Review of All Truth is God’s Truth

All Truth is God’s Truth by Arthur F. Holmes, Eerdman’s Publishing, 1977, 145 pp.

“All Truth is God’s Truth” is not only the title of this book, but a popular phrase among many Christian apologists. The phrase sounds good in and of itself but leaves big questions of epistemology unanswered and even risks falling prey to anti-Biblical theories.

No doubt “all truth IS God’s truth” as God himself IS truth; He is the source and arbiter of all truth. Most Christians would therefore happily agree with the statement “all truth is God’s truth.” But the phrase has bothered me over the years. It seems rife with opportunities for its advocates to posit anti-Biblical theories of truth and sneak in various supposed truths (which are actually falsehoods) into the sum total of all actual truth and even to deny actual truths to make way for those falsehoods. For example, employing the phrase “all truth is God’s truth,” a person who comes to believe in Darwinism and the Big Bang Theory, but who still wants to claim to believe the Bible as well, will no doubt alter his understanding of the Bible to fit those other “truths.” In saying “all truth is God’s truth” they therefore (attempt to) sanctify error. Ultimately the phrase doesn’t answer the question of HOW one determines truth from falsity; how one can know God’s truth.

In the preface Holmes says, “My concern is that we understand how all truth and knowledge we can ever gain come from God and bear witness to him.” (p. ix) This is a good goal but does not answer how such knowledge IS gained. Of course, IF it is gained, it would give glory to God. But we need to know BY WHAT MEANS knowledge is acquired. I take this is as one of the central if not THE central question in epistemology; the justification of knowledge. Does Holmes provide an answer?

My concern that Holmes might allow in some particular errors to the corpus of truth is heightened by his statement that “all truth in every discipline is worthy of attention.” While that statement is perfectly true, it might too quickly open the door to their being truth in disciplines which have only error. Certainly there is no truth in the discipline of astrology or of necromancy, and I have my doubts about many commonly accepted disciplines like earth science and physics. Ultimately, can anything be called truth outside of God’s Word?

Holmes clearly accepts truths outside of the Scripture. He writes, “To say that all truth is God’s truth, moreover, does not mean that all truth is either contained in the Bible or deducible from what we find there.” (p. 8) It sounds like he is here critiquing Gordon Clark’s theory of knowledge. But even a Clarkian could technically agree with that quote for Clark did not believe that all truth is either contained in the Bible or deducible from it; he held that that all truth CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO MAN is either contained in the Bible or deducible from it. That is, Clark’s view is a single source theory of knowledge; simply “the Bible.” Holmes obviously wants more than the Bible. Is his a two-source theory of knowledge? Or three or four sources? Or does he perhaps have some theory of knowledge that encompasses the Bible within it?

Holmes contends that unbelievers as well as believers can know truth, saying, “The Logos is revealed both in the Incarnation and in the written words of Scripture and, if less specifically, in the intelligible order of his creation. Hence non-Christians as well as Christians perceive the truth, if fragmentarily.” (p. 14) This, of course, is aligned with the view of “Common Grace” of the Christian Reformed Church, from the 1924 Synod of Kalamazoo. Holmes includes also that God “endowed man with the capacity … for acquiring knowledge himself.” (p. 21). This leaves God as a bystander rather than an active participation in man’s acquisition of knowledge. But then Holmes contradicts that view in saying, “truth is ultimately revealed to men by God.” So is truth acquired by man all by himself, or is it given by God? Holmes wavers between the two views. But, of course, Holmes says, “All truth is God’s truth, wherever and however it be found” (p. 67) which seems to advocate bouncing around in one’s search.

This multi-fold theory of knowledge is again evident when Holmes says “revelation is not a source of information about everything. It is the Christian’s ‘final and sufficient rule for faith and practice,’ but it is not exhaustive, not even on matters of doctrine and morality, let alone on other subjects. … We need and have other sources of information …” (p. 77).

What are those other sources of information? Holmes gives an “unequivocal No!” to the question “isn’t experience what it is all about?” (p. 80), but then equivocates in giving an opening to the idea when he says “experience alone without rational inquiry is not enough to determine the truth.” (p. 83) So experience WITH rational inquiry somehow does determine truth? Holmes has lowered the standard to human autonomy in knowledge acquisition, and lowered the standard for what truth is: “For practical purposes, the purpose of life and faith and learning, confidence in human reason is well grounded. The basic principles of non-contradiction and of induction are universal and necessary for the purposes of human thought, even if they are not independently and logically necessary. Good reasoning will therefore adopt the rules and procedure those principles require. The result is not that reason can prove everything, but that we can know some things even though we ‘know in part’ and ‘see through a glass darkly.’” (p. 100-101)

There are various other philosophical considerations in the book, no doubt many of which are insightful, but this reviewer is greatly disappointed in Holmes’s work as it, in my view, provides no theory of knowledge allowing us to distinguish God’s Truth from man’s errors. Let us go back to God’s Word, the truth revealed in the Bible.