Introduction:
In John 18:37-38a, Pilate, the Prefect of Judea representing the Roman Empire of His day (26-36 A.D.) was having a final conversation, a cross-examination if-you-will of Jesus Christ, whom He would sentence to die by crucifixion. In the exchange we pick up the following short dialogue:
"Therefore Pilate said to Him, 'So You are a king?' Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” 38 Pilate said to Him, 'What is truth?'"
What is truth?
No greater question was ever asked by an unbeliever in all the Bible at a more pivotal point than this one - "What is truth?" Philosopher and theologian Douglas Groothius in his book "Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case For Biblical Faith", page 124, notes the following observations about truth:
"A belief or statement is true if it matches with, reflects or corresponds to the reality it refers to. For a statement to be true it must be factual. Facts determine the truth or falsity of a belief or statement. It is the nature nature and meaning of truth to be fact dependent."
When Jesus stood before Pilate, He did not respond to Pilate's question "what is truth". If anything, Jesus Himself was (and is) Truth incarnate, as He Himself revealed in John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father by me".
This is a startling statement by Jesus, since no other religious figure in all of religious literature - ancient or modern, and no other philosophical figure have ever claimed themselves to be "the truth". What Jesus meant by that statement in John 14:6 and the question Pilate raised later in that same book of the Bible tells us is that truth as a reality is impossible without God's existence.
The God who is truth
The reason Jesus' statement is so startling is because the God of the Bible is truth by nature. John MacArthur notes in his book "The Truth War," page 2:
"Truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God."
MacArthur later notes:
"Reality is what it is because God declared it so and made it so."
Theologians over the years have noted how much the Bible speaks about God as "truth" by nature (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 31:5; Isaiah 65:16; John 10:35; John 14:6; John 17:17; 2 Corinthians 6:7; 2 Timothy 2:13; Hebrews 1:3; 1 Peter 1:23; 1 John 2:21).
For instance, when Jesus was on the cross, He as Truth incarnate cried out of His humanity to the Father in Heaven these words in Luke 23:46 “'Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.' Having said this, He breathed His last." Interestingly enough, Jesus was citing Psalm 31:5 "Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have ransomed me, O Lord, God of truth."
When Jesus arose from the dead, He proved Himself to be what He claimed - The Truth. His resurrection was the public self-vindication of His character, claims, and teachings. He taught that He Himself was The Truth because He was God incarnate and He taught that God by nature is truth.
Truth by its very nature demonstrates the existence of God. God's very existence and character as truth is the basis for it. I call this "the interdependence of God and truth". One must not see these two as eternal, independent realities.
In other words, something is not true because God says it is true, rather, something is true based upon the fact God Himself is true. He is the ultimate standard. Truth is the very nature of God - He is truth by His very essence. The late Christian apologist Norman Geisler has pointed this out in the first three steps of his argument for Christian theism.
1). Truth about reality is knowable.
2). Opposites cannot both be true.
3). It is true that the theistic God exists.
I do not have time to expound on Geisler's three points. They do however express what I noted already of the interdependence of the reality of truth and God's existence (readers may look further into these three points of Geisler's here 12 Points - NGIM.)
Due to God being truth by nature, it follows that creation would bear the tell-tale marks of the reality of objective truth in its fabric. Truth, as Geisler notes, is "telling it like it is". Before creation, the Triune God was all there was. When He created the heavens and the earth, He endued it as a truth-bearing reality, awaiting discovery by the creatures He had made. If there was no truth, there would be no reality, and thus no God. Conversely (or put another way), if there is no God, there is no reality, and thus no truth.
Current post-modern spirituality and three leading worldviews fail in their attempts to deny the reality of objective truth
Sadly, so much of what passes off as "spirituality" or even movements such as the current "Christian deconstruction" movement, which features a growing number of former professing evangelical Christians denying key doctrines of the Christian faith in place of ideas of their own making, will deny objective truth and will deny much if not all of what the Bible reveals about God Himself.
MacArthur again notes: "The goal of human philosophy used to be truth without God. Today's philosophies are open to the notion of God without truth, or to be more accurate, personal spirituality in which everyone is free to create his or her own God."
Such an approach to spirituality fails because of the influence of three worldviews upon it that I'll spell out below: pluralism, naturalism, and relativism.
Pluralism, Naturalism, and Relativism are among the three leading worldviews today that rule the academy, the media, postmodern spirituality, and many people in our current generation. They all have in common the denial of objective truth and their rejection of the God of Biblical revelation. In noting each of their weaknesses, we can then note why God's existence is necessary for there to be truth.
The first of these, pluralism, claims all religions are the same and that no one religion has "the truth". Pluralism proceeds on the assumption that religion is mankind's response to what he or she cannot explain to an otherwise inexplicable sense of mystery.
The famous (or rather infamous) parable of the blindmen and the elephant is often evoked to prove their point. In the parable, one of the blindmen holds the trunk and says it's a snake; the second blindman touches the side and claims it's a rock; the third has the tail and claims it is a rope; the fourth as an ear and claims it is a leaf; the fifth has a leg and claims it's a tree. The alleged moral of the parable is all truth claims are relative and personal, with no one having the true picture of "what is real" or "what is true".
The parable actually is self-defeating for the pluralist, since the one question not being answered is: who said it was an elephant! Pluralism is self-defeating, since it denies objective truth and claims itself to be objective.
It is often alleged that pluralism proceeds on the basis of neutrality and tolerance, claiming that since all religions are equal, then no one of them have the right to claim to be "the one true religion". Yet, this very assertion shows pluralism to be intolerant and non-neutral! This appears especially in its attacks on Christianity as being intolerant and verging on immoral. It fails to recognize that other religions that it touts as tolerant and neutral are themselves claiming to be "the truth". Buddhism in its Dhammapada chapter 14 has these words within its text:
"He who has gone to refuge to the Buddha, the teaching, and his order demonstrates with transcendental wisdom the four noble truths."
To have such wisdom is a claim to be outside other systems devised by men. Hinduism in its Bhagavad-Gita 18:66 notes an alleged conversation between the main character, Krishna, to the protagonist Arjuna:
"Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear."
Pluralism not only fails because of its self-defeating nature, but also due to its ignorance of what other religions that it touts as holding the pluralist ideology say about themselves.
Naturalism, our second worldview, denies objective truth, and would claim the search for truth to be irrelevant. According to naturalism, all that exists is physics + chance + time + chemistry. We can never know the true nature of reality, ourselves, or even meaning. As philosopher Alvin Plantinga has noted, naturalism fails because if I cannot know anything to be true (or truth itself to exist for that matter), then we would have to say we cannot know if naturalism itself is true! (see a summary of his argument here Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Alvin Plantinga, Templeton Prize 2017 )
The third view, relativism, claims "what is true for you is true for you, but is not true for me". Thinkers such as Paul Copan and Norman Geisler have pointed out how relativism, the notion that there is no such thing as "objective truth", but only "personal truths" or "your truth", is actually making an objective truth claim: namely, that it is absolutely the case that there is no such thing as absolute truth.
Conclusion: God's existence is necessary for truth.
We've traced out the Biblical data for God being truth by nature. We've also spelled out what we mean when we say that God's existence and truth are interdependent. The three worldviews of pluralism, naturalism, and relativism were shown inadequate in their accounts of truth. Hopefully this post has caused readers to think more deeply of the interdependence of God and truth.
