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Betty ... It would be interesting to know how you define truth.

The best definition I’ve heard is that truth is the recognition of reality.

It would be interesting to know how you define truth.

I read your last this morning. Sorry not to have replied by now. But today, I went to my hometown to bring my elderly parents to the polls. My 93-year-old Mom (who just recently got her driver's license renewed!!!) was quite ill when I got there. So I took her to the emergency room. She was treated and released.

I am now about to devote myself to the "traditional" election-day vigil. I do this every election day, whether the election is general or midterm. Mainly I watch Fox News, but there's a good deal of channel surfing, too.

In short, I wonder how much "truth" I'm going to get tonight — or rather in the wee hours of the morning....

But your question — what is Truth? — is very much alive with me, and I'll reply tomorrow OldNavyVet!

p.s.: My mother is an "old Navy vet," too: She served in the South Pacific, in WWII. And is still going strong....

Praise God!

Hello OldNavyVet! You wrote —

It would be interesting to know how you define truth. The best definition I’ve heard is that truth is the recognition of reality.

That’s true as far as it goes. But the maxim begs the questions of what is the “reality” that is capable of being “recognized” (Being)? And how it is recognized (Knowing)?

For me to be able to “define” Truth, I would have to be able somehow to stand “outside” of it. And if I were capable of doing that, then you would have no reason to trust anything I had to say….

But I am not capable of doing that; i.e., of standing outside Truth; for I believe that it constitutes the fundamental structure of Reality that includes me “as part and participant.”

All I have to go on are insights and observations direct and indirect of what Truth IS. Though I can’t “define” it, I can describe it. My list of descriptions would include the following:

Truth is One, unchanging, and eternal. That is, it is timeless and spaceless. It has universal reach, from first to last, from least to greatest. Nothing in the phenomenal or moral worlds is outside of its domain.
Truth is at once transcendent to and immanent in the world of human knowing. It is transcendent in that it did not arise in the world of human knowing; it wasn’t “created there.” Rather, the entire phenomenal world and the world of human knowing are its products. This is to recognize the way Natural Law theory expresses Truth.
Truth is immanent in these worlds (phenomenal and conscious) as what we might call the paradigm or specification of the universal order of the universe in its evolution over time. It accounts for the fact that though there is astonishing diversity in the world of Nature, still the fundamental oneness and identity of Nature is never disrupted by its diversity, but persists over time as the manifold of this diversity.
For the great classical philosophers, Truth is the eternal act of Divine Nous (Mind). With Plato (and I daresay Aristotle too), Truth is so closely associated with Goodness, Beauty, and Justice, that one is led to conclude that these are but different manifestations of one Substance — Truth — viewed under different aspects. And the entire Cosmos (universe) is the manifestation, or “image” (eikon), of this eternal act viewed under the conditions of space and time. But the “eternal actor” is not in time, nor in space. He/It is the God Beyond (i.e., transcending) the Cosmos, the Source of its truthful order in space and time.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Truth is the Word of God “in the Beginning,” i.e., at the divinely-willed inception event of all that there is or ever will be — the Creation. Christianity makes explicit the unity of God and Truth in St. John’s Gospel:

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. — John, 1–4

The Word of God, the Logos, was made manifest in the Incarnation of Christ. Christ is at once the Logos of creation and the Son of God. Another divine Name for Him is Alpha and Omega, “First to Last” (i.e., first cause and last cause, incorporating immanent cause in the evolutionary flow of space and time in between). Thus does Christianity acknowledge the absolute universality of Truth as Creator and Lord of Life.
As for the human relation to Truth, I find St. Anselm’s observation answers very well for me. In the Proslogion XV, he wrote:

Oh Lord, you are not only that than which a greater cannot be conceived, but you are also greater than what can be conceived.

Which is why I said earlier that I can’t “define” truth, only describe it. For how can I — or any other human being — “define” the unconceivable?
Substitute the word “Truth” for “Lord” here — which is an entirely legitimate operation from both the classical Greek and Christian points of view — and we recognize how dependent we humans are on an eternal criterion that we did not specify, but which is operating in the world of human experience. And the challenge it poses: It clearly puts the divine and human into two entirely different orders or “categories” (or “dimensions”) altogether. Truth is the only bridge between them.
From the scientific standpoint, Truth is the foundation of the universal physical and moral laws.
And Truth is the one single standard by which questions of true or false can be answered.

Possibly I could expand on this list. But there’s enough there already I think I’ll just stop.

In the end, Scripture is instructive on this point:

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. — Colossians 2:8 [KJV]

Another translation of the same verse:

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. [? — help!!!]

Colossians 2:8 is clearly stating that divine Truth — the Logos, Christ — is the “measure” that prevents us from being deluded into false propositions. Left unaided by Truth, philosophical doctrines are equally as bad as bad science, and thus equally deleterious to human well-being.

Must leave it there for now, dear OldNavyVet. Thank you ever so much for writing!