I. What is Truth?

      In the early months of 1987 there was considerable media exposure for the supposed life experiences of a major star. This particular star was trying to dignify some rather bizarre beliefs. She even acknowledged the problem of public acceptance in her chosen title of Out on a Limb. There was no real need to worry, our culture's curiosity in the bizarre and outrageous are well documented. In fact, there was and has been a wide measure of titillation, if the assorted articles on the New Age over the course of the decade since are any indication.
      We have become a nation that accepts the whole range of opinionated beliefs, as eagerly as we anticipate new additions to our favorite restaurant's salad bar. This is the worldly reaction to all faiths these days, to suspend any real belief and publicly agree that everyone is completely free to develop their own opinion. Even the Church of Jesus Christ is infected with this opinionization. Once I was talking with a "Christian" friend about the Reformed particulars. Of course he recognized our freedom to think whatever we would. But, he was very cautious about expressing any absolute claims to truth.
      To him and many others, the claim of truth seems beyond comprehension. Pilate's question "What is truth?" in John 18: 38 gives emphasis to this idea. However, in the preceding verse Jesus speaks about the revelational aspect of the claim to truth. In John 8: 47 and 1 John 4: 6 we see a further indication that "comprehension is not a free act of existence, but is grounded in the determination of existence by divine reality."4 So, it would seem there is something more to this idea of truth than meets the common eye! But, Pilate's question is still the world's question. However, in our time, we are more likely to hear the question this way: "What do you mean by truth?"

II. The Meaning of Truth.

      Have you ever tasted white strawberries? Very few people have. Once, my dad tasted a few that he found growing along the edge of his woods. White Strawberries are extraordinarily rare. It is said by the few with first hand experience, my father included, that the taste is exquisitely sweet. The point of this story is that not everyone can experience the taste of white strawberries. To comprehend, you have to talk to someone who has had the taste. So it is with our understanding of truth, we have to dig back in time and literature to find out what truth really meant, so that we are not left hanging like Pilate of old with an unanswered question vital to our understanding of life.
Hebrew Truth

      Our ordinary understanding of the English word "truth" fails to do justice to what is described in the Hebrew Scriptures. In its various forms, "truth" is used over one hundred times. There is is rendered with several connotations: firm reliable, solid, faithful, tested, perceptible, true and lasting. Generally, the Hebrew word designates a reality, which is firm, sure, authentic and unchanging.5 While the Hebrew word "emeth" is used as a legal term, it can also indicate a validity beyond the area of law. This reference is to facts which always demand recognition by all men as reality.6
      This recognition of the eternal reality of God's Word and Law is expressed in Psalm 119: 160; and Psalm 19: 9. This eternal truth is the source of real knowledge, and in that truth there is trust and confidence which is expressed in Psalm 31: 5, revealed in Isaiah 45: 19 and invoked in Isaiah 65: 16. On appeal, moral and legal standards are guaranteed as the goal of divine action in Exodus 34: 6. As the foundation of such truth, God is worthy of our total devotion. "The works of His hands are truth and right, and all His commands are unconditionally valid".7 His words are trustworthy and true precisely because He is God!

Greek Truth

      The Greek word aletheia has an original meaning of non-concealment. It indicates a state of being that can be seen, indicated or expressed. This state can, when it is disclosed, indicate the real or absolute state of affairs in legal, historical and philosophic use.8
      In our time, we may well speak of this idea of true truth in the words of Francis Schaeffer. While the Old Testament is not so much concerned about raising the question of what is truly true, there is the sense that what God is and says is truth. This idea is wholly compatible with the Greek ideal, "since in the practice of history and in historical and philosophical enquiry, it is essentially the task of the logos to reveal and indicate, aletheia can also denote an aspect of the logos".9 Aletheia thus denotes a normative absolute that requires action based upon the full understanding of disclosed knowledge. For this reason aletheia is pregnant with the sense of "correct doctrine", because this shows what the truth is.10 Once the truth is known, action on that truth as an act of obedience conveys a sense of accepting the "authoritative teaching". In this way, truth and law can become joined in correct doctrine.

The New Testament Meanings of Truth

      The word aletheia occurs over one hundred times in the New Testament. Of these, almost half occur in the Gospel and Letters of John. This indicates that the idea of truth is mightily important to the convictions of John the Apostle. In John's Gospel, Jesus Christ lays claim to be the Truth. And while the Synoptics do not make the idea as dominant, this claim appears in the controversies of the last week of Christ's life.11
      In the New Testament, the word may convey the following meanings:12

it is that which "has certainty and force".
it can also have the meaning of "judicial righteousness."
it often takes on the weaker sense of "uprightness".
it is also that "on which one can rely".
it may also signify "sincerity" or "honesty".
it implies the "real state of affairs".
it is used as "statement of truth".
it is also the "true teaching or faith".
it can also mean "genuineness, divine reality or revelation".
      While the Greek concept of aletheia is primarily intellectual, the Hebrew emeth stresses the moral content. While many commentators feel that John stresses the intellectual model, the focus of truth in who and what Jesus Christ is, seems directed more in the sense of the Hebrew emeth.13 In several places, it may simply be used in the ordinary Greek sense of describing what is not false, but actual fact. It is in this sense found in John 5: 33, 8:40 & 44ff and 16: 7. In the stronger sense of describing the faithfulness of God to his own character and promises, it means the Christian revelation in and through Jesus Christ. This sense can be seen in John 1: 17, 8:32, 16:33, 17:17 & 19 and 18:37.14
      It should readily be apparent that in a certain sense, John's witness to the good news of Jesus Christ stresses this concept of truth. And in this Gospel, the idea of truth is concentrated in the eighth chapter. May we then describe this chapter as "The Gospel of Truth"?

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