Apologetics Dialogue on Absolute Truth

John,

 Thank You for your comments I usually
don't get involved with these philosophical
discussions because most of him, frankly,
are way over my head. But I do have an interest
in this one. Thank you for your patience.

What would you say is the difference between
An Absolute Truth and A Universal Truth?

John:

For practical purposes, and especially from a metaphysical not scientific
(natural) perspective, none. The real issue is what is the difference between an objective truth and a subjective opinion.  Most problems in Christian Apologetics revolve around misunderstandings in these two things.

Howard?:
I would think they cannot be limited by restrictions or exceptions that is by being
contained ONLY in some mystery or religious book.

John:

I disagree with the above if by it you
mean to exclude truths found explicitly(only) in religious books. I also disagree that all religious books are mysterious, non-factual, or non-historical.  The Bible for instance is both factual, and historical even though it has allegorical and sometimes mystical qualities.

Howard?
...If Absolute Truth were contained in religious books
then absolute truth would be relative to the religion
represented by the book. That truth would be absolute
to the followers of that religion but not to the followers
of another for instance Christianity vs. Islam, both think
their books are the word of God yet markedly different
and contain what, I suppose you could say, different
Absolute Truth's. Please feel free to point out any
faulty reasoning.

John:

Not exactly, remember that we agreed previously that our definition needed
to include verifiability, not just simply belief.
The idea is developed further as follows:

Almost all religions contain some elements of the truth revealed by God to
man. Atheism and Agnosticism contain virtually none. Polytheism contains a
bit more but virtually none. Pantheistic, aboriginal, and primitive
religions contain a bit more. The 3 great Mono Theistic religions contain
even more. Christian Mono Theism purports to contain the greatest amount of
Truth of the 3 great Mono Theistic religions. Muslims of course deny this,
as do those who claim a deep understanding of Judaism. The question for
each of us is which one contains the most truth, ie, the largest
compendium or body of Truth about God as revealed to man through General and
Special Revelation, in other words, given all the available data which can
be brought to bear on the subject. This type of question is extremely
unpopular in our post modern, post Christian, Neo-Pagan society, which in
general denies the very possibility of making these sorts of determinations,
and considers them politically incorrect, a type of mind-control, if you
will.

If universal truths do exist however, and if it is possible to apprehend
them, then it is reasonable to consider the case in detail, utilizing both
inductive, and deductive reasoning, always asking the question, which of the
various religious systems does the best job of explaining all of both
visible and invisible reality. Christian MonoTheism purports to do that and
claims to do a better job then any of the others. Therefore, Christianity
agrees with Islam and Judaism with respect to some very fundamental
doctrinal issues, for example, that there is only 1 God. However,
Christianity is alone among all the others in asserting that God is a
tripartite entity in unity, a tri-unity, or Trinity, that is 3 persons in 1
being, or 3 who's in 1 what. It asserts that Jesus Christ was God in the
flesh, a hybrid sort of God/man, something denied by Judaism and Islam.
Utilizing another one of the First Principles of reality, called the Law of
the Excluded Middle, we can see that Jesus of Nazareth was either God in the
flesh as HE claimed, or he was not, no other possibility is possible. Even
if he was deluded, insane, or a horrible charlatan, he would not be God in
the flesh, therefore, either Christianity is correct about this or it is
wrong. Similarly, either Christ as the Son of God died on a Roman Cross for
the sins of the world and was raised from the dead after 3 days, or he was
not, something denied by Judaism, and Islam. Again by the Law of the
Excluded Middle, this is either true or false. Similar cases can be made
regarded the Virgin Birth of Christ. If these things are true, then
Christianity has more Truth about God then the other religions do, but that
does not mean they have none. Our job is to consider the evidence much as a
detective does at a crime scene, using both a-posteriori and a-priori type
reasoning. When we do this, we ask questions like: is there good evidence
that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived in Palestine between roughly 3 BC
and 30 AD? What kind of evidence is available? How strong is it? What is
the competing contrary evidence? Do we have extra-biblical, archeological,
historical, scientific etc. data which supports or detracts from this
evidence?

The above is a very different type of analysis, primarily inductive
reasoning, compared with the sort of reasoning employed in 2+2=4. For
example, a commonly accepted universal is that all Human Beings are mortal.
Only philosophical nominalists would tend to dispute this, primarily arguing
that no universals exist except that all universals are only names. A
similar thing happens when we ask how do we "know" that other people have
minds? These are examples of universals appreciable by virtually any Human
being with adequately functioning cognitive equipment. They involve
abstractions and inferences drawn from an incomplete set of data, ie, we are
unable to assess all Human Beings for the presence of minds, and were are
unable to prove with 100% certainty that any human being has a mind. That
does not mean that we lack enough certainty to conclude that all Human
Beings have minds. See my previous post on the nature of proofs and how they
differ in deductive and inductive reasoning.

The point here, is that in order to adequately consider religious questions,
we must recognize the need to employ different types of reasoning,
frequently alternating between deductive and inductive types, when
attempting to ascertain the "best fit" of the data regarding a given
religious system or world view if you will.

Many would
agree that not all truth is to be found in religious books only. Some would
argue that almost all truths found in religious books can be found E/W,
e.g. Aquinas vis a vis the Natural Law at least with respect to the Moral
Law.

An example of this type of dilemma is the Christian teaching that
monogamy is taught by Christ. The New Testament does not specifically
(explicitly) teach this, yet it implicitly does so, as does much of secular
society. When Sacred Tradition is added to the implicit statements found in
New Testament scripture, the doctrine is easily derivable. Yet, given New
and Old Testament scripture alone, one must struggle to derive monogamy from
scriptural revelation alone.

Howard:

 An interesting example. It would be ethically and
morally possible to still be considered a Christian in
good standing with God (but not with very many
churches) with multiple wives, the usual Max number
is 4, if you can afford them, unless you are very important
person and you could have quite a few more. The Bible,
I should say Paul, would not let you be in charge, or be
a principal, of a church if you had more than one wife but
he does not explicitly forbid it from anyone else.
Truly an interesting dilemma to consider. ;-)

John:

If your only source of information was scripture, you would have a more
powerful argument. However, the tradition of the Christian Church for 2000
years has been to limit marriage to one man and one wife, and is suggested
by the biblical passages you refer to which limit deacons and elders to the
same, which implicitly is a powerful piece of data, albeit not explicit.
The fact that the church has handed this teaching down to us over 2000 years
is a testimony to the existence of oral tradition, in Roman Catholicism and
Eastern Orthodoxy this is referred to as Sacred Tradition. Not everything
we hold as part of Christian Monotheism is found explicitly in scripture,
although most is, and most of the rest is found there implicitly.