EMERGENT CHURCH: Is There Absolute Truth?


Here is a common question you will run into regarding the Emergent Church Movement and their objection to the concept of absolute truth:

“Can you produce any Scriptures which contain the phrase “Absolute Truth”? And there isn’t anything in the Bible that uses the phrase “Literal word of God,” because 2 Timothy 3:16 doesn’t say anything about Scripture literally being the Word of God does it”?

This can very easily be answered by establishing from the biblical text exactly Who Jesus Christ of Nazareth truly is. According to the historical eyewitness account of the Apostle John, Christ Jesus is God Himself in human flesh – and the Word was God – John 1:1. (see also–John 1:3-4,14,17-18; 8:24,58; 10:30-33)

Now that we’ve seen a man who knew Jesus of Nazareth personally tell us Who Christ really is–and Who He claimed to be Himself–we can go to John 14:6 – Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Notice that Christ–God Himself in human form–tells us that He is the Truth. One could hardly get more “absolute truth” than that of the very Creator of the universe itself Personally telling you that He is Truth itself!

Logic will tell you that nothing could be more absolute than its Creator, and therefore God would have to be the single highest Source of all truth; so logically what He says is the absolute truth. As such then, this question is actually meaningless, not unlike asking: “Can a circle be a square?” This is exactly where Satan has twisted this postmodern culture into a pretzel; having people “chase their tails” through constant equivocation around shifting meanings of words.

However, since God absolutely chose to make man as a propositional being who communicates through words, and since the Bible tells us that apart from His revelation of Himself to mankind through the Words of Holy Scripture we could only come to know the absolute truth that He literally does exist. So then, if God wished to communicate Who He is and what He is in fact like, God would have had to Speak to us in Words that have real and fixed meanings.

When we combine this absolute truth with that of the Apostle John–our eyewitness–telling us in John 1:14 that – The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, we now see the doctrine of Jesus Christ of Nazareth being “the living Word of God.” This is about as literal as the Word of God can get, is it not? For later the Apostle would go on to tell us in 1 John 1:1-2:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

Now we are ready to look at the a part of 2 Timothy 3:16 – All Scripture is God-breathed. According to another eyewitness report–that of the Apostle Matthew–Jesus Christ of Nazareth is speaking to a literal being known as Satan and says – “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

By quoting Old Testament Scripture (Deuteronomy 8:3) and calling it Words that come – the mouth of God – He (as God Himself) is defining the word “Scripture” as literally being the Word of God. Putting this together with the New Testament Scriptures calling Christ Himself the “living Word of God,” we have now firmly established our case for the Bible being the literal Word of God and the Source of absolute truth.

And clearly in the Person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth we see an open and shut case can be made that not only is there such a thing as absolute truth from the Scriptures being the literal Word of God; we also see that eyewitness testimony tells the absolute Truth that the literal living Word of God absolutely and quite literally walked upon the planet that He literally spoke into existence by the absolute Truth of Words that literally came from the mouth of God.