Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Romans, Chapter 1, verses 18 through 20

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VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re excited to be with you as we continue with our recently started series on Anchored by Truth that we’re calling “Truth and Proof.” As we mentioned in our first couple of episodes this series was inspired by a teaching series that Dr. Gregg Alexander did for his Sunday school class a few years ago. And I’m pleased to announce that today we are joined by Dr. Alexander to help us push deeper into why Christians can be so confident that the Christian faith has a firm basis in reason and evidence. Dr. Alexander was a practicing physician for more than xx years but more importantly he has taught an adult Sunday school class for more than 25 years. Dr. Alexander, would you like to introduce yourself to the Anchored by Truth audience?

Gregg: It’s a pleasure to be with you today. I really admire the fact that Anchored by Truth has devoted itself to supporting and demonstrating the inspiration and infallibility of scripture. I am also grateful that you decided to do this series on “Truth and Proof.” As you mentioned several years ago I wanted to help my Sunday school students begin to understand that Christianity is a faith that is not only supported by logic and reason but also that logic and reason properly applied can help lead people into a deeper relationship with Jesus.

VK: We agree. In our first couple of episodes we’ve also mentioned that the primary reason we think apologetics is an important area of study for Christians is because apologetics can be used to support evangelism. And this particularly true in today’s culture when it seems as though we’ve lost some of the common touchpoints about truth and faith that used to be accepted without question.

Gregg: I think that’s true. Years ago, if you said to someone in our nation that such-and-such a principle was important because it was in the Bible, no one thought anything about your statement. But today, if you encounter a non-believer and fall back on the authority of the Bible the other person is likely to say, “well, I don’t believe in the Bible and I don’t accept its authority.” So, then the believer is faced with the question of where do you go from there? Questions like that are why studying apologetics can be very useful for people like us, and be for the eternal benefit of others. If you know why the Bible is authoritative for all persons – not just for believers – and if the other person is a sincere seeker who will listen to you, then there is a chance that that person may be saved – and that is the purpose of apologetics, evangelism, and a big part of the Christian life. Christianity is a faith that is “other-directed.” 1st Chronicles 28:9 says, “for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you . . .” In my series I set out to prove the truth of that verse.

VK: So, in this series on Anchored by Truth we began in the same place as your Sunday school series - with the building blocks of apologetics. We started with the things that everyone can understand regardless of what they already know, or think they know, about religion in general, and Christianity in particular. And last time we spent a lot of our time talking about truth. After all, we want people to understand that the Bible is true and accurate in matters pertaining to fact and history. But emphasizing that the Bible is true would be meaningless if truth didn’t exist in the first place.

Gregg: That’s a very important point for people to understand. Too often today you hear people say something like “you have your truth and that’s fine for you but that’s not my truth.” When people say that, they have committed the sin or equivocation. They have used the word “truth” as an improper substitute for the word “opinion” or “preference.” Real truth is always absolute. It is not subject to whims, opinions, or individual or group preferences. You wouldn’t think that would be a controversial concept but today is often is. One of the most important services the church can provide society today is the simple reminder that truth exists, is knowable, and absolute. People who reject this basic concept not only create peril for language and communication. They are in grave peril for their souls. The Bible clearly teaches the correspondence view of truth. The ninth commandment is, “you shall not give false testimony about your neighbor” (Exodus 2:16), i.e., tell it like it is. Deuteronomy 18:21-22 – “You may say to yourselves, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’ 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken.” I know you covered some of this last time.

VK: We did. So, today we want to continue from where we left off last time. As you’ve mentioned today there are objections to the existence of absolute truth. I know you covered those in your Sunday school class. Why don’t we get into some of what you covered?

Gregg: Well, one frequent objection to the existence of absolute truth is that we can have only probabilities, not certainties. In other words, someone might contend that we can never attain the degree of certainty in our minds that we can be sure anything is true. The response to this objection can be found in that there are certain truths that cannot be reasonably denied. For instance, neither I nor anyone else can deny that I exist. If someone tried to deny that I exist the immediate question would be “what’s the point of making the denial?” Similarly, you cannot reasonably deny that there are no square circles or four-sided triangles. Those things are true formally by definition. Furthermore, something can be absolutely true even if there is not enough evidence to prove it. Evidence, or the lack of it, doesn’t change a fact.

VK: We addressed some similar points in our “Lord of Logic” series which is available through most major podcasting apps. But I think this is a good reminder that the concepts we are discussing now are fundamental to all correct thinking and logic. What are some other objections people use to object to the existence of truth?

Gregg: Another frequent objection to the existence of absolute truth is that comparisons show that truth is relative, i.e., comparisons change depending on what things are being compared. The response to this objection is relative comparisons are absolutely true insofar as they are accurate. In other words the moment you try to state the results of the comparison you are now stating a conclusion you believe to be true, not merely comparatively true. A third objection people make about truth is that we “grow in truth.” The idea here is that truth is not absolute but rather always partial and incomplete. They will often say something like “science proves that the truth is always changing.”

VK: And I will bet that you have an answer to this third objection as well.

Gregg: Well, the response is that our understanding of truth will certainly change but not the truth itself. We learn more from science daily and not just science but from many other intellectual disciplines. But it is not the truth that is changing but our improving awareness of the truths that always existed. We discover truth with science, but we don’t change it. We change from error to truth. When Sir Isaac Newton first stated certain truths about the nature of gravity nothing about gravity changed. Gravity didn’t start behaving differently just because Newton presented a better description of its behavior and relevance within the physical universe. Newton helped us understand the truth about gravity’s effects better the truth about gravity didn’t change in any way. So, again this objection fails as a meaningful critique of the existence of absolute truth.

VK: I’ve heard some people say that the conception that absolute truths exist is unnecessarily constricting. I guess they might say that absolute truth is too narrow an intellectual premise to be, well, true.

Gregg: Like the responses to the first three objections, the response to this objection is straightforward when you think about it. Let’s look at a simple example. What is the correct answer to the math question of 2 + 2? 2 + 2 equals 4 for all people all the time. It always has. It always will. That’s about as “narrow” as it gets, but it’s also true. And the same thing is true for all statements of fact whether they are physical, historical, mathematical, etc. True statements are not just narrow. They’re unique. George Washington was the first president of the United States and no matter how many presidents follow him he will always be the first – the one and only first. And our embrace of the narrowness of truth is not only important. It is also essential to a livable world. The builder who adds 2 + 2 and gets 3 and then proceeds to put a beam in a building that’s too short will very quickly get a reminder of the consequences of ignoring the absolute nature of truth.

VK: What would you say then to people who claim that absolute truth claims are too dogmatic to be acceptable to most people? Today’s society seems to embrace “tolerance” above just about everything else.

Gregg: The first thing we should do is define what it means to be dogmatic. A common definition of dogmatic might be “characterized by or given to the expression of opinions very strongly or positively held as if they were facts.” So, I would say “yes, absolute truth claims are dogmatic, because a true claim is a fact. So, we should treat it as a fact. An objective fact is going to be a fact regardless of subjective feeling about the fact. I want to distinguish, however, between the truth claim, the fact itself, and the truth claimer – the person holding on to the truth. The truth claim itself is “dogmatic” because it is a fact but that doesn’t mean “truth claimers” must be unpleasant in doggedly proclaiming the truth. We can and should be humble and respectful when we hold in a determined way to the truth. Still, the truth is truth even if expressed in the wrong manner; error is error even if expressed humbly.

VK: I think that’s a great distinction. We Christians are called to proclaim the truth with love and concern for others. It’s sometimes said that Christians must be “winsome” as we engage the world. Winsome is an old word that’s hardly ever used anymore. It means charming, cheerful, pleasant, and even joy-creating. So, it’s possible for us to be determined and persistent – dogmatic if you will – in our proclamation of the truth while not having to be unpleasant as we go about it. So, what else do the Anchored by Truth listeners need to know about objections that are raised against the existence of absolute truth?

Gregg: I taught my Sunday school class that in addition to specific objections about the existence of absolute truth, there are also various views and philosophies that deny the absoluteness of truth.

VK: Can you give us an example of what you’re thinking about?

Gregg: A particularly common philosophy or attitude in our day and age that denies the absoluteness of truth is skepticism. Skepticism claims that we should suspend judgment on everything, that we should doubt all truth claims. Anyone who listens to news or so called “educational” programming will quickly realize that skepticism about historic, orthodox Christianity and traditional values and views abounds, though there is certainly plenty of dogmatism on anything that challenges those values. That observation aside, skeptics will assert philosophically that reason demands that we simply must doubt any and all truth claims.

VK: But of course you don’t agree with this claim and neither should any thinking Christian?

Gregg: No, of course not. Skepticism is self-refuting. If we are to doubt every truth claim we must doubt skepticism. Skepticism says we must doubt all truth claims but then tries to exempt itself from its own standard. So, the skeptic wants to claim that skepticism is the only knowable truth yet provides no reasoned basis for supporting its exemption from the standard it establishes.

VK: That does seem to be a real problem. What other philosophies deny the absoluteness of truth?

Gregg: Agnosticism is another philosophy that denies that absolute truth exists. There are two forms of agnosticism. The strong form of agnosticism affirms that all truth is unknowable. The soft form of agnosticism says that at least we can’t know reality even if we can know appearances. I would respond to agnosticism in this way. The “father of modern agnosticism” is Immanuel Kant. All of philosophy was shaken by his success in convincing many others that we can’t know the truth about reality. His philosophy is fascinating, but it is self-defeating. Kant claims as a truth that we cannot know absolute truth. If he is correct in his belief then he – and we – can’t even know the truth of his own statement; and if he is wrong we have no reason to even care about his philosophy.

VK: That was a point that we made many times in our “Lord of Logic” series. The statement “There is no such thing as absolute truth” is self-refuting. Just as you observed about skepticism it fails the very standard it tries to establish.

Gregg: A good rule for Christians to master is: “every negative presupposes a positive.” Let me restate that to make sure our audience gets a chance to absorb it. “Every negative presupposes a positive.” You can’t doubt something, the negative, without there first being the thing you’re doubting, the positive. One obvious example of this is that someone who says, “there is no truth,” presupposes the truth of his own statement. Another very common philosophy that makes a jumbled mess out of truth and the absolute character of truth is pluralism. Of course, pluralism is rampant all around us today.

VK: I think that most people would say that’s a good thing. At least the word “pluralism” sounds like something we ought to support – just about like tolerance.

VK: Pluralism is one of those tricky words. It has a tendency to shift shapes depending on whose using it. Plural simply means “multiple” or “having more than one.” So, in many areas of life, like ice cream flavors, plural choices are a good thing. The problem arises when you add the “ism” to the plural. Accepted literally, “pluralism” means that someone could claim to hold onto views that are directly contradictory. That turns thinking and communication into a meaningless hash of ideas from which neither truth or sense would ever emerge. What’s next?

Gregg: Relativism denies absolute truth. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead held the view that reality has no unchanging forms. This was the opposite of Plato. Whitehead also said that all truth is in the process of changing and is never found because that to which a truth claim is made is always changing, i.e., the essence of reality is change. Whitehead’s philosophy is the source of Process Theology – which is very common in some liberal seminary thinking, and championed by theologians like John Cobb.

VK: And like pluralism, relativism is all around us today not only in religious discussions but also in political and cultural ones.

Gregg: And it is equally hazardous to your mental health and fitness in all of its manifestations. Like the other critiques which we have been making, relativism either affirms that relativism is absolutely true – in which case it is self-defeating – or else its claim is just another relative statement for which there is no reason to believe it or accept it. As you said relativism reduces attempts to think clearly and form a coherent worldview into an impossible hash of irreconcilable claims and concepts. Well, a final philosophy that rejects the absolute nature of truth that we should discuss is post-modernism. Post-modernism avoids all truth claims and makes no truth claims. This is a radical extreme of relativism and pluralism. The idea of post-modernism – which is seen in literature, philosophy, and even architecture – is seen in the atheist Jacques Derrida, the father of “deconstructionism,” i.e., meaning anything expressed by one person can be, and should be, deconstructed by the hearer and reconstructed to meet his needs. Therefore, language is understood in the context of the hearer, not the speaker, and there is no objective meaning.

VK: Yikes. The dangers of stripping the objective meaning from words – or saying that words only mean what the hearer says they mean – pretty much does away with responsible conversation. Anything anyone says can be misconstrued or misinterpreted if the hearer simply wants to. That will certainly have a chilling effect on people being able to have meaningful dialogues on any subjects other than trivial ones.

Gregg: That’s absolutely correct. With Derrida simple conversations can have disastrous implications for any and all speakers. Moreover, any meaningful philosophy comes to an end, for his philosophy self-destructs as it deconstructs. Post-modernism fails because it either makes a truth claim – which would be contradictory and self-defeating – or it makes no truth claim, and is not, therefore, in the game of truth. By its own keywords – “whatever,” “so what” – it mocks truth and falls apart. Ideas have consequences, and we use language to express ideas. Communication and conversation are essential to learning and growth so when only one side controls the conversation progress and learning stop. Listen to these words: “Let me control the textbooks, and I will control the state . . . when an opponent declares ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I will calmly say, ‘What are you? You will pass on. Your descendents, however, stand in the new camp.’” Who made that statement? Answer: Adolph Hitler. The rise of post-modernism is a truly ominous turn in the spread of truth including Biblical and gospel truth.

VK: That’s unbelievably sad and unbelievably dangerous. If, as you said, post-modernism constricts or stops the spread of truth ultimately it stops the spread of knowledge. Yet, the spread of knowledge, scientific and otherwise, is what produced a modern world where we enjoy so many benefits of the advancements in technology and science.

Gregg: I told my Sunday school class to give some thought for a few minutes to the times of the Old Testament - to go back to some of the things in recorded history that most people agree on. Secular history tells us that there were civilizations in Egypt and Babylon and China and Canaan and the Mediterranean area we call Greece around the timeframe of 2500-2200 BC. Abraham was born around 2000 BC. The Exodus was around 1500-1450 BC; the Law given to Moses was probably around 1450 BC; David becomes king around 1000 BC; the last book of the OT, Malachi, around 400 BC. And then God was “quiet” for 400 years. In the time frame of the Old Testament there were the Empires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. In the 400 “quiet years,” i.e., the “Intertestamental Years,” there emerged the Empires of Greece and Rome. Obviously, a lot was going on in the world. The Parthenon was built in 442 BC; the Great Wall of China was built between 263-233 BC. My point is this: people knew how to think in those days. There was nothing backward about their intellectual capacity. They didn’t have the technology that we do but they built impressive empires and structures. And a large part of the reason we have the technology that we do is because we “stand on the shoulders of giants” who have come before us. They people of those times knew that truth existed and despite a lack of the technology that we have today they still had accomplishments that cause us to marvel today.

VK: That’s a great point. Despite our technological sophistication our generation doesn’t have a monopoly on the ability to reason and make accurate observations about the created order. We may be able to send messages around the world in an instant whereas it took the ancients days or weeks. But that doesn’t mean the content of our messages necessarily makes more sense. Transmitting nonsense or error more quickly doesn’t mean error becomes truth or nonsense makes sense. We have improved technological abilities today but that does not mean we have improved reasoning skills. Nor, sadly does it mean that people have become more virtuous or godly. Thankfully, there are many, many people being saved around the world every day but those believers are not more saved than those that Jesus preached to. And the lost today are going to be just as lost. That’s the primary reason we do these Anchored by Truth episodes. We want to save as many as people as possible and they only way to do that is to point them to the real “Anchor of Truth.”

Gregg: Of course those of us who do present the gospel are well aware that we can never be the reason anyone is saved – that’s God’s job. But we can introduce one of the parties – the unbelieving one – to the other One. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44); and He said, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32). That’s the good news. The sobering news is what was included in the scripture you used in the opening. Certainly, some of the most sobering verses in the entire Bible are what Paul said in Romans 1:20 – “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” That part about unbelievers having no excuse should motivate us to increase our efforts in evangelism and motivate those who haven’t accepted Christ as their Savior to think very carefully about that choice.

VK: Well, sounds like a great time to pray. Today let’s listen to a prayer for restoration of the worship of the one true God to our communities and nation since it is only through that restoration that our unsaved friends and neighbors have the hope for salvation.

---- PRAYER FOR RESTORATION OF THE WORSHIP OF THE ONE TRUE GOD

VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!”

(Bible Quotes from the New International Version)

Romans, Chapter 1, verses 18 through 20