What is truth?

What is truth?

In this world, anything can be questioned.
Every opinion can be argued.
Of every fact it can be asked, and should be asked, “On what basis?”
Every new generation of men disproves the science of the last.
Is anything absolute?

There must be, for if I answer, “no,” I have made an absolute statement, and disproven myself. So if there is some absolute truth, what is it? Where should I look for it?

Men are a poor source of truth—full of deceitful, selfish motives. Even I am full of them. I have sensed them lurking in the recesses of my mind, producing behavior that I do not want to do. As it is written, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”

And nature is not a source of truth, at least the kind of truth we are looking for. Science is about the observation and classification of natural facts, but we are looking for something that transcends observation and classification. Science is the “vocabulary” of truth, but we are looking for the semiotic value. As Aristotle said in the De Interpretatione, “Nouns and verbs on their own do not involve truth or falsity.” And as L. Bloomfield said, “Meaning cannot be defined in terms of our science.” So we are not contesting that if I see a blue pen, its blueness is true; but we are rather looking for a different, deeper kind of truth.

What is truth?
What is the rock of reality on which I can stand to measure and order my perceptions?
What can I trust as true and accurate and reliable?
If we cannot look to men, or to nature, then where is it?

If truth does not lie anywhere inside the world, then it either does not exist, or it lies outside the world.

And there is only one thing that can possibly exist outside the world—one being—who is called God. He is not part of the world because he is the cause and source of the world.

Existence is his first characteristic. Before we know anything about his nature, we know that he must exist. For this reason, his name according to Christianity and Judaism is:

“I am that I am.”

He has no other way of defining himself, other than to say that he profoundly, transcendently, is. There is no cause of his being; he is his own cause. He is the root of all existence.

Therefore God must be our starting point in answering “What is truth?” Unless we believe that God exists, we can never move beyond that question. As it is written, “he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

God is truth.