Key Differences between pre-modernism, modernism, and post-modernism

Why?

Postmodernism is a movement which is so hard to define, especially because it denies absolutes or the effectiveness of words to describe anything. Trying to define it might just be defying post-modernism.

A lot of attempts to describe post-modernism come in contrast to modernism. Postmodernism might be the result, consequence, aftermath of modernism. To understand postmodernism better we will look at the flow of thought that led to it starting with pre-modernism, then modernism, ending with postmodernism. We will look at the differences between these three periods and compare their relationship with Christianity. 

Pre-modernism

Pre-modernism is the period before the Enlightenment which includes the Middle-Ages. Erickson characterizes pre-modernism as a period that believe in the rationality of the universe.

Dualism

Pre-modernist believed in dualism. The believed in both the natural and supernatural, the physical and the spiritual. The believed in an order of things. God being the sovereign creator and sustainer of the universe. Under God came the angelic host, then mankind, then everything else. This dualism was well expressed through religions such as Christianity but also in other polytheistic and pantheistic religions.

Teleological 

Their dualistic helped them place God at the center of all thought. Everything was explained through God. He was the center, reason, and explanation for everything. Everything created had a meaning, and it all fit somehow in God's purpose for everything. 

Realism

Pre-modernists believed in a reality independently of whether we acknowledged it or not. They believed in the correspondence theory of truth. The words we used successfully described reality. 

Relationship with Christianity

In the Pre-modern period, the Christian religion was the most accepted as truth, more than in any other period. Religion was the source of truth, God being the creator, and sustainer, all thought orbited around him. 

Modernism

Modernism has often been said to go from 1789 (the French Revolution) to 1989 (the fall of the wall of Berlin), though Descartes made significant contribution to Modernism with his thought in 1641. This period is characterized by a rejection of superstition, replaced with doubting, and reason to find truth.

Reason

Descartes: I doubt, therfore I think, therefore I am. Started doubting what others of his time assumed to be true. His doubting led to Rationalism. Unless something seem raisonable to be believed he would not accept it. He only accepted what could be proven. 

Naturalistic

Descartes' rationalism led to the scientific method, which offered a whole new way of thinking. Everything could be explained with science. The authority - right to demand obedience concerning belief and action, had a huge shift from what was external to man, like God, to man himself.

Knowledge the virtue of the Age 

Mordernism is seen as the Humanist era. God was sidlines, man is placed in the center. We no longer depend of outside sources for truth. Man is able to raison all truth. Make new discoveries with science, which would lead to progress, and make the world a better place. 

Post-modernism

The era is most easily understood as the rejection of modernism. Modernism failed to provide what it had promised. Knowledge seemed to have failed to provide the "utopia" it had promised. Knowledge had been seen as the greatest good, but this had led to 2 world wars, we still had famine, genocides, the world was not getting better, if anything, the world was getting worse. 

Truth Through our perception

Truth cannot be defined as absolute. Depending on your context, your culture, your upbringing, truth can be different depending on who you are. No one can claim to have absolute truth, mankind would never all agree. 

No more absolute truth

Rejecting truth, we are all allowed to have our opinion, but they must stop there. Anyone claiming to hold an exclusive truth is seen as arrogant and intolerant. Because no one gets the final say, all truths must be seen as valid. Realism is rejected, the correspondence theory of truth is rejected, everything is relative.

Tolerance is the new virtue

Authority has gone from being God's in the premodernist era (practiced by the church), to belonging to men, often concentrated in academia, to no longer being found anywhere. Authority had been used for power to oppress the weak. People rejected all authority. Everyone one has the right to decide what is true. All views must be held as equally true. The definition of tolerance has changed greatly. From allowing people who disagree with you to have the right to express their view, to having to accept their view as equally true.

Relationship with Christianity

One struggle is the religions are seen as oppressive and arrogant, on one hand. But on the other, given the Spirit of Tolerance, Christianity must be accepted as true as all the other beliefs. We have gone a step forward from denying the existing belief in the supernatural. There seems to be a renewed open-mindedness to Christianity.