We now tend to think of truth as a matter of propositions. The word ‘truth’ in its origin indicates not a proposition, but a disposition. ‘True’ (cf German treu, faithful) is related to ‘trust,’ and is fundamentally a matter of what one believes to be the case. Truth and trust (belief) go together.
"What is truth", Pontius Pilate asked.
"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." Just a few chapters earlier, John identified Jesus as the Logos of God, the Word of God. If the Word is truth, then the truth was standing in front of Pilate. Pilate couldn't see the truth because he lacked the proper disposition. For him, truth was a matter of facts and propositional logic. Truth was fixed and unchanging, something unknowable in this changeable world.
In Greek philosophy, Logos was divine reason, or the mind of God. The Logos is involved with the ordering of the world, with providing it with its form and meaning. The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria wrote that the Logos was an intermediate divine being (a demiurge.) This split the difference between the God who single, whole (incapable of being described by attributes), entire, and incapable of change -- and the cosmos whose defining attribute is change.
If truth is a disposition rather than a proposition, and if God is the ultimate truth, what does this mean? Perhaps it means that our propositions about who God is and what God is like are wrong. We are using human language and concepts to describe the God who is beyond both language and thought.
