The meaning of Christ’s saying, “I am the truth”

I

The saying seems at first staggering: an individual human being claims for himself that toward which every human directs his life, for which each individual and each ethical community strives, that which must govern all human relations if one is to trust them, which in a certain sense cannot be denied even to animals, plants, and inanimate objects since they are governed by inner laws on whose consistency we rely, which the scientist presupposes, and which every living being in its development manifests. How can anyone claim for himself this characteristic that governs every being? Its meaning becomes comprehensible in three stages, like three concentric circles.

1. First of all, Christ makes the statement in the context of God’s covenant with biblical mankind. It thus means, I am the fulfillment of all promises that God has made—not merely the fulfillment of that which God in his covenant of friendship with man commanded in the form of directives about proper human behavior (the “Ten Commandments”) and which he finally placed in the human heart. No, he fulfills also the promise that God will reveal himself as he is in truth—as the God who in his love for the world goes to the uttermost end (John 13:1) and thus manifests himself as substantial love (1 John 4:16), so much so that he is not only such for himself but proves on the cross that he is such for the world and for its salvation. He thereby draws us into this truth of his love: “God is love; the one who remains in love, remains in God and God remains in him” (ibid.). To show that he is himself love, God must prove his love to the world. Through his complete revelation of the Father, Christ offers this proof, just as the “Other Advocate” also does, the Holy Spirit who is sent through Christ by the Father. Insofar as the Spirit uncovers the falsehood of the world that rejects Christ—the central thought of the Pope’s Pentecost encyclical—he is “the Spirit of Truth,” who up to the end of the world will lead into the fullness of Christ’s truth: “he will not speak from himself but will take from what is mine and will explain it to you. All that the Father has is mine; that is why I say that he will take from what is mine and explain it to you” (John 16:13⁠-⁠15). The God who first reveals himself as love by accepting a life of suffering that encompasses, (vicariously), all the world and then proves himself to be the only source of ultimate truth for the whole world—this God is the triune God of the Christian Church. Within this self-presentation of God, Christ as the Son of the Father calls himself “the truth,” because he has revealed the deepest essence of the God who created the world. Christ then bestows his and the Father’s Spirit, who is to make this revelation known to all the world.

2. The circle expands when one goes back to the New Testament statement that the whole existence of the cosmos presupposes a divine decision from the outset that a “good” world can be created only when someone from outside all moral catastrophes of this world guarantees and offers security for this deeper and unshakeable goodness. For this reason it is said of “the precious blood of the Lamb without blemish or spot” that “it was already destined before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:19⁠-⁠20), that God “upholds the universe through his powerful word which brought redemption from sins” (Hebrews 1:3), that God “before the foundation of the world has chosen us for adoption through Jesus Christ; through him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Eph 1:4⁠-⁠7), that the chosen ones of God “before the foundation of the world are written in the book of the Lamb that has been slain” (Rev 13:8). Such texts show unequivocally that the decision for a world, whose destiny was clearly foreseen by God, could be risked only if at the outset there existed in God himself the guarantee that every devilish lie, every crime, every No to God would be “undermined” by a divine deed to be accomplished within this world which would assure the victory of his truth over every falsehood. Just that took place in the cross of Christ: “Stat crux, dum volvitur orbis.” [The cross remains standing while the world spins.]

3. However, the universe is not at all simply falsehood, while the cross of Christ (and his whole life) would be the only truth. What has been said needs a further expansion, one which follows almost naturally from the preceding. Of God’s Son who became man, it is said: God “appointed him heir of all things; he is the reflection of his glory, the image (the exact expression is character) of his nature; he upholds the universe by his powerful word” (Heb 1:2⁠-⁠3); “everything has come to be through the Word, and without it not one thing has come to be” (John 1:3). The Son is, however, “from the very beginning the Word,” the perfect expression of God, who expresses in this Word not only his nature but also in this nature everything that he in his freedom can create. That is why (as the theologians say) the possibilities or ideas of all conceivable worlds are expressed at the same time in the Son from all eternity.

When God in his wisdom decided to create the present world, the truth of all things in this world had its final, integral truth in this eternal “Word,” which was to become man at some point and express God’s essence. All things had elements of truth in themselves (“seminal logoi,” fragments of the whole truth, as the Fathers called them). These elements of truth truly belonged to all things insofar as they were like addends of a sum total of truth that was to be added up later. According to God’s plan, that sum was taken when the Logos became incarnate in the world and in a man. First the Church within time, and then the whole cosmos at the end of time, were to be included in the all-encompassing truth of the Logos—the all-encompassing truth about God who reveals himself and delivers himself up. To these elements of the truth belong the life, suffering and death of every single being (and why should subhuman beings be excluded?), all good relations between men, and also all the humanly devised religious and philosophical systems insofar as they struggle to move toward the goal of absolute truth. The contents of these systems perhaps vary greatly in their truth, and need to be tested and discerned in the light of the fullness of truth, but whatever in them is directed toward this fullness of truth will be preserved in it. That which truly has in itself “life” directed to God, which is seriously on the road to God, is already in him who says of himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

II

Having said this, the question may nevertheless be posed: does it suffice to speak merely of “fragments” of truth in relation to the beings of the world, which raises the suspicion that these fragments could have different forms of being or structures? Or with regard to secular (philosophical) truth, is it not appropriate to presently speak of a common nature of all that claims to be truth? In short, are there, in our everyday understanding, different truths or is there only one?

The fact that many things can be true in their own way is not an objection against the oneness of truth. Moreover, a multiplicity of truths in the strict sense of the word would be completely incomprehensible for humans. He would have to ask himself which truth is really the truth and if this question, given the existence of different truths, was unsolvable, the “logical” consequence could only be a denial of every truth (provided the word “logical” still had meaning).

But even as we back away from such a conclusion, general distinctions, however, must first be made. The “truth” of things that the human being has made, a machine for example, are readily comprehensible. Also, facts that he can control (“I slept seven hours,” “the train departed at ten,” “Paris is the capital of France”⁠—⁠the human being built it and determined it to be the capital), are either true or false. A statement about them is either true or (intentionally or unintentionally) a lie. By contrast, the essential nature of beings created by God⁠—⁠the stone, the living creature, the human being⁠—⁠can be probed in more depth (whereby one can discover true laws in them). Yet, their truth is not entirely presentable. Differences between beings are ascertainable, such as those between inanimate and animate, plant and animal, instinct and rational thought. Nevertheless, the assessment of these differences (think about the questions of evolutionary theory) retains something precarious and provisional. Research advances from the expressions and appearances of beings towards their essences and can thereby determine the objective (“true”) laws. But, it will be wary of claiming that it has finally unraveled the innermost “essence” of a natural being (including that of the human being).

What is described as “truth” here can be approached from two sides: from the side of the object, which has the gift of “presenting” itself in manifold ways, of “expressing” its essence in ways that partially reveal its essence but say more about what it can do than what it is. From the side of the truth-seeking subject, who tries to form an (approximately?) “correct” judgment about the appearance of the being in question. Further investigation shows that truth approximated in this way needs to be partly corrected and to be partly incorporated (and thus relativized) into more comprehensive hypotheses. Though it is very rare for a serious researcher to “lie,” he can often “deceive” himself and further research either corrects his findings or integrates them into a more comprehensive conclusion.

Joseph Pieper, in his presentation of the “negative element in Thomas Aquinas’s worldview,” dealt intensively with the fact that this great and so positive thinker made numerous very restrictive statements about the cognitive capacity of human reason. “The essences of things are unknown to us,” “the essential ground of things are unknown to us,” “the substantial forms in themselves are unknown to us,” “the essential differences are not accessible to us.”¹ Thomas gives two reasons for this. First, the created things are afterimages of the archetypes that lie in God’s essence and are therefore necessarily deficient. Second, the dullness of our cognitive power (imbecillitas intellectus nostri [feebleness of our intellect]), means that it is not even able to read into things what they really contain in terms of information about the absolute truth.

And this applies not only to the essences in their narrower sense (essentiae), but also to their basic being (esse), which according to Thomas is the first thing that the human mind detects but for which it can never have an adequate concept. Admittedly, it “posits” (“affirms”) being when faced with the manifestations of things “expressing” themselves, but within a dynamism inherent to it that pushes towards a (super-conceptual) being per se and it can only attribute being (and not mere “maya”) to limited-being things on the way to this being per se. Here the famous problem arises as to whether the human mind, being capable of true knowledge, needs a “radiation” of the divine mind for such knowledge (whereby it would receive, at the same time, insight into the created condition or the God-derivativeness of finite beings) or whether this “radiation” has already been given to it at its creation. It is the difference between a more Augustinian and a more Aristotelian-Thomist epistemology. However, Thomas does not ultimately consider this difference to be very important (“non multum refert”. De spirit, creat. 10 ad 8). No one is further from agnosticism than Thomas. However, no one is more cautious when it comes to formulating a simple theory of truth. Truth, for him, is a “transcendental” that pervades all being. Consequently, it cannot be reduced (any more than being itself) to a short formula.

Let us then leave the all-too familiar formula “adaeuato intellectus ad rem” [an adequation of the intellect to reality] to the side since it is initially too vague and in need of multiple explanations. Rather, let us look back at a moment already alluded to above. All created things have the capacity to “give,” “represent,” “express” themselves. Their hidden essence has the potential to reveal itself to a certain degree. On the side of the subject, the mind has the potential to form a judgment about them based on the signals coming from the outside: beginning with an “internal word” (verbum mentis: Thomas [word of the mind]) that is always already translated (given that man is a social being that cannot exist without speech) into a spoken word (as the new language philosophy has emphatically shown). Consequently, we are faced with the most important conclusion that where truth occurs, an objective word of things (for example, the flight of a bird) and a subjective (-social) word of a cognizing being meet.

But this suddenly brings us back to the sentence of John’s prologue; that all things are created in the divine logos (reason, expression, word) and that they can only be recognized as true by virtue of their logos component within them. All things, existing and (furthermore) cognizing, are linguistic beings. Insofar as they originate from the one divine logos, they ultimately speak only one language or participate in one truth. Insofar as they both⁠—⁠object as well as subject⁠—⁠are only participants, the absolute truth unassailably transcends them unless this absolute truth gives them a part of its own infinity out of free grace (“and those to whom the son chooses to reveal him” Matthew 11:27). As created beings, they take to themselves a deficient share of that divine truth, which we know as a triune truth through revelation; It is the One who expresses [and] gives himself away in love, the Word that receives him in love, and the union and fruit of both⁠—⁠the Holy Spirit. The deficient share is enough to make the creature an “image” of the triune God, in which the archetype can, if it wishes, become incarnate; Now we are once again at the conclusion of the first part. The incarnate Word can call himself the “Truth” because he does both at the same time: he represents the Trinitarian Father in the Holy Spirit and completes everything inchoative, the image-like [and] creaturely truth, in himself.

But one last thing should be added here: When Jesus says, “Whoever sees me, sees the father” (John 14:9), two different things are presumed. First, one sees the Son as he really is: not as a perfect human being, not as an imperfect transposition of the trinitarian relationship into a human form but rather: in the inner loving attitude of his life, action, death and resurrection, the self-expression of the heavenly Father, which can only be recognized through the Holy Spirit. Second, such “seeing” cannot take place in mortal life other than by always progressively [and] evermore closely following Christ in obedient imitation of what Jesus is as the Son. Only the one who “does”⁠—⁠recognizes whether Jesus is the truth (John 7:17, 8:31). In his course towards the truth, he does not imagine it is “one already attained,” but has nevertheless “already been attained by it” (Phil 3:12f.). And since the meeting of the subject and object takes place in a socially formed language, the meeting of the Absolute Word become Flesh and the faithful follower takes place through a language created by God’s Incarnation: that of the Church.