What is absolute reality?

Answer

“What is reality?” is one of the significant philosophical inquiries. One could argue that it is the fundamental question of philosophy, religion, science, and other fields. To refine the query slightly, “Is there an existence of ‘absolute’ reality, and if so, what precisely is it?” Defining reality is a complex task that goes beyond a brief discussion, a single article, or even an entire ministry. It is a subject that surpasses any individual. Nevertheless, there exist distinct Christian viewpoints on the essence of reality. While they may not address every query, they can guide us towards better understandings.

Primarily, truth is a common term used to denote reality. Truth is what aligns with reality—it signifies things that truly exist as opposed to those that do not. This becomes crucial when discussing “absolute” reality, which essentially equates to absolute truth. Reality (truth) must ultimately be absolute; otherwise, reality ceases to exist. If reality lacks absoluteness—if there is no ultimate, singular, all-encompassing truth—then there is essentially nothing to deliberate. All assertions would hold equal validity or be entirely invalid, rendering them meaningless.

The very essence of the question “what is reality (truth)” presupposes a subject that can be defined by statements that are either true or false—correct or incorrect—real or unreal—existent or non-existent. Even those advocating for relativism must make an absolute declaration about the nature of all things. In essence, there is no way to evade absolute reality and no way to reject some form of absolute truth. Anyone who opts to discard this notion is essentially disregarding logical boundaries.

Keeping this in consideration, we can interchangeably use “reality” or “truth” to refer to “absolute reality” and proceed.I’m there. The Bible clearly advocates a belief in truth versus fiction “I hate and abhor lying: But thy law do I love.”, (Psalm 119:163) and that we can indeed discern the difference (Proverbs 13:5; Ephesians 4:25). This concept applies to spirituality, philosophy, and everyday life. Some things are true and real, while others are false and unreal, irrespective of personal opinions or knowledge.

In a spiritual context, the notion of “truth” suggests that not all religious beliefs can be valid. Christ proclaimed Himself as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”, (John 14:6). This statement inherently implies that assertions conflicting with His cannot be true. This exclusivity is reinforced by verses like John 3:18 and John 3:36, which explicitly state that those who deny Christ cannot expect salvation. The concept of salvation apart from Christ has no basis in reality.

From a philosophical perspective, the Bible’s acknowledgment of truth is significant. Some philosophical perspectives question whether humans can truly discern reality. According to the Bible, individuals can differentiate between truth and falsehood “For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain: therefore they went their way as a flock, they were troubled, because there was no shepherd.”, (Zechariah 10:2) and between reality and fiction “For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maket.”

Ha lie. », (Revelation 22:15). In particular, this is knowledge at an “ultimate” level, not merely on a personal, experiential level. We can, in fact, have insight into some aspect of absolute reality. Contrary to philosophies that claim man cannot know, such as solipsism, Scripture says we have a means to see at least some of the critical truths of absolute reality.

In daily life, the Bible’s stance on reality precludes ideas such as moral relativism. According to Scripture, moral truth exists, and anything opposed to it is sin (Psalm 11:7; Psalm 19:9; James 4:17). One of the longest-running philosophical debates is over the difference between “abstract” realities and “concrete” realities. Concepts such as “length,” “happiness,” or “the number four” are not concrete themselves. However, they do have a meaningful connection to concrete things. Biblically speaking, the same is true of concepts such as justice, good, sin, and so forth. You cannot fill a jar with “good” in the same way you can fill a jar with sand, but that does not mean “good” is not true— or “real”— in a meaningful way.

With that idea in mind, we can also distinguish between abstractions that exist and those that technically do not exist. Evil is one such abstraction. Sin is “real” in the same sense that “good” is real— but neither of them is concrete. That is, there is no physical particle or energy that God created as a unit of good or of sin. However, both are “real.” The difference is that sin, in and of itself, is defined only in terms of the absence of goodness. In other words, sin is only “real” in the sense that goodness is real, and sin is the lack of goodness.

In other words, God can create “good,” as an ideal or an abstraction, and sin can “exist” where there is a lack of goodness. This is not as convoluted aAs it sounds—we make the same distinction in physics. “Darkness” is an abstraction, but it corresponds to something real: the absence of light, which (depending on the sense we are using) is a real, physical thing made of photons. “Cold” is an abstraction, but it corresponds to the absence of heat—heat being a “real” thing. Neither darkness nor coldness exist in and of themselves; they are both defined entirely as a lack of something else. “Length” is not a substance or a concrete thing but is an abstraction with implications for the concrete world. “Shortness,” then, is only real in that it’s the lack of “length.”

As part of understanding the Bible’s stance on absolute reality, it’s critically important to separate the “reality” of experiences from the “reality” they are caused by. Human beings have the ability to use their minds to parse the difference between experiences and thoughts, in order to compare them to a more objective “reality.” This is not entirely intuitive; part of the uniqueness of human beings is the knowledge that our feelings and experiences are not always reliable «The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? », (Jeremiah 17:9) and thus need to be compared to something objective (Romans 12:2;1 John 4:1). This is not the same as solipsism, of course, since Christianity presumes that there is some actual, real point of comparison that we can know.

That, more or less, brings the idea of truth, or “reality,” full-circle. According to Christianity, “absolute reality” is truth, “truth” is what actually exists and that corresponds to what is real, and the most important aspects of truth are given to us by God. Reality can be known, and it applies to all aspects of our lives, according to the Bible.

There may not be a uniquely Christian definition of a

Absolute reality is widely accepted since most individuals agree on its definition. Nonetheless, there exists a distinct Christian viewpoint on reality as there is not a unanimous consensus on the nature of reality.