The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Objective Truth of the Bible

Hi

I am having a discussion about the objective truth of the Scriptures.
I maintain that all of Scripture is objective truth and that it remains objective truth regardless of erroneous interpretation of people.

I believe it is possible that the person and I might be speaking past each other, so I thought before I reply to him, it might be best if I get someone else to look at what he is saying, just to make certain that I am not misunderstanding him.

Here is his take on the issue:


"What I’m basically saying that if you put a Bible in a room, all by itself with no one else reading it and no one interpreting it, then of course it’s objective….there is no argument there. The Bible on it’s own is completely objective in all the Bible claims.

However, as soon as humans interact with it, in any case whatsoever, we look at it subjectively.

Therefore, practically to hold a theology of objectivity towards the scriptures is unhelpful and useless if we also want to make claims that the Bible actually has a role in our lives. It is number 3 in what you pasted above that makes it subjective because obviously none of us have the corner on Scripture and know everything that it intends and means. So while the Holy Spirit helps us understand it’s meaning it doesn’t tell us what it means entirely, so until then, as long as humans are involved, what it means and intends for our lives today will in many cases (and some cases not) still be up for debate, and even what ones are up for debate will be up for debate.

I think you might be afraid of the word subjective, because it also implies relativism. So I understand your hesitancy, but I think to keep pushing for the work “objective” only pushes an authority that cannot full be known or experienced by anyone here and now."

Tom

Hi Tom,

To examine his semantics, because he is playing word games, and at the same time offer you an apologetic to use is not a simple thing for me...I can't do it in a paragraph or two. Maybe someone can. But here's a humble offering by a Van Tillian presuppositionalist who has trouble controlling his emotions in the face of these relativistic pseudo-philosophers....not that I'm a philosopher, so I try to be humble, but I can spot a pseudo like a dung beetle on a white wall. I digress.

My apologetic and I meaningfully add emphasis to points where I want you to see when to take control and command the debate. You are already the winner, so don't fear what he has to say.....

"What I’m basically saying that if you put a Bible in a room, all by itself with no one else reading it and no one interpreting it, then of course it’s objective….there is no argument there. The Bible on it’s own is completely objective in all the Bible claims"

What subtle neutrality he offers, that we're all just really rational people being smart about things. This is his peace offering up front, a ploy in psychology to show he is not really an irrational person after all.

Don't you believe it.

He is confusing (like a liar if he meant to, or with too much pride in his own intellect if he didn't) the objectivity of the Bible's ontological, material EXISTENCE with the objectivity of its TRUTH CLAIMS. No Christian would ever debate with him the reality of the Bible's materiality as objectively real (called an ONTOLOGICAL argument in philosophy), yet suddenly you make points that way as if in your favour. "No argument there." So why bother mentioning it then? What could be the possible purpose? Deception, a set up. I will come back to haunt him with that in a moment, that little pigsnie. Rather we Christians claim that the Bible's own claim to be the Word of God is objectively real truth that we can know with certainty. Get on with it.

"However, as soon as humans interact with it, in any case whatsoever, we look at it subjectively."

A tautology. How subtle. The definition of 'subjective' includes the notion of one human experiencing things. This is like saying "The red barn is red." It isn't wrong...but it doesn't add any information nor pose any position....maybe he thinks it does. He is a duper if he's being purposeful, or has been duped by this wordplay before if he's not. He is correct in one sense, of course, in the sense that we can only have our own experience and we cannot experience it for anybody else. Pardon me, has the debate started yet? That is one sense in which we experience truth subjectively, ie from our own perspective. But it is an error in logic to then leap to conclude that because we have our own experience, therefore no truth is (objectively) real. It's a fallacy because it is a reference to different types of things.....that's the suble wordplay, and the grave error, he's into. Now he's about to use the same word subjective, but switch meanings to pick on the Bible. Always watch for that ploy. And that kind of debating just does not follow. If I have my own experience of the football game and you have your own experience when we sit together in the stands, that does not prove the football game never happened...the game did not itself become "subjective" itself just because we had our unique experiences of it. It just proves that we experience things for ourselves. So what.

Now, if he means it in the correct sense, you can agree. In fact, I would take him even further and say, not only subjectively, but FALLIBLY. The Word of God, ie all truth, is infallible, but our ability to sense things through our five senses is not infallible (by a further train of reasoning I may be able to utterly annihilate any faith he has in reasoning at all....but not yet). This is not a destructive argument he's made against us, because when we Christians turn to talk about certain knowledge we turn to revelation, not to sensation or the pure reason of man under his own autonomous thinking, as this duper has. God is able to reveal (not just 'help us out'), so that there is certain knowledge of truthful things. He does this for unbelievers with common knowledge of things (I can prove it using the concept of 'the number 1') and he does it for believers with special revelation...for example, that Jesus is the Messiah and the certainty of our own salvation.

"Therefore, practically to hold a theology of objectivity towards the scriptures is unhelpful and useless..."

Here is where two things happen:

1. He switches word meanings now and 'subjective' turns from uniquely experienced into relativism and I would chastise him for his fallacious reasoning, and

2. we depart from his worldview.

His presupposition- we can tell from what he says- is that REALITY is only what is INTERPRETED by the individual minds of people only, and since experience of one person is always his OWN experience, all reality is simply subjective. You see how he ties truth to experience? He traps himself in his own switched wordplay and wants us to come along. "People think", is his position " and their thoughts are what determines what is real, at least for that individual." Therefore, when it comes to the truth claims of the Bible, he runs to his relativistic philosophical outlook and says that the reality of truth is just something everybody in their subjective state thinks about. He is confused by his own semantic switch.

But now you have him. Because a second ago he felt compelled to seem like a normal human and say ""What I’m basically saying that if you put a Bible in a room, all by itself with no one else reading it and no one interpreting it, then of course it’s objective." Really? How is the truth of it's physical reality (ie the ontology) of the Bible objectively real when there are no minds to sense it and yet it's truth claims are only subjective even though there are minds to sense those? What force or rule in nature brings things together in his mind this way? If there are no human minds left to sense it, then what justification (ie philosophical accounting) can he now offer that it is still real, and yet be consistent with his moment-ago subjective worldview that "truth" is only determined by human subjective opinion?

He may then:

1. run back to being subjective again, talking about how it's real because the common sense of human beings determines it's real ('everybody just accepts it'), which may be defeated by asking if he thinks public opinion determines physical reality (he won't) or he has to accept that the truth of the Bible could possibly be determined by common sense (which is absurd) just the way he says it determines it's physical reality.

2. switch between an objective philosophy for physical reality and subjective philosophy for immaterial things. Now ask him what force or rule in the universe could possibly bring together the subjectivity of his experience with the objectivity of reality outside of him? Are the things he is experiencing in his life real? Or imagined? If real, how could know them since all of his knowledge is only subjective? If they are imagined, then tell him that's why you are a Christian who believes the Bible, because you don't believe in living life as an imaginary fantasy.

You're not proving the Bible in a pro-active way yet, you are simply using the rope he's already given you to hang him....you should have the sense by this time that you gradually grinding down his conflicted worldview into pure subjectivity, and then down further into the skeptical premise that really, if he was to be fully consistent with his own view, he couldn't be certain about anything real at all. At that point you slam home the transcendence of the Christian God as the ONLY feasible rationale for the reality of anything in our experience:

There once was a man who said God,
must think it extremely odd,
when he finds that this tree continues to be
when there's no one about in the Quad.

The reply came:

Dear sir;

You're astonishment's odd
for I am always about in the Quad
and that's why this tree will continue to be
since observed by

Yours Faithfully,

God.

"So while the Holy Spirit helps us understand it’s meaning it doesn’t tell us what it means entirely,"
This is purely arbitrary. He didn't get this from the Bible, and he didn't get it from philosophy. On what authority does he make this claim?

"....as long as humans are involved, what it means and intends for our lives today will in many cases (and some cases not) still be up for debate, and even what ones are up for debate will be up for debate."

Is this an absolute truth that isn't up for debate? Or are you willing to be uncertain enough about that truth-claim that it's debatable? How did he come to this grand objectively real bit of truth, to know it so certainly since, in his own words "none of us have the corner on Scripture and know everything that it intends and means." Is this uncertainty he speaks of limited only to the Christian Bible, is he a pure bigot? Or is he talking about his own ability, everybody's ability, to know absolute truth wherever it may be found? Again, he is forced back to his subjective point of view or else put forward some wimpy authority in the universe that gives him the right and you are proving, on his own presuppositions, that his own opinions don't even stand up to his own opinions. What is his rationale in stating I can't know that Scripture is objectively true, but he can objectively know that it isn't? And more so, on what ground is he able to see my knowing and be so certain that I am not correct in the first place? Just how conflicted is he willing to be? What is his real issue with the Bible? It is always a grudge against God...I try to remember that...there is a lot of condemnation and guilt hanging around the edges of his conscience when it becomes apparent the Bible may just be right.

Every time he claims to take a position, and act as if it is something he can know for sure, force feed his own philosophy on him and he must always retreat to the position "I don't know for sure" "I don't know for sure" "I don't know for sure."

Show him that by rejecting the truth claim of Scripture he is not able to know anything for sure, and with a sharp approach you could take him further to say he can't know anything at all. Except, maybe, on some blind, unaccounted-for leap of faith in his own reasoning ability to be the sole holder of his own truth. And that again, is why I'm a Christian, because I don't believe in irrational, arbitrary blind leaps of faith into my own subjective reasoning that forces me to confess at every turn "I don't know".

Without the Christian God of the Bible, it is not possible for anybody to know anything....yet to even enter a debate with you he must take on the very Christian-like attitude that indeed it is possible in this universe to be certain about things....the difference between us, according to Romans 1, is that I thank God for my ability to know whereas God is very angry at him for not.

"I think you might be afraid of the word subjective, because it also implies relativism. So I understand your hesitancy..."

Don't be patronizing. If I'm hesitant it's because I'm trying to figure out how to show your rusty intellect any mercy at all. I trust by now, my conflicted friend, that you see I was not afraid to take on your definitions and show you how you were mixing concepts on the sly which, in any logical debate, is pure fallacy. It is you who switched mid-debate to assume relativism as soon as we began to talk about God, but still you hold to a psychological "subjective experience" definition of relativism to desperately justify your blind faith in the objective existence of reality which, if you were consistent, you must deny altogether. But you're inconsistent just to appear normal. Good luck with that, or next time read the Bible with some humility.

Give him my email address if he'd like to try me further.....you have it.

-The Tulipman