Truth In Christ (John 8:32)

 

  • 2 Cor.10:3-5 and 1 Chron.12:32.
  • 1 Kings 22:8, 13-17. Today, it is often not that people miss the target but that there is no target to miss.
  1. The very concept of truth is denied.
    • Rosaria Butterfield mentioned that Jill’s hands were large, so a student accused Rosaria of hate speech. Truth was no defence: ‘Your truth isn’t my truth. Your truth hates my reality!
    • six blind men of Indostan approached an elephant and described it variously as 1. a wall (i.e. he felt the body); 2. a spear (i.e. he felt the tusk); 3. a snake (the trunk); 4. a tree (the knee); 5. a fan (the ear); 6. a rope (the tail). But this only makes sense if elephants actually exist and can be known. Partial truth is still truth.
    • ‘That is just your opinion’ to the claim that Jesus’ name is not in the Dead Sea Scrolls. G. K. Chesterton: ‘We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.’
  2. The limits of reason.

    Blaise Pascal: ‘The last stage of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which surpass it. Reason is but feeble if it does not go so far as to know that.’ Faith and reason in 1 Cor.15:1-8.

    Simone Weil: ‘Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go to the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.’

  3. The truth as it is in Christ.
    • Heb.6:18; Tit.1:2; John 14:6; 16:13; 17:17; Prov.30:5-6; Rev.21:5; John 8:32. Simone Weil: truth is ‘the radiant manifestation of reality’.