Christians must live and speak as those who believe God exists, that God is more than a word and that consequently there is a moral objectivity to the reality in which we live. Without the clarity of the Christian voice, things tend to fall apart under the weight of relativism where man is the measure of all things.

On April 8, 1966, Time magazine ran a cover story titled, “Is God Dead?” The question was in large print on the cover suggesting it was a real possibility without consequences. In 2017 Time magazine, using the same cover graphic ask the question: “Is Truth Dead?” This was more of a practical question, but it was loaded with philosophical implications as was the question in 1966. These two great questions are interrelated because if God is dead, then it follows that truth also is dead. This implies that both God and Truth could die, that is, no longer exist which in itself is an absurd question unless from the beginning the idea of God and Truth were phantoms of the mind, a crutch by which man was able to survive until the Enlightenment.

In light of the great question about God’s existence, in 1968 Francis A. Schaeffer addressed this question in his book titled: The God Who Is There. He reasoned that God does exists and, therefore, there is objective truth. If God exists, then the answer to Time’s last question is no—Truth is not dead. On the other hand, if God does not exist then there are no universal truths and upon this unhappy consequence everything collapses into relativism.

As Richard Weaver wrote, “The denial of universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience. The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably—though ways are found to hedge on this—the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of ‘man the measure of all things.’” (Ideas Have Consequences, 4).

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