In chapter six, Truth Defined and Defended, Groothius states that evangelicals are abandoning objective truth because as they claim this concept limits Christian witness.
The first evangelical that Groothius critiques is Brian McLaren. McLaren rejects objective truth in favor of postmodernism. Truth must be deconstructed. There is no one “metanarrative” or worldview. Next, Robert Webber rejects the objectivity of Carl F. H. Henry. Stanley Grenz and John Franke also reject objective truth. They claim that there is no “objectivity” understood as “a static reality existing outside of, and cotemporally with, our socially and linguistically constructed reality.”
The Truth Question
The question of truth has two components. First, there is the metaphysics or being of truth. What is the nature of truth. Second, is the epistemology or how we know what we know. No epistemology works independently of a theory of truth.
1) The correspondence theory of truth. A belief or statement is true only if it matches with, reflects or corresponds to the reality it refers to. For a statement to be true it must be factual. Moral statements are also true because they match reality. The statement “Adultery is wrong” is true because the statement corresponds to the objective, universal and absolute moral law revealed by God. Therefore, it applies to all of reality---to all marriages.
The Bible implicitly and consistently advance the correspondence view in both Testaments. God is a God of truth, whose word is truth (John 17:17).
2) The Postmodernist Challenge. Postmodernism holds that truth is not determined by its connection to objective reality but by various social constructions devised for different purposes.
The postmodernists say to say we know the objective truth about ultimate isssues is to set up a “metanarrative” that is intrinsically oppressive and exploitative.
Various “interpretive communities” determine their own truth. Texts, whether religious or otherwise, do not have any fixed, objective meaning; therefore, they are neither true nor false in themselves. Truth is what our colleagues will let us get away with or what the power structures deem to be so. Finally, there is no “God’s –eye view” of anything; therefore, there is no objective truth.
There are several criticisms of postmodernism. First, metanarratives are not oppressive by being comprehensive truth claims (or worldviews). The Marxist worldview and the Wahhabi version of Islam worldview are oppressive, but the Christian worldview is not oppressive.
Second, postmodernism pronouncements on rejection objective truth tend to contradict themselves in that they claim to be applicable to reality itself, not merely to their own language game. For example, the claim that all metanarratives are oppressive is itself a metanarrative or largescale explanation of reality.
Third, right-thinking people judge certain acts---such as racism, female genital mutilation, rape, child abuse, the murderous terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001---as objectively evil, as atrocities, and not as merely relative social constructions.
Fourth, by emphasizing the irresolvable diversity of truth claims, postmodernism provides no reliable criteria to test these claims against reality.
3) Coherence theories inadequate. This theory holds that a belief is true if it has coherence or consistency with my other beliefs. The main problem with this view is that a set of beliefs held by fallible human beings may be coherent but false.
4) Pragmatism: Not a useful theory of truth. To simplify a bit, the general pragmatic understanding of truth is that a belief is true only if it produces desirable or beneficial effects in the long run.
William James in Essays on Pragmatism, thought that various and conflicting religious beliefs could “work” and thus be “true” on the pragmatic theory.
Correspondence: Vindicated and Essential. Christians, of all people, must strongly affirm the notion that truth is what corresponds to reality---and must do so unswervingly, whatever the postmodern (or other) winds of doctrine may be blowing in our faces.