Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. (John 17:17, NASB)

What Is True Remains True Whether It’s Believed Or Not

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?

These can rather easily be answered by establishing from the biblical text itself exactly Who Jesus Christ of Nazareth is *ahem* absolutely, and truly. 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 Himself claimed to be—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 telling you that He, Personally, 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 it then follows what He says is the absolute Truth. As such then, the question about absolute truth is actually meaningless; not unlike asking: “Can a circle be a square?” Yet this is exactly where Satan has twisted this postmodern culture into a pretzel; having people “chase their tails” through constant equivocation around Humpty Dumpty language.

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 quite 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, therefore, the Source of absolute truth.

Speaking to God the Father through God the Holy Spirit God the Son, Christ Jesus of Nazareth, now confirms this for us:

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. (John 17:17-19, ESV)

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

And Phil Johnson, executive director of the fine Grace to You ministry of Dr. John MacArthur sums up our case well when he says:

Two years ago in November [2004] Christianity Today featured a cover article titled “The Emergent Mystique”; it was about this movement called the emerging church, and it describes how postmodernism is affecting the church.

And this is the latest fashion in cultural relevance; it’s beyond the seeker sensitive churches, it’s beyond what they were doing at Willow Creek, and Saddleback, 10 years ago. This goes beyond this, it’s an attempt to be culturally relevant to the next generation, to the postmodern generation. And if you never heard that expression, the emerging church, you will hear it… The emerging church is simply the nickname for a movement that’s trying to blend Christianity with postmodernism; that’s the whole agenda of the movement. Now I want to be as clear, and as brutally honest with you as possible, right from the get-go. I don’t want you to have any misunderstanding about where I stand.

I am convinced that postmodernism is inherently incompatible with biblical Christianity; and in fact, the most essential elements of post modernism are hostile to the fundamental truth claims of Scripture. And for that reason, I would argue that a postmodern mindset involves some positively sinful ways of thinking. Now if you do any reading on church growth philosophy, or if you just try to stay abreast of…what is popular in the evangelical world, you may already realize it, there are a number of pastors and church leaders out there who are sending the message that they think the church needs to adapt to postmodernism—to embrace postmodernism—and to absorb postmodern style and language in order to reach a postmodern generation.

And I am convinced that the error in that approach is no different from the error, 150 years ago, of those people who tried to devise a modernist brand of Christianity in order to reach the modern world, it’s the same kind of mentality. The heart of biblical, and Christian, truth will be destroyed in the process… Remember, modernism was inherently anti-Christian, anti-supernatural—it represented the wholesale rejection of some vital biblical truths—and why, even though lots of people tried—and they tried for years—it proved totally impossible to blend biblical Christianity with modernism. [It] couldn’t be done; nobody ever did it, there were many churches; and many denominations that tried, and all of them died. They went liberal, and died.

And the evangelical leaders, who are our spiritual forefathers—men like Spurgeon, and J. Gresham Machen, and B. B. Warfield—they were a handful of leaders, in the church, who saw clearly from the outset that modernism was incompatible with biblical truth. And they devoted their lives to fighting the modernist trend. But in exactly the same way, postmodernists are doing the same thing with Christianity today. The postmodernist’s way of looking at the world is, fundamentally, anti-Christian. And, if anything, I would say postmodernism is worse than modernism was.
(A Beginner’s Guide to Postmodernism from here)

See also:

INDEED, DID GOD REALLY SAY?

EMERGING WRONG VIEW OF THE BIBLE

NEO-ORTHODOXY: AN EMERGENT OVERVIEW

THE EMERGING CHURCH SOWING ITS NEO-ORTHODOX CONFUSION ON SCRIPTURE

MARCUS BORG AND ROB BELL: THE BIBLE IS NOT A DIVINE PRODUCT WITH DIVINE FINAL AUTHORITY?

JOHN MACARTHUR: EXISTENTIAL NEO-ORTHODOXY DENIES SOLA SCRIPTURA

DON’T BE FOOLED BY THOSE WHO ONLY SAY THEY LOVE SCRIPTURE