First we must remember Friedrich Nietzsche, the "patron saint of postmodern philosophy." According to this critic of the Christian faith, the world is composed of fragments, each one individual. We construct concepts which rob reality of its diversity and individuality (such as forming the concept "leaf" for leaves, an idea which can never do justice to the diversity of leaves). These concepts or laws are actually illusions or convenient fictions.

"Truth" is solely a function of the language we employ and exists only within specific linguistic contexts. It is a function of the internal workings of language itself. The authority structure of the Church, whether centered on the Bible or the Church's teachings, is therefore unfounded and irrelevant.

Nietzsche's hermeneutical insights parallel Friedrich Schleiermacher's earlier theological assertions. According to this "father of theological liberalism," biblical texts are not systematic theological treatises but reflections of the minds and contexts of their authors. The interpreter must move behind the text to its author's mind. The work of theology is therefore to "abstract entirely from the specific content of the particular Christian experiences."

And so an entirely different epistemological foundation began to be laid by Nietzsche and Schleiermacher, one which rejected the objective building blocks of the modern world for a knowledge base centered in subjectivity. In their view, truth is not absolute and objective but relative and individual. Recent philosophers of language would soon finish this foundation and build a new house on it.