Reading
Truth in a Postmodern World

I have posted on postmodernism in the past. Here is an excellent book that delves into truth in the postmodern world. You will obtain a feel for the different approaches to truth, in the view of the four contributors, which return it to its proper place in the world today. Hopefully this preview with encourage you to read the book and come to grips with this “truth question” that dominates our culture.

Whatever Happened to Truth? Andreas Köstenberger, Gen. Editor, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005)

This is a compilation of essays that were first plenary addresses at the 56th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. A generation earlier, Francis Schaeffer lamented “truth as truth is gone…relativism reigns.” And, Schaeffer understood that once truth was banished from the realm, our everyday lives would be chaotic and unintelligible. Is that not where we are?

In this work, there are four essays about rising up to make a new case for truth so that modern man can be lead out of the wilderness of truth-less-ness and re-establish order is his life. The essays express four different approaches to the dilemma. Editor Köstenberger approaches the issue Biblically using Pilate’s well known question to Jesus on the nature of truth in John 18:38.He looks at the struggle for truth both with the Jewish religious leaders as well as Pilate the secular leader. The Jews, denying Jesus as the Messiah, reject the truth; Pilate wanting to keep control, evades the truth. Jesus’ various “trials” pit the “truth of power” against the “power of truth”.

R. Albert Mohler speaks to the cultural problem created for truth by the postmodern cultural turn. Mohler sees postmodernism deconstructing truth through linguistic analysis that tries to undermine the meaning of words which leads to a therapeutic culture, a decline in authority other than self and the ultimate displacement of morality. This is all an enormous challenge to Christians requiring them to reassert a robust understanding of truth. Without such, “Christ will not in fact be glorified, the Bible will not be obeyed, the Gospel will not be preached, and the Kingdom will not be extended.”

JP Moreland lays the demise of truth on postmodernism and its philosophical dishonesty. Moreland sets forth 5 problems of postmodernism: 1] misunderstanding of Cartesian certainty as it applies to knowledge and truth; 2] confusion about psychological and rational objectivity; 3] rejection of a belief structure with proper basic beliefs; 4] misunderstanding of where truth is found in linguistic structures; and 5] confusion about perception and intentionality. All these problems have lead to the current view of truth as a social construction rather than what actually corresponds to reality.

Kevin Vanhoozer completes the essays with a very challenging look at what has heretofore been the accepted evangelical propositionalist view of truth he calls the Hodge-Henry hypothesis. To Vanhoozer textual meaning cannot be reduced to propostions only and the inerrancy of Scripture is not in itself a hermeneutic. He finds some merit in the postmodern criticism of truth cast in the propositionalist way. For Vanhoozer truth involves proposition and action. He claims the Bible is theodrama whereby Scripture is the “script” and we are the “recipients” receiving doctrine and direction on how to live as Christians. Truth is the fit between text, how we live and reality; the key is proper interpretation of the various literary forms of the text so as to properly act out the teachings.

Whichever position appeals to you, these men provide trenchant analysis of the need for truth. Though their approaches differ, they all agree that there is truth in Scripture and Christ; that truth can be known and that it is the responsibility of Christians to be advocates of Christian truth as the only truth in the world of relativism long ago predicted by Francis Schaeffer. May we be so!