Much confusion exists in our society over what kind of claims Christianity makes. Subjective claims include those of personal preference or beliefs dependent upon the individual. Hence the truth of the claim is grounded in the subject. Subjective claims would be statements like, “chocolate is better than vanilla” or “Florida has nice weather.” Both depend on the personal opinion of the subject (i.e., me).
Objective claims are claims made about external reality, independent of the subject. Hence the truth of the claim is grounded in the object—whether it corresponds to reality. Examples of objective claims would be, “your birthday is on April 22nd”and “murder is wrong.” These are claims made about how the world actually is. In the case of murder, the claim is that murder is morally wrong regardless of one’s opinion or culture. Even if no one believed murder was wrong, murder would still be wrong.
It is crucial to remember that objective and subjective do not mean true and false. In fact, both objective and subjective claims could be either true or false. For instance, perhaps your birthday is not on April 22nd, therefore, the objective claim that your birthday is on April 22nd is false. Or if I said, “my favorite color is green,” that would be a false subjective claim since my favorite color is purple. A claim is true if it corresponds to reality (appropriately called the correspondence theory of truth).
When Christians assert the truth of Christianity, they are making objective claims about reality. God’s existence, God creating mankind in his own image, Jesus’ claim to be God, and Christ’s resurrection from the dead are not matters of personal preference or opinion. They may be personal beliefs—as in, not everybody shares such beliefs—but the beliefs themselves are objective claims about reality.
In sum, do not allow culture to push your Christian faith into mere personal opinion. As Christians we confidently assert that God exists, along with many other biblical teachings, regardless of our own feelings or the feelings of others. Discovering whether those objective Christian claims are true or false is why we study Christian apologetics.
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