Ask Augustine with Dr. Paul Tambrino
Ask Augustine is a weekly column where professor/author Dr. Paul Tambrino discusses various theological questions with wit, clarity and substance.
Question #55 – In Today’s Postmodern World, Who Is to Say Who Is Right and Who Is Wrong – Or Whether “Truth” Even Exists?
Indeed in the postmodern world, what counts as truth is how you feel about it and what you do with it. “Truth” has become subjective, multiple and relative.
As a result, in the postmodern world, religion is in, but truth is out. It seems that many have discovered, in an almost giddy happiness, that religion (or better still spirituality) once again is the in thing.“Few people ask anymore, What do you believe about this? Or what do you think about this? Instead the question is, How do you feel about this?”
Books on angels sell like latté at Christian bookstores. It does not seem to matter that the angels about whom most people talk are virtually indistinguishable from the gods and goddesses of our theological ancestors in Europe, Africa and Asia.
In the postmodern world there are many “correct or right answers” to most questions, regardless of the context.
What postmodernists concentrate on is feeling and relating, for that alone makes their postmodern world worth living.
Few people ask anymore, “What do you believe about this? Or what do you think about this?”“In Christianity truth does not come initially through the power of human reason, because reason can never enlighten on its own. Instead truth arises out of the insight provided by “revelation,” which in turn, may be, and often is, substantiated by reason.”
Instead the question is, “How do you feel about this?” In the past what was true or untrue had been based on fact, on what is; but in postmodernism, each individual, based mainly on how one “feels about it,” defines truth.
Instead of churches reforming in accordance with the Word of God, churches have been conforming to the values of secular culture, and thus are deforming by modern, relativistic thinking.
Truth based on fact has been replaced by the tyranny of individual preferences.
Those considered heretics in our postmodern age are: (1) those who insist that there is a truth of God’s law (a natural law) that underlies all of creation; and (2) those of us who hold to our duty as creatures of our God, and as servants of our Savior to discern that truth, and then in the light of that truth, reform both our personal lives and the very structure of the world of human knowledge and experience.“Christianity does not separate faith from knowledge. We believe so that we might know. It is only out of faith that we gain knowledge of the truth that flows from the One whom we know in faith.”
In Christianity truth does not come initially through the power of human reason, because reason can never enlighten on its own.
Instead truth arises out of the insight provided by “revelation,” which in turn, may be, and often is, substantiated by reason. For Christianity, truth is objective, singular and absolute.
In the Christian world there is only one correct or right answer within the context of any question.
Furthermore, the correct or right answer arises out of the illumination of God’s Word revealed in the sacred Scriptures and pointing to Jesus Christ without whom nothing in this universe had been created (John 1:3) and in whom all things finally hold together (Colossians 1:17).
Christianity does not separate faith from knowledge. We believe so that we might know. It is only out of faith that we gain knowledge of the truth that flows from the One whom we know in faith.
The challenge then for Christians (in this postmodern world that increasingly dismisses the possibility of a single, objective, and absolute truth; a world where even scholars place the word “truth” in quotation marks as if to question its validity; a world where “feeling” and personal choice reign supreme over God’s Word of creation and revelation) is to stand fast for the One who is the Truth.
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