One of the problems of our contemporary world is the common belief that we can never reach a bedrock truth; all is "interpretation" and "opinion." I read an interesting response by Rene Girard in his recent book Evolution and Conversion, p. 255-56. He is discussing the views of Gianni Vattimo, an Italian philosopher:
"[Vattimo] clearly understands the importance and the centrality of Christian belief in defining the destiny of Western culture and civilization . . . [h]owever, it seems to me there is a problem in his religious perspective because he does not place enough emphasis on the Cross. As I recently wrote, he sees only interpretations in human history and no facts. He aligns himself with the post-Nietzchean tradition in claiming the nonviability of any historical 'truth' and confining the novelty of Christianity to a purely discursive level. For him Christianity is mainly a textual experience, which we only believe in because somebody whom we trust and love told us to do so. . . . there is no grounding, no point of departure in this long chain of good imitation; or at least it is a loose one: the book, that, according to a strict hermeneutical approach, can be subject to any possible interpretation.
"Paul says that the only things he knows are Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2.2), and this seems to me to be an indirect answer to Vattimo: one can deconstruct any form of mythical or ideological 'truth', but not the Cross, the actual death of the Son of God. That is the centre around which our culture rotates and from which it has evolved. Why should the world have changed if that event did not convey a radical and fundamental anthropological truth to the human being? God provided the text, but also the hermeneutical key with which to read it: the Cross. The two cannot be separated."
What "radical and fundamental anthropological truth" did Christ's action on the Cross establish?
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