How do we answer the claim that truth is relative?
Question 60089
The claim that all truth is relative has moved from university philosophy departments into everyday conversation, social media, and church life. “That may be true for you but not for me” sounds tolerant and open-minded, but it carries significant implications for anyone who believes that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead and that there is no other name under heaven by which people must be saved. How Christians engage with this claim matters enormously, both for intellectual integrity and for genuine mission.
Understanding What the Claim Actually Says
Postmodern relativism does not merely suggest that different people have different perspectives, which is obviously true. It makes a stronger claim: that there is no objective, universal truth that stands independently of the knower’s culture, language, or community. Truth, on this view, is constructed rather than discovered. It is relative to the framework within which it operates, and no framework has any privileged claim to describe reality as it actually is. What this means in practice is that statements like “Jesus is Lord” are taken as expressions of a particular community’s belief, with no more claim to objective validity than any contrary belief held by any other community.
It is important to engage with this position charitably. Many people who express relativist views are not consciously committed to a philosophical system; they are drawing on a cultural mood that prizes tolerance and fears arrogance. The instinct to avoid dogmatic certainty that overrides other people is not entirely misguided. Christian history contains real examples of truth-claims being weaponised in ways that caused genuine harm. A response to relativism that shows no awareness of this will not be heard.
The Self-Refuting Problem
The most significant intellectual problem with strong truth-relativism is that it undermines itself. The statement “all truth is relative” presents itself as an objective, universal claim about the nature of truth. If it is true, then it too is merely relative to the framework of those who assert it, and there is no reason for anyone outside that framework to accept it. If it is not merely relative but actually, objectively true, then there is at least one objective truth, which disproves the very claim being made. The relativist cannot escape this without abandoning the position.
This argument should be offered gently rather than triumphantly. The goal is not to win a debate but to open a conversation. Pointing out the logical problem creates a space where the question “but then what is truth?” can be genuinely asked, and that is exactly the question to which the Christian gospel speaks.
The Biblical Claim to Objective Truth
Scripture makes no apology for asserting that truth is objective, knowable, and binding on all human beings regardless of their cultural framework. Jesus’ statement in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” is not a claim about His significance within the Christian community’s symbolic world. It is a claim about reality. Pilate’s question “What is truth?” (John 18:38) was asked in the presence of the one who embodies the answer, a moment of painful irony that John’s Gospel records with deliberate purpose.
Jesus’ prayer in John 17:17, “sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth,” grounds the truthfulness of Scripture in the character of God Himself, who cannot lie (Titus 1:2). The biblical understanding is not that God’s word is true because a community has found it useful or meaningful, but that it is true because it corresponds to reality as God, who made and knows all things, has disclosed it. This stands irrespective of human agreement or disagreement.
Pressing the Claim Where It Matters
It also helps to press relativism where it becomes unliveable. No one treats the claim “this bridge is safe to cross” as merely relative to a cultural framework when they need to cross a river. Medical diagnoses are not personal preferences. A courtroom that operated on the principle that all accounts of events are equally valid would be a chaos. The relativism that sounds attractive in a seminar room becomes unliveable the moment real consequences are at stake. This is not a debating trick but a genuine invitation to examine whether the position is coherent as a way of life, not merely as an intellectual posture.
It is worth noting, too, that the postmodern critique of power-laden truth-claims cuts against relativism as readily as it cuts against anything else. If all truth claims are expressions of power, then the claim that all truth is relative is itself an expression of power, deployed by those who benefit from a framework in which no one else’s convictions are allowed to carry objective weight. The Christian does not need to defend the abuse of truth-claims; they can acknowledge the abuse while maintaining that the abuse of a thing does not destroy its proper use.
So, now what?
The Christian response to postmodern relativism is not defensiveness. It is the patient, clear, and gracious proclamation of a gospel that has always operated as a truth-claim in a world resistant to hearing it. The apostles did not proclaim Jesus as one option among many; they proclaimed Him as Lord and Saviour in a pluralist Graeco-Roman world that already had a deity for every preference. The church’s task has not changed. The question “what is truth?” has an answer, and that answer walked out of a tomb on the third day.
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'” John 14:6
