The Christian Faith and the Truth of the Gospel: A Trinitarian Reflection
Photo by Lisa R. Howeler
According to many historians, it was the ancient Sumerians who invented writing, initially on clay tablets, around 3,500 B.C. The subsequent evolution of books went through several phases: first, ancient scrolls (employed by the Hebrews), then the codex, which bound many sheets together (the earliest complete copy of the New Testament, for example, is the Codex Sinaiticus produced in the fourth century), and then on to the printing press which was developed commercially by Gutenberg in 1454 with the publication of the Bible the following year.
What is especially remarkable about this brief history of printing, or the transmission of scripts, if you will, is that from 3,500 B.C. until 1454 A.D., roughly around five thousand years, the chief vehicle for the transmission of human knowledge was copying by hand! In other words, if you wanted a copy of the Bible in the thirteenth century, then it was best to be the friend of a monk. However, once the printing press was in place, texts could be multiplied easily, and the transmission of human knowledge took off. Indeed, the dissemination of knowledge was so broad and rapid that, as Andrew Pettegree has made the case in his book Brand Luther, it was one of the key factors that led to the Reformation.
Today, with the rise of the Digital Age, galvanized by significant advances in artificial intelligence (AI), the cycles of change that once had a wavelength of five thousand years or so are now happening in a matter of days. From data noise in the form of overwhelming amounts of communication, to misinformation in the form of deepfakes and fake news, which may include a combination of real and fabricated content, and then on to algorithmic bias, in which the AI instrument itself may have been programmed with an ongoing bias, in the face of all of this, how is one to know the truth any longer?
Observe at the outset that this is not a minor question before us, one of little concern, for it strikes at the heart of reality, our sense of what is and is not, and as a consequence, it strikes at meaning and purpose as well. More to the point, it strikes at nothing less than the heart of the Christian faith as well, for this faith is preeminently about truth in a way that no other major world religion is. That’s neither a contrived nor an empty claim, as this essay will clearly demonstrate. Indeed, to back away from such a claim for the sake of social affability would only be to back away from the truth of the faith itself and thereby to turn it into something that it never was and never was meant to be.
Beyond this, when thinking about the Christian faith itself, believers often run the course of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, all of which are essential, but then they mistakenly conclude that they are done; all the bases are covered. However, each theological virtue, in its depth and essential meaning, cannot be understood apart from the context of the Truth. Granted, many Christians are well aware of the sayings of Jesus when he declared, "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32), or when he stood before Pilate and affirmed: "the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth" (John 18:37), but it goes further, much further, than this.
Often, when the scriptures just noted above are cited, believers consider truth to be a teaching, a body of knowledge, that can be expressed suitably in propositions, the truth of which can be measured by their correspondence to a state of affairs. So understood, truth embraces the factual and historical dimensions of the Gospel in the form of the statements—for example, that Christ was born in Bethlehem and that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Part of the beauty of the Christian faith, then, is that it is richly rooted in history and is, therefore, on one level, greatly concerned about both historical and empirical facts. However, this is a dimension of the truth of Christianity that could be rightly affirmed by any competent historian, whether a Christian believer or not.
In sensing the challenge of a triumphant scientific empiricism in the nineteenth century, Charles Hodge, a Reformed theologian, focused on the factual dimension of Christianity and proclaimed: “The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science; it is his storehouse of facts.” However, if the truth of the Bible were limited to this dimension, and I am not suggesting that Charles Hodge ever did this, then the result of such an approach to truth would be a kind of theological rationalism in which some of the salient facts of the Bible would be affirmed, but the larger Truth of Scripture would be unacknowledged or perhaps even abandoned. In other words, go so far and one would yet fall far short. The truth of the Christian faith goes well beyond these factual statements.
So then, what is the understanding of truth that the Christian faith celebrates and is not reflected in either an apologetic, theological rationalism or in the understandings of other major world religions? It is none other than the frank recognition that Truth is not exhausted in the affirmation of facts or data, but that truth is also a Person, even Jesus Christ, who proclaimed: "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6). Observe that the Savior did not say that he would offer a discourse or a lecture on truth, as if Truth were something other than his own person, but I AM the Truth. Put another way, Truth is both personal and relational. It has to do with the divine and human relation, with God and those created in the image of God, what the twentieth-century theologian Emil Brunner called divine and human correspondence. Such a recognition calls into account the cogitating intellect of the self, that very small world in which the self is left alone in its own reasoning, and in which everything, even God, simply emerges as an object.
A full-orbed understanding of the truth of Christianity can be illustrated by a gospel story in which Jesus and the Apostle Peter both play key roles. We all know this narrative very well, but perhaps in this current reiteration we will view it in a new and fresh way:
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:4-8)
By means of the command of Jesus, and through his own obedient action, the Apostle Peter now has a very clear understanding of who Jesus is, and as a consequence, who he is as well: “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man.” In other words, the Truth that Jesus is, in his very identity, in his very identity, is revealed to Peter in a moment, in a flash, and the Apostle is greatly humbled in the face of such a recognition—or better yet, such a revelation. Not only does Peter now know who Jesus is in a new way, but he also knows, without pretense or evasion, just who he himself is. The blinders are now clearly off; pretense and self-deception are gone. This is a crucial, not a minor, instantiation of grace, and it ultimately leads to Peter’s later entire transformation of being. That’s what the Truth does.
But there's more, much more. Not only is Jesus Christ the Truth, but so is the Holy Spirit as well. To be sure, the Holy Spirit, who is revealed as a teacher, guide, comforter, intercessor, and sanctifier, among other things—evidencing all the marks of personhood—is likewise referred to as the Truth, in particular, the Spirit of truth. For example, in John 14:16-17a, Jesus promises his followers: "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.” Elsewhere, in John 15:26, Jesus relates that “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.”
Beyond this, in the last passage to be cited, notice that Jesus not only refers to the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, as the Spirit of truth, a commonplace by now, but he also makes the connection to the Truth that is the Father as well. In short, the Spirit of truth goes out from the Father, is sent from the Father by the Son in order to testify of the Son. In light of this, it can rightly be affirmed that God as revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, the heart of Christian revelation, is all about the Truth, for the Son is the Truth, the Holy Spirit is the Truth, and the Father is the Truth. Simply put, it’s Truth all around. There’s no empty boast here.
Since the Christian Godhead, the Holy Trinity, is a community of persons-in-relation—the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and is sent by the Son—and since all of humanity has been created in this precious, glorious image (imago Dei), then the language of persons-in-relation not only gets at the heart of WHO God is, but it also reveals who we are as image bearers who have been created by the Truth to live in the Truth. Observe that this is neither a matter-of-fact understanding, some additional, check-box piece of information that leaves the self very much at the center of its own life, nor is it simply the affirmation of a proposition chiefly in the form of a rational assent. It is this, but it is much more than this. That “more” must be seen, in part, as nothing less than an invitation to embrace the truth of God and our own being. Like Peter, we may initially cry, “Go away from me, Lord,” overwhelmed by the Truth and the beauty of it all, but in the end, if we are wise enough to follow the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit, then we will embrace what is rightly called the Grand Truth of the Bible: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. Glory!
Kenneth J. Collins is Professor of Historical Theology and Wesley Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY, and a member of Firebrand’s editorial board.