Adventure Quest #2: Absolute Truth

Adventure Quest #2: The Holy Grail of Absolute Truth (Solid Ground for Reality).

Old News. We are hearing nothing new these days regarding truth… Everyone has his own truth. You do your truth and I’ll do mine. That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me. How can you say there is such a thing as a universal right and wrong? There is nothing in the world that is truly true, or more true than anything else. Any so-called truth that excludes other possibilities must not be true. Thoughts like these have been claimed ever since the Garden of Eden.

A Couple of Questions. How can I know absolutely that there is no absolute truth? Isn’t a firm rejection of absolute truth an absolute statement? How can I be so certain that absolute truth is not knowable when I do seem to make that claim with such confidence? Don’t we know there are provable absolute truths like gravity and DNA? So if that’s undeniably true, what else might be true as well? By virtue of being human, don’t we have a built-in conscience, an objective basis for morality, such as kindness is good and rape is evil? Without absolute truth, then it would be morally acceptable if a society condones rape?

To Quest (a very active verb): To engage in a long, difficult and adventurous journey that requires hard work in order to achieve a worthwhile goal or a valuable possession; to give oneself to a focused search, a single-minded pursuit, that frequently involves challenges, exploration, and personal growth; to invest personally in a prolonged endeavor in which the process is just as important as the product; to engage in a mission or expedition in an extensive search to discover something important.

TRUTH: (Hebrew, “emet;” Greek, “aletheia”). Truth is the only absolute in the world that fits reality. If everything else in the world falls part, only Truth will remain standing. Truths are the building blocks of all creation. Truth is the true Reality that upholds the world’s reality. Truth is that which can never be truly altered or changed. Truth is that which is universally trustworthy as facts of life, the foundation of what is truly real in our life experience. Truths are the plumblines from which to measure our lives. In God’s mind, truth is common knowledge. Absolute truth lines up with God’s perspectives as established facts, as opposed to a person’s changeable opinions or preferences. Absolute truth is the solid ground on which we can walk, as opposed to the uncertain ground of deceit, illusion, disbelief or superstition. Truths are the tangible fundamentals of existence issued forth from the intangible mind of God. Truth is always true even when discounted or disbelieved. Since the Almighty God is the ultimate source of all truth, then it follows that the ultimate presence of truth resides in the Trinity of Truth: Father God is Truth, the Lord Jesus is Truth, and the Holy Spirit is Truth. “All truth is God’s truth.” 

Yahweh is the Truth. God gave to Moses His name of Yahweh, which is about as close to a personal name of God as we’re going to get. Scholars have been lining up to solve this puzzle of a name for centuries, and have been unsuccessful. It is obviously an archaic use of letters, because Yahweh is the “to be” verb in the future tense. There is no “am” in the Hebrew language, which lead many to claim that Yahweh means, “I will be what I will be.” But many others say that God was using that non-word in the poetic sense with “I AM,” because He is trying to communicate that He is outside of time, so must always speak int the present tense. So now we can try to read Yahweh as, “I AM He who is,” “I AM the One who exists,” or “I AM the Existing One.” In other words, God declares the bedrock truth that upholds the universe… He exists! And this is the truth that Jesus bore witness to in his incarnation. Jesus basically said to the world, I am here to tell the one indisputable fact of the universe… that God exists in the world!

It’s in our DNA. Despite our foolish resistance to the existence of truth, human beings are also hard-wired to find a logical reason for our existence, to discover a meaningful purpose for life itself. That purpose, of course, has to fit with reality, and that’s when absolute truth enters the story. Life meaning finds its stability on the solid ground of truth. Some cultures were better than others in this quest for meaning. Some, like the Hebrews, discovered life purpose through their relationship with their Lord Yahweh. The ancient Greeks, too, were brilliant world-changers when they pursued the reasonable presence of universal truth. In fact, their quest might have looked something like this… If we had been flies on the wall of the village Greek spa around 500 BC, we might have overheard this socratic discussion between the local philosophers (the “lovers of wisdom”) who liked to think about such things….

Heraclitus: “Okay, men, I really think we’re onto something here, and we’re not just flying by the seat of our pants as usual about abstract thoughts that lead us nowhere. I think we can agree on this, right? That surely there must be something significant behind this amazing universe we are all enjoying. When we look at this world of ours, it’s just way too coherent, too reasonable, too purposeful, too orderly, too-well-designed, too beautiful, too organized, too…

Pythagoras: “Yes, yes, we get your point! It’s easy to see that the universe is just too spectacular in every way to exist and carry on will-nilly. There must be a divine law, or a universal principle, or something behind all this. It doesn’t make sense otherwise! There has got to be a universal Thought behind all thinking, a universal Reason that inspires all reason!

Diogenes: “Exactly! We need to name this Reality behind all the other realities. There must be a word we can use for this universal principle, so we all know what we’re talking about when we talk about it, right?

Heraclitus: “I agree! I think the best name for this organizing principle is Logos! I know, I know, it’s the word we use in our bookkeeping when we add up numbers and count tallies and give an accounting of something mathematically. But what better word could we find for the underlying Logical Truth behind all things? Our universe doesn’t add up if there isn’t a governing force making sense of the world, right? So I propose that Logos is the word we can use when we think of Truth, Reason, Thought, Word, Expression, Organizing Principle, Inherent Purpose, Transcendent Source. What do think of this, my friends?

Pythagoras: “Perfect! That was brilliant, Heraclitus! I wish I would have thought of that myself! But this Logos, this invisible, intelligent Truth somewhere behind everything, it is truly beyond our understanding, is it not? Is there any hope that we can get to the bottom of what it all means?

Herodotus: “Well, we can get the ball rolling by assuming what might be true just by using our good ol’ Greek logic. For instance, Logos is an expression, a Word that is spoken to bring order out of chaos, right? So maybe we can safely assume that all the truth, goodness and beauty we find in the world is somehow spoken into reality by Logos. And I would think that when Logos speaks, the world listens. And as soon as this Logos-Word is expressed, whatever is said comes into existence the moment it is spoken. Does that make sense to you men?

Thales: “Well said, Herodotus! That makes sense to me. But I have a question here… Are there any hints in the reality around us that point to Logos? Logos is invisible and inaudible, so are there visible or audible pointers that part the curtain and prove that there is a Logos? In other words, is there anything in our this-worldly existence that shouts to us the existence of this other-worldly Logos factor in the universe? What truths can we point to that certifies there is such a thing as Logos?

Orpheus: “Thales, Thales! You don’t have to ask the same question in a million different ways. We get it! But I do like the question. There must be some Logos that is arranging all the obvious coherence in this world. There must be lots of hints in our world that have been dropped by the Logos of the hidden world, something physical that represents this invisible structure that we’re talking about.

Heraclitus: “Yes, and that hint is harmony! Think of all the harmony we see in the world, when different things somehow fit together coherently. The universe is structured in such a way that there is harmonious function everywhere!

Pythagoras: “Well said! And what do we immediately think of when we think of harmony? Music! How unlikely that such a heavenly reality even exists in our world! The existence of music only makes sense when we see music as an expression of Logos, like the sunbeam from the sun. Think of the beauty of the musical sounds to our ears. Think of the fixed truths and order of the musical scales. Think of the goodness that music brings to our souls and to our world. Nothing moves us as deeply as music, am I right? On top of that, I would bet you a million denarii that even the stars and planets are all moving to the music of Logos! In fact, I wonder if Logos and Music are intertwined so intimately that we couldn’t even tell the two apart if we tried!

Diogenes: “Whoa! So music is not just a gift of Logos, but actually the physical expression of the spiritual Logos? So are you suggesting, Pythagoras, that when we play an instrument, or sing, or simply enjoy music, we are actually experiencing somehow the essence of Logos itself? Hold the phone. I’ve got to think about this for awhile.

Heraclitus: “While we’re thinking about Logos and music, I’ve got the perfect topic for our next discussion… Mathematics! Think of the structure and orderly beauty of mathematics, and the objective truth of it, and how mathematical music actually is?

Herodotus: “Okay, okay! Let’s sink our teeth into that later this week! We need to let this Logos idea digest for awhile. See you in a few days, gentlemen…”

“One word of truth outweighs the world.” (Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, Russian author, early 20th century);

Logos in the Flesh? Don’t be Absurd. In a sense the Greek logos is able to create truth and reality. The Greeks never dreamed that their logos would become an actual person. The idea that logos would take on flesh would be laughable and unthinkable, and would actually defeat their whole understanding of this ideal of an impersonal, governing force in the world. The Greek logos had many hints of the true faith, though, and has been called a “bridge-word” because of the many Greeks who baptized the Greek logos into Christian belief after finding Christianity a logical step forward.

LOGOS: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word (Logos) was with God, and the Word (Logos) was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, for God created everything through Him; not one thing came into being except through Him. In Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.” (John 1:1-4).

The Hebrew Logos. The Bible used during the time of Jesus and the early Christians was usually the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The original Old Testament was written in Hebrew, but Greek was the prominent language used during Jesus’ time. The Septuagint had been translated several centuries before Christ, and so it was commonplace for New Testament writers to quote the Greek version and not the Hebrew version of Scripture. For the most part, when we see a quote from the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament, it is from the Greek Septuagint. The Greek term logos was used literally hundreds of times in the Greek Old Testament, and was often used to highlight the Word of God. Logos was also used to translate “truth,” and implied thought, meaning, planning and design. It’s interesting that the Hebrew Bible’s logos was so similar to the Greek understanding. In many ways, the Greek Old Testament laid the groundwork for John’s use of logos. The Word of God in the Hebrew Bible (logos), as with John, signified the presence of the Lord. Logos suggested God’s self-expression, whether in creation, in the prophet’s message, or in the Torah itself. When a prophet declared “the word of the Lord,” the prophet’s words were considered full of truth, coming from the mind and mouth of Yahweh Himself.

I Exist! The seventy Greek-speaking Jewish scholars who translated the original Hebrew into Greek around 150 BC, produced an authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint. This Greek version of Scripture was determined to be divinely inspired long before Jesus, and copies were spread around the Greek-speaking world. This version of the Scripture then, was the Bible that was used during the 1st Century, and thus by Jesus and His early followers. Whenever Jesus quoted His Bible (the Old Testament) in the Gospels, He is quoting directly from the Septuagint. That was the commonly used Bible during Christ’s time, in Jewish life and worship and study. The Septuagint translated Yahweh as “I AM the Existing One,” so that would be the most familiar way of referring to Yahweh. All Bible-reading Jews would have thought of Yahweh when hearing the phrase “I AM.” In the minds of the Jews, I AM would have been completed with “the Existing One” since that was what they were most familiar with. So Jews would have been thinking of their God as the Existent One, the only Being who is self-existent and truly independent. Only Yahweh God is the Self-Evident Truth, the Essence of Being, the Ground of Reality. Put another way, they would have thought of Yahweh as, “I AM Being.” One of God’s titles that has lasted through the centuries, “the Existing One,” is drawn directly from the Greek Bible’s version of Yahweh, the sacred Name that cannot be uttered. In the Orthodox Church, the Existing One is addressed every day in prayers and worship.

The Gospel Logos. The term Logos in John 1 has been the most debated and discussed term in all the Greek New Testament, according to the biblical scholars. It has been described and amplified and studied and defined in any number of ways. But for our purposes in the Christian faith, Jean Vanier’s definition of Logos is as good as any other: “Logos has come to mean the spoken Word, the thought and idea behind that Word, and the wisdom that inspired that Word.” The term logos was not a foreign word in that part of the world during the time of Jesus and the early Christians. The Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, was widely used for biblical reading and considered the Bible of reference of that time. John decided to adopt that term and baptize the Greek version with a more complete understanding of it from the Christian viewpoint. In the New Testament era, logos meant the expression of a thought of the Father through the Holy Spirit; an utterance or a word embodying a divine idea; a message through speech or in writing; or more generally, reasoning expressed by words. John’s logos would include these sorts of thoughts:

(1.)  There is indeed a universal Reason that is behind the well-ordered and reasonable world. This powerful force of divine intelligence is the God of the holy Scriptures, Yahweh, the Sovereign God who put the cosmos together. This God is the Person who created the world with His spoken Word, “Let there be...” and has sustained it ever since.

(2.)  This personal Creator God, the eternal Lord of the cosmos, wanted to yet again use His spoken Word to start a new beginning. God’s Word would once again be in the act of creation, but this time would create salvation and renewal. God’s spoken Word was actually a divine Presence, His Son, Jesus Christ.

(3.)  The Creator God expressed Himself with His spoken Word, and His ultimate self-expression was when He revealed Himself to the world in the form of His Son. In this way, God revealed His divine Reason and Wisdom, and His desire to personally share His presence in this world He created. So God, the invisible Source of Reason and Wisdom, sent forth His Son as His visible, eternal spoken Word. Jesus, the spoken Word, is thus the Voice of God.

(4.)  Jesus Christ is the Logos, the living Word of God, the Word who once said, “Let there be light!” That creative Word has taken on flesh and is the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus is the physical representative of God’s existence, heaven’s Ambassador of the Godhead to bring messages from His home. Jesus is the Co-Creator of the cosmos and has been face-to-face with the almighty God for all eternity. The Word that spoke light into the world has now become the Light of that world.

(5.)  So John declares that Jesus, the Son of God, is in fact the Logos…not only the spoken Word of God in the flesh in a new creation, not only God’s thought behind that living Word, but also the embodiment of the Wisdom that inspired God’s spoken Word. John presents Jesus as the absolute revelation and self-expression of God. Jesus is Yahweh spoken into flesh, the holy Scripture in the form of a Person. If we want to read God’s mind, we read Jesus.

Gospel Truths: 

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free!” (John 8:32).

“And the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:14, 17).

“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24)

“I AM the Truth!” (John 14:6).

“This I why I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the Truth. Everyone who is a friend of the Truth, who belongs to the Truth, listens to my voice.’ And Pilate said to Jesus, ‘What is truth?” (John 18:37-38).

“Make them holy by your truth; teach them your Word which is truth. Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. And I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them, so they can be made holy by your truth.” (Jesus praying to the Father for His followers, in John 17:17-19).

“These things says the Amen (‘the Truth’), the Faithful and True Witness…” (Jesus referring to His biblical titles in Revelation 3:14).

Grace and Truth, Love and Faithfulness. How could John do this? How could he presume to summarize all there is to know about the eternal Son of God in two little words? Well, he did. Jesus in a nutshell…Grace and truth. Many Biblical scholars believe that John 1:14 and 17 is an intentional repetition of the phrase in Yahweh’s important self-revelation (Exodus 34:6), which included “abounding in love and faithfulness.” John 1 no doubt hearkens back to Yahweh’s nature in Exodus 34, flatly stating that Jesus is of the very same eternal nature as Yahweh, the glorious God of the Hebrew Bible. The fact that the Hebrews saw truth and faithfulness as interchangeable points to God’s character, that He is true to His word, true to His nature, that God keeps truth certainly and with stability and trustworthiness. God is literally, truly faithful. And Jesus is truly Yahweh in the flesh.

Mission Statement of Jesus. What led up to Pilate’s famous question as he stood toe-to-toe with Jesus? What prompted Pilate’s question was the Son of God giving His life purpose in one sentence: to “bear witness to the truth.” Jesus took on flesh in order to reveal the indisputable fact of God’s existence in the world. Jesus testified to the truth by revealing Himself, the Author of truth. Jesus came into the world to show us that truth actually exists. He became incarnate to show the world what God’s living Truth looks like in real life. The Father was clear about His request of the Son. I want you to bear witness to the truth, He instructed. I want you to save the world we so carefully created, He said. I want you to be truth in the flesh on the earth, God to the rescue representing the truth of my love. Did the Father send the Son on a fool’s errand? Maybe, if you mean that Jesus was a holy fool.

Are the Gospels True? Can we trust the Gospels? Since we base all these absolute truths on Scripture, particularly the Gospels, this is the first question that needs to be answered. If we can’t trust that the Gospels are true and God’s Word, then all the claims to the nature of truth will not have a leg to stand on. So, the answer here is… Yes, we can safely claim that the Gospels in the Bible are true and are reliable as a foundation of our belief in in the truth of Jesus. For many reasons, it does not require blind faith to accept the Gospels are true:

• Historical Evidence: The existence of Jesus as described in the Gospels has been verified by non-Christian historians, like the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius. The life of Christ has been so well-documented by Jewish manuscripts and many ancient historians that there is more evidence for His existence than for historical figures from Plato to Caesar;
• Manuscripts: The Gospels have more ancient copies from the original texts than any other ancient text in history. There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the Gospels, as early as the 2nd century. Those manuscripts were written so close in time to the originals that the biblical Gospels have been declared authentic, even by textual critics;
• Accuracy: The thousands of manuscripts based on the original texts have been proven to be virtually identical to the originals. That’s the way Jewish and early Christian scholars worked. They were trained to repeat what they see accurately, meticulously, and essentially verbatim. The reader of the Gospels can be assured that the Gospels being read today are faithfully reporting what was originally written by the gospel authors;
• Archeology: Time and again the geographical and historical details have been corroborated by extensive archeological digs, and the accuracy of Scripture in general and the Gospels in particular has been proven far above other literary and historical sources;
• Eye Witnesses: The Gospels were written in firsthand accounts by eye witnesses and composed within their lifetimes through their personal experiences with Jesus. These writers went to their death proclaiming the truth of their gospel accounts. Would they have sacrificed their very lives for something they knew to be a lie or a sham? No, they wouldn’t;
• Common Sense: Do any of the Gospel reports ring false, or written in a fictional form? Does the character and life of Jesus seem concocted or invented in some way? Have His moral teachings been bettered or seen as unwise through history? Jesus is presented in the Gospels as someone that could not be invented out of thin air. The reader logically cannot see Him as merely a great moral teacher, since He claimed to be on an even level with God. Did Jesus seem like a liar, a fraud, insane? No, He didn’t. So the only option left is that what the Gospels say about Jesus is true. Since we have more evidence that the Jesus of the Gospels is true, is more trustworthy than Plato or Caesar or any other historical figure, we can accept the truth of the Gospels using logic and common sense.
• Personal Change: The Gospels have been proven true by the personal experiences of countless readers by containing a life-changing spiritual power. It’s clear that God has invested His divine energy into the words of the Gospels. Many, many skeptics have done thorough research to investigate the authenticity of the Gospels, and they consistently come to the realization that they are simply believable and completely true.

So what? Once we have accepted that the Gospels of the Bible are true, reliable, and authentic, then we can move on to what they have to reveal about the truth of Jesus. Which begs questions like these… So What? Why should I bother? What difference does this make in my life? Does the truth of the Gospels even matter? At all? Well, if one is honestly and intentionally seeking the truth about life, and then basing one’s life on that truth, then this matters a great deal. One glaring example of this is that the resurrection of Jesus is the most well-verified event in human history. Isn’t that a fact that calls for our response? When we ignore what is established truth, then this becomes the most important factor in one’s life, doesn’t it? Because of the truth of the Gospels, which includes the resurrection, then it follows that only in Jesus can we find the irrefutable, absolute truths in the universe. “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” (John 14:6).

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” (Blaise Pascal, French scientist, mid-17th century).

Who, Not What. We don’t know if Pilate was asking his famous question, “What is truth,” as a cynic, a skeptic, a manipulator, or an earnest seeker of the answer. But we do know he asked the wrong question of Jesus, didn’t he? Instead of What, he should have asked Who. Tragically, he didn’t realize that he was staring directly into the Answer to his question, standing right there in front of him. Little did he realize that truth is a Person, not an abstract concept. It’s hard to blame Pilate though, because we don’t normally think of an intangible concept as being a tangible, flesh and blood person. When an abstraction turns out to be an actual Person, so much so that the concept is the Person’s identity, that’s difficult to digest. Is it even possible for a human being to be so saturated with something, so in union with and in synch with it, that the person can be identified as that concept? No, that is humanly impossible. It’s difficult enough to try to understand a divine being who contains all the truth in the universe, but to literally be that truth incarnate? Faith needs to be activated, to say the least. When an established fact like a mathematical concept is understood, that’s one thing. But when that concept becomes somehow a tangible reality and takes on flesh? But to believe in God is to accept that this type of impossibility is possible. Sorry, Pilate, but Truth had a pulse, God’s pulse, and you didn’t have eyes to see it. The certain fact is that Jesus was so deeply joined in union with truth, truth is so invested in Him, that God is actually Truth itself.

The Spirit of Truth. The longest conversation that Jesus had with His disciples is known as His Farewell Address, found in John 13-16. There is no doubt that Jesus chose His last words carefully and underlined them with special importance. He spoke of His leaving, among other things, which saddened His disciples very much. But then Jesus sought to encourage His disciples by declaring that when He leaves, He will be giving them a unique gift, the Gift of a lifetime, His Holy Spirit. Significantly, Jesus referred to His Spirit as the “Spirit of Truth” three times in His farewell words. The Spirit of Truth is Good News for us! We are not abandoned or left alone to fend for ourselves. We don’t have to stumble blindly through the Christian faith trying to figure out what we are to believe, what we are to do next, how we progress spiritually, how we prepare for eternal life with God, what the Scripture has to say to us. Good News! The Spirit of Truth will live in us to do all that needs to be done, with our cooperation, as He takes us in triumph to the finish line! The fact is we can only understand spiritual truths when we are able to discern them through the Spirit of Truth.

“As your spiritual father, nothing delights me more or gives me greater joy than to hear that you, my children, are living into the truth and continuing diligently in the ways of truth.” (the encouraging words of St. John in 3 John 4).