One of the greatest ironies of history consisted in a question that Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, asked of Jesus of Nazareth. Exasperated by Jesus’ enigmatic responses, Pilate finally expressed the question “What is truth?”
The irony consists in the fact that Pilate was looking into the eyes of Truth personified at that very moment. Christ, Himself, had told His disciples the previous night, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” (John 14:6).
But was Pilate’s question so unreasonable? In it do we not find a legitimate search for a meaningful answer? After all, in a culture where there were as many gods as there were men to worship them, would it not be difficult for the average Roman to define in concrete terms what truth actually was and who it was that possessed it? I believe that the spirit of Pilate’s question lingers, especially in our day when the very nature of truth itself has been brought into question.
If the Foundations Are Destroyed…
Psalm 11:3 asks this question, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The modern Christian apologist faces a unique problem. In past times, the object of apologetic argumentation was to bring to light the truth and to dismiss the false, but in modern times the very notion of truth itself has been discredited, so that now the apologist must not only present the truth, but define what truth is. If the foundational understanding of truth is undermined, what can the righteous do?
We have all heard statements like this before.
“That may be true for you, but it is not true for me.”
“There is no such thing as absolute truth.”
“All truth is relative.”
“You cannot know the truth.”
“Truth depends on how you were raised.”
These statements may seem ridiculous or nonsensical, but they represent an increasingly prevalent trend of philosophy in the modern world (See figures 1 and 2). A trend, which if left unchecked, will render meaningful conversations about God and salvation nearly impossible.
So is truth an absolute and immutable fact, or is it relative to your perspective and culture? That is the question that the Christian apologist must be able to answer in order to lay a stable foundation for further proofs of his faith.
Truth Defined
Truth is that which corresponds with reality. Or to put it in the words of C. S. Lewis, “Truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is.”[i] This is known as the Correspondence Theory of truth, and is the only logically correct answer to the question of what truth is. All attempts to define truth in any other way are ultimately logically self-defeating.
Aristotle’s Definition of Truth
The Correspondence Theory of truth was first postulated by Plato’s famous student, Aristotle. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle states:
Now, in the first place, this is evident to those who define what truth and falsehood are. For indeed, the assertion that entity does not exist, and that nonentity does, is a falsehood, but that entity exists, and that nonentity does not exist, is truth. [ii]
To put Aristotle’s definition simply: truth is telling it like it is.
This may seem obvious or commonsensical, but Aristotle, by amplifying the teaching of Plato, was one of the first individuals to point out that truth is objective and not subjective. That is, truth exists outside of ourselves and does not conform itself to our opinions of it. For example, no matter how much I opine that the law of gravity does not exist, if I jump off of a tall building I will still fall. Once again, Aristotle states…
Statements and beliefs…themselves remain completely unchangeable in every way; it is because the actual thing changes that the contrary comes to belong to them.[iii]
Aristotle was basically saying that reality causes a statement to be true or false. Truth does not change reality, it agrees with it.
G. E. Moore’s Definition of Truth
G. E. Moore (1873-195 
was a philosopher and close personal friend of the famous agnostic, Bertrand Russell. He and Russell, despite their errors, are renowned for shedding light upon the Correspondence theory. Moore gives a definition of truth that closely resembles Aristotle’s, and helps to clarify the Correspondence Theory.
In Some Main Problems of Philosophy, Moore states, “To say that this belief is true is to say that there is in the Universe a fact to which it corresponds; and that to say that it is false is to say that there is not in the Universe any fact to which it corresponds.”[iv] In essence, Moore was saying that true beliefs correspond to facts (i.e. true ideas correspond to reality). He goes on to say, “When the belief is true, it certainly does correspond to a fact; and when it corresponds to a fact it certainly is true…and when it does not correspond to any fact, then certainly it is false.”[v]
In Moore’s postulation of the Correspondence Theory we understand a belief does not create fact to make itself true, but rather, a belief is true because it agrees with a fact that exists within reality.
The Liar Paradox
The Correspondence Theory has been the reigning theory of truth in Western thought for over two thousand years. It has not been without enemies however; for it was not long after that Aristotle had asserted his theory that it was met with criticism. Eubulides (a philosopher of the fourth century B.C.) postulated what is known as the “liar’s paradox” in an attempt to confound the correspondence theory. Eubulides asked his audience to consider the statement, “I am lying”.
The paradox is self-evident. If you say that the statement is true; it is really false, but if you say that the statement is false; it is actually true. So it seems that we find here at least and apparent problem with the correspondence theory of truth.
The answer to this objection is that it is logically self-defeating. Saul Kripke points out that such a statement is not grounded in a external matter of fact. While Bertrand Russel observes that this statment creates what is known as a metalanguage in which talk about the primary language is impossible. To quote Russell, “The man who says, ‘I am telling a lie of order n‘, is telling a lie, but a lie of order n + 1.”[vi]
[i] Lewis, C.S., God in the Dock, (Eerdmans, [2002 reprint of 1970 copyright]), taken from “Myth Became Fact”, p. 66
[ii] Aristotle, Metaphysics 4.7 1011b25-30, (Prometheus Books, 1991), translation by John H. McMahon
[iii] Aristotle, Categories 5.4a, From The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton University, 1984)
[iv] Moore, G. E., Some Main Problems of Philosophy, (Macmillan, 1953), p. 277
[v] Ibid. p. 279
[vi] Gardner, M., The Sixth Book of Mathematical Games from Scientific American, (University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 222
April 4, 2008 at 6:42 pm
So then truth is not dependent on whether one believes it or not, but belief is dependent on the truth it is anchored in(reality or “what is”)?
If postmodernism is all about tearing down and deconstructing accepted views on truth and such, where can we begin to show bedrock foundations of truth where we can reconstruct truth for them?
April 5, 2008 at 12:02 pm
One thing that the Christian apologist can do is show the absurdities that arise from denying the basic logical principles that undergird the correspondence theory of truth. These absurdities not arise within the system of logical proofs, but also within real life as well. That is what I will be dealing with as I examine the principle of non-contradiction in part 2 of this subject.
April 7, 2008 at 8:39 am
[...] April 6, 2008 The Nature of Truth (Part 2): The Principle of Non-Contradiction Posted by Josh under Apologetics, Christian Thought, Christianity, Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Problems of Philosophy, Truth (Click to see Part 1) [...]
May 9, 2008 at 8:49 am
“When the belief is true, it certainly does correspond to a fact; and when it corresponds to a fact it certainly is true…and when it does not correspond to any fact, then certainly it is false.”
Based on the above, one could say that since there is no evidence that God exists, God must therefore not exist.
This also supports the idea that you can’t prove something isn’t; you can only prove something is.
In other words, you can’t prove God doesn’t exist; you can only prove God does exist. This has never been proven, so one must logically conclude that there is no God since there is no evidence of a God. Afterall, everything we think we know about God has been told to us by man, not by God.
May 9, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Hi Eran, thanks for stopping by.
I’m not sure that I follow your objection to Moore’s statement. It seems that you might be confusing metaphysics (fact: as in what actually exists) with epistemology (evidence: what warrants our belief in what exists).
Also, given the correspondence theory of truth, it is completely logically possible that a proposition could be true (correspond to some actual state of affairs), yet the person who believes it have no evidence that it is true; that is, their is a fact that corresponds to the statement, but not a known fact. Whether this person actually possesses knowledge or not is an epistemological question.
As to not being able to prove that something does not exist, that’s just not true at all. Given the correspondence theory of truth, I believe that I can ‘prove’ that 5 sided squares do not exist by merely explaing the terms as they correspond to reality. And I think that it would be possible to prove that God doesn’t exist if one were to find a clear logical contradiction in the primary attributes ascribed to God.
And as to their being no evidence for God: there are a lot of brilliant Christian scholars who would disagree with that assertion. Indeed, I think that there is evidence available to both sides in the debate concerning theism and atheism. One is convinced of the truth of their particular position when they affirm that the evidence in favor of it outweighs the evidence contrary to it. I happen to think that this is the case concerning theism.
Thanks again for the comment Eran, and stop by anytime.