Relativism Throughout the Church and United States

“Barbarism is that which prevailed from the days of Adam down through ten generations to the time of Noah. It is called barbarism because of the fact that in those times men had no ruling authority or mutual accord, but every man was independent and a law unto himself after the dictates of his own will.” (John of Damascus, “The Fount of Knowledge,” cited in Political Apocalypse, Ellis Sandoz, p. 131)

Pre-flood barbarism was an anarchy of pride, selfishness and relativism in accord with Nietzsche’s philosophy of relativism, “You have your way, I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, it does not exist,” The animating spirit of both pre-flood and post-flood relativism here in America and the American church is “there is no fear of God before their eyes,” (Rom. 3:18) and “they do not love the Truth” (2 Thes. 2:10). 

According to Collin Garbarino, author of “Moral Relativists in the University: They Aren’t Who You Think They Are,” young conservatives arriving on campus are as morally relative as liberals. While a liberal faculty certainly promotes the idea that “good” is a relative term defined by the individual and the only “bad” is to infringe on another person’s ability to express their own version of “good,” the battle for conservatism was lost long before students ever met their first college professor. In my experience, said Garbarino, freshmen arrive on campus as moral relativists. (The Aquila Report, August 24, 2014)

In other words, it’s Christian and Jewish parents who impress their own moral relativism upon their children. Some years ago Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., published his Refutation of Moral Relativism, a deeply researched work that is even more relevant today than when it was published. America, said Kreeft, is both the world’s most religious nation and the primary source of relativism in the world. Reports show that Catholics are as relativistic, both in behavior and in belief, as Protestants. Sixty-two percent of Evangelicals say they disbelieve in any absolute or unchanging truths, and American Jews are significantly more relativistic and more secular than Gentiles. (A Refutation of Moral Relativism, Peter Kreeft)

In “What We Can’t Not Know,” a penetrating examination of the lost world of unchanging truths, moral absolutes, and morally-grounded common sense that we all really do know about right and wrong, author J. Budzisewski, professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas, writes that the pervasive darkness within both our churches and society requires lots of lies:

“…the public relations of moral wrong require lies, and a lot of them…There are the lies about whether infidelity and promiscuity really hurt anyone. There are the lies about whether the living child is really alive, or really a child. Next come lies about the meaning of fairness, the nature of promises, and what the “committed gay relationship” is really like. Amid all of them is the lie about how hard it is to know what to do.” (p. 195)

And then there are the lies about whether the Bible is the inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word of God written by men inspired by the Holy Spirit or is really nothing more than a book of myths and moral stories written by superstitious goat-herders in our prescientific, pre-evolutionary past. And since this is the case, say relativists, then why not say that God made and ignited a Cosmic Egg (Big Bang) which generated matter and energy. Then after billions of years of God-directed evolution eventuating in the suffering and death of millions of life-forms (making God the cause of death and evil), man inexplicably fell from grace even though God is the guilty party. If everyone feels this version of events feels right then why not make it the indisputable account? After all, who can know truth?

Matthew 21: 23-27 and Relativism in the Church

“And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Jesus asked the chief priests and elders to take a stand an a simple truth claim: Either John’s baptism is from heaven or from man. Declare what you believe to be the truth. They ponder: If we say that John’s baptism is from heaven, then we will be shamed because we don’t live like it is from heaven and Jesus will show that we are hypocrites. (1)

On the other hand, if we say that John’s baptism is from man, we may be attacked by the crowd, because they all believe he was a prophet. So since we don’t want to be shamed and we don’t want to be harmed by a mob, we will not say that either of those positions are true (that John’s baptism is from heaven or from man). So we will rationalize and say: We don’t know the answer to your question.

Clearly they are equivocating. Despite that they were chief priests and elders their evasion demonstrates the way the depraved mind works when the conscience is unclean. The human mind, apart from transforming grace (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:23), is depraved (1 Timothy 6:5) and debased (Romans 1:28) and hard (2 Corinthians 4:4) and darkened and futile (Ephesians 4:17-18). It was created by God to discover, embrace, and be shaped by the immutable truth of our Lord. To respond to His truth in knowing and enjoying Him and serving man. But Matthew 21:23-27 is a picture of its depravity. (1)

Just like millions of contemporary Americans, priests, pastors, elders, deacons, and laymen, ancient Jewish elders and chief priests did not use their minds to formulate a true answer. Instead they reasoned carefully: “If we say this, then such and such will happen. And if we say that, then such and such will happen.” They reasoned carefully, not because they cared about truth but because they didn’t want to be shamed or harmed.

Like the minds of millions of American and Christian relativists, the minds of the chief priests and elders were the agile slaves of their disordered passions (the adulterous heart, Matthew 16:4) while their language did the dirty work of covering up the corruption. Truth was irrelevant, meaning it didn’t matter whether John’s baptism was from heaven or from man. What mattered was that they not be shamed or harmed. So like the ancient chief priests and elders, today’s relativists within and without the church use perverted language to disguise indifference to truth in favor of self, pride and having their way, even if it means a relativist pastor accusing brothers and sisters in Christ of being in the wrong.

Relativism is deeply rooted in the base desire of the fallen human mind to be free from all authority and to enjoy the exaltation of self and of doing what self wants. This is where relativism comes from.

The Guilt of Relativist Pastors, Elders, and Deacons Within the Church

“And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, “Why are you thinking evil in your hearts?” Matthew 9:4

“Immediately Jesus, aware in His spirit that they were reasoning that way within themselves, *said to them, “Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts?” Mark 2:8

Pastors, elders, and deacons are supposed to be faithful, trust-worthy leaders and role-models. They are to be men of their word. But if they are relativists, they fail their calling, break faith, and destroy trust. They are also guilty of committing treason against the objective reality of God and against their moral obligations to their brothers and sisters in Christ. As well, they are guilty of manipulating language to conceal their defection from truth in furtherance of getting their way and of cloaking their selfish pride in false humility. Plus, all of the evil workings of their hearts are known to Jesus, who sees into their hearts and knows their motivations. They can deceive humans but not the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Disastrous Consequences of Relativism to Whole Societies

When relativism takes hold of church and society, everyone begins to do what is right in his or her own eyes without any regard for submission to truth. In this atmosphere of turmoil, distrust and darkness, both church and society begin to break down. Michael Novak put it like this:

“Vulgar relativism is an invisible gas, odorless, deadly, that is now polluting every free society on earth. It is a gas that attacks the central nervous system of moral striving. The most perilous threat to the free society today is, therefore, neither political nor economic. It is the poisonous, corrupting culture of relativism…”

“During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the most insidious and duplicitous attacks from within, from those who undermine the virtues of our people, doing in advance the work of the Father of Lies. “There is no such thing as truth,” they teach even the little ones. “Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with yourself. Do what feels comfortable.” Those who speak in this way prepare the jails of the twenty-first century. They do the work of tyrants.” (Michael Novak, “Awakening from Nihilism: The Templeton Prize Address” in First Things, August/September, no. 45, pp. 20-21)

According to the renowned German historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975):

“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

The Perfect Anti-God State of Mind

Relativism begins with pride (love of self), and a will, turned toward evil, the perfect anti-God, anti-truth, anti-authority, anti-higher knowledge state of mind:

“Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act [would] never [have] been done had not an evil will preceded it.  And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For “pride is the beginning of sin” [Ecclus. 10:13?]. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction. This falling away is spontaneous; for if the will had remained steadfast in the love of that higher and changeless good by which it was illumined to intelligence and kindled into love, it would not have turned away to find satisfaction in itself. The wicked deed, then that is to say, the transgression of eating the forbidden fruit was committed by persons who were already wicked.” (Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods et al., in Augustine, Basic Writings, 2:257-58; 14.13)

What is Truth?

Since the fall, all men and women – like dumb sheep – have obeyed the lusts of the flesh, worshipped the gods of intellectual arrogance and appetites, followed after the prince of the air and allured by his lies packaged as gleaming nuggets of esoteric truth dutifully slouched toward hell.

Truth however, is neither the seductive lies of the devil nor the relativistic opinions, equivocations, fleeting feelings and perverted choices of fallen men, be they relativistic pastors, elders, and deacons, or otherwise, but rather the Second Person of the Holy Trinity (John 16:6). Jesus is the embodiment of the wisdom of God; He is the eternally unchanging Word of God. John 1:10 tells us that everything seen and unseen was created ex nihilo by the spoken Word of the Son of God, which means that Jesus Christ was active and present long before His incarnation, therefore eternally co-existent with the Father. Jesus Christ is therefore God just as the Father and Holy Spirit are God, thus the Word of the Old Testament’s creation account is Jesus Christ of the New Testament (John 1:1). Jesus Christ is the Word. His Word is Truth even as He Himself is Truth, the same today as yesterday and for always. Truth then is Jesus Christ Who teaches, “The truth will make you free.”

Truth is fidelity to Jesus Christ thus, Truth is an objective social good meant to be shared by all mankind. But like their father the devil, relativists hate truth and work to suppress it, and herein lay the psychological violence which is the evil fruit of moral relativism.

In “The Poison of Subjectivism,” C.S. Lewis warns that relativism will certainly end the human race and “damn our souls.” Because Lewis was an orthodox Christian he agreed with the fundamental teachings of his Lord and savior Jesus Christ and the Old Testament prophets that salvation presupposes sin and the need of repentance, therefore repentance logically presupposes an objectively real Moral Law and need of a Savior. It follows that Jesus Christ, our Savior, did not die for our opinions:

” He did not say that His blood was the blood of the new and everlasting covenant and that it would be shed for you and for all so that opinions may be forgiven; He did not say, “I am a way, a truth, and a life”; He did not say, “Let he who is without opinion cast the first stone”; He did not say to that dark tempter, “It is said, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,’ but hey, Satan, whatever works for you.” (4)

In this light we can see that moral relativism will surely damn the souls of relativists because just as it suppresses objective truth and reality, so it eliminates Moral Law, thereby trivializing repentance, imperiling salvation and ending the human race, not by flood as in the days of pre-flood relativists, but by fire, reserved for the post-flood world and its enlightened, liberated relativists.

Lewis sees farther than most, thus he argues that human kind will be ended in damnation because the entire human race is becoming increasingly Westernized, thereby relativized. The tragic irony here is that America, which at one time was a fortress of Christian light, is now the primary source of moral relativism (demonic darkness) in the world today. This is because America’s collapsing Christian denominations no longer defend Biblical infallibility, objective truth and moral law.

The pride, selfishness, and relativism that has characterized the modern age since its beginning is nothing new. These sins characterized the pre-flood world as well, and we know how that ended.  When these evils finally prevail throughout the present world, then as a thief in the night will come the Day of the Lord (2 Pet. 3:10) and the unrepentant human race will meet its’ allotted fate:

“Their destruction will overtake them while they dream of happiness, and please themselves with vain amusements. There will be no means to escape the terror or the punishment of that day.” However, the Day of the Lord, “will be a happy day to the righteous. They are not in darkness; they are the children of the light. It is the happy condition of all true Christians.” (Matthew Henry, commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5:2)

2024@Linda Kimball

Linda writes on worldview, the occult, and similar subjects

1. The Challenge of Relativism, Ligonier National Conference, Resource by John Piper, Desiring God, Mar. 2007
2. American Christians and Moral Relativism, Selwyn Duke, American Thinker, Feb. 2010