Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Is All Truth God's Truth?

Is all truth God's truth?
A pastor friend of mine argued that that this statement is not true. Let's discuss that for a moment.

"Epistemology" is defined as "the study or theory of the origin, nature, methods, and limits of knowledge." This is is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. When it comes to truth there is ZERO opinion. If your opinion happens to land on truth then great, your opinion is right. If your opinion does not align with the truth then your opinion is not true. You have a right to your opinion however you do not have a right to debate your opinion as truth if it is not true. Does perspective change truth? No. Perspective is how you may agree or disagree with truth, a sort of lens on how you view truth, but doesn't change it. What is comical about 'epistemology' is that can we really study knowledge? It almost seems like a paradox. But here is the main question, is truth a social construction or solely God's? I would relegate this to an absolute, I personally feel it can only exist wholly God's or man's. All things are created by God, He is the causality of everything. I process things through reductive reasoning, reduce this down to it's simple form, truth is God's or it isn't!

Truth is not subjective, truth is not opinionated, truth is not debatable, truth is not irrational even when you disagree with it, truth stands on it's own always remaining the same and being unchangeable. So I want to use a simile to look at truth; truth is to light as untruth is to darkness. There are verses like John 1:5 that says, the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. Then Isaiah 5:20 NIV says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. So if dark and light cannot coexist then (un)truth cannot coexist. So truth and untruth cannot coexist then can there be truth that is not of God, if God is truth? This is commonly called the "correspondence of truth". This basically means that something is true only if it corresponds or agrees with factual reality. Again this is limited to our understanding of our universe and reality. So check this out, this basically presupposes a flow of logic called bivalence. In technical terms, bivalence is a very deep part of epistimology. Basically, any unambiguous, declarative statement must be entirely true or entirely false. So God is either wholly true or wholly false, we know he is wholly true, this is pretty declarative in studying God with the process of epistimology, again, only limited to how we interpret and understand what truth is, the absolutism of truth. For post-moderns I can stand firm upon their belief and say they are not human, based on their definition that truth is relative, they are a higher bread of mosquitoes (this is a joke based off their reasoning). Relativism is an attempt to not have to pony up to the admittance of self-responsibility, what a nice life. However that belief does not remove truth, ignorance doesn't create, again it is perspective.

Satan has no creative abilities, he can only use what God has created. He can manipulate truth, he can stretch truth, but he cannot tell the truth and lie at the same time, refer again to the rules of bivalence. Satan can borrow only. So the same rules apply, either Satan is a being of truth or he lies. We must understand his nature is evil so if he does tell the truth it is motivated my ill actions and will be used for bad. Now his truth is truly borrowed from God, not created. So even in this understanding we can say all truth is still God's truth. It either is or isn't. If it isn't all God's then whose else is it?

If God is true and God is the creator of all things then false is the lack of truth, just like darkness is the lack of light. Did God create evil or is evil the absence of Godliness and truth? Is there hate or is hate the absence of love? Thoughts?

2 comments:

Eric Wilbanks said...

Well said, Shaun. I tend to look at it like this: Truth and Fact are two different things and Truth is always greater than fact. Example...
--Fact: Neither Adam nor Eve died when they ate the fruit.
--Truth: Both Adam and Eve died when they ate the fruit.
--Fact: Man cannot walk on water.
--Truth: Jesus walked on water.
Everything you experience is fact, but not everything you experience is Truth. I know people who not only experience lies, but live them each day.
Truth is the Creator. Fact is a our experience of creation. It serves us well to remember the distinction.
Thanks again for the post.

Anonymous said...

Shaun said, "So if dark and light cannot coexist then (un)truth cannot coexist. So truth and untruth cannot coexist"

and

"...but he cannot tell the truth and lie at the same time"

Wrong. You've tied yourself up in long argument and dictionary definitions, Shaun. The fact is that the devil habitually mixes truth with a lie, and that's why his deceptions are so deceptive! Its that simple.

People who use the expession, "All truth is God's truth" generally do so to justify going to illegitimate sources for their truth, and as a result they stand in the gravest danger of being deceived by spiritual forces who have been in the deception business for thousands of years and have "perfected" the technique!

Stay with the Word of God and you'll never even have the need to mouth this deceptive expression.

Cheers, Keith