The 2016–17 academic year has begun. It’s time for introductory
and orientation lectures. Yesterday I was talking with the Ancient Church
(patristics) class about the what history is or what historians do and why
history is important. Americans, in particular, it seems to me, must be
persuaded of the value of history. Henry Ford notoriously said that “history is
bunk.” (Yes, he really said it. See here and here).
We have a strong anti-historical and anti-intellectual bias. Traditionally, we
are an industrious people but we tend to leave things like serious reading and
thinking to other people. A significant percentage of Americans cannot tell one,
e.g., who is the Speaker of the House (Paul Ryan), the constitutional order of
succession, or how many members there are of the United States Senate. Labor
Day is traditionally the time when Americans begin “paying attention,” as the
pundits say, to the general election but apathy about civics runs deep. I have
seen interviews where young people were unable to answer the question, “Where
was the Vietnam War?” I kid you not. It is a little more difficult for people
in other places and cultures to be so indifferent to the past. In some places
ancient slights and insults are as vivid and real to people as they were they
day they actually happened.
Amnesia has some advantages in American civic life. Apart from
gang violence in Chicago, most American cities do not experience the sort of
sectarian (factional) violence that are common place in some parts of the
world. Nevertheless, To the degree that American Christians are influenced by
the prevailing anti-intellectual, anti-historical culture we are cut off from
our family history. Christianity is a corporation to which believers are
grafted. It existed before us. We are given a name in baptism and receive an
inheritance of two millennia of reflection on the Scriptures. Every one of us
is influenced by that history, even we do not know it. We have inherited a way
we read Scripture. We have inherited a way to think and speak about the faith.
We have inherited a grammar, logic. and rhetoric of the faith. Either we will
be intelligent about it or we will be ignorant of the reality that we are using
someone else’s language, and, as it were, wearing hand-me-downs but it would be
foolish to go about it hand-me-downs pretending that one has made them himself.
Another challenge that late-modern Christians face is the suspicion,
deeply rooted among those under 40, that truth claims are really a cloaking
device to camouflage attempts to manipulate and control others. It is not
surprising that the children of the last two generations are suspicious about
truth claims. The same thing happened during the industrial revolution, a
century ago, in the early 20th century. Rapid social-economic change produces
dislocation and older certainties are called into question and it’s natural for
young people especially to think that everything must be called into question.
Like the early 20th century, the world experienced a global conflict, though
the current war on terror, though global, has taken relatively few lives. The
vast majority of today’s young people are in little jeopardy since the war is
being fought by the West, to the degree it is still being fought, by
professional soldiers, marines, airmen, coastguardsmen, and marines rather than
by draftees. Still, economic disruption, in our case, by the information
economy, and war have produced similar outcomes, among them suspicion about
truth claims.
Clearly there is truth and everyone knows it. It is true, as I
always point out to the students (as a thought experiment only), that should
one jump off the roof of the chapel, gravity will do its thing and friction
will do its thing. That is true. Gravity and friction are not subjective. It is
not the case that gravity exists for me but not for you. There are other kinds
of truths, e.g., moral and religious truths and this is at the heart of the
historian is called to do: tell the truth about the past as best he can. He
must admit frankly the great difficulties in telling the truth about the past.
The Stephen Avery case illustrates how difficult it can be to find the truth
when evidence is relatively fresh and witnesses are alive. Historians do not
have the advantage of asking follow-up questions to living witnesses and our
evidence is frequently very old and fragmentary. There are other challenges too
that can make the historian’s job quite daunting indeed.
Nevertheless, skepticism, i.e., giving up on the reality of truth,
is not an option for Christians. We must reject Pilate’s skepticism when he
said, “What is truth?” (John 8:38). Scripture says and we confess that
there is truth (John 8:32). Jesus is the “grace and truth” (John 1:14). He is
the “way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus said to our Father, “Your
Word is truth: (John 17:17). If Jesus was not a skeptic, if he was willing to
go to the cross, if he was raised from the dead (he was!) how can we possibly
indulge in skepticism? We need to repent of our relativism, our skepticism, and
our intellectual and spiritual sloth.
As I was trying to make the case to the students that the search
for the truth about the past is a worthwhile endeavor it occurred to me that we
also confess the Ninth Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness
against your neighbor” (Ex 20:16; Deut 5:20; Matt 19:18). I do not
recall if I said it in class—there is a much to cover and little time—so I will
say it here: the ninth
commandment necessarily implies the existence of truth. If we may not bear false
witness, if we may not tell lies to our about our neighbor, then it must
necessarily be that there is truth to tell to and about our neighbor. The
ninth commandment means that we are to tell the truth. We are not to shade the
truth, manipulate the truth, hide the truth, warp the truth, or corrupt the
truth. We are tell it.
Truth is. There certainly are ambiguities and no human can know the truth the
way God knows it (we know an analogy or facsimile, as Abelard put it) of what
God knows but as creatures we are not capable of the infinite (finitum non
capax infiniti). Nevertheless, we can know the truth that creatures are
capable of knowing and we should pursue it, believe it, and tell it.
The truth that ninth commandment requires us to tell is not merely
subjective, i.e., what is true for me but not necessarily for thee. No, the
truth required by the ninth commandment, by our Lord Jesus, who is Truth, is
objectively true. Jesus is not merely subjectively true for Christians who
choose to believe in him in order to sleep through the night. It’s not
“whatever gets you through the night.” The truth is what really is. Jesus really is the
truth for everyone and everyone will be held to account for what they have done
with him, whether they have believed him and believed in him. Those who have
heard and rejected him shall give account to him who bore the wrath of God
against sin for all his people. No one was ever more zealous for the truth than
Jesus and no one is more gracious and patient with us liars than Jesus the
Truth.
Now is the day of salvation. Truth is and the truth is that
Jesus is the only Savior from the wrath to come. Flee to him while it is still
today.
Posted by R. Scott Clark | Saturday, September 3, 2016 | Categorized Academic Stuff, Historical
Theology, Historiography,
Moral Law | Tagged 9th commandment, emnt, lies, relativism, subjectivism, truth Bookmark the permalink.
