How does Christianity claim to be Objectively True?
Summary
Something that has puzzled me for a long time is that Christianity claims to be objectively true, that it truly has exclusive access to god and the means into heaven. It also claims to be historically true, and by implication, all the events in the New Testament must also be true, objectively true, in fact, since history is inviolate.
However, there a serious problems with the chain of custody regarding how such truths have come about, beginning with Jesus' own claims and ending with a religion with 30,000 Churches, denominations, sub-groups that are unable to to prove themselves to each other.
edit: correction - it's actually 45,000 now (https://www.christianity.com/wiki/church/how-many-christian-denominations-are-there.html)
This is at the heart of why I believe that Christianity either cannot be true at all, and is certainly not objective, or it is such a tangled mess that no one group can claim to be the one and only true version of Christianity.
ADDED:
- Being objectively true means that it is true whether or not someone believed in it or not.
- Being subjectively true means that it is true for a particular person depending on his experiences, prejudices, education, values or perspective.
Subjective all the way down
At every point of Christianity, there is a flawed human involved, all the way to Jesus' original claims. This subjectivity strikes at the heart of Christianity's claims to being the true interpretation of the true scripture that accurately represents the true path to heaven. Christian apologists like to claim they hold to a higher objective truth, yet they are unable to be convincing about said truths outside of their specific bubbles.
The creation of the scripture is subjective from the choice of what to include or not, the translations from the originals to Greek or Latin, the further translations from that, and modernizations are subjectively determined.
It was executed by flawed humans working under auspices of a church/denomination that subjectively claims to represent divine authority.
As history marches along new ideas are constantly added (the virgin birth, the trinity's existents, the trinity's nature, ending in Mormonism). Any augmentations and embellishments to the original Jesus story (if there ever really was one) are equally suspect, for the same reasons.
Jesus' own claims of his own divinity, his gatekeeping of heaven, miracles, to the eventual suicide by Romans, also have similar flaws: being 100% human, Jesus is as flawed as any other human. Open to invention, personal power and a legacy.
That's at least good dozen individual layers that puts the authenticity into question and makes the chain of custody very problematic from the beginning. Taken with the claims of infalliability, objective reasoning, and absolute truth from many sub-branches who compete and contradict each other throughout all of history, what exactly constitutes as being true?
Philosophically bereft
The problem is not just on the chain of custody of "truth" but that there are multiple ones that compete for being the truth. It's about the lack of an agreed upon ontology (not everyone believes in Saints or even the Trinity), a lack of an agreed Epistemology (allowing anyone to claim to be the true truth, finally, this time), and bad theology that is sometimes based on bad math and bad science (which means that even indisputable facts can be misused).
Conclusion
I've tried very hard to get to the heart of how each Christian group claims to be the only true religion and the objections are:
Only belief in the Nicean Creed qualifies a Christian, everyone else is false. My rebuttal is that this is just a subjective claim, with no actual proof, since the Nicean Creed is an subjective agreement as to the nature of God. However, the Arians have a different idea, as do other non-Trinitarian Christians. So this is still an unresolved issue.
The nature of God and Jesus' role, which is still disputed, isn't as important as the acceptance of Jesus as the exclusive access to Heaven. My response is that if it weren't important why can't it be resolved, and how can one religion claim their rituals and specifics are more true than any other?
Both these objections prove my point, I could be talking to a Catholic or a Mormon or an Evangelical, and I would imagine they would all say the same - their version is the true one, and that the others are wrong. And the proof offered? None!
Therefore, how can any Christian claim to be objectively true? When at every level it seems to be highly subjective at every turn.
**edit 1: Clarifications ** I am not saying Christian claims and ontology are wrong, I am saying there is no epistemology to determine which competing claims are true:
I am not necessarily saying everything in Christianity is wrong. I am saying there is no way to determine who is right, particularly if one puts Christianity in the context of the other Abrahamic religions, all of whom have equally robust theological arguments.
I am saying Christianity clearly lacks the means to determine the truth value of anything. I know Christianity likes to think of itself as being logically sound but that is actually a very low bar. Logical arguments on flawed in a long reasoning chain, where key decisions are made subjectively or through some kind of personal, individual divine revelation, is guaranteed to produce the kinds of results we see.
These long-running disagreements feel more like political disagreements, where one's personal interpretation of economics , morality and religion, are powerful motivators. This is what makes the whole enterprise of beliefs and believing largely subjective.
All this points to a chain of reasoning where subjective claims far outweigh the following objective reasons why the claims are true.
**edit 2: Scripture justifies itself **
It seems that the reason for the epistemology weakness and contradictory claims within Christianity is because of some of the scripture below:
2 Timothy 3:16 [16] All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, (ESV)
Revelation 21:5–6 [5] And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” [6] And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. (ESV)
** 2 Peter 1:20** [20] knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. (ESV)
Luke 24:44 [44] Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (ESV)
It should be obvious that internal self-justification is a circular but more important to my specific case here, is that this is likely how Christians can justify wildly different claims, so long as it could be linked to some other scriptural claim. It's clear Jesus did this as he broke off from Judaism. It is this self-authentication without a central authority that is the root of the flaws.