Michael Horton is a Reformed theologian, professor (i actually had the chance to take a class with him this past summer and didn’t, something which i now regret), author, the editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine, and hosts a regular radio program called The White Horse Inn. he is one of two writers in this book to represent the “garden” clearing (the other being a Greek Orthodox Christian) described by Leonard Sweet in the introduction which follows the “preserving methods/preserving message” paradigm in the postmodern, emergent church conversation.

he begins his article by trying to define postmodernism, a necessary task in order to proceed with the conversation. rather than stating an abstract definition of the ideology, Horton traces it back to the thinkers that have shaped modernism and the movement commonly called postmodernism. he states that there are, in fact, two types of postmodernism, academic postmodernism and popular postmodernism. the former finds proponents in writers and thinkers such as Heidegger, French poststructuralists, Gadamer, Ricoeur, etc. however, this area of postmodernism is so broad and so closely tied to modernism that it is quite difficult to “speak in sweeping terms of a major paradigm shift in culture.” he declares that the social theory that drives this academic postmodernism is largely motivated by theological ideas that seek to attack God and the “discourse that is grounded in His existence and sovereignty” as this branch also includes such thinkers as Kant, Nietzsche, and Freud.

the other side of this coin, the popular postmodernists, also contains a very broad variety among its proponents that is too difficult to isolate from modernism. he concludes that the popular postmodernists are the result of popular culture “with its obsessions with technology, mass communications, mass marketing, the therapeutic orientation, and consumption.” because of the culture of mass consumerism, this branch of postmodernism has effected the church. it has created “hipper-than-thou clubs passing for youth ministry, informal chats passing for sermons, and brazen marketing passing for evangelism, where busyness equals holiness, and expository preaching is considered too intellectual,” trends that are quite alarming to those who wish to preserve both methods and message. Horton boils these postmodernists down to the image of a child who refuses to grow up as they would rather have a “give it to me now” sort of attitude rather than actually sitting down with issues or ideas and exhausting them in order to form their own thoughts on the particular issue at hand. it is a group who would rather have a good time, be talked to in simplistic terms, and does not like the challenges and convictions that wisdom, truth, righteousness, and responsibility bring. he cites Callinicos and joins him in saying that “much of what is written in support of the idea that we live in a postmodern epoch seems to me of small caliber intellectually, usually superficial, often ignorant, sometimes incoherent.” Horton joins Andy Crouch in doubting the existence of postmodernism, at least as a distinct break from modernity and a new epoch in thought.

after discussing the definition and thrust of postmodernism, the question becomes “what does this mean for the church?” Horton declares that if the church is still the institution as described in Scripture (which many postmoderns would agree), the means of grace appointed by Christ and the sufficient institution for carrying out the Great Commission, edifying the saints, and administering the means of grace which are sufficient for the conversion of souls, then it is the burden of the postmoderns to show, Scripturally, why the methods and message must change in parallel ways with culture and technology. again, it is noted that a market driven society and consumer whims are what has created the so-called “postmodern” churches whose “niche marketing breaks up the generations, entertainment drowns out catechesis, and the attraction of the customer edges out the communion of saints across all times and places.”

in response to this, Horton offers a solution. he proposes that we should not see the division as between “modern” and “postmodern,” but between “this present evil age” and “the age to come.” this is the division which Christ and Paul speak of in the New Testament. rather than conforming the Gospel to cultural whims, the church should be breaking through this “present evil age through the preaching of the cross and the Resurrection,” spreading the Gospel through Word and sacrament, creating new members among the cross-cultural, cross-generational “cloud of witnesses” that the writer of Hebrews tells us we are enveloped in. in doing this, the church can even hope to “attract a new generation to take the Christian faith seriously, as fake and cloying attempts to impress those who are ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ give way to genuinely satisfying richness: that gospel which alone is ‘the power of God unto salvation.’” Horton states that these emphases can be lost in an uncritical (church) culture that takes its cues from that which is marketed as important and interesting. he contrasts this culture and its advocates with those in the Reformation who, “instead of capitulating to the ignorance of the people by relying on pictures and icons as ‘the books for the unlearned,’ the Reformers insisted they be elevated in their abilities so that they could read Scripture, understand sermons, and find new opportunities to advance their own calling and their neighbor’s good.”

however, there are many today who say that the creeds, confessions, doctrines, and liturgies of centuries past “can hardly be suitable to the questions of today.” Horton, though, says that this is not the correct attitude towards the past. he states that instead of asking “is Luther’s question our question?”, the church should be asking “is Luther’s question Scripture’s question?” he maintains that all that the church does should be founded upon Scripture and that anything that does not conform to the words set down for us in the Canon should be suspect. the point of this, he says, is to show that “truth is neither timeless nor time-bound but enduring.” the motivation of the Reformers was not to revolutionize or reinvent the faith for their own time and as a model for succeeding generations, but to “recall the ancient and apostolic faith to a medieval church that had, in a number of respects, compromised its very identity as the church of Christ.”

alluding to the answer to the problem set forth by Andy Crouch, Horton concludes his chapter by affirming that “the enduring character of faith cannot be pried from the enduring character of practice.” in other words, while the message remains the same (enduring throughout the ages and rooted in Scripture), so too should the methods remain the same. to say that the message remains unchanged while methods are ever-changing is to present a dichotomy that is foreign to Scripture. faith and practice should both find their foundation in the Word of God, the practices being word and sacrament. noting the enduring character of the biblical covenants of God, Horton states that this covenantal mentality “must have priority over allegiances to any ethnic group, generation, culture, or class.” to put the priority of message and/or methods in any of these isolated ideas is to alienate the people of God who don’t fit into the particular market niche that is being pandered to, murdering the enduring message and methods established for us in Scripture. the church is charged to convert the world, not be converted by the world, and Christ’s words to us are recalled as He promised His church that His church would endure “until the end of the age” and would not be built and torn down and rebuilt again according to the whims of the various cultures.

being Reformed myself, most of what Michael Horton said reflects my own thoughts on this topic and he says them in much better ways than i could articulate at this point in my life. of all the writers in this book, Horton definitely seems to be the most well-read, and presents himself (even if unconsciously) as such. i think the number of other thinkers alluded to and cited throughout his article brings great credibility to what he has to say, but i think it is also his biggest weakness. he definitely follows the example of the Reformers he spoke of in challenging his readers to a higher understanding of the issues at hand by using the words of great philosophers, many of them obscure, hoping that this will whet the appetite for knowledge in the reader and driving him or her to go out and read these thinkers for themselves. the reason i think this could be his greatest weakness in this conversation is precisely because of the problem he identifies in the postmodern movement, the problem of postmoderns wanting things to be dumbed down for them and their laziness to be pandered to so that they don’t have to use the language of modernism or something evil like that. so that would be my one criticism of Horton’s article, although i definitely do not think that he should have written any differently, especially since he basically explains the direction he’s coming from in wanting to challenge the reader, rather than make them a theological and philosophical couch potato.

like i alluded to, this is the article i most agree with. i found myself “amen-ing” (mostly to myself, but several times quite audibly) as i read the article and wish even more that i had taken the class with Horton, which was aptly titled “Preaching and Pastoring in a Postmodern World.” i definitely join him in believing that all the church does should be solidly rooted in Scripture. i believe that word and sacrament is the primary responsibility of the church and that its purpose in the culture is to edify the saints and equip them for spreading the Gospel of Christ unto all the nations and amongst all peoples. i agree with him that the Truth contained in Scripture and the Truth in the Gospel endures through all the ages, no matter what attempts by man are made to destroy, pervert, or lessen it. i believe that we should be more concerned with “this present evil age” and “the age to come” rather than wanting to forget the “modernism” of the past and hoping to break new ground through relativization and niche worship services. above all, i believe it is only through the Gospel that hearts can be changed and people can be saved, not through clever marketing tactics that seek to mimic the culture and further the consumeristic desires of modern people. this enduring Gospel, handed down to us from Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, Christ, Paul, John, Origen, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Whitefield, Spurgeon, and the other saints in the “great cloud of witnesses,” does not change and we should not be so arrogant to think that it needs to.