Clive Every-Clayton on universal Truth for a post-modern age
We still bask in the memory of the great work of God 500 years ago.
Revival overflowed from Germany to change the world forever. We give God thanks for the magnificent Solas that sum up the reformers’ mighty emphases: Scripture, the supreme authority of our faith; Christ, the only Saviour for sinners; Grace, the only source of our salvation; Faith the simple means of salvation; God’s glory, the final outcome of it all.
Something taken for granted
Yet there may be one that has escaped us, one that our forefathers in the reformed faith took for granted because in those days, unlike ours, the general consensus took it as established. I will call it ‘Sola Veritas Universalis’: the reformers proclaimed God’s Word as absolute, universal Truth. It is obvious that the dynamic force of Luther’s reformation came – under God – from his total conviction that the truth God had revealed in Scripture was public truth, true universally. Thinkers in those days generally accepted that premise, whereas in our relativistic age, the very opposite is the case.
But in the face of the post-modern mood in philosophy, evangelicals share with Luther his absolute insistence on knowing and proclaiming truth from God, and we need to be reassured that our biblical gospel is indeed the Sola Veritas Universalis – the real absolute Truth. It is universal truth valid for the whole world; it is public truth that everyone should be taught. It is truth that God himself has made known. This was the understanding of the reformers who were ready to suffer and die for proclaiming it.
A different world?
As we preach the gospel to our generation, we face an audience with different premises: they think that there is no absolute truth about the issues of religion, that all religions are alike in proposing mere human ideas, and that it is arrogant to think one has the truth. The world has reached this point in its philosophical history because for generations (since Descartes, a century after the Reformation) the expectation of philosophers was that by their in-depth rational thinking, without God’s revelation, they would find a system of truth covering everything important. This approach known as modernity lasted until the 20th century.
Last century however, an important shift came, when thinkers finally realised that human reason is unable to provide absolute truth to answer mankind’s big questions. This realisation dawned slowly, and with it a serious feeling of despair: it seemed there would be no way of finding truth about why we are here, if there is a God, where we are headed and whether there is any hope… This is the climate of post-modernity in which we live today: an atmosphere of meaninglessness and despair reigns.
God’s revelation
Many feel hopeless about ever knowing real truth about anything. But they do not realise that this position has been reached because thinkers side-lined the key option that would give answers – God’s revelation. In the light of the failure of human philosophy we are all the more convinced that absolute truth can come only by God revealing it.
As never before this situation gives rise to a great opportunity to evangelicals, so long as we act with humility, love and respect – not arrogance. We must take courage and move back into proclamation mode: we have good news to share! God has demonstrated his existence by the incarnation of his Son. He has spoken, giving in his word the universal answers that our generation craves but has lost hope of ever finding.
Of course people will mock us, reject us and accuse us of arrogance when we gently, with conviction, tell them the truth of God, but we owe it to them out of love to tell them. If the reformers were willing to suffer for their evangelism, shall we not follow in their train? Is not this the way to truly commemorate the glorious Reformation?
