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Copernicus Was a Heretic, and So Am I: A Postmodern Theology

Remember Copernicus? He was the guy who dared suggest that the earth was a round moving ball when the Bible clearly said that it was flat and stationary (e.g. Isaiah 5:26, Psalm 104:5, Joshua 10:13). Proponents of his views were made to recant or were burned at the stake for heresy. Today, we moderns chuckle, but I wonder if there are biblical truths we cling to that fall into the same category.

What does the Bible say to us in our world of tumult and unprecedented change? What's the truth of the Bible that God wants us to hear in our time?

The truth of the Bible is embodied in an alternative community, not in a ruling society. The descendants of Abraham were constantly called to act as an alternative community to the prevailing order of the day. Jesus, God in human form, wandered the dusty paths of Palestine as a homeless prophet and gathered to himself a motley crew of disciples. The early church was called to be an alternative witnessing community, open to all peoples but standing in stark and prophetic contrast to the Roman power structures.

For the next few hundred years, Christians were a political threat to the establishment and were fiercely persecuted because they refused to pledge allegiance to the political, military, and economic gods of the day. Then at the beginning of the fourth century, in a strange twist of history, Constantine, the Roman emperor, made Christianity the ruling power in western society.

Do our modern theological statements express the truth of Scripture or are they more a reflection of a particular time and culture? Do our family values and moral imperatives actually come from the Bible or from our modern western culture based on Constantinian Christendom? Are we reducing the truth of the Bible to human constructs by creating doctrines, creeds, and statements and absolutizing them?

In postmodern times, the established structures of modernity are crumbling all around us. Christians are once again becoming the persecuted minority, the radical alternative. Some people mourn these changes, this loss of influence; and they fight, quite literally, to preserve the status quo. But Christianity was never meant to be the religion of the powerful; it's a faith for those on the margins, for the weak and despised.

Young people are increasingly seeing themselves as a marginalized people and victims of the modern establishment. Teens want to experience truth; they want to see faith in action.

Christian theology in a postmodern time needs to be radical, dynamic, and relational. Radical theology doesn't necessarily follow the mainstream; it listens to the voices from the margins, just as Jesus did. It's not afraid to be heretical in the sense of a religious opinion that differs from the accepted dogma of the establishment.

Dynamic theology is one that's forged in the crucible of the present time, in our case, the postmodern milieu. The Bible doesn't claim to house an unchanging truth. It proclaims a truth that penetrates hearts and transforms lives and communities.

Youth workers are poised to lead the way in articulating and practicing this theology as those who often speak for those on the margins. Youth workers are concerned with contemporary contexts. Youth ministry is inherently relational. Re-visioning our theology for postmodern times is a frightening task, and we're finite and fragile. But the fragmentation and violence of our world, the quest for God's truth, and the assurance of God's love urge us on. Let the inquisition begin.

Gareth Brandt directs the youth work department at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, British Columbia.