This claim was later expanded, I thought, by secularists to include the conviction that nothing is absolute. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
The idea of relativity, of course, is very old since it was championed by the Sophists of ancient Greece who insisted, “Man is the measure of all things” (Theaetetus 152a, cf. Protagoras, Gorgias). The Sophists taught their students how to argue both sides of every issue for the purpose of victory in court debate and a quick buck; much like modern law schools. This practice was mightily opposed by philosophers such as Plato who thought human beings should be interested in truth not persuasion. A more recent version, discussed by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind, maintains it is absolutely certain that everything is relative (p. 25).
In any case, philosophers and theologians have argued for a long time whether truth is relative or absolute. This problem is complicated by the popular acceptance and extension of the phrase, Einstein’s theory of relativity. Doubtless, all Presbyterians (except me) have known for a long time that this conclusion is totally unwarranted.
The truth is that in the mid 1800’s Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, disturbed by the esthetics of equations describing electromagnetic phenomena, added a mathematical term to make the formulae symmetric. Mathematically, Maxwell’s new equations showed that an accelerating electric charge results in electric and magnetic fields traveling together as a wave. Rewritten in a form known to describe waves, two experimentally determined constants (εo, the permittivity constant, and µo, the permeability constant) appeared where the velocity of the light waves should have been. When Maxwell combined these two constants in the manner dictated by his formula, he predicted that the velocity of his wave was 3 x 108 m/s with no mention of a reference frame. These constants indicated that the velocity of light was the same for everybody, always. Maxwell was extremely disturbed by his findings and spent a good part of his life trying to understand them.
Scientists were disturbed by Maxwell’s equations because they defied common sense. If one is standing at a train station watching a train pass at 60 mph, and an exceptionally handsome seminary professor, standing on one of the moving flatcars, throws his usual 100 mph fastball toward the engine, a person standing on the platform would measure the baseball to be moving at 160 mph. Therefore, the speed of the fastball depends on whether you are the seminary professor (who measures his fastball at 100 mph in his frame of reference) or the observer beside the tracks (who would measure the ball at 160 mph). The speed of the baseball is relative to the person who is measuring it. This is intuitive, and correct at normal speeds. However, according to Maxwell’s equations, all light waves travel at the same speed. That is like saying the fastball appears to be traveling at 100 mph for both the seminary professor and the observer beside the tracks. Most scientists, and even Maxwell himself, thought this conclusion could not possibly be true.
Albert Einstein, however, accepted Maxwell’s results. The brilliance of Einstein’s theory lies in the audacious assertion that anyone measuring light finds the exact same velocity no matter how fast they are moving. From this postulate springs the paradoxical and counterintuitive theory Einstein called “Invariantentheorie” or “Theory of Invariance.” The public, fixated on the fact that time is not absolute but depends on velocity, paraphrased Einstein’s achievement into the popularly understood cliché “everything is relative” when, in fact, everything is NOT relative. This erroneous paraphrase was unfortunately extended to a social theory of relativity and also a theological denial of the absolute. To physicists the shocking revelation of Einstein’s so-called “theory of relativity” is that everything is most certainly NOT relative. To the contrary, the speed of light is absolute.
According to the great Gallican confession (article 2), which Presbyterians may someday wise up and include in our Book of Confessions, God has written two books: the Word, which is God’s special revelation, and the World, which is God’s natural revelation. The comfortable relation between natural and special revelation was severely attacked by Karl Barth and remains an open question among theologians of the Word. However, some theologians of nature and culture are so impressed by certain developments in the physical and social sciences that in maintaining diversity they conclude everything is relative and nothing is absolute. At least it is clear that Einstein’s “theory of relativity” does not support this view. The speed of light is absolutely the same for every man, woman, and child, whether measured in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria or the outermost parts of the world.
I am happy to say that all my scientific children confess Jesus Christ, the light of the world (John 8:12) as absolute Lord of all. They accept this doctrinal position on the basis of personal experience, as we all do, but also because of their immense respect and affection for the most influential theologian in our family – their mother.
