From Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenge of Postmodernism by Douglas Groothuis (pgs. 178-179):
Christian truth is public truth – truth for the marketplace that can be assessed according to universal criteria by any thinking person who is willing to consider it openly, seriously and humbly (Mt. 7.7). This is what Paul declared on Mars Hill before the non-Christian thinkers of his day (Acts 17.22-31)…
Paul affirmed the following propositions.
- Athenian religion is objectively inadequate because it lacks Christ (Acts 17.22-23)
- God is the Creator of all and cannot be reduced to idols. The Athenian’s idolatrous worship is false before the fact of God (Acts 17.24-25)
- God is the sovereign source of every human being and has marked out each one’s habitation and place in history (Acts 17.26)
- God did this so that people would seek him and perhaps find him (Acts 17.27)
- A non-Christian Greek thinker’s writings expand on point 4 (Acts 17.28)
- Since we are God’s creatures, God should not be depicted by an image made by human skill (Acts 17.29). It fits neither God nor us.
- God overlooked the race’s previous ignorance, but now commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17.30)
- God has decreed a day when the world will be rightly judged by the risen Christ (Acts 17.31).
- God has proven point 8 for all people by raising Christ from the dead in history (Acts 17.31).
Paul is setting forth claims concerning objective truths. These truths can be known by those who presently hold another worldview [i.e. Have different beliefs and opinions distinct from Christianity]. He appeals to the objective evidence of Christ’s resurrection from the dead as evidence available to convince these people. He does not encourage them to join his community or language game, redescribe life along his lines or accept Christianity because it has a tight web of belief (bold mine).
Public truth demands universal access – although we should not expect universal assent because of the darkness of unrepented sin (2 Cor. 4.4)…
The same is true for us today because God’s truth has not changed, and humans are still made in the image of God, corrupted by sin and redeemable through the work of Jesus Christ, God incarnate.
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thesauros
on Mar 5th, 2010
@ 4:04 pm:
thank you for this post – good information – God Bless – See you there!