Can We Know the Truth?
32
Can We Know the Truth?
32eBook
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Overview
In today’s postmodern world truth is increasingly difficult to define and defend. The quintessential questions we find ourselves asking are, “Is there such a thing as truth?” And, if so, “How are we to define what truth is?” The Bible is very clear: all truth comes from God, and he has made it known to us.
In this Gospel Coalition booklet, Richard D. Phillips answers the question, “Can we know the truth?” He points us to the Bible as the revelation of God’s character and his design for our lives. Refuting postmodern objections, Phillips explains the role of truth in the Christian life and demonstrates truth put into practice. This is a great booklet to distribute to those asking if we can know anything with absolute certainty.
Can We Know the Truth? offers a thoughtful explanation for point 2 of the Gospel Coalition’s confessional statement. The Gospel Coalition is an evangelical renewal movement dedicated to a scripture-based reformation of ministry practices.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781433527746 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 03/02/2011 |
| Series: | The Gospel Coalition Booklets |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 32 |
| File size: | 210 KB |
About the Author
Richard D. Phillips (DD, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary) is the senior minister of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. He chairs the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology and coedits the Reformed Expository Commentary. He is also a chairman of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, a council member of the Gospel Coalition, and a trustee of Westminster Theological Seminary.
D. A. Carson (PhD, Cambridge University) is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he has taught since 1978. He is a cofounder of the Gospel Coalition and has written or edited nearly 120 books. He and his wife, Joy, have two children and live in the north suburbs of Chicago.
Timothy J. Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. He is the best-selling author of The Prodigal God and The Reason for God.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The well-known Bible teacher James Montgomery Boice was once traveling by plane when the woman seated next to him discovered that he was a Christian minister. She responded by bringing out all of her objections to the Christian faith. First, she spoke against original sin, how it made no sense and how she would not accept it. Boice listened to her and then replied, "I see, but is it true?"
Next, she went on to the idea of judgment and hell, saying how uncivilized and amoral all of it was. "I see how you feel," Boice answered, "but is it true?"
Finally, she erupted with her great distaste for virtually everything taught in the Bible, how it wasn't modern or appealing to her way of thinking. As Boice began to open his mouth one last time, she interrupted, "Oh, I know, I know, none of that matters! 'Is it true?' you are going to say!"
That conversation took place around the year 1990. I suspect that had it taken place in the year 2010, the ending might well have been somewhat different. Instead of the woman conceding the point that truth is what matters, she likely would have taken the conversation in another direction: "How can you claim that your beliefs are true? No one can really know the truth, so what I feel about it is really all that matters."
The point is that if Christians are to communicate the gospel truth to today's postmodern generations, we will likely have to do more than simply state the truth. In many cases, it will not suffice to hold forth our Bible and walk friends down the famous "Romans Road" series of evangelistic verses. In addition, and often beforehand, we will need to answer questions such as, "Why should I accept that the Bible is true?" and, "That may be true for you, but why should it be true for anyone else?" These are questions concerning epistemology, that is, our beliefs and assumptions about knowledge and truth. Prior to giving our witness to Christian truth, we will often have to present clear Christian views about truth itself.
An evangelical approach to the knowledge of truth will need to incorporate our biblical convictions regarding God, mankind, sin, salvation, and more. Some might object that beginning with our beliefs injects subjectivity into the question, since our theory of truth presupposes certain truths. Our answer is that as Christians we cannot avoid the realities of who and what we are through our relationship to Jesus Christ.
The purpose of this booklet, then, is not to present an objective epistemology that anyone — Christian or not — would adopt. Rather, this presents a stance toward the knowledge of truth that reflects the core beliefs of our gospel faith and validates our experience as Christian believers. In other words, this chapter presents how we as Christians answer questions regarding the knowledge of truth.
Wouldn't it be better, some will ask, to meet our unbelieving neighbors on an objective epistemological common ground? The answer is that no such objective common ground exists that does not require Christians to ignore the lordship of Jesus. This we cannot honestly do. So are we left with nothing to say except the missionally frustrating, "You have to be born again to understand"? Not at all! Just as Christians have a gospel message to share with the world, we also have a God- and Christ-centered answer to important questions about knowing and truth.
Today's Crisis of Truth
We happen to be living in a historical moment of tension between two models or theories regarding the knowledge of truth: the modern and the postmodern. Modernity advanced for generations on the unshakable conviction that unaided human reason would successfully expand knowledge and apply truth. In the same way that Isaac Newton's physics produced knowledge about the truth of gravity, modernity believed in a rational advance toward truth in virtually every domain of life.
This continued until the realities of the twentieth century shook that unshakable conviction. Unaided reason did not turn out so well in the "truths" of Nazi Germany, post–World War II Communism, or Western imperialism. Nor did the science of unaided reason treat the Bible and its gospel very favorably; the rationalist dogma replaced the biblical version of Jesus with various portraits in its own image.
Even when modern-thinking Christians have sought to use rationalism to support the Bible's teaching, thoughtful Christians have found that the rationalist approach to absolute truth lines up poorly with Christian humility, charity, and our teaching about the human problem of sin. As the Christian witness has moved into the twenty-first century, therefore, we have rightly sought to distance ourselves from the rationalism of modernity.
Appreciating Postmodern Insights
In secular thinking, the collapse of confidence in modernity spawned a rebellious adolescent offspring, postmodernity, whose chief aim is deconstructing everything modern. Almost incidentally, postmodernity has also criticized Christian thought. D. A. Carson has catalogued a number of strengths in the postmodern critique, even when it is applied to recent evangelical approaches to theology and apologetics.
First, Christians should acknowledge the role that context plays in anyone's understanding and belief. "Truth" is always held by actual persons, and those persons are deeply shaped by culture, language, heritage, and community. There will be differences, involving both strengths and weaknesses, in how a Westerner will read a certain passage of Scripture and how a sub-Saharan African Christian will read the same passage. For instance, the Westerner is more likely to emphasize the individualist and the African the corporate aspects of the passage.
Regardless of the question of absolute truth itself, postmodernity correctly points out that actual people are finite and therefore have a limited, subjective understanding of truth. As Carson puts it, truth "is necessarily expressed in culture-laden ways and believed or known by finite, culturally restricted people."
Second, we should share postmodernity's concern that truth may become more an object of power than a means for enlightenment. Here is where the Christian doctrine of sin — including our sin — requires that we qualify our approach to truth. Truth does not necessarily imply oppression, but some have oppressed others with truth.
Third, if postmodern critiques cause Christians (among others) to challenge doctrines and views that have become traditional, we can be thankful for the opportunity to reconsider, reformulate, and restate teachings that may have become stale in our practice. This will be seen especially in confessional church bodies that strive to uphold doctrinal dogmas. Fresh questions and even doubts require church leaders to reexamine the biblical basis for their teaching and may result in genuine advances or some needed reformation.
Fourth, Christians may be cobelligerent with postmodernity's assaults against modernism. Carson compares a Christian's appreciation of postmodern arguments to the Western Allies' pact with Communist Russia against Nazi Germany in World War II. It's not that Christians will ultimately agree with postmodernity any more than the Western democracies approved of the Bolsheviks, but Christians may welcome some postmodern arguments against unbelieving rationalism just as the Western Allies were grateful for all those Russian tanks. Carson writes:
Postmodernity has proved capable, in God's providence, of launching very heavy artillery against the modernity which, across four centuries, developed in such a way that increasingly it taunted confessional Christianity. The irony is delicious. The modernity which has arrogantly insisted that human reason is the final arbiter of truth has spawned a stepchild that has arisen to slay it.
Given these positive contributions of postmodern epistemology, we should acknowledge its benefits, and in doing so, we may gain a hearing with some who would otherwise tune us out.
The Postmodern Crisis
This appreciation does not mean that Christian epistemology and postmodern skepticism are a well-suited match. We humbly confess that our knowledge of truth is limited, that our context affects how we communicate and receive truth, and that we may need to rethink traditional dogmas. But unlike many postmoderns, Christians believe that truth is real, not merely constructed.
Evangelical Christians, in particular, believe that truth derives from and is revealed by God. Thus, truth is authoritative. Here is where postmodernity parts company with historic Christianity, for the postmodern view rejects the reality of truth, positing an implicit (and in some cases, explicit) relativism in which nothing is really and finally true. Survey after survey shows that this mind-set prevails in Western culture today. "Do you believe in absolute truth, or is all truth relative?" Clear majorities today, even among professing Christians, affirm the postmodern dogma that nothing is really, absolutely true.
Moreover, postmoderns steadfastly insist that even if there is ultimate truth, finite and flawed men and women can never know the truth authoritatively. The postmodern junta now governing Western culture holds this relativism as its sole absolute: no one has the right to say that he possesses the truth absolutely so that others are absolutely wrong. There may be "my truth" and "your truth," but the postmodern mind dogmatizes against anyone claiming dogmatically to possess the truth (except the postmodern dogma against said dogma). The result is that of W. B. Yeats's famous poem: "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
The crisis of the postmodern position is that it cannot believe or live out its own claims. Postmodernity has nothing to believe, including its own unbelief, despite the aching need of humans to know and believe. R. C. Sproul tells of meeting a young woman on a train who had spent time at a New Age camp. When an interested lady asked what she had learned, the young woman answered, "I learned that I am god." Sproul responded with the following sophisticated apologetic question: "You don't really believe that, do you?" To this, she answered, "Well, not really." So it is with the entire postmodern denial of truth: their claim against truth is itself a truth that postmoderns do not believe, so that postmodern epistemology becomes a maze in which the builder is himself forever lost.
For this reason, when some postmoderns say that there is no truth and that all truth is relative, Christians can respond with Sproul's question to the young woman on the train: "You don't really believe that, do you?" We can fairly easily point out that postmodernists do not live as if truth is relative. After all, the most fervent deconstructionists expect their own words to be understood. They would not write books if they did not believe in the possibility of knowing and understanding. If one challenges their argument against truth, they counter with reasons to uphold the truth of their argument!
One professor made this point after his college class had united against him in insisting that nothing is ultimately true or morally wrong in an objective sense. The next day the professor informed the students that regardless of their performance on the exam they were all going to receive an F. The students objected in unison, "But that's wrong!" and the professor's point against relativism was made. No one can live it, and therefore no one really believes it. This is the crisis of truth in our postmodern times: our society dogmatically rejects truth in theory but cannot live that way in practice.
Behind all truth is the God of truth. Yeats expresses this in the poem I cited above. He decries the center not holding, so that "things fall apart." In the previous line Yeats notes the consequence: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer."
Here is the scope of the postmodern crisis: we cannot hear God's voice without truth. Like the young woman on the train, those who are left to construct their own truth must also make their own gods. On the trajectory marked by relativism, reason gives way to irrationality, and irrationality delivers man into the hands of idols.
A Christian Approach to Truth
Defending truth involves more than protecting ourselves from unbelief. Christian epistemology is also a vital component of our ministry of Christ's love for a world in crisis. In practice, this means that Christians must go farther than simply disproving the postmodern denial of truth. We must articulate a distinctively Christian doctrine of truth based on what God has revealed to us in the Bible and consistent with our experience.
Christianity presents a legitimate third way over against the modern and the postmodern. With the moderns we believe that truth exists and is accessible, though we steadfastly reject that we can exhaustively know truth by our unaided reason. With the postmoderns we are skeptical that finite, fallible humans are the agents of truth, though we insist that truth is real and that we can know it. A successful Christian epistemology, then, not only responds to evangelical Christian belief but also enables us to communicate our doctrine of knowing to a world that both doubts and greatly desires to know truth.
God, Truth, and Reality
An evangelical Christian epistemology begins by affirming that truth corresponds to reality. The external world in which every individual lives is not a world we subjectively construct through our narrow experience. Rather, God created reality and upholds it by his ongoing providential rule.
The basis for this Christian doctrine of real truth is that God exists. This presupposition contrasts with the modern rationalist and the postmodern relativist, who both presuppose that God does not exist. It is not the case that modernists and postmodernists develop their theories without presuppositions. Rather, the modern and postmodern unbelievers presuppose that there is no God and as a result end up in the crisis of irrationality. Christians escape the crisis not at the end but at the beginning of their theory of truth by presupposing, as Francis Schaeffer put it, "the God who is there." Having urged postmodern relativists to consider their crisis resulting from their denial of God, we now invite them to consider the way out of the crisis by presupposing God.
It is, of course, not just "God" that the Christian presupposes, but the God of the Bible. The Holy Scriptures reveal that there is "one God, eternally existing in three equally divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another." Each of these statements bears on the Christian belief in truth. Because there is one God, not many, there is a unity to all that God has made. Because this one God exists in three divine persons, there is communication within the Godhead itself. Because of the Trinity, knowing and revealing are intrinsic to God and therefore to all that God has made.
"God is love," writes the apostle John (1 John 4:7), and the nature of love is to know and be known. Indeed, according to the Bible, the desire of God is for his glory to be known, and the will of each member of the Trinity is to glorify the other divine persons. God's purpose in creation, therefore, is the revealing of his glory. David sang, "You have set your glory above the heavens" (Ps. 8:1). According to Paul, the essence of sin is to see God in his creation and refuse to "honor him as God or give thanks to him" (Rom. 1:21). This is why The Gospel Coalition's Confessional Statement asserts, "He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration."
It is because of our belief in the God of the Bible that Christians believe that truth corresponds to reality. The world is not a mere projection of human minds; rather, God created the world with an objective reality that is grounded in his eternal being. The created things that "declare the glory of God" (Ps. 19:1) must be real in order to accomplish their designed purpose.
Chief among these created things are humans, whom God made in his image so that we might know God and reveal him to the rest of creation. The biblical teaching that God made humans in his image includes our capacity to reason in a way that is analogous to God's reasoning; humans image God not in an unknowing way but through the knowledge of God that is the end of both creation and salvation. Jeremiah's new-covenant promise is that "they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord" (Jer. 31:34). Jesus states, "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God" (John 17:3).
Since God desires to be known in a world that he designed to reveal him, Christians believe that revealed truth is real. God made a real world, and God reveals real truth about himself in and through that world. In short, truth is part of the real world that God made, a world that includes humans as creatures specially designed to receive truth so as to know God.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Can We Know the Truth?"
by .
Copyright © 2011 The Gospel Coalition.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
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Table of Contents
Today's Crisis of Truth, 8,
A Christian Approach to Truth, 12,
Christian Truth in Practice, 20,
Notes, 25,
The Gospel Coalition, 27,