Thursday, May 14, 2009

Christology and the Correspondence Theory of Truth

In my mind it is quite difficult to determine where we would turn if we were to abandon completely the correspondence theory of truth. Other theories (the coherence theory, the pragmatic theory, and others) seem to fail us and so I am happy to affirm, with William Alston, David Clark, Kevin Vanhoozer, and others, a minimalist correspondence theory of truth wherein we do not demand a precise account of the nature of that correspondence relation between truth-bearers (especially propositions) and the states of affairs to which they pertain.

However, the Gospel of John presses us to add some nuance to our understanding of truth. In John 14:6 Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life." So our understanding of how truth is borne out must include more than just propositions (briefly, a proposition is the descriptive content of an assertion). It must include the very person of Jesus Christ!

In other words, we need an unashamedly Christian understanding of truth as correspondence. We need to uphold both the propositional and the personal contours of truth, keeping in mind that propositions may be deeply personal and that knowledge of persons involves knowledge of propositions pertaining to those persons. This is an important commitment not least because of how easy it is to find some who focus on the propositional at the expense of the personal and the other way around.

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