TRUTH

One of the oddities of this season in our national life is that the word in the title of this book whose meaning is least clear is truth. How we arrived at this point was discussed in the introduction, and how we find our way forward is the concern of the chapters to follow. But without a shared understanding of the nature of truth there is no way forward, just a never-ending ride around and around on this vicious circle of a merry-go-round. This is not a work of epistemology but of homiletics. Nevertheless, Pilate's infamous question to Jesus in John 18:38 must be considered: "What is truth?"

Preachers do not need a philosophical or theological explication of the nature of truth, but a homiletical understanding of the nature of the truth we are called to proclaim. In other words, we do not need to make this any harder than it already is. Still, we might recall two classic understandings of the nature of truth because in a way the difference between these two approaches to truth helps us understand why truth has always been an endless topic of debate and is now a topic of such sharp dispute.

TWO WAYS OF VIEWING TRUTH

Whether one refers to them as an idealist versus pragmatic understanding, or "one group of philosophers" versus "another group of philosophers," there has long been a distinction between "coherence" views of the nature of truth and "correspondence" views. The former is arguably more theoretical, the latter more empirical, but that is just another set of distinctions to add to the mix.

The coherence view emphasizes that truth is best determined by how well the proposition in question coheres, or fits, with a larger set of propositions that form a complete system. In the most ideal sense a proposition is true only when it coheres with an inclusive understanding of all reality. The truth of a proposition is therefore determined by its coherence, or congruence, with an entire worldview. The view was expressed by modern philosophers, especially Leibniz and Hegel, and more recently by logical positivists.

The correspondence view adjudicates truth and falsity based on whether a proposition corresponds with what is observed to be the case. This is both logical (for something cannot both exist and not exist) and observational (we see, hear and feel precipitation, so it is raining). We may disagree over the form of precipitation; some might call it sleet, for example, but it is true to say that it is raining, sleeting, or snowing because we can observe the precipitation. This view goes back to Aristotle and is found in the much more contemporary work of Russell and Wittgenstein. It is also, frankly, common sense.

Even this small bit of epistemology can help us understand why our sermons sometimes founder on disagreements about the nature of truth. On the one hand, we preach from the foundation of a coherent system, the gospel, and adjudicate truth based on how well a claim works within that system. On the other hand, we also privilege a more commonsense approach within that system, while others do not. For example, an important proposition is that we are to "love one another." Few on Sunday will disagree, until we take that proposition to the border with Mexico and claim that prohibiting all immigration is inconsistent with Christ's command. A listener with a competing system will disagree, saying that it has nothing to do with Jesus but is about border security and the integrity of our democracy or about "stealing jobs from Americans." We are no longer arguing about facts; we are arguing about systems of coherence and how observable truths fit or clash with those systems. Preachers get frustrated when even the most basic "facts" — sometimes preserved for posterity in a video recording — are disputed. It will not help much, but it helps a little to remember that we are arguing not about facts but about the systems by which we make sense of our world.

In his monumental work, A Secular Age, Canadian philosopher and theologian Charles Taylor gives a persuasive account for how it is that in the last five hundred years we went from a world in which everyone, regardless of confession and creed, made sense of the world with some reference to God, to a world in which everyone, and again with no regard to confession and creed, makes sense of the world without reference to God. Into this functional atheism creep many belief systems, and out of those systems emerge what Daniel Patrick Moynihan said we could not have: our own set of facts.

We see this when what for many are cold, hard, scientific data about warming temperatures and rising sea levels are, to others, just opinions, with which some scientist somewhere disagrees, so it is all relative. We are picking our truths based on what coheres with our systems, while pretending that we are operating with a correspondence theory of the nature of truth. I think.

What I am confident of is that the nature of truth is contested, and arguments about the facts are frustrating and circular. Put differently, we will no more easily convince in our sermons those who see the world differently than we do than we will in any other discourse. To do that we have to redefine the nature of truth, arguing biblically, not philosophically.

BIBLICAL TRUTH

We have to start somewhere, as a believer and as a preacher. Not our introduction to any particular sermon, but the starting point, the ground of our faith, and the source of any authority we may have as a preacher. We have to start somewhere. The choices are many: confession and creed; scripture, history, and tradition; testimony and witness. But before any of those options, in this season of our national life, we have to start with a clear and uncompromising understanding of and commitment to the truth, which requires a very un-postmodern understanding that truth is even possible. Not a construct, not relative, not a this-and-that; but it is an either/or, something that because it is, means other things are not. A belief that there is a truth to be known and proclaimed, debated, committed to, and defended. If this is old-fashioned, it is nevertheless the foundation of preaching. Before the incarnation, before the Trinity, before the creeds, comes truth. Believe it or not, but do not relativize it. Offer an alternative truth but not the possibility that opposites may both be true. When we agree that the truth is not just a possibility to be explored but a reality to be discovered and shared, then and only then can we answer Pilate's cynical question, "What is truth?"

Pilate's question about the nature of truth fits well into the theology of the Fourth Gospel but flounders on cynicisms in an age of alternative facts. The claims preachers make for the truth of the gospel is contested, and long has been, by denomination, sect, party, and tribe. As the Christian version of an older joke goes, every town needs two churches, the one I go to and the one I would not be caught dead in. And that is only to consider disagreements within the extended family of the faithful. In the ever-increasing number of those who no longer or may never self-identify as Christian, claiming to...