Where did postmodernism come from, and why does it matter? In this episode of the worldview series, Dr. Phil Fernandes, President of the Institute of Biblical Defense, director of the Master of Arts in Christian Apologetics at Veritas International University, and pastor of Trinity Bible Fellowship, traces the intellectual journey from pre-modernism all the way through to postmodernism.

He starts with pre-modernism — the era shaped by Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and later by Christianity, which brought with it a belief in absolute truth, absolute morality, meaning in life, and the value of every human being. From there he traces the rise of modernism, launched by René Descartes in the 17th century, which placed human reason at the center of everything. The problem was that Western civilization fell so in love with the gift of human reason that it forgot the God who gave it — and the attempt to solve all problems through reason alone ultimately collapsed into existentialism, where individuals were left to create their own truth through sheer willpower.

Postmodernism is what came next — the individual disappears entirely, swallowed up by the collective, and since there's no objective truth, every community simply reads reality through its own narrative. Dr. Fernandes argues that the only worldview that can genuinely protect the individual, ground human rights, and provide real meaning is the Christian worldview — and that postmodernism, far from being a solution, is a dead end.