Have We Come Full Circle?

There was once a day, a couple thousand years ago, when pragmatic relativism reigned. In the Roman Empire in the early days of Christianity it could have been said, though it may not have been coined quite the same way, "What's good for me is good for me and what's good for you is good for you."

Let us examine a brief testimony to this. In the early years of what would eventually become known as Christianity, many gods were worshiped by the Romans and many religions were allowed in the empire. There was indeed a god for everything. What is interesting is that you could have believed in any of these gods and worshiped in any form you desired and in fact held to any strange religion so long as you kept the peace, sacrificed to the local deities, and paid due respect the deity of the emperor. So long as you kept social peace and bothered no one you were an accepted part of society. You could have worshiped any god you pleased and practiced any religion you desired just as long as you kept to yourself about it and allowed society to run. This is why the Christians were persecuted on the odd charge of "atheism": because they refused to worship any but the one true and living God. In the Roman's minds they did not have enough gods. Indeed, for them to enter the cultural milieu of the Roman Empire and announce that there was indeed only one truth and that there was indeed only one way was a direct affront to the lackadaisical idea that one could worship whatever god one might choose so long as he worshiped the local deities and kept social peace.

Is this not the same position in which we find ourselves? Have we not in fact come in a full circle back to this point? Have the philosophers really come to a new form of thinking in postmodernism?

From 313 A.D. forward the one true and living God was simply the assumed normative for thought. This came about, not only through Constantine's Edict of Milan but also through the strenuous and tireless efforts of men who were Christians who fought the cultural milieu and fought to establish a Christian culture instead. Men like the early apologists and later fathers. These men spoke into the vacuum of Roman society that there was a real tangible reality to be found in the gospel and that this reality defined all of life. These men worked so hard that eventually one day Rome became a Christian empire whether for the better or for the worse.

Is this not what we find ourselves moving towards? While all truth has truly in a sense been lost to the modernists who killed us and who killed all rational thinking which led to postmodernism it would seem to me that we have come full circle. Where there was little need for a whole generation of apologists from 313 A.D. to the Renaissance there has been a surge of great apologists speaking to a defunct and decadent society in which one may worship any god he so desires so long as he pays tribute to the gods of politics and does not disturb the social peace. This sounds terribly repetitive. Have we not trod this ground before?

My suggestion is that, just like the apologists of old and the fathers after them, we stick to our guns and stand for the absolute tangible reality of the biblical gospel and the absolute tangible reality that God is reality. The apologists made their arguments from all they had: the Bible. They were reasonable arguments, they were cogent arguments, and they were spoken into a confused and lost generation in which "the only heresy was to say that there was heresy."

We should not be surprised at the state of thought in today's world and we must not, indeed we dare not conform to it. It is as Solomon once said, "There is nothing new under the sun." The postmodern conception of truth, if indeed it can be called that, is nothing fresh. It is nothing fresh for the only "truth" to be that there is no truth. It is nothing fresh to exclaim, as did Pilate in his air of scepticism, "What is truth?"

For these statements to be uttered once more and these thoughts to be thought once more has rocked four generations of Christians back on their heels in confused surprise. Ignorant of the fact that this is nothing new there has been much condemnation and hiding inside of our calm little sects in Evangelicalism, primarily out of fear if I am correct, and this is a great sin. There has likewise been an extreme conformity to this "new" conception of truth and it is likewise just as dangerous a sin. We must, as the apostles, as the apologists, and as the fathers, speak of the absolute tangible reality of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To Pilate Jesus simply said, "For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth." To which Pilate asked, "What is truth?"

Truth is put into one simple verse by Christ Himself, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by me." Christ himself is the truth. His birth, life, death, resurrection, current reign, and eventual theocracy are truth. His revealing of the almighty powerful and sovereign God is truth. His revealing the sin of man in a clear light is truth. His solution for that sin, the cross, is truth.

Have we not come full circle? In a world desperate for truth, though they may not look it, and as in the Roman Empire, we must do as the men of old and stand on the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ as inerrantly inspired in the Bible.

Let us do no other.

A lui sia la gloria in eterno,

R.D. Thompson