Truth as a construct. . .

Epistemology is that part of philosophy which is concerned with forms of truth.  Epistemology asks: “how do we know that something is true?” In essence, what is truth?  When I was in college, epistemology generally was organized around four ‘classical’ or ‘common’ theories of truth.  Nobody thinks a philosphy class is practical and by nature we presume that this is the domain of academicians and not ordinary folk.  This is not quite the case since it is precisely truth that is at stake in the modern controversies that affect our political, social, and religious lives.

If you wanted a summary of the four theories of truth, it might look like this.

• The correspondence theory of truth — that whatever corresponds to observable reality is true.
• The coherence theory of truth —  that claims are true if they follow logically and coherently from a set of axioms (or intermediate propositions).
• The consensus theory of truth — that what is true is what everyone agrees to be true.
• The pragmatic theory of truth — that what is true is what is useful to you, or beneficial for you.

In modern thinking, truth is not something that exists apart from our judgment or agreement.  In fact, truth is a construct.  Truth is really what we make up for ourselves to explain things around us.  Truth is therefore not universal at all but subjective and personal.  Truth is what I say it is.

When truth is subjective to the individual or when it depends upon the agreement of people, truth is no longer foundational but marginal.  Truth changes and everything else changes.  Everything else changes and truth changes.  We all say this during the pandemic.  What some labeled misinformation turned out to be truth and what was promoted as truth and science turned out to be misinformation.  Science attempts to live largely within the first to theories of truth while politics and society live within the latter two theories.  So where does religion live?

Christianity does not claim to be a truth but insists it is the truth -- the objective truth that does not change no matter if people do not believe it or society as a whole does not hold to it.  The problem is that we live in a culture in which this kind of objective truth no longer exists and the only truths that do are the ones we all agree upon or the ones we find individually helpful.  Because truth is a construct, there is no absolute truth at all and certainly no religious absolute truths -- no matter what Scripture says.  All of this has become possible and even largely accepted by many Christians because we have presumed a difference and distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of the Bible.  When this became somewhat normal or usual, the ability to know something definitively was lost.  

As a culture we are suffering the fact that we no longer are bound by any truth -- not a religious truth nor a scientific truth.  We have not truth left but the ones we agree to hold and the ones individuals may find beneficial (but only subjectively and if they tolerate conflicting truths others find beneficial).  The roots of our political conflict as well as the fruits of the decline of Christianity as the truth lie in the fact that there is no objective truth anymore and we cannot solve any problems as long as truth itself depends upon acceptance by a larger group or what the individual finds privately beneficial.  In the end, the political disagreements are less about policy than about truth and the religious disagreement between orthodox Christianity and what passes for Christianity today is less about doctrines than about the nature of truth itself.