ALL THE NAMES OF JESUS STUDY 22. TRUTH
We understand truth as conforming to what is real and can be factually verified. This immediately creates problems in religion because what may be truth by acceptance through faith or institution may not be able to be verified by logical or scientific demonstration. Truths of religious faith may be beyond verification and this raises both the criteria for judging truth and of the authority of settling issues on disputed truth.
In the philosophy of language analysis, Toulmin suggests that truth is equivalent to whatever is worthy of belief and that the basis of judgement differs according to the category under verification. If this is so, the difficulties of the proof of the truth between science and religion would disappear.
In the Old Testament truth was a quality possessed by God (Ps 25:5; 86:11). It stresses God’s reliability and trustworthiness.
In the New Testament the shift from Hebrew to Greek brings new understanding. Truth was distinct from falsehood by intellectual understanding. John particularly makes use of this concept (John 1:14, 17; 3:21; 4:23; 8:32; 14:6; 16:13 etc.). Jesus was the ultimate reality and when we understand that we come into full understanding of life. And to understand life is to live in obedience to your understanding. Hence Jesus is both the ultimate reality and the perfect example of living to be followed.
FOR TODAY
Four diverse quotations in different fields give their attitudes towards truth. Alexander Campbell once wrote: “Truth has nothing to fear from investigation. It dreads not the light of science, nor shuns the scrutiny of prying inquiry. It challenges the fullest, the ablest and the boldest examination.”
When Dr. William Harvey in 1618 expounded to a disbelieving and hostile world that the blood in the body was actually pumped around the heart, instead of just filling our veins; he was reminded that people had for centuries believed that the blood just filled us, and that it didn’t move. And with great insight he wrote his historic book (1628) “The Circulation of the Blood” “It is never discreditable to desert error, even though error be sanctioned by the highest antiquity.”
Goethe, the German poet truly said “ Nothing is more harmful to a new truth, than an old error!” Alan Richardson writes “The brave new logic of yesterday, becomes the stuffy orthodoxy of today, and the deadly obscurantism of tomorrow!”
These four writers each stress an important aspect of truth. In an age when everything must be scientifically verified or logically demonstrable we need to constantly stress that truth is larger than the neat shapes of logic and the test tubes on the bench. Christians should never be afraid of where truth will lead them. It can only lead them closer to Christ. Christians possessing philosophic equipment should also challenge the assumption that “the logic of scientific rationalism is the only route to genuine knowledge or that provability is the test of truth” – F.R. Barry.
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