I started out last week to make a case for the trustworthiness of the Bible but was struck by the realization that first I had to deal with widely held opinion that there is no universal and absolute truth.  “We have gone from the belief that everyone has a right to his or own opinion to the absurd notion that every opinion is equally right. Spirituality is a private matter; beliefs are accepted or rejected to suit one’s fancy.”  Erwin Lutzer.

So let’s explore the roots of relativism.  There is an ancient Indian parable in the Buddhist Scriptures, which tells how six blind men were once summoned to inspect an elephant and describe what they could feel. The first at the head declares, ‘Sire, an elephant is like a pot.’ The second feels the ears and exclaims, ‘An elephant is like a winnowing-basket.’ Another is led to a leg and insists it is ‘pillar’ and the one holding the tail is sure it is a ‘brush’. And so on.  This story is useful in understanding that we do have different perspectives, but it also assumes that we are all blind and that truth is a giant elephant.

“The point of the parable, as it is often retold today, is that when it comes to matters philosophical, Truth is in the eye of the beholder (or, in the case of blind men, the hand of the holder). In other words, your perspective determines your views. A person brought up a Christian will probably see things Christianly; a person brought up a Muslim will probably see things Islamically. One person views abortion as immoral; another views it as perfectly legitimate. No one is right or wrong. It is just one’s perspective or viewpoint.”  Dr. John Dickson, Director of the Centre for Public Christianity, Honorary Associate of the Department of Ancient History, Macquarie University (Australia)

 The word ‘relativism’ first appeared in 1859 in the writings Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton. It probably entered English via the German ‘Relativismus’ which was being used by the followers of the massively influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).  However besides that fact that there are hints of relativism in the snakes first date with Eve in the garden, we need to go back to around 500 B.C. to hear the modern version of relativism first articulated. 

Protagoras was a ‘Sophist’, born in 490 B.C.  Protagoras was an itinerant teacher of grammar, literature and philosophy. People would pay Protagoras huge fees because it was said he could argue any side of a case and, if he wanted to, could even make weak arguments sound the strongest of all.   He may be the first “spin doctor.”   Protagoras wrote a book called Alētheia – Greek for ‘Truth’. The opening line of “Aletheia captures the essence of modern relativsm, ‘Man is the measure of all things: of the things which are, that they are, and of the things which are not, that they are not.’ His point was that truth and falsehood are determined not by things outside of a person, but from a person’s own perspective. The measure of ‘truth’ is the viewpoint of the man himself. As he later says, ‘Things are for every man what they seem to him to be.’  Ever hear someone say, “perception is reality?”  Well you have Protagoras to thank for that half truism.

Philosophers call this approach to life relativism. Officially defined, relativism is ‘the theory of knowledge or ethics which holds that criteria of judgment are relative, varying with the individual, time, and circumstance.’  As a worldview, relativism has impacted the range of human experience—morality, culture, religion, philosophy, science and the very notion of existence itself.

By the way, Plato strongly objected to Protagoras and pretty much crushed his argument that all truth was relative.  However in the 18th and 19th century, Europeans, looking for a way to break the stranglehold that the corrupt church had on the masses, recycled relativism and it has grown in popularity ever since.

However, you won’t have to think long to remember a place or a time when a large group of people were wrong about something. Please think about my claim that there is such a thing as absolute, universal truth. I leave you with a series of probing questions given to us by Erwin Lutzer  “Has God left us a trustworthy revelation that tells us how to be reconciled to Him? Is truth something that I have a right to make up according to my liking, or is there an objective standard of rightness?  Are there some religious convictions that are actually based on fact, beliefs that actualy reflect the way things are? In other words are there revealed truths that are based on God?”