Ever since people starting thinking about the big questions of life, three questions have been central.
These questions concern the nature of reality (metaphysics), truth (epistemology), and values (axiology).
For the greater part, thinkers have asserted that the answers to these questions have a certain objectivity. For example, thinkers may differ on what constitutes fundamental reality, but they generally agreed that there were things ‘out there’ independent of what people thought about them. Likewise with truth. For all the different ways of knowing (such as reason and observations), and for all the troubling questions about perception and truth, the world could be known in some objective sense. When it came to ethics, there is a long tradition of some sense of universal values, such as those undergirding the various present statements on human rights.
Christian thinkers have given plausible and compelling answers to these big questions. Hence a Christian metaphysic that reality consists of two parts that are equally real: the self-defining creator and his dependent creation. A Christian epistemology builds on the knowledge of God being given by revelation in the book of his word (Scripture) and on knowledge of his creation based on observation of the book of his world (science). As for ethics, a Christian ethic builds on the character and word of God: the ‘good’ reflects his character as expressed in his self-revelation.
Many modern thinkers, however, echo a fundamental subjectivity that draws on some early Greek schools. It is increasingly common to hear people speak of ‘my reality’ expressing a very personal sense of what is (un)real. Alongside that, we have multiple artificial realities generated by AI and seen in the parallel universe of video games and such like. The same happens with truth. An objective sense of something being true, irrespective of whether people believe, it is increasingly replaced by ‘my truth’. In this view, personal opinion becomes ‘fact’ which cannot be challenged. As for ethics, that battle is long lost in popular culture where personal preferences rule the day. Of course, this fundamental subjectivity is ultimately self-defeating. Consider the contradiction when someone asserts as a universal truth that there are no universals.
What is the Christian to make of this? Tempting though it is, the path of faith is not simply to assert old objectivities and slip into a purely modernist mindset. For example, a Christian can agree that there is objective reality and truth, while also agreeing that creaturely limitations and the fruits of the Fall mean a certain subjectivity to all human knowing, including our knowledge of God in Scripture.
However, nor can Christians embrace the subjective turn and accept the fundamental subjectivity of reality, truth and values. This world is not an illusion. Our task is to expose the folly of extreme subjectivity while giving a plausible explanation of the God who is there, who speaks and who defines the good.
Much of that is captured in Jesus’ saying that I am the way, the truth, and the life – no one comes to the father except by me (Jn 14:6). To the (post)modern mind these assertions are nonsense. To the eye of faith, they are gold.
David Burke,
November 2023