ABSTRACT
In his response to Richard Robert's essay, Daniel Hardy firmly agrees that the three phenomena of pre-modernity, modernity and post-modernity "coexist", but interprets this as indicating that linkages and a sense of social cohesion or provisional wholeness need not and should not be entirely lost. A healthy reminder of the ambivalence and negative aspects of post-modernity is well identified in Jurgen Moltmann's preference for the term "sub-modernity". Theology makes truth-claims that transcend the merely local or pragmatic. Richard Rorty provides his most transparent and explicit bonding between pragmatism and consumerism when he proposes that the grammar of truth has no residue of content beyond what may be offered as a justification for holding a belief or for pursuing a course of action. Explicit connections in the New Testament between epistemology and eschatology are identified in the context of the grace of the cross by J. Louis Martyn.
