Be The Fruit

Piper on “All Truth is God’s Truth”

by Bill Blair on 14/03/09 at 8:53 am

John Piper wrote an interesting article about the concept of “all truth is God’s truth.”  The post is titled, “All Truth is God’s Truth,’ Admits the Devil,” and it can be read here.  Piper suggests that it is not enough to know something factual or as being true, but such “truth” should be utilized to know God more and glorify him.  As the title suggests, Piper says even the Devil understands that truth is derived from God, but the key is not what we know but how we use it.  Below are some excerpts that I will interact with:

Alongside “All truth is God’s truth,” we need to say, “All truth exists to display more of God and awaken more love for God.” This means that knowing truth and knowing it as God’s truth is not a virtue until it awakens desire and delight in us for the God of truth. And that desire and delight are not complete until they give rise to words or actions that display the worth of God. That is, we exist to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31), and merely knowing a truth to be God’s truth does not glorify him any more than the devil does.

Should we really call something “truth” if we do not see how it points to God or works for God’s purposes?  Some things are observable and repeatable, but is it really truth with a capital “T” if we miss this key element?  It would seem that something is missing from puzzle which makes whatever we know a little less than truth.

I give thanks that unbelievers see God’s truths in the natural world in a limited way. They know many scientific and cultural facts. But they do not feel desire for God or delight in God because of them. So these facts are misused. This is not a virtue.

I also give thanks that that believers may learn many of God’s truths from unbelievers and see them rightly and thus desire God more and delight in God more because of those truths, so that unbelievers become, unwittingly, the means of our worship.

 Piper is correct when he states how unbelievers see “truths” in a limited way.  I put “truths” in quotes because I don’t really think we should properly consider them to be truth when it is limited.  Maybe factual is a better term, but the key point to understand is not all “truth” is the same.  What the unbeliever observes in the world and considers to be true is always limited because he fails to see how such “truth” can be used to glorify God.  The unbeliever simply cannot glorify God; therefore, whatever he has discovered should not be considered to be full truth.  The real criteria for truth is that which has been revealed to us by God in Scripture.

The key is this, what the world has discovered as “truth” must be radically reinterpreted so that it is understood within a biblical framework so it can be used to glorify God.  In order to do this, we must view the world through a biblical lens by attempting to see how all things fit within God’s redemptive purposes.  I think this is what Piper alludes to when he says believers can see rightly what the world “knows” in a limited way.  In order to see things through a biblical lens we must think about many things like the nature of man, the cause of man’s problems in this world, God’s purposes and plan, and how what we know relates to the redemption of this world through Jesus.

The idea that ”all truth is God’s truth” is one that is conceptually true, but it is a dangerous one because it often leads believers to accept all the world believes without ever seeing whether such “truth” fits within the biblical framework.  Piper has some good thoughts in his post, and it sparked some of these thoughts this morning so take a look at the rest of his article when you get a chance.