Anthony Kennedy and Casey

In the Supreme Court decision “Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania V. Robert P. Casey” in 1992, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his opinion:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

Is that statement by a Supreme Court justice true?  Can someone define his own concept of existence, of meaning?  Everyone defines his own meaning?  I say “no” to that, but it relates to how anyone obtains an accurate understanding of the world.

Anthony Kennedy wrote that personal preference, which originates from a person’s feelings or opinions, arising from the inside and not the outside, would override objective meaning.  Therefore, objective truth contradicted freedom and essentially then America itself.  Something is true as long as it corresponds to someone’s desires.

Authenticity and Relativism

Even more so, when truth is your truth, then it’s also authentic.  Count that for goodness and beauty too.  Stephen Presser writes about Kennedy’s line:

It undoubtedly owes a lot to Freudian psychology, to Rousseau’s notion that civilization places us in chains, and, most of all, to the concept usually associated with Abraham Maslow, “self-actualization.” The core of this philosophy seems to be that each of us has an authentic “self,” and the goal of life ought to be to maximize individual opportunities to express and develop it.

I read someone, who called the statement, “the epitome of relativistic thought.”  Obviously, when applied to abortion, to which the Casey law was written, a baby is anything the person feels it to be, who wants the abortion.  It is an invader of the mother or just a clump of cells or cancer.

Outside, Not the Inside

Before the 19th century in the United States, almost everyone saw truth as received from the outside, not the inside.  God was separate from His creation.  Truth, goodness, and beauty, which came from Him, outside of His creation, were transcendent.  Hence, people called them the transcendentals.

On the outside was evidence.  Revelation is the declaration of God.  This is premodernism.  Everything starts with God.  But even modernism said evidence on the outside was necessary.  As Ben Shapiro very often says, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”  Man’s observation falls below revelation though.  Modernism assumed that absolutes existed, but their testing came through man’s reasoning.

Predmodern, Modern, Romanticism, Postmodern

Between Christ and the 19th century, this very long period is premodern.  Sure, 1500 to 1800 is an early modern period.  I don’t want to get into when modernism started.  It depends on how you define it.  Theological modernism started in the 19th century.  That’s the time of the worldview shift reflected also in the Romantic Movement of the 19th century.

Modernism connected truth to man’s experience, his observation.  Romanticism moved modernism all the way to the inside, where truth, goodness, and beauty were not longer transcendent, but completely immanent.  New religions exploded in the 19th century.  Truth lost objectivity.  People’s opinion, their feelings, increasingly become more important to decide truth, goodness, and beauty.  The movement toward truth is your truth is postmodernism.

God’s Word is the final arbiter of truth, but it isn’t the only one.  1 Timothy 3:15 calls the church the pillar and ground for the truth.  Still, however, that’s outside of your opinion, your thinking, and your feelings.

Even modernism depends on man’s thinking or reasoning.  This continues to influence even conservatism in the world.  Modernists confirm God’s revelation to man’s thinking, what one could call, rationalism.  Scripture stands above man’s reasoning, what Peter calls the pure mother’s milk (1 Pet 2:2).  It circumvents man’s observation and reasoning, coming directly from God, that is, from the outside.  What it says is true, good, and beautiful.