the arguments made by conservatives seem
very persuasive and grounding but from a New Testament perspective they are flawed
at almost every level.
An otherworldly and non-conformist ethos leads us to a
cultural posture and interaction that embraces neither the Classic nor the
Enlightened. In fact in many ways we are better able to resonate with the postmodern
critique and even the cynical. We benefit from critiques that expose the world
system's inherent flaws and contradictions, that reveal it to be an idolatrous
fraud and resting on transient and degenerating foundations – as Paul teaches
in 1 Corinthians 7.29-31 and Romans 8.19-23. This should not upset us but
rather drives us all the more toward the inescapable choice between dependence
upon revelation and the hope it grants or a collapse into nihilism.