MacArthur commentary on Jn 16.25

Because God is the God of truth (<a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Ex+34%3A6">Ex. 34:6</a>; <a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=2Sa+7%3A28">2 Sam. 7:28</a>) who cannot lie (<a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Tit+1%3A2">Titus 1:2</a>; <a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Heb+6%3A18">Heb. 6:18</a>), it follows that His Word is also true and free from error—being absolutely right in all it commands and accurate in all it describes (<a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Ps+119%3A142">Ps. 119:142</a>; <a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Jn+17%3A17">John 17:17</a>). It is true not only when it speaks to spiritual and moral issues, but also in matters of science and history. The God who created this universe (<a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Ge+1%3A1">Gen. 1:1</a>; <a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Ac+17%3A24-25">Acts 17:24-25</a>) and who orchestrates human history for His purposes (<a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Isa+46%3A10">Isa. 46:10</a>; <a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Ac+17%3A26">Acts 17:26</a>) is the same God who has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. There is therefore a unified field of knowledge between the general revelation of the Creator God found in the natural world (cf. <a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Ps+19%3A1-6">Ps. 19:1-6</a>) and the revelation of His plan of salvation and judgment found in the Bible (cf. <a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Ps+19%3A7-10">Ps. 19:7-10</a>). Because God is its author, His Word reveals His perfection and carries His authority, meaning that the truth it reveals is absolute.

But postmodernism rejects that concept. One of the legacies of the rationalism crafted by the Enlightenment philosophers has been the artificial division of the realm of truth into two completely separate spheres. On the one hand is the world of facts, of objective, public knowledge that is binding on all and is verifiable rationally On the other hand is the realm of values, which postmodernism views as private, subjective matters of personal preference, neither necessarily rational nor verifiable. The former realm encompasses science, history, and autonomous human reason. Religion, morality, and the arts are relegated to the private realm of values; they are seen as nothing more than culturally conditioned preferences, with no right to be considered either objective or universally binding.

This divided view of truth has created a profound intellectual schizophrenia in modern man. Scientific naturalism tells him he is nothing more than a sophisticated biochemical machine, with a mind that is nothing more than a "three-pound computer made of meat," as one scientist put it. But that notion does not find resonance in the human mind because men are made in the image of God, and cannot live consistently with such a materialistic, mechanistic view of themselves. They cannot stop behaving as though people have value and dignity, and the freedom to make choices—even though such beliefs contradict their naturalistic worldview. As Nancy Pearcey explains,

The postmodern dilemma can be summed up by saying that ethics depends on the reality of something that materialistic science has declared to be unreal.... This is the tragedy of the postmodern age: The things that matter most in life—freedom and dignity meaning and significance—have been reduced to nothing but useful fictions. Wishful thinking. Irrational mysticism. (Total Truth [Wheaton: Crossway, 2005], 107,110. Italics in original.)

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The consequence of it all is a bleak world of hopelessness and despair. People yearn for the very significance, meaning, and purpose in their lives that their worldview cannot offer them. As a result, they resort to irrational "leaps of faith," searching desperately for some experience, feeling, intuition, or idea to believe in and to live for, to give them hope and meaning. But all they succeed in doing is hewing out for themselves "broken cisterns that can hold no water" (<a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Jer+2%3A13">Jer. 2:13</a>). The worldly pleasures they tirelessly pursue can never satisfy them (cf. <a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Ecc+2%3A1-26">Eccl. 2:1-26</a>). Real hope, the experience of genuine love, and a true sense of purpose in life come only through believing in "the glorious gospel of the blessed God" (<a href="http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=1Ti+1%3A11">1 Tim. 1:11</a>).

MacArthur New Testament Commentary, The - MacArthur New Testament Commentary – John 12-21.