Truth is subjective to many people and relative to Christians and atheists alike. Subjectivism, as such, is the rejection of objective truth for a wide array of reasons. Atheists and anti-theists generally share a secular creed tacit in nature to declare there is no God. There is no objective truth. There is no ground for Reason. There are no absolute Morals. There is no ultimate Value. There is no ultimate Meaning. There is no eternal hope.1 In the mind of those who hold a worldview of subjectivism, everything is permitted without social constraints—notably, including people who attend and lead churches who do not accept the authority and truth of Scripture as God’s word. To “believers” or “Christians” who live as there is only limited objective truth, do so from a position of upholding the mantra of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a necessary and overriding social doctrine to shape false faith and errant practices.
Anti-theists or atheists outright opposed or indifferent to the existence of God make it clear and consistent that Christians who believe in God are deluded, misguided, or just people who never really grew up. Christians, across the board among every denomination or tradition without exception, hold varying degrees of acceptance concerning the objective truth of the gospel and Scripture. Consequently, most congregations are egalitarian. Very many favor same-sex marriage, tolerate promiscuous lifestyles, advocate homosexuality, ordain female pastors, adopt critical theory, accede to social justice violence, liberation theology, feminism, and numerous other conditions of social decay within the church. In contradiction to Jesus, our Messiah, and Apostles James, John, Peter, Paul, and others were crystal clear about objective truth concerning the gospel, repentance, sin, and Godly living. A survey of social media interaction among too many clergies and laity across a wide swath of denominations, from conservative to liberal ideologies, informs the culture of social positions opposed to objective truth as made clear through the authority of God’s word as His voice of instruction, redemption, and warning to humanity. The poison of subjectivism is thoroughly ingrained within the culture and the church. Where C.S. Lewis informs his readers that beliefs about moral judgments which are exclusively subjective to the individual or community are the poison of subjectivism that eventually leads to the destruction of society, beginning with traditional Christian morality.2
This post offers a defense of objective truth as made clear through the intent and meaning of canonical Holy Scripture as transmitted from ancient manuscripts. Conversely, when Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “what is truth,” he spoke from a position of cynically subjective understanding to show itself as spiritually vacant from Christ and His word as Truth. To define truth is itself an objectivist position. An alternative or relative definition of truth per se to the subjectivist is unwanted or strained at best. According to Aristotle, truth is defined in terms of ordinary people in a pragmatic sense, “To say that what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true; and therefore also he who says that a thing is or is not will say either what is true or what is false.” 3
Jesus defined Himself as the embodiment of Truth (Jn 1:14, 17, 14:6, 1 Jn 5:20). As transliterated from Greek as alētheia, He spoke of Himself in conformance to reality. His being as the embodiment of truth concerns Himself as Messiah and all He claimed, especially about a person’s access to eternal life and God the Father. True God revealed in Christ Jesus was and is made objectively evident “as what is is, and what is not is not, is true,” as Aristotle has put it. Not from subjective rationale stemming from alternate theories of truth to escape revelatory details of actual reality with corresponding metaphysical and philosophical support. “Telling it like it is” corresponds to facts about a matter objectively ascertained independently of a knower and his consciousness. Truth, in general, presupposes commonsense notions of reality, and if anything does not conform to reality, as a practical matter, theory or otherwise, that is by definition false.4 Therefore, a person can consequently frame observation of reality and its corresponding truth in terms of denial or acceptance.
Alternative theories of truth to counter subjectivistic thought, or subjective truth, can offer some perspective as conversations involving disbelief among atheists or unbiblical and sinful behaviors from Christians become evident or come up in conversations. The “what is true for me is not necessarily true for you” holds no credibility in opposition to objective truth. Four theories are generally understood to render universal and religious subjectivism meaningless.
First, a pragmatic theory of truth is Truth that works relatively. It’s a relativistic form of thought that ultimately becomes impractical because it devolves into an unending pursuit of pragmatic or destructive outcomes as an ongoing means to an end until circularity or exhaustion is reached. Second, the empiricist’s theory of truth is what someone would view truth as a function of sensory perception. Without empirical evidence to support rationalistic assertions concerning God and spiritual or supernatural objects of faith, false conclusions are made a priori that such terms and meaning are incomprehensible. Third, rationalists’ view of truth concerns human reason as the judge of reality and must distinctly be understood within cognitive reasoning alone. It is the denial that many truths cannot be proved, such as the law of noncontradiction. Finally, the coherence theory of truth that considers various sets of ideas can yield contradictory conclusions that are actually incoherent. Facts the way they really are can correspond to coherence theory, while a situation evident from another perspective can demonstrate otherwise to produce another contradiction. Coherence theory generally relies upon presuppositions of truth without objective and comprehensive facts as evidentially valid.
Individual abandonment of objective truth would cause a further precipitous decay within society and civilization in general. Atheist and Christian denials of truth as revealed through Creation and God’s word for purposes of convenience, preferences, or social utility erode an ability to comprehend revelation by grace either way. People are not created as necessary beings, but contingent beings grounded by actual alētheic existence with objective truth as a divinely instituted construct and requirement. Without being in fellowship with God, who expects acceptance and adherence to objective truth, both atheists and professing Christians naturally arrive at a place of confusion and misery, often eternally. The objective truth of the gospel and Scripture points to Jesus, who wants people to accept objective truth and come into fellowship with Him and the Father for salvific purposes. People who deny objective truth, or passively dismiss it, have no room for repentance and recognition of sin as made explicit by the authority of Scripture.5 To deny objective truth is what Apostle Paul warns about as a matter of principle with eternally damning consequences (Rom 1:18-32).
Paradoxical truth does not contradict objective truth as revealed and made evident in a natural sense throughout creation. Collisions in faith and reason do not somehow run up against the consistency of logic, but merely point to an inability to process observations and arrive at coherent conclusions due to the limitations of human cognition. While Richard Niebuhr’s (1894-1962) theological work attempted to shape knowledge of objective truth within a relativistic framework, he reasoned that universal truth could be obtained through historical traditions and relativism. Partially to explain the Western drive of denominationalism, he took a specific long-term interest between unity and diversity within the church. It was splintering at a growing rate in the 1950s, and he sought to bring the church into wider cultural acceptance within secular society to suit modern life. 6 The proliferation of church denominations is in the thousands. The largest convention in the U.S. (Southern Baptist Convention) is in a crisis of unity due to its partial acceptance of objective truth. For the same reason, Episcopalian and Lutheran churches have lost hundreds of thousands of members over the course of recent years. Other denominations have become more fragmented.
By further comparison, John Stott (1921-2011), an Anglican priest of evangelical tradition, wrote, “In our post-modern era, the self-confidence of the Enlightenment has gone, the very concept of objective ‘truth’ is rejected, and all that remains are purely personal and subjective opinions.” He wrote this perspective in 2001 to indicate the trajectory of social culture downstream from the church. Consequently, the state of civilization is in upheaval with violence, gender dysphoria, political unrest, political corruption, wars, and corporate greed, unlike any time before in history. Every bit of which serves as evidence of a departure from objective truth as the grounding of faith and morality in obedience to God’s prescriptive order. Consider entertainment and the state of academic institutions. Consider the widespread and deep infestation of subjectivism within local churches at the hands of leaders who believe what God has revealed in His Word but have not surrendered to objective truth to the growing demise of society at large.
Citations
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1 Gary DeMar, ed., Pushing the Antithesis: The Apologetic Methodology of Greg L. Bahnsen (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2007), 67.
2 Dr. Alan K. Snyder, “Lewis’s “Poison of Subjectivism” in Our Day” Southeastern University, Lakeland Florida, Accessed 11 April. 2022. https://ponderingprinciples.com/2017/12/16/lewiss-poison-of-subjectivism-in-our-day/
3 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Books I–XIV; Oeconomica; Magna Moralia, ed. Jeffrey Henderson, trans. Hugh Tredennick and G. Cyril Armstrong, vol. 1, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 1933–1935), 201.
4 Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics, The IVP Pocket Reference Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 135.
5 John R. Franke, “Recasting Inerrancy: The Bible as Witness to Missional Plurality,” in Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, ed. J. Merrick, Stephen M. Garrett, and Stanley N. Gundry, Zondervan Counterpoints Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013), 288.
6 Daniel G. Reid et al., Dictionary of Christianity in America (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990).
7 John Stott, The Incomparable Christ (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2001), 66.
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