Rational Faith

A Philosopher's Defense of Christianity

Stephen T Davis

• Publisher: Lion Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780745980065
• eBook ISBN: 9780745980072
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

For keen minds looking for a philosophical look at whether faith in God is a practical way to find meaning in life. Idea for proving meat to debates of belief, Rational Faith gives you a chance to take an honest and serious look at what modern and classical thought have to say about what faith is, and mean, and whether it's truly possible.

If God exists, why doesn't he eliminate suffering and evil?

Does evolution disprove Christianity?

Can religion be explained by cognitive science?

People have grappled for ages with these kinds of questions. And many in today's academic world find Christian belief untenable.

But renowned philosopher Stephen Davis argues that belief in God is indeed a rational and intellectually sound endeavour.

Drawing on a lifetime of rigorous reflection and critical thinking, he explores perennial and contemporary challenges to Christian faith. Davis appraises objections fairly and openly, offering thoughtful approaches to common intellectual problems. Real questions warrant reasonable responses. Examine for yourself the rationality of the Christian faith.

IS THERE ANY SUCH THING AS OBJECTIVE TRUTH?

Right at the outset of this book, we need to consider the concept of truth.¹ This is because there are many in academia today who reject, in one way of another, the notion of objective truth. I actually believe that the validity of everything anyone does, in academic studies or in ordinary life, depends on objective truth. This of course includes Christian faith. I will explain why.

Why This Topic Is Important

One reason why I want to begin with this issue is this: over the years I have spoken at many Christian colleges and universities. And I have noticed, especially among some of the younger professors, some confusion on issues of truth. These scholars were Christians, of course, but they did not know how or whether you could reconcile Christian commitment with the epistemological and moral relativism espoused by many of their secular professors in graduate school. In some degree or other, I suspect, all Christian academics these days struggle with this issue. And so do many Christian undergraduates.

Here is a brief road map of where I will go in this chapter. First I want to define two theories of truth, objective truth and relative truth. I will speak about both epistemological and moral relativism. Then I will try to defend a realist or objective notion of truth against two criticisms frequently raised against it. Next, I will raise several criticisms of relativism. I think the theory can be refuted on purely philosophical grounds (i.e., without bringing in theological considerations). But then I will turn explicitly to Christian concerns about truth and especially to Jesus’ claim to be “the truth.” My final substantive point will be that morality requires God. I will even offer an argument for the existence of God based on morality. In conclusion, I will briefly exegete two texts from Proverbs that I think are relevant to the struggles of Christians in academia.

Realist Theories of Truth

What then does it mean to call a statement true? Or, as Pilate cynically asked Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38).

There are of course different senses of the word true. We use expressions like “true blue,” “true north” and being “true to yourself.” But I am asking about the epistemological or cognitive sense of the word, the sense that concerns the truth or falsity of statements or claims. And there exists a classic answer to Pilate’s question, which is found in both Plato and Aristotle. We can call this answer the realist notion of truth. Its central idea is that a statement is true if and only if what the statement says to be the case is the case. So truth has to do with the relationship between the statements that we make and the reality that exists external to them. Or, as Thomas Aquinas famously put it, “truth is the agreement between the idea and the thing.”² And if a given statement does agree with reality in this way, then on the realist notion of truth the statement is objectively true.

One way of trying to spell out that relationship is the so-called correspondence theory of truth. It says that a statement is true if it corresponds to the facts. If I say to you on a Tuesday that “today is Sunday” or (on any day) that “San Francisco is south of Los Angeles,” those statements are false because what they say does not correspond to the way things are.

The correspondence theory has come in for criticism over the centuries. I will mention two objections. The first—which I am only going to state but not discuss—is that nobody has ever spelled out exactly what correspondence is, what exactly it is for a statement to correspond to or with a fact. I think this criticism is largely well-taken. This is work that remains for correspondence theorists to do.

But the second criticism—which is much in the spirit of our age, as you will see—is one I want to respond to. The objection says that we do not have unmediated access to “the facts.” That is, on the correspondence theory we could only test a truth claim if we could be directly confronted with bare facts (i.e., confronted apart from our language and conceptual schemes). Take the statement “There is a lamp on the table.” To see whether there is correspondence here—so the critics say—we would have to know the facts, quite independently of our language. That is, we would have to be able to know whether there is a lamp on the table quite apart from our ideas and words. And that is something—so this criticism runs—we cannot do.

But I do not think this criticism holds. We might not have any unmediated access to facts (i.e., access unaffected by our ideas, conceptual schemes and words). But we do have access to facts, and that is the crucial point. By various means we can check on whether there is a lamp on the table. We can look and see; we can ask somebody who is in a position to know; we can read a description of the furniture of the room written by somebody we trust. If we could not recognize facts about the world that exists “out there” (i.e., external to our minds)—for example, that a train is coming toward us or that a steep cliff is one step away—we would not survive. We might as well lie down and die.

But even if this criticism of the correspondence theory is telling, it will not matter for our purposes in the present chapter. The criticism has no force against the objective notion of truth: that theory only aims to say what truth is, not to provide ways of determining what is true and what is false. Again, it simply says that a statement is true if what it claims to be the case is in fact the case. That is the notion that I want to argue for.

Relativism on Truth

But unfortunately there is a much more serious threat on the horizon, one that endangers both the correspondence theory and all realist or objective notions of truth. This is a theory known as relativism. I will get to relativism by first talking about one way of arriving there—namely, via postmodernism.

Postmodernism as an academic theory has pretty much shot its wad by now, but aspects of it remain influential. As I understand them, postmodernists make four crucial points. First, they reject the Enlightenment model of reason, science and the scientific method as the ideal vehicles for gaining knowledge. Second, they emphasize the point that all persons have social locations, so all claims are located by nation, gender, race and class. In short, there is no “view from nowhere.” Everybody has a location that influences and biases what he or she believes; there is no complete objectivity to view reality from. Third, postmodernists emphasize issues of power; all knowledge claims are political. To claim to know something is to attempt to exercise influence and power over others. Fourth, postmodernists are known for the slogan “Everything is a text.” Every use of language, and indeed every physical object, is subject to various interpretations; there is no one intrinsic or objective meaning to any text or thing. No one metanarrative (i.e., no one overarching scheme of meaning) can have total dominance.

What does this have to do with objective theories of truth? Well, the logic of postmodernism leads directly to what its defenders call contextualization. Truth is internal to contexts; beliefs are true and false in relation to various social locations; beliefs are justified socially. This then is a version of relativism.

Let’s define relativism as the view that the truth or falsity of claims depends on who is making or evaluating them. A proposition like “Murder is morally wrong” can be true for one person and false for another. There is no such thing as transpersonal, transcontextual truths. There is no “God’s eye view” of things. And all truth claims are true for the people who are sincerely making them. If I think that murder is morally wrong, I am correct. And if you think murder is morally right, you are correct. What is true is always “true for you,” but not necessarily for anybody else.

This theory is in direct contrast to the realist or objective notion of truth. On that venerable theory, if something is true, it is true no matter what anybody may think. If it is true that “San Francisco is north of Los Angeles,” then that statement is true even if there are people who do not understand the statement or even if there are people who think it false.

But three caveats are in order in order to avoid misunderstanding. First, no defender of objective theories of truth will deny the obvious fact that there are many statements whose truth value—that is, whether they are true or false—we do not or even cannot know. This fact alone ought to lead to a kind of epistemological humility. There are lots of things that we do not know, and we may be mistaken even on many of the points where we have firm opinions. Second, the truth values of some statements change over time. If I say, “I am standing,” I can change the truth value of that statement from true to false by simply sitting down. And third, there are some areas in life where relativism appears to be true. Which tastes better, steak or pizza? Who is the better composer, J. S. Bach or Paul McCartney? On such issues (i.e., on matters of taste) you and I can disagree and we can both be correct, since we are simply reporting our own preferences. But on most matters (e.g., on whether San Francisco is north of Los Angeles) I claim that relativism is simply false. Let me explain why.

Notice that relativism in truth leads immediately to relativism in ethics. If all truth is socially located and varies from person to person, then, obviously, statements like “Murder is morally wrong” are only relatively true. Nothing is morally right or wrong per se; some things are (as relativists say) right or wrong “for you.”

I confess that I have never clearly understood what the expression “true for you” is supposed to mean. If somebody says (as a student of mine once said to me), “Christianity is true for you but not for me,” I think that just means “You are a Christian and I am not.” That is, we disagree. And I submit that what we disagree about is this: Is Christianity true (i.e., objectively true)?

Indeed, there is a deep incoherence in most versions of relativism. We see it most clearly in the attempt to argue that nothing is objectively true. The very claim “Nothing is objectively true” is certainly pushed by most relativists as if it were objectively true. Thus their theory is self-refuting, like the position of the person who says, “I am unable to speak a single word of English.” And if relativists deny that the statement “Nothing is objectively true” is meant by them to be objectively true (i.e., if they insist that it is merely their own perspective on things), that raises the question why those of us who think that there are statements that are objectively true should agree with them or even take their theory seriously.

Moreover, there is this question: How can we be sure that we have not been biased by our social location in making the very claim that our social location always distorts our ability to access reality? I have never heard a relativist satisfactorily answer that question. It is quite true, of course, that we all have locations, and it is true that our locations influence what we believe. In today’s academic world, we have to take those points seriously. But neither point rules out the possibility that we can have objectively true beliefs.

Here is a personal impression from years of teaching American college students. We professors used to see loads of students arriving at college who seemed committed to a kind of poorly thought-through ethical relativism. But then, slowly but noticeably, that seemed to stop, almost as if somebody had turned off a spigot. I think a certain historical event was partially responsible—namely, the 9/11 attacks. After that event I think many young people at least implicitly decided that although Mohamed Atta and his cohorts may have sincerely believed that what they were doing was morally right, their acts were morally wrong. And the minute you embrace that thought, you are no relativist.

But despite the arguments I’ve been giving, some people might feel that there is still something wrong with objectivism—namely, that it leads to intolerance. Indeed, I think what motivates most relativists is the desire to be tolerant. The idea, I guess, is this: given that people strongly disagree about important things and are sometimes even willing to resort to violence over them, the best way to promote the moral value that we call tolerance is to insist that there is no such thing as objective truth. That way there are no absolute truths for people to get dogmatic about.

But that idea is badly misguided. There is no necessary connection between being an objectivist on truth and being intolerant. Of course, there is a historical tendency that can be disturbing—a sense of absolute certainty does lead some people to intolerance and imperialism. Still, relativists who try to make this point don’t seem to realize that there can be moral systems that are taken to be objectively true and that teach or even require tolerance.

I too strongly believe in tolerance. No sensible person can read the newspaper or the Internet or watch the news on television without realizing the need for people of divergent views to get along. The Christian motivation for tolerance is not that nobody has the objective truth but that Jesus told us to love all people and especially our enemies. And we Christians try to practice tolerance and respect for people precisely because we believe that Jesus’ teaching is true (i.e., objectively true).

You can see, then, that contrary to what relativists sometimes say in their quest for tolerance, there is no necessary connection whatsoever between believing in objective truth and being fanatical, dogmatic, inflexible, narrow-minded or unwilling to debate. Here, I think, we are at the heart of secular academia’s suspicion of objective truth. But tolerance is not holding that all viewpoints are equally valid; I am pointing out that you can be an objectivist on truth and still treat other people with respect even if you think their views are objectively false.

Truth is characterized by four things. First, truth is objective. The truth of the true statements we make is not internal to us; it lies in the world. What makes a statement true is not our subjective feelings about it but the way the world is. Second, truth is universal. The true statements that we make are true not just “for us” but for all people. Third, truth is lasting. As we have seen, some statements can change in truth value because the world changes, but the truth of a true statement is eternally the same unless the world does change. Truth is enduring, not ephemeral. Fourth, truth makes it possible for us to communicate, survive and thrive. It is true that it is good to step out of the way of oncoming traffic and to eat a balanced diet. We could not survive apart from those sorts of truths.

I would sum up all four points by saying that truth is trustworthy. As opposed to feelings, tastes and beliefs that are “true for you,” truth can be relied on.

Jesus as the Truth

I now turn to the relationship between truth and Christianity. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). What did Jesus mean when he said that he was “the truth”? What do we Christians mean when we make the same affirmation about him?

I submit that we mean three things. The meaning here is clearly different from, although related to, the epistemological sense of truth we have been discussing thus far. First, Jesus is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Is There Any Such Thing as Objective Truth?
• 2 Why Believe in God?
• 3 Is the Bible’s Picture of Jesus Reliable?
• 4 Was Jesus Raised from the Dead?
• 5 Does Evolution Disprove Christianity?
• 6 Can Cognitive Science Explain Religion?
• 7 Is Christianity Unique?
• 8 Do Evil and Suffering Show That God Does Not Exist?
• 9 Can We Be Happy Apart from God?
• Conclusion
• Further Reading
• Notes