The Argument For Truth
- by: Ray Ciervo 02/26/2008
THE ARGUMENT FOR TRUTH
What is Truth?
It seems redundant to have to state the need for truth. Yet, in our society today when someone says they know something to be true, they are told either they're arrogant to make such an assertion, or they cannot know the truth. Then there's the "true for you, but not for me (or everyone else) retort.
What is truth? Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea in the first century A.D. asked that of Jesus Christ. Perhaps Pilate was sneering at Jesus who had made a comment about his followers hearing the truth. In Pilate's world truth was much as it is today - disregarded as a certainty. Rome's world was a pluralistic world where there were many "gods" and many philosophies competing for ascendancy. One day one philosophy might be the right flavor, but it could fall out tomorrow and another take its place. There was no certain truth that could rule all of life.
Jesus' world held that God's word was the content of truth. What Christians today call the Old Testament was for Jesus and his followers, the truth. One was expected to live all of life relying on the instruction and wisdom of the Scripture. There was no question that the Scripture was the Word of God and the Word of God was the truth.
John reveals Jesus as "The Word of God in his gospel." He is in person, the living Word. Jesus makes an enormous assertion in John 14:6, where he claimed: "I am the way, the truth, and the life . . ." Later while on trial, Pilate, asked Jesus, "What is truth? Ironically, Pilate asked this question to someone who could have answered him. Perhaps the only person who could have answered him was Jesus. So, John calls Jesus the "Word of God" and then in another context Jesus tells his disciples that he is the truth. How is Jesus the truth? How can truth be a person?
The confusion or the question arises about a person being the truth when the concept of truth is confused with the content of truth. That is, the theory of truth is different from what is claimed to be true. When Jesus said, "I am the truth?" what was the context? Was Jesus claiming to be the answer to every question? Question: Is Pluto a planet? Answer: Jesus. No, Jesus wasn't claiming to be the answer to every question, to every mathematical problem, nor to every scientific difficulty. Jesus was claiming to be the truth concerning the Messiah, Old Testament prophecy, God's Son, and everything that would pertain to him as the Christ.
The concept of the truth is what we mean when we say something is true. How do we know what "true" and "truth" is? The most recognized theory or concept of truth is the correspondence theory of truth. The correspondence theory of truth states that the statement or assertion made must correspond to its object. "It is raining," is true when it is actually raining. "The world is round," is true because in fact the world is round. These statements correspond to their object.
Conversely, a lie is something that doesn't correspond to its object. The world cannot be both flat and round at the same time in the same respect. That is a contradiction. The Law of Non-contradiction states just this: that no statement can be both true and not true at the same time in the same respect. "A" cannot be both "A" and "Non-A" at the same time in the same sense. At least, that's one way of expressing this.
So, when Jesus claimed, "I am the truth" he wasn't claiming to be the theory of truth, i.e. the concept of truth. He was claiming to be the promised one, the Messiah. He is the content of what is true about the Messiah, Prophecy, the Son of God, and every other word about him.
The next point to make about the truth is that when something is true, it is true for all people all the time, everywhere. Truth is absolute. If I were to say, "I am cold." That would be true in so far as I am really cold. If I weren't cold I'd be making a false statement. The fact that I am cold is true for everyone - Ray Ciervo is cold.
The concept of truth is also undeniable. You cannot deny the existence of truth without using the truth to do it. That's called a self-defeating statement, or a self-stultifying statement. To say, "I can't speak a word of English," is self-defeating because you must use English to say this. To say there is no such thing as truth depends on the truth to make the statement. In other words, the person who asserts that there is no such thing as truth is making a statement they wish you to recognize as something that corresponds to reality. They want you to believe what they are saying is true. In this case, this is a false statement because it is self-defeating. It is self-defeating because they're making a truth statement asserting there is no such thing as truth.
One of the ways apologists deal with the argument concerning truth is to turn negative statements about the truth back on themselves. As in the case above, you must use the concept of truth to assert there is no truth. "That's true for you but not for me" is another one. When this statement is turned back on itself, you ask, "Is that just true for you or is it true for everyone else?" Another one I'm confronted with more than occasionally asserts, "No one can know the truth." If this is true, how can you know you can't know the truth? This point brings up another one to consider. You must know something about the truth to know you can't know the truth. This statement assumes someone knows the truth, i.e. the person making the statement, in order to assert the truth cannot be known.
Truth is usually the first casualty in most debates and dialogues. Truth can be disregarded, denied, and trivialized. Postmodernism, in its rejection of the modernist view of reason and certainty, has rejected truth as absolute.
No Truth, No Meaning, No Purpose - Postmodern View of Truth
Postmodernism has brought the latest assault on the truth. David Wells says the earmarks of postmodernism are no truth, no meaning, no purpose. This is an accurate understanding of what postmodernism stands for. In its rejection of reason and certainty, postmodernism bends toward a nihilistic worldview.
As in most ideologies/philosophies postmodernism moves on a continuum. There are those who are "hard" postmodernists and those who are "soft" postmodernists. The hard postmodernists would say there is no objective truth, no absolute truth. Soft postmodernists may say that truth is "out there" but we cannot be certain about knowing it. Or, as one postmodernist friend asked, "How can we know for certain that what we know is certain? Or as another one of my friends likes to say that "the truth is kaleidoscopic." What I believe he means by that is that the truth is multi-faceted. What would you ask to turn that statement back on itself? "Is that truth statement kaleidoscopic?"
In both cases of hard and soft postmodernism, it is an issue of epistemology. Epistemology is how we know what we know. It is not simply what we know, but the ways in which we come to know things. Although epistemology is an important tool in the quest for truth, there is one more important - theology
Our thoughts about truth concern our belief about God. First and foremost, all truth is God's truth. He is the God of truth and he has given us the faculties to know the truth. It would be absurd to say or even think that we would know the way God knows. God knows everything instantaneously. There is nothing that God does not know and he also knows everything simultaneously. God does not learn anything, but is perfect in knowledge as he is in every other attribute of his.
The amazing thing about God's knowledge is not that he knows all the truth about Creation with its minute details, but that God knows himself perfectly and in truth. All the knowledge about Creation, whether it is the facts of the Universe or the facts about sub-atomic particles, they are finite and the knowledge about them is finite. However, God is infinite and he has perfect knowledge about himself. Now, that's amazing.
Any knowledge that humans have is given to us from God. He has either given us the faculties to know these things (reason) or revealed them to us through revelation. The purpose of knowing anything is that knowledge would lead us to knowing Him. In everything that God has made he has revealed something about himself. To disregard truth as something that is uncertain is to say that we cannot know God with any certainty.
In one sense, to deny the existence of truth is to deny the existence of God. The fact that we have a reasonable world where knowledge can be apprehended and ascertained is proof that a reasonable God has caused it to exist. If I may digress to a naturalistic view of the Universe, i.e. Creation . . . If there is no rhyme or reason for existence of any kind then knowledge is useless. There is no sense in knowing, neither is there any reason for knowing anything. If that which exists has come into existence by accident and is unguided in its evolution, then how can the simplest understanding of anything be trusted. There is no way to know what is real and what is certain. If truth does not exist, nor be trusted, then why trust any knowledge?
Once again, this is something that postmodernism has embraced. Eschewing the modernist ideology of the certainty of reason, postmodernism has embraced and purported that nothing is certain and all assertions are unreliable. So, there is nothing that is not tainted with someone's personal perspective (perspectivalism) born out of their experiences, nuanced with their preferences. No text, postmodernists say, has any meaning except that which the reader, not the author intends it to have.
A course in hermeneutics would help this misunderstanding and misinterpretation of texts, if the course were taken from a classical position. The postmodernist view of texts and meanings has gutted knowledge passed down though several thousand years. Aristotle's writings, which have survived for 2500 years, are now useless for education. Why? Because they're just his view of reality, nuanced with his experiences and culture.
This erroneous thought has found a foothold among Christians who have embraced postmodernism. There is a disregard for the authority of Scripture. There is no "absoluteness" about the veracity of Scripture. There seems to be a disregard for the process of interpretation also. This would be commensurate with the disregard for the authority of Scripture. Since Scripture has no authority, or at least, no final authority, there is no need for any process of interpretation. This has led to an inclusivism in salvation. Inclusivism holds that God uses other means to bring people to himself other than those held by orthodox Christianity.
Once again we find a continuum. On the one side of the continuum we find people who have embraced the idea that God uses all religions to make himself known. Through those religions people can find salvation, especially if their intentions are right. On the other side of the continuum we find people who believe the Bible to be one among many revelations of God. This of course denies certain attributes about truth and calls into question the reliability and sufficiency of Scripture. Both of these are related, also.
The fact that God created the Universe supports the idea of knowledge in general and knowledge about God in particular. "The heavens are telling the glory of God . . ."(Ps. 19:1) And, the most significant one, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," (John 1:14). Whether we're looking at the Creation in general or the Person of Christ, we find that God has communicated with us from the general to the specific. On the other hand, if truth is unknowable then so is God. If knowledge about God is not certain, then we cannot truly know him. We could also cite that Jesus did not tell us the truth when he told his disciples you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. However, the Scripture is supposed to be a "lamp to our feet," (Psalm 119:105). It is the Spirit of truth that guides us into all truth, (John 16:13); and the truth will make us free, (John 8:32). So, which are we to believe? In which should we put our faith? Should we put our faith in the postmodern view of truth that it is unknowable, or doesn't exist? Should we believe the truth is uncertain? Or should we believe that we cannot be certain about anything that is written?
To believe or to put your trust in any of the above statements leads nowhere. It leads to a life of futility, meaningless existence, and complete uncertainty. However, believing in the certainty of truth as God has communicated it through what has been made, and the Scripture, gives us hope of discovery, learning, and knowledge. We discover, learn, and know for one reason: to know him.
The concept of truth is that truth is "telling it like it is." The correspondence theory of truth declares that truth must correspond to its object. The content of truth is all that is knowable about reality. When it is discovered or revealed, it can be declared as truth. The apostles who beheld Jesus after the resurrection declared Jesus as the Lord and Savior. This was telling it like it is and stating facts that corresponded to reality.
The Word of God is certain. God can and is known. Our relationship with God is built upon the certainty of his word. We can trust him because his revelation is sure, his word is clear.
