Theology Basics: What Is Truth?

When I look around that the world we find ourselves in, something that is deeply concerning to me is the widening gap between narratives on the left and the right (politically speaking). It seems like there are two different versions of the truth out there, and the algorithms used by social media to calculate which content is likely to grab your attention only serves to fan the flames.

In order to have any meaningful dialogue, there must be some conversation about the nature of truth itself. Does truth exist? Who decides what’s true? If enough people say something loudly and often enough, does it become true?

Before really answering any of these questions, it’s worth briefly thinking about what we actually mean when we say truth.

A Brief History Lesson

To understand the modern conversations around truth (and how they pertain to theology), we first have to understand, in broad strokes, how we have arrived at this point.

The Enlightenment movement in the 1700’s saw an awakening of human intellectuality. Reason and logic became the predominant lens through which people started looking at the world. The scientific method blossomed and we began to understand more and more about how the world works.

Modernism was the prevailing paradigm in the 1700’s through the first half of the 1900’s. The idea was that there must be hard objective rules which serve to explain the world we see. As we discovered more about the laws of mathematics, the more we realized that order exists. There was a growing expectation that the rules we can observe within nature were sufficient to explain the world around us.

Darwin’s theory of evolution perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the modern age. We see complexity around us, and various life forms share certain traits, therefore it is posited that we all evolved from a common ancestor. The underlying assumption is that there must be an underlying natural rule which sufficiently explains the world we can see and measure.

Setting aside the merits and validity of Darwinian evolution (in which I do not believe), around the middle of the 20^th century people began to acknowledge that the world is more complex than modernism had initially supposed. Things do not always fit neatly into defined categories.

In reaction to the failure of natural laws and rules to explain everything the question has shifted, in intellectual circles, to whether truth is even knowable. This led to the rise of what is called postmodernism.

Subjective or Objective?

We currently live in what’s called the postmodern era, and the popular idea promoted in higher education is that truth itself is subjective.

Subjective truth is the idea that truth is relative to the viewpoint of the individual person. The statement Twix is the best candy bar is an example of a subjective claim because it is a matter of personal preference. Twix is my favorite candy bar, but it might not be your favorite candy bar.

When taken to the extreme, this has broad worldview implications. If you follow this through to its logical conclusion, what’s true for me might not necessarily be true for you. In this view, there is really no such thing as an absolute truth, because my own experience is what defines the truth for me.

Even things like morality (right and wrong) become a matter of personal preference. If this were true, the only thing driving societal values is that they are mutually agreed-upon behaviors that are beneficial. We all agree that murder is negative, which is what makes it bad.

This is the worldview promoted by the vast majority of colleges and universities today.

The alternative to the postmodern worldview would be the idea that there is objective truth.

In contrast to subjective truth, objective truth is the idea that things that are true are simply true, regardless of one’s interaction with that truth. The statement Twix is a candy bar made of chocolate, caramel, and cookie is an objectively true statement. It is true independent of me, whether I like the candy bars or not.

It is important to be able to differentiate between an objective and subjective claim, because they are fundamentally different. The fact that subjective truth exists (I enjoy Twix the best) does not mean that objective truth does not also exist independent of my opinion.

The Egg Salad Has Gone Bad!

The truth is that nobody really lives as though truth were strictly subjective. One simple illustration will suffice to make the point. Imagine that on one of the many college campuses where the postmodern worldview is embraced, the cafeteria has a refrigerator break down. The result is that the egg salad that was supposed to be out on the buffet line has gone bad.

Upon hearing the news that the egg salad has gone bad, suddenly no one is willing to risk the idea that even though your truth might be that the eggs have gone bad, my truth is that they’re still good. Two plus two will always equal four, independent of my personal opinion. My feelings can’t change the fact that mathematical principles are what they are and work how they work. Two competing ideas which contradict each other cannot both be true.

Biblical Truth

This is important because when Scripture talks about truth, it talks about it as being objective. The truth is based on what aligns to God’s character. God is a certain way, and he is independent of anything in creation, and truth is objectively true. The truth is often complex, but it is nevertheless objective.

When Jesus is before Pilate in John, we get a glimpse into an intellectual sparring match. Pilate is trying to decide whether to hand Jesus over to be crucified, and is conversing with Jesus.

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?”

Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?”

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

John 18:33-38a ESV

Jesus came into the world to bear witness to the truth. The truth Jesus came to bear witness to is objective truth. The truth of God’s love for us and the opportunity for eternal life through Jesus is objectively true, regardless of our feelings about it.

Tragically, Pilate brushes this profound revelation off and dismisses it. But the reality is that truth matters, because we want our worldview to match the reality we see around us.

Jesus asserts elsewhere that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that nobody comes to the Father except through him exclusively (John 14:6). This is an exclusive truth claim, and makes it so that any hope of universal salvation through different religious systems cannot also be true.

Jesus either is the only way, or he isn't.

This has far-reaching implications as we wrestle with how we should live our lives and what values are worth holding. There is a metric by which we can measure with when there are two very different and competing narratives.

If we really believe that God is the standard by which we measure truth, then all truth is ultimately God's truth. Our convictions, as Christians, should be a desire for the truth, rather than to further a narrative we've created in our heads.

If objective truth really exists (which is does), the truth, and not our opinions or desires, must be what drives us.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Philippians 4:8 ESV