Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

The objective truth of Divine Revelation steers us away from the dangers of postmodern relativism.

The late great Sir Roger Scruton once advised that if a person “tells you there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative’, they are asking you not to believe them. So don’t.”

Sound advice for those listening to anyone who butchers the adage on beauty by rendering it: “Truth is in the eyes of the beholder.”

This was preached by Whoopi Goldberg’s character, Guinan, in the 7-year-long 80-90’s TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Scruton’s point wasn’t just satirical.

If Next Gen’s screenwriters were right, and truth is in the eyes of the beholder, how can anyone today claim, declare, or police anything as misinformation, or disinformation?

If truth and morality are purely subjective, then there is no concrete basis on which anyone can declare anything to be either good, evil, right, or wrong.

Herein lies the danger of relativism.

A Half-Truth is a Whole Lie

The post-modern basis for measuring what is or isn’t either of those things, comes down to whether a person or idea conforms to their prevailing groupthink, party line, and/or approved political narrative.

The alleged enemy, then, is that which does not conform to any of these three things.

The consequence of rejecting objective truths is the embrace of subjective falsehoods.

In contemporary culture, these subjective means of defining terms, turn the label “domestic terrorist” or “anti-vaxxer” into a means of political persecution. Just as phobias are politicised in the reckless dismissal of reasoned arguments against Islamism, and the KGBTQLAA++ religion.

Notice how the current occupants of the White House deploy subjective relative terms against their political opponents — such as was expressed both in a recent press conference, and Joe Biden’s recent ‘Primetime Address’, where the current president of the United States divided the country along the lines of: anyone not a Democrat, is a domestic terrorist.

 

Man vs God

Galatians 5 warns us of the danger in replacing revelation with relativism.

Paul notes how the subjective words of man often war against the objective Word of God.

Revelation is not opposed to reason; it is by its objective presence in the world, a war on relativism.

We are, Paul commands, to keep in step with the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of the age. An imperative echoed in Romans 12:2 and John 16:13.

Where revelatory fact calls on human faith, reason and responsibility, man’s sovereign subjectivity demands we allow the blind to lead the blind.

This is why Whoopi’s statement “truth is in the eyes of the beholder” — aka subjective relativism — is rife with holes. Relativism is the lifeblood of tyranny. Its rules benefit the few at the expense of the many.

Whereas God’s revelation and His sovereign Kingship are THE blueprint for existence, both now and for eternity.

Relativism’s ambiguous, subjective, whim-of-the-moment laws are the blueprint for non-existence.

To submit to the latter is to submit to a house of slavery, the former, a house of freedom.

“It is,” Paul states, “for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1; see also Romans 8:15)

Mathematician John Lennox, in his defence of the historicity of the Book of Daniel, wrote:

“At the heart of post-modernism lies a patent self-contradiction. It expects us to accept, as absolute truth, that there are no absolute truths.”

He said, there is a “pick and mix” trend “found in cultures and societies throughout history that takes something of absolute value, and reduces it to something of relative value.”

Faith and Reason

Lennox goes on to argue that Nebuchadnezzar’s encounter with God’s revelation proves that God’s revelation engages man’s ability to reason.

When the Babylonian demi-god’s advisors gave advice based on their subjective reading of the dream, God revealed the meaning to Nebuchadnezzar through Daniel by way of faith, reason, and revelation.

Daniel wasn’t guided by emotional reasoning — his faith and reason were guided by revelatory facts.

God’s self-revealing is the counter-cultural flip of man’s primeval claim to be god, or to know who God is outside of revelation.

This is what some have called God’s disrupting grace.

His objective Word — the Theos logos — existing as a direct challenge to man’s ideas, imagination, ideologies, and idols.

The counter-cultural power of revelation is that God’s sovereign Word spoken to man from outside himself, is inherently opposed to the subjective sovereignty of the post-modern relativist paradigm.

God chooses to speak to man. Man does not get to say who or what God is.

Instead, God’s revelation engages human reason, and invites us to have a faith that seeks understanding.

The unique voice of transcendence fulfilled in the uniqueness of Jesus Christ lays claim to humanity.

Here the one true God wars against the false gods of the Ancient Near Eastern pantheon, by thundering, and thundering still:

“I will be your God, and you will be My people.”

___

Photo by Naassom Azevedo.