N. T. Wright is the former Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, and author of more than thirty books. He is considered one of the foremost New Testament scholars, but in spite of his scholarship, his writing is clear and understandable. His book “Simply Christian” is a clear summary of our faith. In the first section, he touches on the issue of truth.
“Over the last generation in Western culture, truth has been like the rope in a tug-of-war contest. On the one hand, some want to reduce all truth to ‘facts’, things that can be proved in the way you can prove that oil is lighter than water, or even that two and two make four. On the other hand, some believe that all truth is relative, and that all claims to truth are merely coded claims to power. Ordinary mortals, dimly aware of this tug-of-war, and its social, cultural and political spin-offs, may well feel some uncertainty about what truth is, while still knowing that it matters,
“The sort of thing we could and should mean by ‘truth’ will vary according to what we’re talking about. If I want to go into town, it matters whether the person who has told me to take the number 53 bus is speaking the truth or not.
“But by no means all truth is of that kind, or testable in the same way. If there’s any truth lying behind the quest for justice, it is that the world isn’t meant to be morally chaotic; but what do we mean be ‘meant’, and how do we know? If there’s any truth in the thirst for spirituality, it could be simply that humans find satisfaction in exploring a ‘spiritual’ dimension to their lives, or it could be that we are made for relationship with another Being who can only be known that way.
“And, talking of relationships, the ‘truth’ of a relationship is in the relationship itself, in being ‘true’ to one another, which is considerably more than (though presumably it includes) telling each other the truth about the number 53 bus. . . .
“What we mean by ‘know’ is likewise further in need of investigation. To ‘know’ the deeper truths we have been hinting at is much like ‘knowing’ a person - something which takes a long time, a lot of trust, and a good deal of trial and error - and less like ‘knowing’ the right bus to take into town. It’s the kind of knowing in which the subject and object are intertwined, so that you could never say that it was either purely subjective or purely objective
“One good word for this deeper and richer kind of knowing, the kind that goes with the deeper and richer kind of truth, is ‘love’.”
- From “SIMPLY CHRISTIAN: Why Christianity makes sense”, by N. T. Wright, published by Harper Collins, 2006, pages 50 and 51
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