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TRUTH. — In the apostolic documents thesimplest meaning given to ' truth ' is that of sincerity. St. P.iul, writing of the dificrent motives that had im- pelled people to make known the gospel of Christ, declared that he rejoiced that Clirist w .-is iiroclaimecl 'whether in imiteiu'C or in truth' (I'll 1"*). The same .Apostle called upon the Corinthian Christians to banish all insincerity from their holiest religious ceremonies. ' Let ns keep the feast not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth '(1 Co 5'). Even in passages like these it is evident that 'truth' tended to acquire a deeper and wider meaning, passing from mere sincerity to conformity with the highest ethical claims. The standard of ethical truth was embodied in .lesus, who was set forth as the example to which Christians should conform. Thus St. Paul warned his readers against a life of lasciviousness by recalling the way in which they had learned Christ, ' if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus' (Eph 4-'). (This passage is sometimes taken as asserting the identity of Jesus and the Christ, but the old reading and interpretation seem preferable.) For the most part, however, the apostles speak of truth as equivalent to truth kot i^oxv", the revelation of God that rejiches its fullness in the gospel of Christ. St. Paul made it synonymous with 'the gospel of your salvation' (l^ph 1"), and, writing t« tlie Thessalonians, he described the Divine and human sides of conversion as ' sanctilication of the Sjiirit and belief of the truth ' (2 Th 2''). The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews declared that for those who sinned wilfully after they had gained a full knowledge of the truth there could be no further sacrifice for sin (He 10'-"). In the Pastoral Epistles this use is specially prevalent — e.g. 1 Ti 2*, ' (iod willeth that all men shcmid be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth"; 1 Ti 3'°, where the (_^huicli of the living God is described as ' the pillar and ground of the truth'; 2 Ti 2", 'a workman that needelh not to be a.shanied, handling aright the word of truth.' While these various aspects of truth are suggested in the apostolic writings, it would be a mistake to supjiose that the apostles regarded truth as consisting of sejiarate entities ; rather they regarded it as a unity embodied in Jesus Christ, so that intellectual sincerity, ethical purity, doctrinal enlightenment, and s]iiiitual ex- perience were all manifestations of the one living and true God. This unity of truth seems to be tlie thought underlying the general principle set forth by St. Paul that ' we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth ' (2 Co 13"). No one
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has power against truth, for all truth and all kinds of truth are one in God : the only |)Ower is given to those who seek to act in the service of truth. Wlierefore it is the denial of God to endeavour to advance truth by any means tliat fails to yield to Irutli in every department of human thought and life.
Truth was fully embodied and expressed in Jesus Christ, but before His coming there had been partial revelations of trutli ' by divers portions and in divers manners' (He 1'), and St. Paul felt free to acknowledge that the Jew might claim that he had in the law ' tlie form (ii6p(j>u(nv) of knowledge and of the truth' (Ro 2-"). This outward form was determined by tlie inner truth of which it was the outline or expression, but it was at the best only partial and inijierfect. The apostles further taught that the truth of God outlined in the Law and embodied in Clirist was brought home to the heart and mind of men by many various methods, but that all these methods received their virtue through the vitalizing influence of the Holy Spirit. The Uay of I'entecost left its mark not only on the life but also on the teaching of the Apostolic Church, and St. Paul in his special experience learned on the way to Damascus and in the solitude of the desert that the gospel came to him through no liuman means but through revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal I'-). Hence there was constant insist- ence on the agency of the Holy Spirit as the real source of enlightenment in the truth of God. At the same time it was recognized that there was great diversity in the Spirit's working, for there was no dead uniformity in His operations. St. John offers the chief example of the revelation of truth being given by direct vision, and in his Apocalypse he shows liow he received in this way the knowledge of things present and future when he was in the spirit on the Lord's Day. St. Paul claimed that he also was indebted to visions for knowledge tliat he had received, and for the hearing of ' unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter '(2 Co 12'). But such experiences were acknowledged by him to be unusual, so that lie indulged in some modest boasting on account of the exceptional privilege granted to him. The more usual method of illumination was by the Spirit's interpreting the life of Jesus Christ to the needs of human experience, and making the Scriptures of the OT radiate a new meaning in the light of the sacrihce and work of the Saviour. Thus the Suttering Servant of Jahweh of Deutero- Isaiah led to a better understanding of the Crucitied Lord (Ac 8^), and prophets as well as private Christians learned the truth better through ex- amination of the Scriptures (17").