NB: WHERE YOU BEGIN VIRTUALLY DETERMINES WHERE YOU'LL END UP.
But the truth that Postmodernists just want to maintain is that the truths of Christianity are only relative or that some things may work for them and therefore be true for them (someone's truth has no power over you and you cannot judge another person's truth). They claim that one person's truth doesn't matter to another and their truth has validity for them. Like they say in the catchphrase: "That may be true for you, but not for me!" People often confuse what's true and truth: facts may be true and we speak the truth when we don't lie, but no one can "know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," like they demand in court, except God. Scripture is the fulfillment and revelation of truth and is the only source of divine truth and can be called "Truth." We can know the truth, Jesus is proof! Jesus said that he who is of the truth will listen to Him (cf. John 18:37), and He came to bear witness to the truth (ibid.). Pilate spoke like a typical Postmodernist and asked, "What is truth?" (v. 38), only not waiting for an answer--is it opinion or feeling?
To Rome, "might made right," (the Iron Rule); there was no universal truth. This refers to objective truth, meaning it's true regardless of doubt or affirmation, and no matter who says it or believes it, regardless of culture, context, or time. Postmodernists deny any possibility of knowing this kind of truth in their "hermeneutic of suspicion." They even go on to say that even if it did exist, we wouldn't communicate it adequately and understand it for sure. Don't confuse truth with "scientific fact" and "justified belief" or knowledge: e.g., that the earth was flat or the sun revolved around the earth, was justifiably believed in the past!
Augustine declared: "All truth is God's truth," Thomas Aquinas added, "All truth meets at the top!" Christians are, above all else, seekers of the truth (cf. 2 Thess. 2:10) and have experienced the truth to set them free (cf. John 8:32). We are responsible for the truth that God gives us and "speaking the truth in love" to another (cf. Eph 4:15, NIV), that means we are sensitive in its appropriateness, tactfulness, application, and timeliness. Wherever we encounter truth, it's because God ordained it as being the source of all truth, God Himself--whether in pure science (and this discipline could've only arisen due to the Christian worldview and the first scientists were Christians!) or in applied sciences, such as political science (just governance), sociology (society and groups), psychology (what makes us human? the study of behavior), biology (what is life?), law (what is just law?), ethics (how do we then live?), economics (who do we produce the most?), philosophy (how do we know something?), theology ("queen of sciences"--studying and knowing God), or history (recording the past using research and evidence). We all have a point of view that reflects on our interpretation of reality--not believing in God or that "God is dead" [or irrelevant and unbelievable], as Nietzsche proclaimed, is equated with there being no absolute truth as a consequence.
If we don't believe absolute truth exists, then we will not believe in a God of Truth with a capital T. There is absolute truth because Jesus came to bear witness of it and is the incarnation or personification of it. But there is no absolute belief! If they insist truth is relative, ask relative to what? We don't all agree as to our interpretations of the truth or the facts. And we have a right to our own opinions, but not to fabricate our own truths or make up so-called "alternative facts." Truth can be defined as what corresponds to reality and this is called the Correspondence Theory of Truth, but Postmodernists deny this and that we can even know an objective truth valid for everyone and all the time. They are, therefore, atheists by consequence, because, if there is no universal truth, there can be no God--at least there's no God's eye view of it or metanarrative (grand story of reality). Truth to them is what works for them or suits their fancy. In pragmatism, the test of an idea is not whether it's true, but whether it works--the results! Things that aren't true can work!
We must realize that all knowledge is contingent and it takes a leap of faith to know anything. And exists something besides matter/energy in the cosmos--intelligence! Scientists are people of faith as much as Christians; they have just accepted a different set of presuppositions to put their faith in. Scientists and science have been wrong before, and are not infallible nor inerrant--but limited. But with God there is nothing contingent; He knows all from the most trivial to the most profound and He chooses not to reveal everything to us, but to remain a God of mystery. Just like the first words of Scripture in Gen. 1:1 ("In the beginning God"), we must begin with God to know anything for sure and explain everything from there (just as Prov. 1:7 (NKJV) says, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge...").
He knows what lies in the future as well as the past, because everything is present with God, and He also knows all possibilities (past, present, and future), or anything that makes sense at all. Christianity is the only faith based on truth. Our faith is revealed because we could know nothing apart from revelation. This is the God we represent and we are to be dedicated to searching for and knowing the truth.
Christians have nothing to fear from the truth because we serve the God of Truth and in Him is no lie, for He cannot lie. Our faith is based on facts, not fable, fiction, myth, legend, or tall tale--but sound historically accurate narrative of eye-witnesses telling the truth with corroboration, and without collusion, and the veracity of their accounts is evidenced by their willingness to die for them, when they were in a position to know if it was the truth or a lie. Many will die for a lie, but they won't die for a known lie. NB: "THE ONLY SYSTEM OF THOUGHT THAT CHRIST WILL FIT INTO IS THE ONE WHERE HE IS THE STARTING POINT." --ATHANASIUS
About Me
- Karl Broberg
- I am a born-again Christian, who is Reformed, but also charismatic, spiritually speaking. (I do not speak in tongues, but I believe glossalalia is a bona fide gift not given to all, and not as great as prophecy, for example.) I have several years of college education but only completed a two-year degree. I was raised Lutheran and confirmed, but I didn't "find Christ" until I was in the Army and responded to a Billy Graham crusade in 1973. I was mentored or discipled by the Navigators in the army and upon discharge joined several evangelical, Bible-teaching churches. I was baptized as an infant, but believe in believer baptism, of which I was a partaker after my conversion experience. I believe in the "5 Onlys" of the reformation: sola fide (faith alone); sola Scriptura (Scripture alone); soli Christo (Christ alone), sola gratia (grace alone), and soli Deo gloria (to God alone be the glory). I affirm TULIP as defended in the Reformation.. I affirm most of The Westminster Confession of Faith, especially pertaining to Providence.