Quid Est Veritas?
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8.32) What is truth? People have been asking this question from the very beginning. It is possible, in fact it can be implied, that Adam and Eve had some concept of the Truth as they walked in the Garden with the Word and as they considered the beauty of the Lord’s work. Moses certainly understood Truth when recounting the beginning of Creation when he said that God looked over creation and saw that it was good. Here, I am equating goodness with truth. For God Himself to say that something is good is the same as His saying it is true.
Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers wrote voraciously on the nature of truth, how its acquisition was the telos or end of human action, and how it should be pursued for its own sake. Aristotle wrote regarding Aletheia, the Greek word for truth which means “unconcealment or uncovering.” Once something has been uncovered to reveal itself, its truth or falsehood can be better distinguished. Great orators too have lauded the excellence of truth, laws have been written and hallowed, and nations have arisen and fallen based upon their living a good, beautiful, and true life. Simply put, knowing the truth, whether in a physical, moral, or spiritual manner is necessary to a life well lived, and is an essential element of our lives as human beings.
But is truth based upon experience, authority, or tradition? Is it perhaps a combination of these things? And finally why is it important? With Christianity and the Incarnation, something mysterious and wonderful occurs. No longer relegated to thoughts of philosophers and sages, the concept of truth changes. For the first time, truth becomes personified in the hypostasis of the Son. Truth, therefore, isn’t a thing. Truth is the second Person of the Holy Trinity.
In the New Testament the word Aletheia is used 47 times with our blessed Lord referring to truth some 26 times. Most importantly out of all of these is when Christ speaks of Himself, saying I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by Me. Another important appearance of truth is later in St. John’s Gospel, when our Lord is before Pilate. In the course of their conversation, Pilate asks Jesus, art Thou a king? Jesus responds with the truth, that His kingdom is not of this world, but it was to this end was He was born, and for this cause came He into the world, that He should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth hears His voice.
Pilate retorts with the now famous line, Quid est veritas, what is truth? Like us, Pilate is clueless and does not understand…he does not comprehend. This, then, leads to the question of what did Pilate not comprehend?
In the Gospel of John, those listening to Christ are said to be those who believed in Him. “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8.31–32). Here, St. John uses the word Aletheia, the uncovering or unconcealment, will set you free. This is peculiar, and attentive listeners and readers might ask, what will be unconcealed, what will be uncovered, and what does this have to do with setting us free?
The answer comes from our Lord just a few verses later:
Verily, verily I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house forever: but the Son abideth [for] ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8.34–36)
I would like to call your attention to the word servant. Another word for servant is slave. A slave abideth not in the house forever. The imagery is palpable. He who is a slave to sin must be set free from He who is Truth. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Archbishop Averky in his commentary on the Gospels notes,
The one who is enslaved to sin cannot remain in the kingdom of the Messiah, where there must be total moral freedom and where all must acknowledge themselves to be exclusively children of the Heavenly Father.
Now, to be a slave is the opposite of being an heir. A slave, says Archbishop Averky, can be “dismissed and sent away, but a son remains an heir forever.” Thus, our Lord is calling us to embrace Him so we can leave the slavery of sin. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
The Pharisees, trying to refute the sayings of the Master offer a rebuttal. But we are Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? (John 8.33) Are we not like this dear brothers and sisters when we justify our own sins while judging the sins of others? We look at a sinner and say, I am an Orthodox Christian, thank God I am not like that sinner over there! Through blindness to our own servitude to sin, we lie and deceive ourselves by saying our servitude or slavery is not as bad as that of our neighbor. But our Lord knows, and it is to us that he says, my word hath no place in you! I make this distinction dear brothers and sisters because many, if not most of our sins, remain hidden from the eyes of our neighbor.
On the outside we are as whited sepulchers, but on the inside we are full of dead men’s bones and all filthiness. Ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. Truth cannot tolerate the lies and the deception. St. John Chrysostom says regarding the Pharisees, and us by association,
If you boast of the relationship of Abraham ye ought also to show forth his life. He said not, You do not contain my words, but, My word has no place in you, thus declaring the sublimity of His doctrines.
Our Lord gently but firmly shows the error of our thinking. If God were our Father, we would love Him: for he proceeded forth and came from God; neither came He of myself, but He sent Him. Christ shows that it is only in having His word in us that we can truly be called sons of God and escape the slavery of sin.
The question now is, how do we do this? If truth is a person, then we must be in a relationship with that person. To be in a relationship with Christ, to have our sins forgiven, we must live a life of repentance, the active turning away from the slavery of sin the freedom of Christ. The Church gives us the tools to live this life. Through the services, the holy mysteries, and the cyclical calendar of the Church, we learn to live a life wrapped in the love and forgiveness of Christ, He who is Truth, He who sets us free from the slavery of sin.
We need the Truth to set us free, so that by our sins we do not become like them who sought to kill him when He spoke the Truth. We can no longer reject the truth and instead recognize that when we love sin more than we love God it is us who are throwing stones. The Truth convicts us and stings our consciences when they have fallen to the deceits of the evil one. We must, therefore endeavor to know His Word so that we may know Him, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and thereby be sons of God.
John W. Heitzenrater, II A.B., M.H.M.
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