The location of truth. . .

Of all the damage done by modernism, the worst just might be the location of truth.  Where nearly everyone agreed that truth was objective, it was objective because it was not conditioned by nor dependent upon the self believing or accepting or rejecting it.  In other words, truth was located outside of the self and the encounter with truth was both the subject of and the direction of education.  For religion, this was also the case.  Truth was not captive to or located in the self but in the revelation that comes from outside of self.  Now that is not the case.

Modernism has located the truth precisely within the self and so the pursuit of truth is the process of knowing the self.  An illustration of this is the selfie and the preoccupation not with moments to be remembered or sites to be seen but with the self.M  We are, in Augustine's words, curved in on our self -- which is how we have classically defined the mark of sin yet in modernism it is good and salutary to glorify the self, the feelings of the self, and to define reality by the self.

The gift of Christianity to modernism is the challenge to this presumption that truth is located within the self and more particularly within feelings.  Indeed, orthodox Christianity claims that truth must be revealed -- not simply the truth about God but the truth about the self.  The gift of sin is how the self has become disordered, that is, disconnected from the truth outside its self to the point where the truth within not only overshadows but prevents the revelation of God from being known at all.  When St. Paul says that no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, he is not addressing simply the words that are said but truth itself.  Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life yet He cannot be known apart from the person and work of the Spirit.  Sin has left us blind to the dead end of truth that is located within the self.

We have refused the cardinal truth of creation -- that God is creator and we are creatures.  We have refused the cardinal truth of redemption --  that we cannot save ourselves either by changing our will and desire or by atoning for our sin.  We have refused the cardinal truth of sanctification -- that the good that we do is not our doing but Christ in us.  Instead, we have reversed creation and made ourselves not only the guardians of creation but the authorities who define what good is and what our relationship to creation is.  We have reversed redemption and turned Jesus into a coach who helps us do for ourselves or an example of what we too may do if we only try hard enough.  We have turned sanctification into the correction of behavior to a standard we define instead of the pursuit of holiness, learning to desire what is holy and right and good, and being led by the law of God to know what this holy, right, and good is.

Modernism is of no help to us because it does not offer us any guidance except to encourage us to trust our selves.  How foolish it is for us to locate truth within us and to make ourselves the arbiters of what that truth is!  Yet not only the world but liberal Christianity presumes this foolishness to be wisdom.  Modernism has held captive the liberal and progressive Christianity to the point where the only real and objective truth, the Scriptures, have become strange and alien to us.  In other words, modern Christianity has taught us to believe that being true to self is a higher truth than to know the truth which is Christ.  In the end, the lie has triumphed and we have been deceived by that life to think it wise.