Due to sin - our knowledge is subjective, selective and incomplete
God desires to be known in a world that he designed to reveal him, Christians believe that revealed truth is real. God made a real world, and God reveals the real truth about himself in and through that world. In short, the truth is part of the real world that God made, a world that includes humans as creatures specially designed to receive truth so as to know God.
But the Bible’s teaching involves more than creation and salvation. The Bible also teaches that humans fell into sin and subsequently corrupted their nature and society. So sin prevents humans from receiving the truth. Here postmodernity prudently points out that even if there is the real truth, humans may not be able to know the truth truly.
There are two reasons for this limitation. First, humans are finite, even apart from sin; humans can know truth only partially, so their knowledge is subjective, selective, and incomplete. Second, humans are sinful. When we add the problem of sin, humans are no longer able to know truth truly at all.
In rebellion against God, sinful humans tend to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18 NASB). Paul went so far as to say that man in his sinful nature “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them” (1 Cor. 2:14). How, then, can Christians speak of knowing the truth after humans fell into this dreadful condition?
The answer to the problem of sin is the good news that Jesus saves us from our sin. Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose, I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). Jesus called himself “the light of the world” (John 8:12) because he saves sinners out of the darkness of ignorance and unbelief.
The answer to the problem of sin is the good news that Jesus saves us from our sin. Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose, I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). Jesus called himself “the light of the world” (John 8:12) because he saves sinners out of the darkness of ignorance and unbelief.
Not only did Jesus come to reveal the glory of God in his incarnate manhood (see John 1:14; 14:9), but he also sends the Holy Spirit to animate the spirits of sinful men and women to know and believe the truth. Thus, in the same passage where Paul directly states that sinful humans cannot know truth, he reveals that God’s Holy Spirit solves this problem by giving new life to undeserving sinners: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world,” Paul explains, “but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12).
In creation, fall, and salvation, the Christian doctrine of truth flows from the reality of God. God created the world to display his glory, and he created humans to know him and reflect his glory. Sin involves rejecting the truth revealed about God and thus perverts how humans receive the truth. Salvation takes place through God’s revealing the truth about Jesus Christ (see 1 Pet. 1:23) and then progressively enables sinful humans to know and accept the truth.
It always remains true, as Herman Bavinck stated, that it is “impossible for God fully to reveal himself to and in his creatures, for the finite does not grasp the infinite.” For this reason, Christians freely admit the limitations of finitude, in addition to our ongoing struggle with sin, that keep any man or woman from knowing truth perfectly or completely.
In creation, fall, and salvation, the Christian doctrine of truth flows from the reality of God. God created the world to display his glory, and he created humans to know him and reflect his glory. Sin involves rejecting the truth revealed about God and thus perverts how humans receive the truth. Salvation takes place through God’s revealing the truth about Jesus Christ (see 1 Pet. 1:23) and then progressively enables sinful humans to know and accept the truth.
It always remains true, as Herman Bavinck stated, that it is “impossible for God fully to reveal himself to and in his creatures, for the finite does not grasp the infinite.” For this reason, Christians freely admit the limitations of finitude, in addition to our ongoing struggle with sin, that keep any man or woman from knowing truth perfectly or completely.
Yet by virtue of God as creator and revealer, Christians insist that there is the truth, that truth corresponds to God and his created reality, and that we may know the truth because God has revealed himself to us in his creation.
So how does the Christian answer the postmodern unbeliever who simply denies that God exists and thus denies that truth exists? Francis Schaeffer recounts one answer from a conversation he had with a small gathering of college students. One of the students vehemently insisted that there is no truth. Schaeffer wanted to make him see that however much he said there is no truth, he could not live as if his statement was true.
If there is no real truth, there is no real morality either. “Am I not correct,” Schaeffer asked, “in saying that on the basis of your system, cruelty and non-cruelty are ultimately equal, that there is no intrinsic difference between them?”
So how does the Christian answer the postmodern unbeliever who simply denies that God exists and thus denies that truth exists? Francis Schaeffer recounts one answer from a conversation he had with a small gathering of college students. One of the students vehemently insisted that there is no truth. Schaeffer wanted to make him see that however much he said there is no truth, he could not live as if his statement was true.
If there is no real truth, there is no real morality either. “Am I not correct,” Schaeffer asked, “in saying that on the basis of your system, cruelty and non-cruelty are ultimately equal, that there is no intrinsic difference between them?”
The man confirmed that Schaeffer was correct. Hearing this, another student took a kettle of steaming water that was about to be used to make tea and held it over the unbeliever’s head. When the atheist demanded an explanation, the student reminded him that since he did not believe in any real difference between cruelty and non-cruelty, he should not mind having the boiling water poured over him.
The man who denied truth raced out of the room, thus proving Schaeffer’s point: the person who denies God and thus has no basis for the existence of truth simply cannot and does not live out his doctrine. “God shuts us up to reality,” Schaeffer explained. “We cannot escape the reality of what is, no matter what we say we believe or think.”
Phillips, R. D. (2011). Can we know the truth?. (D. A. Carson & T. J. Keller, Eds.) (pp. 14–16). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
The man who denied truth raced out of the room, thus proving Schaeffer’s point: the person who denies God and thus has no basis for the existence of truth simply cannot and does not live out his doctrine. “God shuts us up to reality,” Schaeffer explained. “We cannot escape the reality of what is, no matter what we say we believe or think.”
Phillips, R. D. (2011). Can we know the truth?. (D. A. Carson & T. J. Keller, Eds.) (pp. 14–16). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
