Epistemological Issue - WHAT???

Have you ever thought about how we should respond to cultural crisis of truth? In theological terms this equates to 'the epistemological issue'.

So, for a few hundred years, thanks to the Enlightenment, an agreement was reached (mostly) that truth - spoken in words that substantially corresponded to reality - does in fact exist and can be known. However if human response is unaided, it was understood, that was objective truth. Now lets jump forward a few hundred years, post modernism has reviewed and criticized this set of assumptions, arguing that we are not objective in our pursuit of knowledge, but rather interpreters of information through our own personal experiences, self-interests, emotions, cultural prejudices, language limitations, and relational communities. Post modernism claims that objectivity is arrogant and leads to conflict between communities with differing opinions as to where the truth lies. They see this arrogance in objective truth, in part, explaining why many of the injustices and wars of the modern era. Alarming as this observation is, their response is of more concern. The post modernist would like us to replace objective truth with a more humbly "tolerant" subjective pluarlism.

How must we respond?

Let me offer 3 suggestions.

1. We affirm that the words of Scripture are true, because they are God's statements, and they correspond to reality even though our knowledge of those truths is always necessarily incomplete.

2. We affirm that truth is conveyed in Scripture. Scripture conveys God's will and mind to us so as to change us into his likeness.

3. We affirm that truth is not only a theoretical correspondence but also a covenantal relationship. That is to say, if we only speak of truth as propositional, it weakens our appreciation of the incarnate Son as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the communicative power of narrative and story, and the importance of truth as living truly in correspondence to God.

Brothers - there is truth! OBJECTIVE truth... let's not let the boundary markers be moved... 2+2 does in fact = 4!

I know this is a bit deep and may be hard to understand, however I think it is important to wrestle with these theological issues. Truly this is not the final word on the subject. However I believe these sort of topics sharpen us to minister to our kids who are going to be facing this philosophy of post modernism. I think as well, dealing with these issues assists us in recognizing other thoughts being presented on TV and how they are reaching and influencing our wife's thinking and our mother in laws thinkings and our sisters and sister-n laws...

We need to not be afraid of deep theological issues, but we do need to tread humbly and prayerfully.