One of the more potent questions folks ask postmodernists is if truth is anything more than, or other than, a rhetoric used by those in power to justify their power? Walsh and Keesmaat address the so-called “objectivity” of truth in chp 7 of Colossians Remixed.
They proceed by reminding us that truth is commitment — it is relational, fidelity, and covenantal. And the nervousness about talking about truth this way is called “Cartesian anxiety.” They say “Fear not.”
Isn’t this then just relative to one ‘s commitment? Yes. Precisely. And they critique the idolatry of “rationalism” that thinks that all truth must be subject to rational proof. They argue that this rational approach to truth masks that at the deeper level there is a commitment to rationalism.
W-K contend we need first to be committed to Jesus. “The commitment to reason … is the most insidious idolatry to capture the imagination of the church in its history” (119). What makes it serious and insidious is that most don’t recognize it as a commitment, a previous layer of commitment from which everything hangs.
But, their interrogators ask, is truth “out there” — is it objective? Tomorrow.