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I was invited to the InterVarsity chapter of our campus for a discussion on Christianity in the university. One of the leaders felt I was being "wish-washy" and challenged me. She said, "After all, as Jesus says, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), no one comes to the Father but by me.' Can you say, 'but by me'?" she asked.

"Yes," I responded, "but isn't it curious that Jesus did not say to his disciples, 'I am here to tell you about the truth?' He says, 'I am the truth.' "

Increasing numbers of Christians are decrying rampant moral and intellectual "relativism" within our culture. Our culture is undeniably in sad shape, intellectually and morally, but I'm not sure "relativism" is the problem. In "No Place for Truth," David Wells argues forcefully that evangelicals are called to push the truth, to speak up for objective, absolute truth, regardless of how people feel about it. Feeling is not the issue, according to Wells, the issue is: "Is the gospel true--objectively, absolutely true--or not?"

Wells has a point. The concept of absolute truth is a necessary corrective for a society wallowing in pop-psychotherapeutic, feel-good strategies. After all, most of us are not conditioned to ask, "Is this true?" but rather, "How do I feel about this?"

But I'm not sure that putting the matter in this way is the best strategy for the church today. It fails to do full justice to the peculiar truth that is proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Recently I heard a Christian apologist argue that either Christianity was objectively true, accessible to anyone with rational sense, or it was a preposterous lie. "If I say it is raining today," said the apologist, "that is either true or it is not true. It can't be almost true, or figuratively true. It is objectively true. Likewise, when I say, 'Jesus Christ rose from the dead,' it is either true or it is sheer fantasy."

I could see where he was going with this. Certainly God gave us powers of reason and, in the exercise of those powers, we ought to be able to think about Jesus. Yet I thought he was not only begging the question of the myriad ways in which we use those words, That's true, he was also not being true to the nature of Jesus, who is "the way, the truth, and the life."

I have come to agree with my colleague Stanley Hauerwas that Christians who argue for the "objective" truth of Jesus are making a tactical mistake. Jesus did not arrive among us enunciating a set of propositions that we are to affirm. There is no point at which Jesus says, "You need to believe four propositions about me: number one: I was born of a virgin; number two: Scripture is inerrant . . ." Jesus doesn't talk like that. Jesus never asks us to agree; he asks us to join up, to follow. He did not call for cognitive assent; he asked for a life of discipleship involving the whole self, not just the mind.

Again, he did not say, "I have come to start a discussion about what is true." (We academics would have loved it if he had!) Rather, he came saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." The truth is a person, personal. This truth is not sheer subjectivity, either, for the truth of Jesus is utterly inseparable from him--his life, death, and resurrection. We Christians really would have no idea what the truth is if it were not for our being met and called by Jesus.

When people today say, "That's true," what they usually mean is that they have some preconception of what truth is, and they have heard some assertion that matches their preconception. They are saying: "That certainly is true to my experience of the world thus far" or "That idea is congruent with all my previous ideas and is not threatening to my present existence; therefore, it seems true."

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March 4 1996, Vol. 40, No. 3