Thursday, August 14, 2008
SABBATICAL MUSINGS - 3
TRUTH AND SUBJECTIVITY
One of the classes I took at Regent College was on the life, thought and writings of Soren Kierkegaard taught by a professor from Baylor University. In response to the rationalism of his day, K. stressed the importance of subjectively knowing truth. One way to state the concept is that truth is subjectivity, but subjectivity is not truth.
First the negative. K. has been misread by existentialist philosophers who interpret him looking back through the lens of Camus and Sartre and other 20th century atheist existentialists. They realized that the "death" of God meant there is no objective, absolute truth so one must simply choose or decide what will be true for oneself. Make a choice. But the choice has no objective basis. Truth is subjective. It is only my truth.
K. predicted this development and negates it in his principle that subjectivity is not truth.
But on the positive side of the equation his goal was to get a rationalistic, Enlightenment, scientific world and a Constantinian (state church) Christianity to see that truth must be subjectively integrated into one's own life experience in order to be worth anything at all or to have any real validity.
What good is "out there" absolute, objective truth if it is not integrated into my own life? So what if the propositional statements "Losing weight is good for your health" and "God is love" are true? They have no meaning, no weight, no impact until I integrate them into my own life in experience. Or, to use a big word, until they become existentially true.
All practical truth is subjective truth - subjectively integrated into my experience. Propositional truth does matter (see my last post) but only as a foundation for subjective truth. What counts is making it my truth. That is when one will finally lose weight or find God. After all, this is really what we mean when we say that the real point of the gospel is to come into relationship with God or to have Jesus as your personal savior.
The task for the church is to bring people to a subjective appropriation of biblical truth into their everyday lives. Then the world will see the truth - truth that has once again become incarnate.
One of the classes I took at Regent College was on the life, thought and writings of Soren Kierkegaard taught by a professor from Baylor University. In response to the rationalism of his day, K. stressed the importance of subjectively knowing truth. One way to state the concept is that truth is subjectivity, but subjectivity is not truth.
First the negative. K. has been misread by existentialist philosophers who interpret him looking back through the lens of Camus and Sartre and other 20th century atheist existentialists. They realized that the "death" of God meant there is no objective, absolute truth so one must simply choose or decide what will be true for oneself. Make a choice. But the choice has no objective basis. Truth is subjective. It is only my truth.
K. predicted this development and negates it in his principle that subjectivity is not truth.
But on the positive side of the equation his goal was to get a rationalistic, Enlightenment, scientific world and a Constantinian (state church) Christianity to see that truth must be subjectively integrated into one's own life experience in order to be worth anything at all or to have any real validity.
What good is "out there" absolute, objective truth if it is not integrated into my own life? So what if the propositional statements "Losing weight is good for your health" and "God is love" are true? They have no meaning, no weight, no impact until I integrate them into my own life in experience. Or, to use a big word, until they become existentially true.
All practical truth is subjective truth - subjectively integrated into my experience. Propositional truth does matter (see my last post) but only as a foundation for subjective truth. What counts is making it my truth. That is when one will finally lose weight or find God. After all, this is really what we mean when we say that the real point of the gospel is to come into relationship with God or to have Jesus as your personal savior.
The task for the church is to bring people to a subjective appropriation of biblical truth into their everyday lives. Then the world will see the truth - truth that has once again become incarnate.
