1. Evangelical History and Mediating NARRATIVES, part 2
Soong-Chan Rah
Milton B. Engebretson Professor
of Church Growth and Evangelism
North Park Theological Seminary

2. Scottish Common Sense Responding to David Hume’s Skepticism
Thomas Reid (Scotland)
John Witherspoon (Princeton University)
Charles Hodge (Princeton Seminary
“Common” sense (self-evident by reason/observation)
“We hold these truths to be self-evident” (Declaration of Independence)
Apologetics
Begin with presuppositions (what is self-evident) and trace out the “truth” with a linear, progressive development
Evangelicals/Fundamentalists “lazily” applying “common” sense

3. Modernity’s Captivity to Western Culture
"We [liken] the whole historical project of modernity to the building of the tower of Babel. Babel can function as a symbol of modern autonomous world construction. ‘Let us engage in the social construction of reality,’ said the architects of modernity, ‘and let us do so in such a way to exalt human glory. Let us build a tower from which we can get a God's-eye view of the world. And let us build a homogenized, centralized culture, a global culture hegemonically unified in service of the gods of scientism, technicism and economism. Let us proclaim to the world the gospel of autonomous progress.’”

4. Modernity : Captivity’s Culmination
2 He called out with a mighty voice, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury." 4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore.
Revelation 18 (NRSV)

5. Bounded Set

6. Bounded Set

7. Centered Set