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How to Recognize the Truth
In John 18:38, Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" That question is as current today as it was in Pilate's time. In a post-modern world, few people believe that truth can be known. How did the most well educated generation in the world's history end up giving up its belief in truth? As with all practical and doctrinal problems, it all really began in Genesis 3:1-6. Satan appeared to Eve in the Garden of Eden and asked her, "Has God said?" Satan asked Eve to evaluate for herself whether God was right. Instead of living as God's vassal in God's world view, Satan asked Eve to be independent and to figure out the reality for herself. Then he asked her to reject God's claims and God's sovereignty. Satan urged Eve to become an autonomous ruler of the earth instead of God's vassal. Pain, trouble, and confusion have come to the world both because Eve chose intellectual autonomy and because Adam chose Eve instead of God. Their choices have made it very hard for people to find the truth on their own. Having rejected a view of the world that grew from a vassal relationship with God, the human race has tried to find truth, values, and ethics by itself. How do people decide what to believe?
SEEKING TRUTH: CHOOSING BELIEFS AS AN ACT OF WILL How do people decide what to believe? People reach decisions about truth in several ways. First, almost everyone sometimes just makes a choice about what to believe. Often, people have little evidence for the accuracy of their beliefs. They simply make a decision and stand on it. You can see this in Eve's decision to decide for herself the nature of truth. Since Eve's day, this has been a basic human way to think, and it may not be going too far to see it as man's desire to replace God. Without realizing it, we may try to imitate God by being the One who has the right to declare the nature of reality. That may be why some people get so angry when others disagree with them. The question is authority. If I declare something to be true and you declare that I am wrong, you are challenging my right to be the one who can declare the nature of truth. That challenges my pride and my self-concept. When we react that way, we are really claiming that others should respect our authority and perhaps even treat us as if we were a shadow of the divine. That's a strong statement, but since the fall, it is usually deep in the human soul. It's the root from which pride grows, and pride is the basic and fundamental human sin. Far too often, this kind of self-proclaimed authority has shaped the academic discussion. I saw an example of this at a theological conference a year or two ago. I listened to a set of papers about the relationship between science and religion. The section was chaired by a psychiatrist who taught in the field. After hearing the papers, I suggested an example that illustrated the difference between science and religion. I described a case where I had seen a demon driven from a child under circumstances that could be nothing other than that. I suggested that science could describe the nature of the child's actions before and after the demon was driven out. Science could describe how long the change of behavior lasted, but science could never explain why the change occurred. My suggestion was first met with ridicule. I noted that there were two things that were characteristic of almost every religion on earth: a belief in an afterlife, and a belief in the significance of unseen spiritual forces. So ridicule was inappropriate. I explained again why the circumstances allowed no other interpretation, and I suggested that some explanation for the event was needed by those who would ridicule it. With no first hand knowledge of the situation, the psychiatrist invented a story of what must have happened and declared that it had to be true because of the psychiatrist's authority. When I explained why the proposed model could not be correct, the psychiatrist became angry because I had challenged professional authority. When we declare something to be true simply on the basis of our own authority, are we really trying to supplant God as the one who decrees reality and truth?
SEEKING TRUTH: WORLD VIEWS THAT SHAPE OBSERVATIONS Another problem with the academic world is that its discussions grow from assumptions and world views that may be of limited validity. Each author selects facts that fit into his or her world view and then presents the combination of world view and facts as truth. Joshua Ramo discussed this problem in his book The Age of the Unthinkable, (New York: Little, Brown, 2009, 38-40). Ramo discussed a speech given by Friedrich August von Hayek in 1974 when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Economics. Hayek titled the speech "The Pretence of Knowledge." He argued that economists commonly pretended that very complex phenomena were simple enough that they could hold reality within the intellectual structures that they had created. Hayek argued that reality was far too complex for that to be possible. Hayek argued that it was very dangerous to accept uncritically claims that appeared to be scientific. Ramo quoted Hayek as concluding, "If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible." (p.39) So much of what is presented as academic truth today pretends to be for more comprehensive than it actually is. Within the world of biblical studies, an example of this problem can be seen in an article that Richard Friedman wrote in 1996 titled "Some Recent Non-Arguments Concerning the Documentary Hypothesis." (87-101 in Michael V. Fox, et al, eds. Texts, Temples, and Traditions. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996). Friedman's article discussed the documentary hypothesis. If you don't know what that is, check the Key Terms link on this web site. Friedman began his essay with these words.
What are the assumptions behind this statement? Friedman assumes that the authorship of the Pentateuch is a "problem." Then he claims that there are almost no scholars on earth working on the "problem" who would believe that the Pentateuch was written by one person. Well, OK, but the Evangelical world does not for the most part see the authorship of the Pentateuch as being a "problem." Other than a few cases of editing like the account of Moses' death in Deuteronomy, Moses wrote the Pentateuch. The Evangelical Theological Society has over 3,000 members. Most of them hold professional positions teaching or preaching. Full members of the society have masters degrees or doctorates in the field. All ETS members sign a statement every year that they accept the inerrancy of the biblical text, and the idea of inerrancy is almost completely incompatible with the documentary hypothesis. Few members of ETS would accept the documentary hypothesis in any form. Friedman's claims seem to ignore the whole conservative wing of scholarship and to limit significance to those who share his assumptions. The rest of Friedman's article attempted to refute recent attacks that have been raised against the documentary hypothesis by conservative scholars like Kitchen and Millard. Friedman's arguments had some merit. It is almost as hard to refute a complex system as it is to prove it correct. In the end, the documentary hypothesis can neither be demonstrated nor refuted. It is supported or opposed on the basis of the presuppositions brought to the evidence. Having said that though, the actual evidence used to support the documentary hypothesis is far less compelling than the evidence used to argue against it. It is only a matter of time before the whole model blows away on the dust of history. Really important theological ideas are accepted or rejected by faith. The fundamental question is whether people submit to God and to His Word or subject the Word of God to their own authority. Does God determine the nature of His Word and His world, or do people determine the nature of the Word and the world through the exercise of their reason? That is the most important division in the academic world.
SEEKING TRUTH FROM AUTHORITY FIGURES Another way that people decide what they believe is to appeal to the authority of others. You can see this in Eve's choice to believe Satan. Having rejected God's authority, people look for another authority to take His place. We often choose to believe things because of the identity of the person who makes a claim. That's why actors and sports figures are so often used on television to sell everything from soap to insurance. People hunger for the security that comes from accepting an authority, and that hunger is rooted in their inner hunger for God. In an academic context, the woods are full of people who appeal to the authority of other scholars who have academic status. Friedman's article mentioned above seems partly to be an appeal to the authority of the large number of mainstream (liberal) scholars who accept the documentary hypothesis.
SEEKING TRUTH FROM THE BALANCE OF THE EVIDENCE Another way that people try to determine the truth is to weigh the evidence and decide which case is stronger. While this should characterize well educated people, everyone does it to some degree. Which is a better pick up truck, a Ford or a Chevy? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each vehicle? Which football team is more likely to win the next game? Questions like these require balancing a lot of factors. They often give little certainty, and presuppositions strongly impact conclusions. Obviously, the Vikings are a better football team, but few outside of Minnesota would agree. If applied in an academic context, this method may ask the causes of the American revolution or the date of Israel's exodus from Egypt. The debates are endless. The desire to balance rival forms of evidence is at the heart of any search for truth. Yet when the whole attempt is based on mistaken presuppositions, only a limited amount of truth will be found. If the most important evidence is unknown, balancing rival available forms of evidence may lead only to a choice of errors. Even the most honest and thorough attempt to balance evidential claims may only limit the mistakes that are made and not lead to reality. It is not uncommon for fierce debates to swirl around the case for three or four academic models used to explain the same evidence even though all of the models are incorrect. A related issue is that an analysis of the evidence can only lead to conclusions supported by the evidence. While that seems like a good thing, it can in some ways be problematic. Most of the really important questions can not be proven one way or another by the existing evidence. George Mendenhall commented on this problem. He noted that there was a huge gulf between archaeology and theology that could not be bridged. Mendenhall argued that neither archaeology nor theology alone could lead to an understanding of the Bible (George E. Mendenhall, "Between Theology and Archaeology." Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 7 (1978): 28. Archaeology may show that a city was destroyed, and it may give a fairly good idea when it was destroyed. However, archaeology can rarely determine who destroyed it or why it was destroyed. Archaeology can not comment on Abraham's covenant with God or Christian claims that Christ rose from the dead. Almost all of the really important questions are not capable of being answered evidentially and must be based on faith. That is just as true of the documentary hypothesis as it is a belief in biblical inerrancy. The documentary hypothesis assumes the existence of redactional levels like J, E, D, and P. None of those can be proven from the evidence. The documentary hypothesis is still simply an educated guess accepted or rejected by faith commitments.
TRUTH AND VERIFICATION The problem with an evidential analysis is that it often leads to surprisingly little certainty while the field demands certainty. One of the most common demands in academia today is that anything must be verifiable if it is to be believed. That demand is assumed to be at the heart of scholarship. If a truth claim can not be proven correct, it can not be accepted. That is at least the theory. Actually, the demand for verifiability is usually a weapon used to attack other positions. Scholars tend to assume that their own positions are verifiable although the evidence supporting their conclusions may be tenuous at best. In practice, their positions are often verified by their own authority as scholars. They then demand that the positions of those who disagree must be verified, and such verification is usually impossible. Much of the time, there are just too many ways that the same evidence could be understood. When that is true, each proposed interpretation of the evidence becomes at least partly speculative. While most scholars claim to reject speculation as unverifiable, the reality is usually far different. Speculation supported by academic status is the ground from which scholarship grows. N. Wyatt recognized this fact when he wrote:
Wyatt wrote these words to defend himself against criticism for speculating about the evidence. Yet his words are true. Few people are epistemologically self-conscious enough to realize the extent that their own beliefs grow from guesses that are only partly justified by the evidence, and few people grasp honestly the limitations of the evidence behind their claims. In mainstream biblical studies, the demand for verification is applied especially to the Bible. The mainstream academic community assumes that the Bible is wrong because it was written for religious reasons. If anything in the Bible is to be accepted, it must be verified and proven true by independent evidence. It is not good enough to make a strong circumstantial case that the biblical narrative could be correct. If there is any way that the evidence could be used to deny the truth of the biblical narrative, the biblical account must be rejected as unverifiable. That claim is then presented as the scholarly way to view the Bible, and those who simply believe the text are dismissed as naive. It is striking that most of the important texts from antiquity contain a religious element. Yet that level of skepticism is rarely applied to the Annals of Thutmose III or similar ancient historical texts.
SEEKING TRUTH, SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE, AND SOPHISTICATION One of the most important factors in truth decisions has always been the search for social acceptance. People choose faith beliefs as part of the role that belief systems play in social groups. This principle can be seen in Christian denominations. Members of the Christian Reformed denomination tend strongly to be of Dutch ancestry. Rejection of Calvinist doctrine would challenge a person's standing both in the Dutch community and the Dutch church. Members of the Missouri Synod Lutheran denomination tend strongly to come from a German background. Rejection of Lutheran doctrine would call into question a persons standing in the church and its community. Groups like the Wisconsin Synod and Missouri Synod Lutheran denominations are surprisingly cut off even from other Lutheran denominations. The closer that a denomination stays to its ethnic roots, the closer it will probably stay to the traditional theological roots of that denomination. The more that denominations are integrated into the American cultural melting pot, the more theologically diverse they are likely to become. Strongly left wing denominations like the PCUSA, the ELCA, or the United Methodist church have little ethnic identity other than a tendency toward a European background. The principle of socially accepted beliefs can be seen in nearly all religions. Young people born into a Muslim family in Saudi Arabia will almost always grow up to accept Islam. The cultural costs of rejecting Islam can be very serious whatever the intellectual merits of Islam may or may not be. Young people who grow up in the jungle in Borneo will almost always accept the religious beliefs of their villages. The less diverse a culture may be, the less diversity will be seen in the religious and theological beliefs of its members. To remain a part of the group, individuals in the group accept its epistemology and theology. The search for social acceptance can also take a rather twisted form. As the West turns slowly away from God, young people as a generation have been taught that they are too sophisticated and well informed to believe in the biblical text. They are taught that modern people reject the Bible's old fashioned claims about morality and judgment. They are taught that they simply know much more than their parents, and that all religious traditions are equally valid. They are taught that the only unforgivable sin is intolerance, and that no one could be condemned by God for any behavior. It is very hard to reach a generation that considers itself too intelligent to believe. The group solidarity and shared values shut out the truth. That has always been true, and it was a consistent problem throughout the Old Testament. Yahweh worship was always thought naive and old fashioned while Baal worship was thought educated and sophisticated. For a discussion of this, see the O T & Today link on this web page. In the past, God has intervened in judgment to drive people back to Him. Sometimes God's judgment brought revival, and sometimes the believing community in that place simply died away. The troubles faced by Western culture today may reflect the same principle. For a discussion, see The Future link on this web page.
TRUTH AND THE SEARCH FOR VALUES If revelation from God is rejected, how can inherent value be found? Without God's world view, human values are largely culturally defined. As an example, thinking about the difference between a painting by Picasso, an identical painting by a good forger, and a poor copy by a college student. All three may be the same size. They may be painted on the same kind of canvass with the same kind of paint. The Picasso and the forgery may use very similar brush strokes, and their images may appear identical to anyone except an expert. To determine the difference between the Picasso and the forgery, even an expert may be forced to rely on the paint scattered around the edges of the canvass beneath the frame since a forger probably would not be able to see it. The Picasso and the forgery may be nearly identical, and the college student's copy may be similar. Yet the Picasso may sell for millions of dollars. The forgery may be worth a few thousand as a curiosity piece, while the college student's copy may have no practical value. What makes the difference between them? Three things shape the value of the painting: 1) the perception of the importance of the painter in the field, 2) the expectation of the rising sales price of the painting, and 3) the appeal of the picture as a piece of art. The first two of these are passing theoretical values that have little to do with the paintings themselves, and the third is rather subjective. In a reality based evaluation, the paintings have value because of what they say about the human soul. They also have value on the basis of the amount of truth that they contain and teach. The Picasso has value because the painter was trying in his own way to paint the truth as he saw it. The forgery has less value because the painter was trying to use it as a vehicle to steal from others. In God's eyes, the intent of the heart is an important part of value. The college student's painting may have less value because he or she may not yet have learned to communicate the truth in paint. Yet even the Picasso's value is somewhat limited by the fact that it is a failed attempt to depict the nature of reality. Picasso saw the world with a warped and distorted vision. From the standpoint of eternity, his painting is not something that can last because it is not really true. Picasso did not succeed in depicting the essence of things. Human cultural values and reality based values are quite different. The problem with reality based values is that even conservative Christians share the blinders placed on the race by Adam and Eve's revolt against God. We can not see the world as God sees it. So there is a limit to how well anyone can see the real value for things in life. Other human values tend to be equally theoretical and tentative.
ETHICS The human race shares a similar problem with ethics. Having rejected a vassal relationship with God, the race has to try to find some other basis for ethical beliefs. What makes an action right or wrong? God's values have often been echoed in human legal codes through natural revelation, a residual presence of God's Spirit in human culture, a distorted memory of revelation, and simple common sense. From the beginning of history, law codes have condemned murder and theft. They have regulated marriage and sexual relationships. They have sometimes dictated the religion of a culture. They have demanded honesty in court. The Ten Commandments are not foreign to the ethical perceptions of the ancient world, and the principles behind the Ten Commandments are still reflected in many legal codes today. However, the practical ethics of a culture are often different from the traditional legal roots of a culture. Rejection of the Old Testament's prohibition of interest payments has resulted in a bankrupt world. Rejection of God's command against stealing has led to corrupt businessmen stealing billions of dollars and leaving hundreds of thousands of people impoverished. Rejection of God's command against murder has left so many thousands of people afraid to walk the streets at night. The millions of abortions performed world wide in this generation have produced a retirement aged population too large to be supported by the cultures in which they live. A rejection of morality has produced a global epidemic of AIDS and venereal disease. Abandonment of morality in Western cultures has produced a divorce rate over 50% and the alienation, emotional pain, sorrow, and economic trouble that is so often a product of divorce. The rejection of morality has also been increasingly reflected in new laws that normalize the culture's rejection of God and His law. The immorality and abortion problems have also led to a hardened and determined opposition to conservative Christianity as millions of people are determined that no one will ever say that they have done anything wrong. Yet for all of the concern over immorality and opposition to abortion in the conservative orbit, both immorality and abortion have been surprisingly common in the Evangelical community as well. These (and other) sins have quenched the Spirit in far too many congregations. The failure to pass on basic Christian beliefs to the next generation has produced a geriatric church on the verge of numerical collapse. The real world consequences of sin are chaos, pain, trouble, and sorrow. Yet most people today do not have the eyes to see the consequences of their own actions. Having rejected God's ethics, people have to find some basis for deciding what is right and what is wrong. However, without God, there is no workable theoretical basis for ethical decisions. What makes some things right and others wrong? If God's revelation is rejected, ethical decisions often become culturally defined. In theory at least, each culture's ethical decisions can not be censored by another culture because without God's revelation, there is no inherent standard for behavior. The problem with culturally defined ethics can be seen when Nazi Germany accepted Nietzsche's philosophy that strength determined right. The German culture as a whole accepted the ethic that Jews were subhuman and had to be exterminated for the good of the culture. If ethics and human values grew from human experience and broad cultural agreement, did other cultures have the right to condemn the Nazi's chosen values? The Nürnburg trials argued that Nazi values deserved condemnation and judgment because the court assumed an eternal basis for ethics that grew from biblical values. When a culture's ethical system is based only on chosen cultural values, it is hard to justify judging the Nazis even though it was a deeply demonic movement. That may raise a cry of protest because most people assume the validity of basic human values without having a theoretical justification for those values. It is certainly true that many people have good, noble, compassionate, and life centered values without having any real relationship with the God who made the world and who holds all of life in His hands. Truly fine people can be found in most religious traditions. For example, Islam has received a reputation as a violent and nearly demonic force in the world because of the evil done by some in the name of their prophet. While wickedness is common in the Islamic world, most Muslims are not like that. Most are just normal people who would not want to harm anyone in the name of religion. Some conscientious Muslims have an ethical system that is noble and commendable. Some Muslims live according to values that resemble biblical teaching (partly because the Koran was written under the strong influence of the biblical text). Some Muslims are more noble than the majority of Christians today. Those who do not know God may have life centered values because of the ground level presence of God's Spirit in human cultures, the remnant of God's truth preserved in human cultures, natural revelation, and common sense. Just as Christ loved the rich young ruler who turned away because of his possessions, God loves those who live according to God's values even if they do not know Him. However, that kind of love does not save them in the final judgment. Why not? If people live relatively righteous lives, love others, have mercy on the poor and weak, and work for life centered values, why isn't that good enough for God? For an innovative explanation, see the discussion in the Old Testament & Today page on this web site.
THE BIBLE AND THE LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE The Bible consistently warns that human methods for finding truth are at best very limited. This was Solomon's conclusion. In Ecclesiastes 1:13, Solomon noted that he had set his heart to explore with wisdom everything that was done under heaven. He found that quest to be a grievous task given by God to men. In Ecclesiastes 3:11 and 8:17, Solomon noted that God had set eternity in peoples' hearts, but He had done so in a way that prevented them from finding out what He was doing. Even though people claimed to understand, they could not really discover it. In Ecclesiastes 7:24, Solomon noted that the past was mysterious, and who could discover it? In I Corinthians 8:2, Paul warned that if anyone thought that he knew anything, he had not yet learned what he ought to know. A somewhat similar observation was made after World War II by existentialists like Sartre. The Bible's critique of wisdom and knowledge was normally related directly to a knowledge of God. In I Corinthians 1:20-21, Paul asked where the scribe or wise man was. Paul claimed that God had turned the wisdom of this world into foolishness because the world could not know God through its wisdom. That is as true today as it was in Paul's time. Professors at the university may project the image that they are among the world's leading intellectuals. Yet if they don't know God, they don't really understand even the most basic truths about the world around them. In their pride, they become fools. There is an important difference between how the Bible saw knowledge and how knowledge is seen in the modern world. People today think in a very Greek way. Drawing on roots from Eden and ancient Egypt, Greek philosophers believed that the independent reasoning mind could determine the nature of truth through the exercise of human reason. That basic belief drives the modern world. The Biblical view of knowledge draws on a completely different ancient Near Eastern tradition. Both in the Bible and in much of the ancient world, the word "know" was a technical treaty term. It referred to life within a sovereign/vassal covenant relationship. The sovereign "knew" the vassal, and the vassal "knew" the sovereign. Knowing was living life within a proper covenant relationship with the sovereign. That's why God said to Israel in Amos 3:2, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth." (The KJV got the Hebrew right here instead of the NIV or the NASB.) God was saying, "You only have a covenant relationship with Me of all the world's peoples." True knowledge in the Bible was not independent or autonomous. It was not content or theory without personal connection or commitment. Knowledge was a reflection of a relationship with God. For a long discussion of this usage, see my book Yahweh's Song which can be downloaded from the EVS Book Store. Since knowledge grew from a relationship with God, each person's world view had to grow out of that relationship. Since God is true, Christians are called to seek His truth in the world everywhere around us. Christians should be doing state of the art work in every academic discipline instead of hiding from the academic debate. Christians are called to hunger for the truth and seek it wherever it can be found because all true truth is really God's truth. Yet, how can truth be found? That's the problem. How can people look for and find the truth? It has to be said that people have fallen minds, and they live in a fallen world. We see through a glass darkly, but we will one day see God face to face. Much truth can simply not be found in a fallen world just as God's face can only partly be seen in this life. Yet we are called to seek it. The search for truth has to be grounded in humility to be successful at all. It is absolutely necessary to be humble before God, humble before others, and humble before the evidence. It is vital to be willing to recognize on a daily basis that we are wrong and to move in a different direction. We have to keep in mind every day the limits of our ability to understand, and to try to be honest with what the evidence really proves. We have to be willing always to put the evidence in the broader context of God's revelation. Only humility can allow us to see anything with fairly clear eyes. Yet humility is the hardest thing for people to find. Our pride fights against it at every turn. The humility that is necessary to seek for truth is also more often than not at war with the academic world. What is the truth about scholarship and scholars? Follow the Scholars and Scholarship link for a discussion of how the academic world really works. |
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Copyright © 2009 Dr. Rodger Dalman
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