Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture

by Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Publisher:

Crossway

, 2020

Overview

We live in a post-Christian world. Contemporary thought—claiming to be “progressive” and “liberating”—seeks to undermine biblical Christianity, but in fact contradicts culture itself by assaulting family, community, authority, and nature. Today’s Christians need to understand the underlying worldviews of the post-Christian culture in order to navigate these new challenges in their world. This insightful book charts the course of how postmodernism led to our post-Christian times; explores how Christians can combat today’s constructivism, relativism, and Gnosticism; and offers solutions to those problems as a way to recover reality, rebuild culture, and revive faith.

Key Features

• Examines the underlying worldviews of the post-Christian culture
• Addresses new cultural challenges in their world
• Explores how Christians can combat today’s constructivism, relativism, and Gnosticism

Contents

• Introduction: After Postmodernism

Part I: Reality

• Constructing Our Own Worlds: The Ptolomaic Counter-Revolution
• Knowing Nature: The Dominance of Science
• Mastering Nature: The Achievements of Science
• Recovering Reality: The Story of Kant’s Neighbor

Part II: The Body

• The End of Sex: The Exaltation of Barrenness
• Repudiating the Body: Engineering Children and Oneself
• Sexual Counter-Revolution: Towards a Theology of the Body

Part III: Society

• Culture & Anti-Culture: Society without Community
• Power Politics & the Death of Education: From Relativism to Absolutism
• Rebuilding Civilization: Options for the Dark Ages

Part IV: Religion

• Spiritual but not Religious: The Religion of the Nones
• Religious but Not Spiritual: The New Gods
• Post-Christian Christianity: Desecularizing the Church
• Conclusion: Towards the Post-Secular

Top Highlights

“Postmodernists believe that reality is a construction—of the mind, the will, the culture—rather than an objective truth.” (Page 14)

“Now notice the course of the ‘sexual revolution’ in our post-Christian times. First, God, with his commands and his creative and redemptive purposes, is removed from consideration. Next, sex is detached from its physical function of conceiving children. Next, sex is detached from the sexual distinctions of male and female. Next, sex is detached from relationship altogether—from the impersonal pursuit of ‘sex objects’ to sex with oneself, in the solitary eroticism of pornography. Thus, sex as a created reality is repudiated at every level. Instead, we are left with an attenuated alternative that reduces sex to little more than a spasm of pleasure and relief.” (Page 99)

“With constructivism, human beings attempt to take on the role of creator. But when they do, they end up repudiating reality itself.” (Page 26)

“Postmodernists and their successors, however, are constructivists. Truth is not something we discover, they say, but something we construct. Morality is not something built into human nature; rather, it is an individual or cultural construction. Knowledge comes not so much from a passively receptive intellect, but from the will; specifically, the will to power. And since different cultures and individuals can construct different truths, truth is relative.” (Pages 25–26)

“While postmodernists and their successors continue to invoke science as a bastion against religion, they are mostly interested not so much in science but in technology. That is, what can be constructed from science.” (Page 26)

Praise for the Print Edition

Post-Christian is a provocative overview of the challenges Christians at the whipping post face. As the sea of faith temporarily recedes, fewer people have the confidence to debate ideas, raise children, and build institutions. Gene Veith explains the problems of constructing our own worlds, exalting barrenness, and building society without community. Some leaders say we’ll survive by secularizing the church, but this book shows a better way: pray and work for a new reformation.

—Marvin Olasky, Editor in Chief, WORLD Magazine

No one has taught me how to think like a Christian more than Gene Veith. Post-Christian just may be the magnum opus of a writer and thinker who has already contributed a body of work of immeasurable worth to the church. This book is a library in miniature for the Christian who wants to navigate the post-Christian world biblically, thoughtfully, and faithfully. It should be on the shelf in every Christian home.

—Karen Swallow Prior, author, On Reading Well and Fierce Convictions

Gene Veith’s Post-Christian is a logical, cogent, sensible, no-spin, facts-based, unapologetic analysis of the zeitgeist in Western culture. Which is to say, it’s not very politically correct. But that’s a good thing! In this post-truth, reality-denying cultural moment, we need the grounded sanity this book provides. Highly informative and well-researched, Post-Christian is a treasure trove of wisdom and a valuable resource for the church’s revitalization.

—Brett McCracken, Senior Editor, The Gospel Coalition; author, Uncomfortable and Hipster Christianity

Product Details

• Title: Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture
• Author: Gene Edward Veith Jr.
• Publisher: Crossway
• Publication Date: 2020
• Pages: 320
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Topic: Christianity and Culture

About Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Gene Edward Veith (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is professor of English at Concordia University-Wisconsin. He also serves there as director of the Cranach Institute, a center devoted to the study of Christianity and culture. His books include The Gift of Art: The Place of the Arts in Scripture (InterVarsity Press, 1983), Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature (Corssway, 1990), Postmodern Times: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Crossway, 1994), The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals (Concordia Publishing House, 1999), and several others. He is the cultural editor of World magazine.

Sample Pages from Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture