The contemporary challenges of pluralism, postmodernity, and fundamentalism have made it difficult to speak of truth without coming across as arrogant. However, this is not a necessary consequence of believing in truth.

Don’t get me wrong: I am a pluralist. I admire and embrace many of the epistemological insights of postmodernity. And I find most aspects of fundamentalism disturbing and demeaning to the development of a mature and culturally-engaged faith. However, I do not embrace hard pluralism (the belief that all perspectives are equally valid and consequently invalid), hard postmodernity (the belief that all perspectives are nothing more than culturally and personally biased), and hard fundamentalism (the belief that faith equals certainty concerning propositional statements). Each “hard” perspective should not preclude our seeking of and speaking about transcendent – transcultural, transpersonal, transrational – truth.

You Shall Know the Truth

Why is this the case? Because “knowing truth” is central to the Christian faith. Jesus claimed to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” He taught that knowledge of the truth is possible and liberating, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). The life of salvation is a life that corresponds to truth, participates in truth, acts upon truth, proclaims the truth, and seeks greater understanding of the truth. Salvation is so intertwined with truth that the apostle Paul wrote that “God desires that everyone be saved and come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).

Truth is knowable. Truth is do-able. Truth is proclaim-able. Thus, the Christian finds herself at odds with radical pluralists who claim that all truth-claims are equal, with postmodernists who question whether truth is knowable, and fundamentalists who reduce truth to propositional truth-claims.

Ultimately, the Christian tradition teaches that truth is personal, for it is identified with a person, namely, Jesus Christ who is the truth. Likewise, the Holy Spirit is the truth, the witness to Jesus Christ (1 John 5:7).

In his book, Sweeter Than Honey: Orthodox Thinking on Dogma and Truth, Peter Bouteneff demonstrates that the Orthodox perspective of truth best represents the ancient understanding of Christian knowledge: “Truth is something you enter into a relationship with” (22). It is not simply a detached objective reality, but is a personal reality that one receives and participates in. Furthermore, “Truth is linked to a way of life, one that is in concert with the way things really are” (22). Thus, the Christian knows the truth, practices the truth, and proclaims the truth in the message of Christ.

This personal quality of truth is opposed to how many people understand truth. “Christianity does not consist in a series of verifiable and interlocking hypotheses. Nor is it a philosophical system consisting in satisfactory, mutually consistent propositions… the way that truth is sought and engaged with is not through detachment but through a living relationship of faith and love with the object we seek” (36). The Christian seeks more than “objective truth,” facts, or information. “The goal is not to find information, or even to discern fact, but to bring ourselves, as living subjects, into engagement with reality, culminating ultimately in a participation in the ground of what is real” (35).

Embracing Plurality, Not Hard Pluralism

The Christian’s belief in the knowability of truth “does not discount truths found outside the Christian tradition.

St. John teaches that Jesus is “the true light who enlightens every human being (John 1:9). Second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr believed that the “seeds of the Word” could be found in diverse faiths and systems of thought. According to this line of thinking, everything that is true, whether or not it is said by a Christian, is true because of Christ; anything that is approaching truth is approaching Christ. And everyone who is doing the truth is making some kind of approach to Christ, whether or not they name him as Christ. As Christ himself says, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (Jn 18.37).

Card-carrying, Bible-reading Christians do not hold a monopoly on truth. People of all backgrounds and faith traditions can and do come to right conclusions about created reality and about God himself. But where this happens, whether in the person of a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, or Buddhist, we point to Christ, and we locate the fulfillment of that truth in Christ. This is how we apply our belief that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. (27)

This is not an accommodation to pluralism, but an awareness that all truth is God’s truth, and that, ultimately, all truth, whether it states this explicitly, finds its source and end in Christ. I realize that most people from other traditions will not be satisfied in having their perspective reduced to an affirmation of the truth as it is in Christ, but my belief that Jesus is Lord of all – not just a “personal” savior, but the truest and best reflection of God – precludes me from affirming anything different. “Scripture identifies Jesus Christ not just with Christian truth, as opposed to everyone else’s truth, but with universal truth, the truth for everyone and everything.” (26). To claim anything less makes statements like “Jesus is Lord” irrelevant. This does not necessarily make me antagonistic to truths from other sources, but allows me to recognize all truths as finding their source and goal in the person of Christ.

This christocentric perspective of truth affirms truths in other traditions but also recognizes legitimate differences. An unwillingness to do so is unfair to Christianity, and for matter, to all other faith traditions, for they all express different truths. For example, Christians assert that Jesus Christ is the only-begotten Son of God. The Muslim tradition explicitly rejects this as a possibility: “Allah is He on Whom all depend. He begets not, nor is He begotten. And none is like Him” (Quran 112.1-4). It would be dishonest to both traditions to assume that they agree on all points. Neither Christianity or Islam – or any religious tradition, for that matter – are honored by flattening them all to their commonalities. Though this is a good way to begin to engage others in ecumenical dialogue, it is not a good way to engage in comparative religion.

This is the flaw in radical pluralism. Though hard pluralism seems to be the more humble approach, it also can be expressed arrogantly, with as much absolutism as the most grounded dogma. Bouteneff correctly identifies the problem:

Arrogance is supposed to be the unique ailment, of absolutists in their claims to be right. But are religious pluralists less arrogant in some of their positions? In effect they assert that the ancient religious traditions, all of which hold, to various degrees, that their faith positions are unique, have got it wrong. It’s only we enlightened postmodern Westerners who have got it right. (57)

Embracing Postmodernity, not Hard Postmodernity

The Christian claim to truth recognizes our own inherent human limitations. All of the major Christian traditions in their best forms admit that God is ineffable (beyond words) and incomprehensible. God would not be God if this were not the case. Both the infinite nature of God and our own inherent limitations prevent us from ever assuming we have the final word on God. There are always greater depths we can plumb. Even the fullness of revelation in Christ recognizes that there is more truth waiting to be revealed.

Indeed, our own limited perception makes comprehensive knowledge of any object – whether it is a pencil, another person, or God – a practical impossibility. Since this is the case, we should not be upset by the fact that our knowledge of God is finite, and thus incomplete. There are many realities – including God – which we know truly without knowing comprehensibly. If we reserve judgment until we possess comprehensive knowledge we shall hesitate to do and say anything about everything. This hardly advances the cause of truth, but rather, stops it dead in its tracks.

Contrary to Christian fundamentalism, which often comes across as arrogant in its obsession with absolute truth, the Christian tradition recognizes that God cannot be held to the limitations of human logic. Doctrines such as God’s transcendence and immanence, the theanthropic union of the human and divine in Jesus, and the human quality of the sacred scriptures are steeped in mystery and paradox, thus defying logic’s limitations expressed chiefly in its law of non-contradiction. God is both far and near, human and divine, present and timeless. This is one reason that fundamentalist absolutism is deficient. “Vital as it is to reject religious relativism, it is equally important to underscore the proper boundaries of absolutism” (63).

Contrary to postmodern relativism, the Christian tradition argues that God’s truth is catholic – truth that both transcends and embraces all human cultures. As such, it holds the potential to both be expressed in every human culture and to be critical of human cultures.

A degree of relativism—in the sense of cultural sensitivity—can be a positive thing. It can serve as a much-needed corrective to cultural imperialism, which for centuries has been so destructive around the world. But it becomes counterproductive when sensitivity becomes a god, eclipsing fundamental and, yes, absolute human rights to life and dignity. People of different cultures have a responsibility to be deeply critical of the once common practice of female infanticide in China; they may justly decry the practice of dowry burnings in India; they should be outraged at “honor killings” in sectors of the Islamic world… The biggest problem with a thoroughgoing relativism may not even be the logical one. It’s that relativism shrinks from admitting the existence of real evil. (67)

Bouteneff continues:

In all, we must be able to believe that individual people, and entire groups of people, hold views that are wrong. What’s perhaps harder for some of us is that we must also be prepared to be shown where we are wrong. Both of these things, however, are possible only if we believe that there is an absolute right and wrong, an absolute truth, and that human beings have the capacity to come to know that truth. In our society today, it is becoming an act of courage to say as much. (72)

Why is this important? Too many people are falling outside the boundaries of the Christian tradition by refusing to claim they can know truth or practice truth. They capitulate to our culture’s philosophies by giving in too easily to the pressure to refrain from talking about truth.

The simple fact that truth cannot be known comprehensively does not imply that truth cannot be known at all. The postmodern insight that truth is culturally communicated and received does not imply that truth is limited to our culture. The pluralist insight that all traditions contain some truth does not imply that no tradition is more right or more wrong than any other. The fundamentalist inclination to hold to absolute truths does not mean that all claims to absolute truth are arrogant.

Toward a Recovery of Truth

As stated above, radical pluralism and postmodernity can be just as absolutist in their stance as fundamentalism. The pluralist claim that no absolute truth exists may, on the surface, appear compassionate, but it is just another absolutism masquerading itself as tolerance. Likewise, the postmodern claim that truth is culturally-contained is another absolutism.

In short, unless one is willing to be a consistent relativist or a complete agnostic, one must be willing that they believe that truth is important. Without it, the best we have is opinion and conjecture. These are hardly positions that lead to freedom and liberation, but rather, confine us to our own minds, culture, and time. Furthermore, if one truly holds these positions – hard pluralism or hard postmodernity – they have placed themselves outside the discussion of truth as a meaningful category. Once we have decided that there is no truth to be discovered, then the discussion has, for all extents and purposes, ended. And this is a more tragic conclusion than the most extreme fundamentalist assertion.

What Christians need to recover is the apostolicity and catholicity of truth. The ancient Christian tradition has never stated that truth is known outside the apostolic witness. Furthermore, it has always held that its truth is transcultural – that is, catholic – in that it can be experienced and expressed in all cultural settings. It has also held that truth is transrational in that it exceeds our finite human limitations – that is, it is mystery. Finally, it has always held that truth is transpersonal – it transcends us and finds its source and goal in God.

Our common confession in all the ecumenical creeds is that “we believe in God the Father… Christ Jesus… the Holy Spirit… and the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” When we lose sight of this – especially our belief that the church has preserved and communicated the truth as it is in Jesus – then we are bound to eventually lose touch with the Christian tradition, and by default, the Christ of the Christian tradition. And when we have lost Christ, we have lost the truth – and salvation! Having nothing to “set us free” we end up chained to the oppressive bonds of our own culture, limited perceptions, and reigning philosophies. What we seek to gain in being relevant may be lost in the babbling irrelevance of personal opinion. And then, our claim that “God desires that everyone be saved and come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4) is empty, meaningless, and powerless – simply another preference among preferences.

Yes, I am well aware that religious belief can be abused. It can be used in ways that negates its own message. It can become the servant of foreign powers that use it for its own ends. In the words of Bouteneff: “People certainly abuse religious belief, but what needs to change is not the belief but the abuse” (69).

In my next essay, I will consider how we come to a true, albeit limited, grasp of the revelation of God in Christ, and by doing so, be set free to be fully human, aligning ourselves with truth that is meaningful, liberating, and eternal.

Quotes excerpted from Sweeter Than Honey: Orthodox Thinking on Dogma And Truth by Peter C. Bouteneff
© Richard J. Vincent, 2007