What I’m not suggesting is that Christians lessen the intensity of their convictions as much as I am advocating for an appeal to our convictions that may need to be funneled through alternate means.

Take, for example, an appeal to the superiority of traditional marriage. If traditional marriage as understood by the Christian tradition is true and comports with reality, then it must be true apart from an appeal to Scripture. I arrived at this thinking after reading an article from the conservative quarterly of the University of Chicago, Counterpoint (which is available for free PDF download and a must read). In the most recent edition, the pseudonymous “Carl Roberts” makes an appeal for traditional marriage according to sociological data in his article titled “Rationally Based: Social Science’s Case for Traditional Marriage.” His conclusions are entirely palatable to a Christian understanding of traditional marriage, but Roberts arrived at his conclusion apart from appeals to Scripture.

In a culture that laughs at the notion of biblical authority, the Bible’s authority is going to have to be proven apart from the traditional recitations of Scripture. The Bible will still be true, but that does not mean that evidence which comports with Scripture is any less truer. Scripture’s truthfulness does not need to be proven outside itself, but our attempts at arriving at culturally satisfying and preserving explanations do.