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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Truth Comes Out, December 27, 2005
This review is from: Whatever Happened to Truth? (Paperback)
Comprised of four essays from the plenary sessions at the 2004 ETS convention, Whatever Happened to Truth? addresses truth from biblical, cultural, philosophical, and hermeneutical perspectives. Editor Andreas Köstenberger notes in the introduction that each contributor writes from "an evangelical, inerrantist perspective and in the conviction that there is truth, and that truth can be known, in God's written word, the Bible, and in God's incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus Christ." (10)
Köstenberger begins the anthology with his essay "'What is Truth?' Pilate's Question in Its Johannine and Larger Biblical Context." He gives a defense of the historicity of the Johannine account, and then examines the role of the characters involved in the trial (the Jewish leaders, Pilate, and Jesus). While being a well-written and intriguing essay, it felt out of place. The study and conclusions reached have more to do with the historical issues related to John 18:38 than they do with `truth' as such.
The second essay, "What is Truth? Truth and Contemporary Culture," was written by Albert Mohler. Mohler suggests that postmodernism supplies six challenges for Christians. I found the most interesting to be `the dominion of therapy.' According to Mohler, "The critical epistemological questioned is shifted from `What is true?' to `What makes me feel good?'" (61) As usual, Mohler provides insightful points regarding culture and challenges Christians to stand firm in light of them.
J.P. Moreland contributes the third essay, "Truth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern Turn." His paper caused the most reaction due to his claim that "postmodernism is an immoral and cowardly viewpoint." (76) After defending the correspondence view of truth, he maintains that postmodernism (especially in its Christian manifestations) is confused on at least five points, primarily epistemological. Though a bit sensational, Moreland does a superb job of showing where postmodernism has gone wrong in regards to truth.
The final essay is "Lost in Interpretation? Truth, Scripture, and Hermeneutics," authored by Kevin Vanhoozer. Vanhoozer makes many points, including: textual meaning cannot be reduced to propositions, inerrancy is not really a hermeneutic, and hermeneutics should be theodramatic. While he makes several good points, Vanhoozer's contribution is mostly a rambling mesh of independent points having no direct relation to one another. He covers so many different areas that each of the summaries of his essay at the beginning and back of the book are at least twice as long as the other summaries.
Each author offers a unique contribution to the question, Whatever Happened to Truth? While some are stronger than others, it is a valuable book in that it engages truth on several fronts from diverse perspectives.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely satisfying, September 7, 2006
This review is from: Whatever Happened to Truth? (Paperback)
Whatever Happened to Truth is a compilation of four plenary addresses given at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theology Society. Each essay approaches the issue of truth from a different vantage point. Andreas Kostenberger offers a biblical exposition of Pilate's question to Jesus, "What is truth?"; Albert Mohler provides a cultural commentary, warning evangelicals to avoid the postmodern mood and its effects; J. P. Moreland provides a philosophical defense of a modest foundationalism and a correspondence theory of truth; and Kevin Vanhoozer concludes with a hermeneutical-theological essay on truth. These four essays are framed by Kostenberger's clear and helpful introductory and concluding essays.
Overall, I found the book extremely satisfying, bringing together as it does four distinguished and staunch defenders of conservative evangelicalism. Kostenberger's essay "What is Truth? Pilate's Question in Its Johannine and Larger Biblical Context" is a scholarly and thoughtful exegesis of Jesus and Pilate's exchange, though his excessive footnotes were a distraction. J. P. Moreland's essay "Truth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern Turn" is thoughtful and clear as usual, though there's certainly nothing new here. The essays by both Mohler and Vanhoozer, however, deserve further comment...
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Taking a stand for truth, April 21, 2006
This review is from: Whatever Happened to Truth? (Paperback)
These are not good days for truth. Truth has taken a hammering for several centuries now, and the attacks seem to intensify with each passing age. Modernism of course offered a reductionistic view of truth, arguing that only the empirically verifiable could pass the truth test.
And postmodernism has come along, declaring that there is no such thing as truth. All of which sits nicely with a largely hedonistic and relativistic West, in which individuals are quite happy to justify their selfishness by a shrug of the shoulders and the reply, "Whatever".
In such a poisoned environment, this volume offers a much-needed antidote. Truth exists. Truth matters. And truth must be affirmed. Thus assert the authors found in this helpful volume
This book actually comprises four separate essays, not necessarily of equal value or uniform consistency, but all of worth in the current debate.
The opening essay by Kostenberger focuses on truth as found in John's gospel, especially in relation to the appearance of Jesus before Pilate. As Kostenberger has recently written a helpful commentary on John (in the Baker series, 2004), this is the most biblical-based of the essays, and reads much like an excursion from his commentary.
The second essay, by R. Albert Mohler, is an overview of the cultural trends that have arisen out the modern and postmodern assaults on the biblical view of truth. After providing a readable, non-technical survey of the last several centuries, Mohler reminds us that a recovery of the biblical doctrine of revelation is needed to restore truth to its proper place.
Philosopher and apologist J.P. Moreland examines the philosophical assault on truth, especially the attack on the correspondence theory of truth. He critiques the confusions of postmodernism, and offers helpful distinctions and conceptual clarity in our understanding of truth. He demonstrates how a modest version of foundationalism is still defensible and worth promoting.
Finally Kevin Vanhoozer offers what may be the most important and detailed discussion of this book. He explores the related concerns of doctrine, hermeneutics, truth and understanding. He offers nuanced discussions on how we should understand concepts such as inerrancy, the role and meaning of propositional truth, and the phenomenon of Scripture. Those familiar with his earlier works, especially Is There a Meaning in the Text (1998), First Theology (2002), and The Drama of Doctrine (2005) will finds similar themes here, and will enjoy the complexity and sensitivity of his argumentation.
Being a collection of diverse essays, which tend to go off in different trajectories, this volume can appear to be slightly disjointed. But the four authors all share common concern over the war on truth, and the need for biblical Christians to once again stand up for truth when it is no longer popular to do so, even within sections of the church. As such, this is a valuable set of articles that deserve a wide reading.
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