The Christian Understanding of Truth

Abstract

At first sight the above title may suggest a gross presumption. For surely what is true is true, and there is an end of it. How can there be such a thing as an “understanding of truth,” let alone a Christian understanding of truth? And yet there have been such things as “theories of truth,” attempts to analyse the notion, ending perhaps as analysis so often does in the paradox of tautology, “truth is truth,” yet useful and illuminating as far as they go. But if we grant that truth-theory forms an admissible chapter in the philosophy of logic, can we talk of such a thing as a Christian understanding of truth? After all truth remains truth. And if we speak of an understanding of truth, and then predicate Christian of it, are we using the word understanding in such a way that theory is substitutable for it? There is a suggestion in the word understanding of a certain condescension towards what is understood, a pigeon-holing, as if we would like to say: “Yes, now we have got truth nicely docketed.” Whereas perhaps a “theory of truth” does no more than help us to dissolve some puzzle or puzzles connected with the notion.So any attempt to defend the concept of a Christian understanding of truth must begin by some account of the sort of jobs truth-theories have tried to do, and then explain the kind of connection that obtains between such theories and what we call an “ understanding of truth.”