God therefore bestows a gift of singular value, when, for the instruction of the Church, he employs not dumb teachers merely, but opens his own sacred mouth; when he not only proclaims that some God must be worshipped, but at the same time declares that He is the God to whom worship is due; when he not only teaches his elect to have respect to God, but manifests himself as the God to whom this respect should be paid.
The course which God followed towards his Church from the very first, was to supplement these common proofs by the addition of his Word, as a surer and more direct means of discovering himself. And there can be no doubt that it was by this help, Adam, Noah, Abraham, and the other patriarchs, attained to that familiar knowledge which, in a manner, distinguished them from unbelievers. I am not now speaking of the peculiar doctrines of faith by which they were elevated to the hope of eternal blessedness. It was necessary, in passing from death unto life, that they should know God, not only as a Creator, but as a Redeemer also; and both kinds of knowledge they certainly did obtain from the Word.
~John Calvin, Institutes of Religion, Chapter 6, section 1
In our post-modern culture the idea of absolute truth is seen as a position of arrogance. The post-modernist sees truth, if it exists at all, as unknowable. “Discussion” has become the operative word and the height of intellect is the admission that absolute truth is unattainable. So he or she is left with “their truth” which has equal value with any other truth. It is completely subjective, untestable and denies the idea of exclusivity and leaves people open to moral relativism.
“Seminaries don’t make pastors, churches do.”
“A biblical perspective of truth also necessarily entails the recognition that ultimately truth is an objective reality. Truth exists outside of us and remains the same regardless of how we may perceive it. Truth by definition is as fixed and constant as God is immutable. That is because real truth (what Francis Schaeffer called ‘true truth’) is the unchanging expression of who God is; it is not our own personal and arbitrary interpretation of reality.
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