Are There Any Absolutes?—part 2

Are There Any Absolutes?—part 2

            Philosophy has been historically a pursuit of the systematized principles that give a wisdom that reveals truth and a unified filed of knowledge based on truth and error or thesis and antithesis.  Somewhere in the early 20th century many philosophers began to give up hope in a unified filed of knowledge based on thesis (right) or antithesis (wrong).  They began to believe the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Frederick Hegel (1770-1831).  Hegel believed that every idea belonged to an all-embracing mind in which every idea (thesis) elicited its opposite (antithesis) and the result of these two was a unified whole which he called synthesis.  His “unified” whole was epistemologically different since it derived “knowing” from a new synthesis thesis.  This “knowing” brought about a new truth that was always found somewhere between truth and error.

            Before Hegelian synthesis thought, the Scripture in I John 2:15, “Love not the world”, meant just that, don’t love the world or become controlled by the system of “this present age”.  After acceptance of Hegelian synthesis thought, it became acceptable to be a worldly Christian.  Those who accepted this viewpoint no longer believed the Bible when it said that if you loved the world, the love of the father was not in you.  Under this autonomous philosophy you could love the world and the Lord at the same time.  So, the synthesis thinking church musicians, who were in many instances, graduates of Christian colleges and seminaries began to think that if it was okay to love the world system then it was okay to love the world’s music.  Philosophically they believed that the answer could no more be based on good music and bad music, God’s music and the Satan’s music, or in appropriate or inappropriate music.  They believed that all styles were equal and that the musical answer must be somewhere between truth and error.