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Absolutely, Positively True
There is an interesting article in Reason & Revelation; Vol. XVI, # 6; 1996. R&R
is a "monthly journal of Christian Evidences". The article is by Garry K.
Brantley and is titled "What Has Happened to Truth?".
Jesus once said, "Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Pilate
once asked Jesus "What is truth?". The Brantley article deals with concepts of
what constitutes "truth" and how those concepts are changing. He points out that
traditional western ideas of "What is truth?" have recently undergone tremendous
changes.
One casualty of this process has been the concept of "universal" or "absolute"
truth. The cutting edge of present day thought suggests that there is no such
thing as absolute truth. But I have to wonder if these "thinkers" would argue if
it is "absolutely" true that there is no "absolute" truth.
Brantley observes how that traditional thought regarding truth (i.e. that there
are definite and universal standards for what is true; and that these can be
determined by properly using God's revelation as well as man's reasoning
ability) gave way to the "modernist" school of thought. "Modern" thinkers
trashed the concept that God's revelation had anything to do with discovering
truth, and singled out man's reasoning abilities as being the only proper
criteria by which to arrive at truth.
It even became important to them to completely distance oneself from God in
order that one's objectivity not be "tainted" by faith. Truth was still thought
of as objective, and this perspective is still, at present, a powerful force in
today's world.
But, there is a new kid on the block. No longer must the modernist only deal
with what he would term as "ancient superstition" but also with "post modernist"
thinking. Since the 1970's, this young upstart has been growing in strength and
challenging his two predecessors; the "traditional" and the "modernist". The
post modernists holds that truth is not absolute after all. In the interest of
pluralism, post modernistic thinkers insist that what is true for you depends
upon your gender,
ethnicity, economic status, sexual orientation and so forth. Diversity is
celebrated and inherently good; if you are different, then that is good; just
because it is different. These people are much more religious than their
modernistic counterparts; replacing the idea of "all religion is bad" with the
idea "(almost) all religion is good".
The result of this has been moral, doctrinal and spiritual anarchy. You might be
wondering about the "(almost)" in the statement in the above paragraph "(almost)
all religion is good." This is because most post modernists have an exception to
this rule. Out of all the religious thought in the world, which is it that these
thinkers would say, "Is not good"? The ones who say truth is "objective" of
course. Those that would say Jesus is "the way, the truth and the life, and no
one comes to
the Father but by (Him)" (John 14:6) or that "God's word is truth" (John 17:17)
or that "everyone who hears (Jesus') voice is of the truth" (John 18:37).
Pilate and the post modernists both say, "What is truth?". Jesus has the answer;
and it is the only one which will make us free (John 8:31,32).
By Jon W. Quinn
The Final Page
From Expository Files 3.9; September 1996
