8 - The concept of truth

Summary

It may seem odd that we have come this far in a book devoted to a theological account of truth without making any attempt to say what truth is. The foregoing theological reflections on deciding what to believe may seem to accentuate the oddity, since we have from the outset made use of the concept of truth in the process of saying how we should make such decisions.

Leaving truth to the end, however, need not be taken to pose any special difficulties. The concepts of meaning, belief, and truth can only be grasped together, but obviously they cannot all be presented at once. Something has to come first, and leaving truth to the end has advantages. At least in some respects the concept of truth is about as clear a notion as we have; we have a better intuitive grasp of it than we do of the concepts of meaning, belief, and (a fortiori) epistemic decision. It was thus easier to presume upon that grasp in giving an account of the other notions than it would have been to proceed in the opposite direction.

Realism in search of a truth bearer

An ancient tradition holds that realism best captures the concept of truth. “Realism” comes in many different varieties, and involves more than simply a way of conceiving truth. But one hallmark of realism is the thought that truth is a relationship of correspondence between two quite different sorts of things: the mind, thoughts, propositions, or beliefs on the one hand, and reality, the world, or states of affairs on the other.

Christian theology has often thought about truth as a relationship of correspondence, and so along realist lines.