by James Thomas

Created on: June 11, 2010   Last Updated: June 13, 2010

Can a man go to India traveling north on the road to Russia? This is an absurd question but none the less a question that reflects a parallel to our postmodern culture today. If the destination we seek is the proverbial truth by knowledge then does it make sense to discover truth in a manner contrary to the nature of truth?

What is the nature of truth? Can truth be known? By what means is truth attained by the human mind? In a world where Judges exercise “interpretive strategies” to throw out centuries of civilized law and to construct brand new legal principles reflecting current fashions; where Journalists, taught that objectivity is impossible, write biases news stories and advance their own ideological agendas; where Teachers, convinced that there are no objective truths to learn, teach “processes” instead, offering “experiences” instead of knowledge and encouraging their students to question existing values and to create their own. What road are we on?

If knowledge can be truly attained at all by human beings then it is dependent on the human ability to think for any theory or worldview subscribed by anyone which is used to explain the operations of the cosmos must have been derived at through a process of thought. This therefore shows the irrevocable connection between thought and/or a lie/truth. The nature of truth is then an existing reality whose existence is made known through a rational process of thought.

Seeing then that truth and thought are connected, there are only two destinations for the processes of thought or worldview that are used; truth or lie. This is sound logic since the real fact exists; to say there is no truth would have to be a true statement.

Can truth be known? If the nature of truth is the already existing reality, then truth is constantly in a state of refinement. This does not mean that truth cannot be known but on the contrary, it can and more of the reality can be understood with the addition of the empirical processes of observation. We know the reality we observe or learn empirically or even vicariously but there is never a limit to the amount of knowledge that may be collected or absorbed.

Romans 10:17 states, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God”. This is the Biblical precedence for the empirical learning process from the Words of God. The empirical process for humans does not stop there. Psalms 33:6 declares “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth” (KJV). The structure of the universe and all of its physical laws from the building blocks of DNA to the unlimited number of subatomic particles in the universe and the mathematical consistency of physics all have their origin in the Word of God.

No matter what “strategy” of thought or principle employed by someone, the worldview that is in error lead to the destination of error. The thought processes by which one attains knowledge must operate correctly in order to attain knowledge.

“To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretention to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.” – Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

Bibliography

Veith, Gene Edward, Jr. Postmodern Times, A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture, Crossway Books, Wheaton, Il, 1994

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