Epilogue
Divine truth that is revealed in Scripture does not change. However, the culture to which its truths are presented does. Think about the challenge of writing a book that presents a rational and unified message over a 2,000-year period from as many as 40 different authors. The message must be meaningful to all people regardless of intellect, social status, personality, or culture throughout all of history. The Bible accomplishes this. Many see this as evidence of the Bible’s supernatural inspiration.
With God and His word standing as the only enduring source of truth, different times and cultures will stand in contrast to that truth in different ways. When this study was originally presented, most Americans believed in objective truth that did not change regardless of circumstances. In the later part of the 20th century, the idea that truth was relative and was the result of how human society evolved took hold first in academic circles then in popular culture. The term for this denial of objective reality is called postmodernism. It stands in stark contrast to the truth claims of the Bible, which are presented as objective and unchanging regardless of culture, time, or circumstance. Let’s explore how to identify these ideas and how they contrast with biblical teaching.
Free Will and Truth
In the time since Chester pulled out of Scripture what it taught about human volition, a more distorted view of free will and objective truth has become prominent in society. Regarding free will, there is a belief held by some philosophers that free will is an illusion. Most who take this view also believe that only the natural or material world exists. They are called naturalists or materialists. Not all naturalists, however, deny free will.
The denial of free will is also a view held by some theologians. They tip the scales so strongly towards God’s sovereignty that they leave no room for people to freely make choices. The point is to recognize that denial of free will is something you, your family, and friends will encounter. This idea stands in contrast to what the Bible teaches. Be alert, as it can come from those who do not believe in God as well as those who do.
Let’s take a moment to review the key ideas of this thinking so that we can identify examples of this philosophy as it takes hold in our world. The naturalist restricts the explanation of the universe to material things. Any explanation of the world that recognizes the non-physical or spiritual realm is seen as invalid. For example, the soul or consciousness according to this view emerges from matter. It is not distinct from matter. Thus, spiritual and supernatural things are illusions that emerge from the physical world. This belief conflicts with Paul’s teaching in I Corinthians 15 about the resurrection body and II Corinthians 5:6-10 where we are told that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
The contemporary line of naturalist thinking called scientism goes like this. Science is the ultimate authority to define truth. Science can only examine the natural world. Nothing exists that cannot be experimentally observed. The mind, consciousness, or soul must have a physical basis because only the natural exists. The brain and consciousness are the result of evolution and its response to its environment. Some naturalists go on to conclude that our ability to choose is deterministic, not a free choice. This means that previous events and decisions determine our choices. Everything is predetermined, even though it feels like we are actually making choices. This line of reasoning concludes that if you run the clock backwards for all choices, you can trace everything back to a first event from which all of history evolves. There is no free will.
The problem with this naturalistic view is that it requires one to accept either a never-ending journey to find a first cause of the universe, a natural one that was uncaused, or the universe is eternal. If one believes in a natural uncaused cause, the universe must have created itself from nothing as Stephen Hawking declared in his book The Grand Design. To avoid a never-ending “peeling back of the onion” to a first cause, our rational mind recognizes something must be eternal, the universe or a creator. Notice the Bible got each part of this problem of origins right before there was modern science. First, the Bible assumes God exists and is beyond the natural world. Second, it declares God to be the eternal being, the only uncaused cause. Third, it says God created the universe out of nothing.
With the rapid growth of STEM careers (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) and their educational grounding in a naturalistic view of the world, this belief will only become more commonplace in our society. The scientific method is a powerful tool to explain the natural world. Scientists like Bacon, Galileo, and Newton, who believed science was worth doing because they believed in God, refined the scientific method. We should not reject it. The point is to recognize what questions science can answer and those it cannot answer. Science is not able to answer questions of faith, morality, purpose, spirituality, destiny, or agency (who did it). Science is limited to physical laws and mechanisms that explain how the world works, not whether there is a mind (who) or purpose (why) behind a mechanism or law.
When one claims that we have no free will, there are sobering implications. First, we have no basis to hold anyone accountable for their choices. All personal choices are pre-determined by past and current environments. Second, the study of free will, which is said to be an illusion, has no value. Third, if there is no free will then faith in God or love between two people loses its emotional benefit, meaning, and authenticity. What good is it to receive trust or love from a person if they give it because they were predetermined to do so rather than out of their free will?
A powerful capacity that comes from being created in God’s image is our ability to think rationally. Our rationality creates at least two significant challenges for those who reject free will and the non-physical world. First, this view provides no rational basis to make a universal truth claim. If we are totally determined and prewired to think the way we do, we would not be free to make a truth statement. Any truth claim would require us to rise above the subjectivity of this world, which would violate naturalism. This creates a self-contradiction for the determinist who makes a truth claim. Second, this view has no basis for us to trust the rationality of our thoughts. If we are the result of random time and chance that seeks survival as its end, then there is no reason to believe an unguided evolutionary process created a rational mind for the purpose of discerning truth. Notice these claims of naturalists are philosophical, not scientific. They cannot be tested, as the scientific method requires.
Finally, let’s pivot from the denial of free will to the redefinition of truth. Not only has denial of free will gained traction in our society, but society has also evolved the standard for what qualifies as truth. The belief that there is no objective truth leaves a void in the human heart that desperately seeks truth in a subjective world.
To fill this void, a post-truth culture that promotes everyone’s personal truth as valid has emerged. This idea claims that our personal experiences permit us to create truth for ourselves. This allows us in one sense to function in God’s image by embracing the need God has put in our hearts for a moral compass (Romans 1:18-23), but it causes great discord in society as one person’s personal truth will inevitably conflict with another person’s truth.
The rational thinking that God has endowed us with does not allow for two opposing truths to both be true. For example, it is not possible to be a married bachelor. This is a logical contradiction. A post-truth culture creates fertile soil for conflicting truth and creates tension in our society and between people. If on the other hand, we recognize that the Creator of the universe provided us with objective, unchanging truth, we have an anchor and a compass to guide our moral thinking that supersedes anyone’s personal truth.
Another result of this concept of truth is that it views any challenge to another person’s personal truth as arrogant and intolerant. This reasoning is logical if there is no objective truth. However, if God has provided us with unchanging, knowable truth, then to claim a personal truth that is in conflict with our Creator's truth is the essence of rebellion. Some find this hard to accept, but this is the result of people going their own way. Isaiah 55:8 sums it up well, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”
As a naturalistic worldview further saturates our educational systems, future generations will find it increasingly difficult to accept that God endowed each of us with the capacity to choose and the responsibility that comes with our choices. That, however, will not change how God created us to feel, think, and act. God has created each of us in His image and as such put into each of us a sense of objective morality and need for spiritual fulfillment satisfied only through a personal relationship with Him. The truths of Scripture described in this study are the key to Christian maturity. They are the foundation to building trusting relationships with each other. Most importantly, understanding and living these truths will create a healthy, living relationship with our Creator made possible only through Jesus Christ’s redemptive work (John 14:6, I Corinthians 15:3-8).