On the road to Emmaus: Evangelism in postmodern age

Abstract

The article examines the problem of comparing the basic premises of the philosophy of postmodernism and religious worldview, in particular, the Christian doctrine. The heuristic potential of the concept of “kenosis” is revealed in the works of the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo as applied to the interpretation of the history of philosophy simultaneously in the context of Christian doctrine and philosophy of postmodernism. In the context of the Christian doctrine, kenosis means “exhaustion” of God as His voluntary descent into the world through incarnation and death on the cross for the salvation of people. This is a specifically Christian thesis closely related to the unique tenets of Christian theology, anthropology, and soteriology. Vattimo considers it possible to use the concept of kenosis as a basis for understanding the relationship between Christianity and postmodernity, since it is in the perspective of Divine “exhaustion” that the true nature of the evangelism is revealed, which cannot be reduced to an ontotheological metanarrative. The article also proposes the concept of a historical interpretation of the Gospel in the works of the modern British biblical scholar Nicholas Thomas Wright as one of the possible strategies for explicating the “intersection points” between postmodern philosophy and Christian theology. It is concluded that the assertion about the antagonism and incompatibility of postmodernism and Christianity is superficial and this issue requires a more careful and comprehensive study.