Truth is truth, Mr. Giuliani
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” several weeks ago, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said, “Truth isn’t truth.” Later he tried to clarify his statement by tweeting it wasn’t meant “as a pontification on moral theology.”
Giuliani’s views merit examination because truth’s foundation is indeed theological and, therefore, has moral implications.
The concept of truth appears throughout the Bible more than 250 times. It conveys certainty, steadfastness, and dependability. Its Hebrew and Greek words are sometimes translated faithfulness.
Truth is part of God’s character, actions, and conversations. In Exodus, the Lord describes himself as “abundant in goodness and truth.” In Deuteronomy, Moses describes God as a Rock, one whose ways are just, and “a God of truth and without iniquity”.
William R. Goodman Jr., a biblical scholar, writes that “truth proceeds from the nature of God.” The psalmist David agrees, addressing God as “O Lord God of truth” and calling his judgments “true and righteous altogether”.
Human beings are expected to be truthful in their relationships with God and one another. Truth is “regarded as what God demands of man,” comments biblical scholar E. C. Blackman.
We are called to speak truth to our neighbors and to love truth and peace, the prophet Zechariah commands. In poetic language, Proverbs tells us to wear truth like a necklace and to write it on our heart.
Rabbinic literature offers this insight from Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel on truth’s importance: By three things is the world sustained: judgment, truth, and peace.
According to the prophet Hosea, a noticeable characteristic of a wicked people is the absence of truth, mercy, and the knowledge of God. In that environment, deception prevails, no one speaks the truth, and people have taught themselves to lie, says the prophet Jeremiah.
The Gospel of John refers frequently to truth. Within the context of speaking to Jews who believed in him, Jesus says that “the truth shall make you free.” While conversing with his disciples, Jesus states that he is “the way, the truth, and the life.”
Elsewhere in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, in his legal defense before Festus, uses the word truth straightforwardly to mean factual statements. In a beloved passage from I Corinthians often quoted at weddings, Paul links love and truth this way: Love does not rejoice in iniquity but in the truth.
Two issues in current American discourse bear mentioning: the illusory truth effect, the tendency to believe that something is correct when heard repeatedly; and post-truth, the idea that facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than are appeals to emotion and personal belief.
Both concepts have theological and moral implications. The Oxford Dictionaries named post-truth the 2016 Word of the Year.
Former president Jimmy Carter, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, mentions the academy’s strict code in a recent Time magazine interview.
He says the code’s primary measurement of someone’s moral and ethical standards “is whether or not they tell the truth.”
Truth promotes honor, civility and the general welfare. Indeed, Mr. Giuliani, truth is truth.
Reach Robin Gallaher Branch at rbranch3@cbu.edu.