Tag: truth

“Truth has to be logically consistent”

Today I watched a sermon from Frank Strickland at CBC. He raised the enormous question, “What is truth?”, the intent being to contend for absolute truth, vis-a-vis the existential relativism of postmodernism. I greatly appreciate Frank’s message and I applaud his desire to engage with the thinking of the age. However, I detected what I believe to be an oversimplification or a confusion of terms that might throw off some of his listeners.

Frank provides three “tests of truth” before he gets to defining truth. It must: be logically consistent, align with reality, and be relevant to life. I recognize the first two of these tests from my study in linguistics. In semantics, the definition of a proposition is something that can be shown to be either true or false and thus has “truth value”, as opposed to its parts, nouns and verbs, which do not have truth value. Propositions are subject to logical tests and comparison to models (realities) in order to determine their truth value. Mr. Strickland, therefore, is regarding truth as propositional in nature. He explicitly states, “Truth has to be logically consistent.”

The conclusion of Mr. Strickland’s message is that “Jesus is the truth,” based on scriptures including John 14:6. I affirm with him that Christ is the Ultimate Truth, the deep truth that is meant in the question, “What is Truth?” as asked by both Mr. Strickland and Pontius Pilate, and what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the Truth.” However, this conclusion conflicts with the statement he made earlier, that truth “has to be logically consistent.”

If Jesus himself is the Truth, then he exceeds and transcends a black-and-white/propositional/logical understanding of truth. Truth, with a capital “T”, includes propositions but is not limited to them. It also includes inherent contradictions or paradoxes which Christians embrace as core elements of their faith. The Trinity. The Hypostatic Union. Free Will and Predestination. To force these glorious mysteries to conform to logic is hubris; it defiles the sacred with one’s intellect and inevitably causes error. Whereas clear propositional truth from God is an essential rock to which we attach ourselves in faith, still God transcends logic. Logic is the order of the universe, yet it is incapable of capturing its own Maker. Therefore, Divine Truth is not merely veracity. To embrace Christianity is to embrace logic as the handmaiden of God but to acknowledge that there are some inner chambers that she cannot enter; and those are the chambers to which God calls us. It would be a grievous error to assume that Jesus “has to be logically consistent,” for that would bind God in fetters of his own making and make him a slave to the human intellect.

I believe it behooves Christians to content for truth as it applies in the realm of logic and philosophy, but to clearly mark its end, and to set apart as different and sacred the way that we know The Truth Himself in the deepest place of our being. When we relate to others about God, we must bear a constant humility toward what we know and reverence toward the mysteries of God, and we must use logic in its place but keep it there, bearing in mind that what people are ultimately searching for is not the ability to know the truth value of a sentence, but the ability to know the One True and Living God.

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.