What Is Truth?

Roger Nicole, in his article "The Biblical Concept of Truth" (published in Scripture and Truth, ed. Carson and Woodbridge), provides a very helpful survey of the biblical material. He shows that in the OT the prominent categories for terms related to truth are (1) faithfulness and (2) conformity to fact, and that in the NT the prominent categories are (1) conformity to fact and (2) completeness. Here is how he sums things up:

The biblical view of truth . . . is that it is like a rope with several intertwined strands. It will not do to isolate the strands and deal with them separately, although they may be distinguished just as various lines in a telephone cable may be distinguished by color. The full Bible concept of truth involves factuality, faithfulness, and completeness. . . .

Truth, in the biblical sense, is ultimately associated with the triune God Himself as a perfection of His being. By His singular mercy truth is communicated in a finite though adequate means to rational creatures, angelic and human, so they can distinguish between truth and error, veracity and mendacity, straightforwardness and deceptiveness. God is always on the side of what is true and right. Specifically He is always true to His word, so that faithfulness appaears as a wondrous feature of His being, grounding full confidence on the part of the believers. In His faithfulness God will not stop with prefigurements and foreshadowings, but will provide to those who worship Him, true light, true bread, true life in Jesus Christ, the Savior full of grace and truth, who brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel (John 1:14; 2 Tim. 2:10). (p. 296)