When Christian writers, pastors, theologians and scholars want to illuminate certain key ideas found in the Bible, they go back to the original languages in which it was written. From those original words they look to get a clearer sense of the authors’ meanings. Here is how some of the most important concepts found in the New Testament might be listed:
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And even though New Testament scholars would all agree that each of the words on this list properly and accurately conveys an important New Testament idea, there’s just one problem: one of these words is not like the others.
It’s the word for truth – veritas.
You are more familiar with the word veritas than you probably know. It’s the word from which we get “verify,” to demonstrate that something is true; “verity,” a true principle or belief; “verisimilitude,” the appearance of being true or real; and “verdict,” the decision of who is right on a disputed subject. The idea of veritas, with its many variations, permeates our thinking and our language, and has done so for thousands of years.
In 1080 A.D., Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, produced for the Church the first medieval work on the subject of truth in a book entitled “De Veritate.” In it, he wrote, “I do not recall ever having found a definition of truth; but if you wish, let us inquire as to what truth is, by going through the various things in which we say there is truth.”
Over a thousand years had passed since the resurrection of Christ, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, by his own admission, had still not found a definition of truth with which he was satisfied. So, he provided one. Not only for himself, but for the whole Church which followed after him – right down to this very day. And so he defined the word veritas.
After a thorough examination, Anselm concluded that the correct definition of veritas, or “truth,” is “rightness perceptible only to the mind.” Perception is, of course, “the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.” Thus, Anselm’s definition of truth clearly excludes anything which cannot be perceived through the senses. That is to say, anything that cannot be observed and thereby “verified” by the senses cannot be called truth under his definition of veritas.
Then, some two hundred years after Anselm’s definition, Thomas Aquinas, considered to be the Catholic Church’s greatest theologian and philosopher, weighed in on the subject by saying, “A judgment is said to be true [veritas] when it conforms to external reality.”
Veritas, truth, would be, in this case, a kind of “correctness of vision,” according to Aquinas. External reality, that to which a judgment must conform in order to be true according to this definition, can only be identified by direct observation. Veritas, then, according to both Anselm and Aquinas, is a conformation to external reality perceived through the senses.
But both of these definitions of truth are really little more than an expanded restatement of what had already been held to be correct for more than a thousand years before that.
Aristotle, the famous Athenian philosopher, pupil of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great, had given his own definition of truth some 1,300 years before, around 300 B.C. “To say what is, that it is, and to say what is not, that it is not, is true,” declared Aristotle.
And that sounds remarkably like Anselm’s and Aquinas’ definitions. In fact, Aquinas’ own stated goal was to synthesize Aristotle’s ideas with the principles of Christianity. What more logical place to start than with the very concept of truth itself?
In Aristotle’s definition of veritas, if truth is saying what is is, then obviously, one must see what is before one may say what is. So, Anselm and Aquinas and Aristotle all agree: truth is simply making my statements agree with my observations of an external reality. In other words, my statements must correspond with an observed reality in order to be declared true.
And that, very simply said, is the concept of veritas. Veritas says that what I cannot see, I cannot say is truth. Truth must be verified by direct observation.
And that’s an altogether reasonable requirement. In fact, that is the entire basis for what is called the “scientific method,” which is, by definition, knowledge acquired solely by systematic observation, measurement, and experiment. And that very process of scientific method provides the basis for absolutely everything that we call truth today.
So important was this idea of veritas that Harvard University, the oldest university in the United States, originally established in 1636 to train clergymen for the ministry, chose as its very own motto, “Veritas.”
At the school’s inception, the motto was “Veritas Christos et Ecclesiae,” meaning “Truth for Christ and the Church,” but it was later shortened to what it is today, simply “Veritas.” In a word, at Harvard, from the beginning and still to this day, a proper education was, and is, nothing less than the seeking and finding of veritas: truth.
And today, there are literally thousands of Veritas Churches, both Catholic and Protestant. There are Veritas Ministries, Veritas church schools, Veritas church choirs and clubs, and Veritas youth meetings.
There are Veritas marriage encounter groups, Veritas church cafes, Veritas church bookstores, Veritas church television and radio shows, and on and on and on – all an indisputable testimony to the fact that the Church also comfortably embraces the word veritas as its very own embodiment of the ideal of truth, just like everybody else does.
So... if everybody agrees that veritas is both the proper and most fitting word to convey the idea of truth, and if it was good enough for Aristotle and Anselm and Aquinas, and good enough for the brightest and the best at Harvard, and still good enough for the entire Church today... then what’s the problem?
The problem is – it’s the wrong word.
One would imagine that God, in His infinite wisdom and power, in order to make certain that His message was communicated most clearly and faithfully, could have chosen to do so in any language He wanted. After all, He’s God. He could have chosen Swahili if He’d wanted. But He didn’t.
He chose, instead, Hebrew for the Old Testament, and Greek for the New Testament. One would think – perhaps – most probably – He did so with some Expert forethought on His part concerning the matter. But the word veritas is neither Hebrew nor Greek. It’s Latin. And that should trouble you for a couple of reasons.
First, because the word veritas is nowhere found in the New Testament. There are no Latin words in the original New Testament writing. That means, as good as veritas may be at conveying what Aristotle, Anselm, Aquinas, Harvard and the Church define as truth, it is not the original container that God chose to transport His idea of truth.
But perhaps, one might propose, this new container is also a faithful container with no leaks or loss along the way.
Nope. It’s not. And that’s the second reason it should trouble you.
The word aletheia, the Greek word that actually does appear in the New Testament for truth – means exactly the opposite of what the word veritas means.
Veritas is not just a different word for truth. It’s precisely the opposite word for truth.
Aletheia, pronounced al-ay’-the-a, means “truth, as in ‘not concealing.’” It is a combination of the prefix a, which negates what follows, and the word lanthano, meaning “to lie hid.” So “truth” is, by its original Greek definition, “not to lie hid,” or “to un-hide,” or “to unconceal.”
Its usage can be traced all the way back to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey around 850 BC. But where scholars have studied the original usage of aletheia, they are puzzled by what they find. Or rather, by what they do not find. Hiddenness and its opposite, unconcealedness, are conditions which should attach to ‘things’ as well as to the content of statements. Yet it is almost exclusively to the latter that aletheia refers in its first two and a half centuries of attestation. Aletheia in its earliest usage is never applied to ‘things,’ but is used only in connection with ‘verbs of saying.’ In its original usage, someone always ‘tells’ the truth to another. Aletheia had to do with the reliability of what is reported by one person to another.1
The only prerequisite for truth to be “that which is unconcealed,” is that it must first have been, of course, concealed. The word “concealed” means “to hide or to withdraw or remove from observation; to cover or keep from sight; to keep secret; to prevent or avoid disclosing or divulging.”
And therein lies the difference between veritas and aletheia, by precisely an entire immeasurable universe:
Veritas says truth is ‘unknown’ and, therefore, must be discovered.
Aletheia says truth is ‘intentionally hidden’ and, therefore, cannot be discovered.
Veritas says that truth is only that which can be discovered by man through direct observation.
Aletheia says that truth is only that which cannot be discovered by man through direct observation.
In fact, aletheia says that only that which has been altogether withdrawn or removed from observation, intentionally covered and kept from sight, hidden and concealed away from direct view, and then “told” to me by another whose word is reliable, can ever be called the truth. And that’s God’s idea of truth.
The apostle Paul explains it like this:
The word “mystery,” musterion in the Greek, doesn’t simply mean “that which is unknown,” but rather “to shut the mouth,” through the idea of a purposeful “silence imposed by initiation into religious rites;” in other words, a mystery is that secret which can only be known if one who already knows the secret willingly passes it on to one who does not.
Paul says this wisdom of God is intentionally hidden, apokrupto, “concealed away, kept secret.” These are secrets hidden away on purpose, ordained before the world was even created, Paul says, that none of the princes of this world knew. And that means not even the smartest guys from Harvard knew them.
Paul continues in the same passage:
That is aletheia. That which is hidden. On purpose. And revealed. On purpose. Not found by investigation. Never found by investigation. Hidden so that it cannot be found by investigation.
Your eyes have never even seen these things before, says Paul: Eye hath not seen. Your ears have never even heard these things before: nor ear heard. And none of these things has ever even crossed your mind before: neither have entered into the heart of man.
With “unconcealment,” aletheia, as truth, you have no prior idea of what you’re even looking for when you begin your search for truth.
Jesus says that these things are purposely hidden so that they cannot be found.
I tell you, declared Jesus to His disciples, many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which you see and have not seen them, and to hear those things that you hear, and have not heard them (Luke 10:24).
If prophets and kings, the most spiritual men in the world and the most powerful men in the world, could not, even with their greatest efforts, find these things by investigation, by veritas, what are your chances of finding them apart from His revelation of them to you?
It’s not just that these things are simply ‘unknown.’ Veritas deals with unknowns every day. That’s veritas’ very own speciality. Every scientific inquiry that veritas has ever made was made into the unknown.
But on the contrary, declares the apostle, these things have been intentionally hidden, purposely concealed away, by God Himself, since before the world, specifically so that they cannot be found. And you have no idea how good God is at hiding things.
These things can only be known if He has revealed them, apokalupto, “taken off the cover, disclosed, and unconcealed” them by His Spirit. And if He doesn’t unconceal them, they cannot be known at all. Never. No veritas can ever discover this. This is aletheia.
The word rejoiced used above to describe Jesus as He prays to His Father has been woefully understated in its translation from the original Greek. Agalliao is a combination of two words: agan, which means “much,” and hallomai, which means “to jump, to leap, to spring up.” In the original Greek the word literally means to “much jump for joy.”
What was Jesus so excited about that the gospel writer reports that He was agalliao, “much jumping for joy”?
Jesus was beside Himself with joy as He contemplated the fact that God, not man, controlled the truth, by hiding it from some and revealing it to others.
You have hid these things, apokrupto, “concealed away,” from the wise and prudent, Jesus joyfully declares. And You have revealed them, apokalupto, “taken off the cover,” unto babes. The word “babe” is the word nepios, which is a combination of two parts; one meaning “no,” and the other meaning “word.” A babe is one who has no words of his own. That is aletheia.
Veritas says, “To call it truth, you must see it for yourself.”
Aletheia says, “To call it truth, another, whose word you trust, must see it for you.”
The unconcealment of aletheia guarantees the “un-discoverability” of truth apart from God’s very own revelation of it.
According to the prophet David, it was Jesus Who would say of Himself, I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world.
Don’t tell me that what Jesus said is what you expected Him to say. Don’t tell me that Moses already told you in advance what Jesus would say. Don’t tell me that anybody, ever, in the entire history of the entire world, ever said what Jesus said. Until Jesus spoke, His words had been kept secret from everyone. Even from Moses.
If Moses had already said what Jesus would later say, why would Moses himself say, “If you don’t listen to the One who comes after me, you’ll be destroyed”? Otherwise, he would have simply said, “Listen to me because the One coming after me will be saying the same thing I’m saying.”
What Jesus says has never been said before. In fact, what Jesus says has never even been thought before!
These things have been purposely hidden from the foundation of the world so that they could not be found. Not even by Moses. Or anyone else for that matter. And it’s impossible that the things Jesus and His apostles tell you could be anything other than astonishingly unfamiliar to you. If you’re really listening for the immeasurable difference.
On the mountain of transfiguration, after Jesus finishes talking with Moses and Elijah, Peter suggests to Jesus that they build three shrines, one to Moses, one to Elijah, and one to Jesus.
Don’t get confused. Jesus isn’t saying what Moses said. Jesus isn’t saying what Elijah said. There is no equality of words here. There is no equality of anything here. Why would God say Hear ye Him, if all that Jesus would say had already been said by Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets?
It’s not “Hear ye them.” It’s Hear ye Him.
When Peter says to Jesus, Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus replies, Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto you, but my Father which is heaven (Matthew 16:7).
It’s not just that flesh and blood did not reveal it to Peter: it is rather that flesh and blood could not reveal it to Peter. Aletheia cannot be found apart from God’s revelation of it.
Jesus said, All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him (Matthew 11:27).
Jesus says, No man knoweth, epiginosko, “recognizes” the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth, epiginosko, “recognizes” any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal, apokalupto, “take off the cover, and unconceal,” Him. That is aletheia: truth that is undiscoverable apart from Christ’s revelation of it.
You will not “recognize” the Father. And neither will you “recognize” the Son, apart from the revelation of the aletheia that comes only through the words of Jesus. And that’s incredibly important to understand.
Jesus’ words are different by an entire universe from anything that Moses, or Elijah, or you, or anyone else, ever even imagined they would be.
And that means, what the Father and the Son look like when you do recognize them must also be different by an entire universe from what Moses, or Elijah, or you, or anyone else would ever have imagined it to be as well.
And if it’s not, then what you have “recognized” is not the Father or the Son at all.
If it is not different by an entire universe from what you had expected, then what you have “recognized” is what someone other than the Son has revealed to you. Perhaps Moses. Or Elijah. Or the TV preacher. But certainly not Jesus.
No man recognizes the Father except the one to whom I reveal Him, declares Jesus. Until you hear the Son speak, you only think you recognize the Father. Until you hear the Son speak, you cannot possibly recognize the Father. That is aletheia.
Paul assures his hearers that the truth he is communicating to them is aletheia, not veritas.
The sum and substance of veritas is its total reliance on “observation.” Observation is its singular and strict requirement. What it cannot see, it cannot call truth.
But no one even seems to remember that Jesus said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation (Luke 17:20).
Listen carefully: the Greek word for “observation” is parateresis, meaning “ocular evidence.” And obviously, ocular evidence is evidence that you can see with your eyes.
Astonishingly, Jesus declares that the kingdom of God comes with no ocular evidence. No evidence that can be seen. None whatsoever. That automatically excludes any true knowledge of the kingdom from ever being discovered or “recognized” by means of veritas.
Do you understand what Jesus is saying?
For the last thousand years, thanks to Anselm and Aquinas and their altogether erroneous Aristotelian definition of Biblical truth as veritas, the Church has been running around attempting to produce for a skeptical world ocular evidence that Jesus declares does not even exist.
“Can’t you see the kingdom in the DNA? Can’t you see it by observing the mathematical precision of the planets and the stars? Can’t you see the divinely Intelligent Design all around you?” the Church asks the world, in utter exasperation.
“No,” is the answer. They can’t see it. And neither can you.
They’re not supposed to see it. And neither are you.
Why? Because it does not exist.
You’re trying to give them an ocular evidence that God Himself doesn’t offer them or you.
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away, said Jesus (Luke 21:33).
You’re trying to provide a proof for what shall not pass away with that very thing which shall pass away. You’re trying to verify heaven with earth. You’re trying to accomplish with veritas what God designed to only be accomplished with aletheia. And it cannot be done.
Jesus already told you. It cannot be done. You’ll extract no convincing evidence for the eternal out of the merely temporary. None. It isn’t there. It doesn’t exist. You’ve got it exactly backwards. The totally changeable cannot possibly contain the confirmation for the totally unchangeable.
See those heavens? Temporary. See that DNA? Temporary. Hear that word of God? Permanent.
Everything except the word of God is temporary. No exceptions.
And the temporary cannot confirm the permanent. Ever.
There is an entire booming industry that has grown up around attempting to provide an ocular evidence that doesn’t even exist. But like the emperor’s new clothes, it cannot be seen for the very best reason of all:
It isn’t really there.
Listen carefully: you can never prove aletheia with veritas. Because veritas cannot see it. Do you not understand? What veritas cannot see, it cannot call truth.
The distinction between veritas and aletheia is nothing less than the difference between seeing and hearing.
Veritas must see. On the other hand, aletheia must hear.
Jesus said to Nicodemus, The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit (John 3:8).
The word tell, in cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth, is the Greek word eido, “to see.” Jesus says you cannot “see” where the wind comes from or where it goes. You can only “hear” the sound, in the Greek, literally the “voice” of the wind. Jesus says that’s the way everything of the Spirit is. By design, on purpose, in order to hide it from the wise and prudent, you can “hear” spiritual things, but you cannot “see” them. Ever.
Just like the wind, says Jesus.
That’s God’s real Intelligent Design. With the new eyes that you bargained for in the garden when you chose the lie that you could “see” and verify with your own eyes rather than the truth that you could only “hear,” you will never “see” His truth in this world again. He has hidden these things away, concealed them from your sight. You may “hear” them, but you cannot “see” them. They are hidden from the wise and prudent. Because the wise and prudent trust only their eyes.
“Can’t you see the wind?” the Church asks the world in utter exasperation.
“No, we can’t!” says the world to the Church.
And Jesus says to the Church, Neither can you.
Listen to Jesus. Stop trying to make the world ‘see’ the wind. Stop trying to make the world see what isn’t even there.
Do you not understand the problem? If you could ‘see’ it, there could be no hiding it. If you could see it, everyone would get it. You would accomplish the very thing that God Himself refuses to do: you would ‘unconceal’ to the wise and the prudent the very thing that God is hiding from them! And Jesus wouldn’t be jumping for joy over that.
That’s exactly what those who talk of Intelligent Design have been trying to do: they’ve been trying to unconceal to the wise and prudent the very thing that God is concealing from them. Good luck with that. As soon as they can get them to see the wind, I’m sure they’ll ‘see’ the rest of what they’re trying to show them as well.
Veritas is about that which can be apprehended only by sight. Aletheia is about that which can be apprehended only by sound. Veritas is totally dependent on the eyes. Aletheia, by contrast, is totally dependent on the ears.
Jesus explains that in the kingdom of God, the ‘ears’ must take the place of the ‘eyes.’ You must close your eyes and open your ears. Jesus explains, there is a sight that comes only from hearing.
The subject here is the secret things that are hidden and how they are to be found. The kingdom of God is the place where the search is to be conducted. Jesus says that a candle is put not under a bushel, but on a candlestick, so that those things which are hid (kruptos) in the darkness may be manifested by the light (phaneroo); and that those things which are secret (apokruphos), will come abroad (eis phaneros).
Then He says, Take heed what ye hear.
Most read Take heed what ye hear and think Jesus is saying “beware” or “be cautious” of what you hear, as though He were giving an admonition of some impending danger. But the proper Greek word for such a warning would have been prosecho, meaning to “pay attention to” or “be cautious about.” For example:
Take heed [prosecho] that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise [the object of taking heed] ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven (Matthew 6:1).
But above in the example of the candlestick and its secrets-revealing light, the phrase translated take heed is not the word prosecho at all. It is the single word blepo, a primary verb which simply means “to see.”
So what Jesus is actually saying here is quite different than what you might have thought. He says: Blepo tis akouo. Blepo is the word “see.” Tis is the word “what.” Akouo is the word “hear,” from which we get “acoustic.”
Jesus is not saying “Be careful what you hear.”
Jesus is saying, “See what you hear.”
See with your ears, not with your eyes.
As the candle is lit to ‘unconceal’ what has been secretly hidden in the darkness, likewise, My words will unconceal to whoever has ears to hear, what has been hidden from the wise and prudent, who insist on ‘seeing the truth with their eyes’ rather than ‘seeing the truth with their ears.’
Those who ‘hear,’ says Jesus, will ‘see.’ Those who do not ‘hear’ will not ‘see.’
And unto you that hear shall more be given. He who ‘hears’ more will ‘see’ more. And he who ‘hears’ not at all will have that which he ‘sees apart from hearing it in My words’ taken away altogether. From him shall be taken even that which he hath.
Heaven and earth, which you can ‘see,’ shall pass away. But My words, which you can only ‘hear,’ shall not pass away. That which you can ‘see’ is temporary. That which you can only ‘hear’ is permanent.
The light that lights the kingdom is in my words, declares Jesus. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. The wise and prudent insist on seeing before they will believe. Babes, on the other hand, just need to hear.
King David knew that already: The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple (Psalm 119:130).
The word entrance, pethatch in the Hebrew, means “disclosure.” The “disclosure,” or “unconcealment” of your words, gives light. The simple are the babes. “I see by what I hear,” declares David. “Not by what I see.”
And if you think about it, that idea might not actually sound totally unfamiliar to you. Because there is a scriptural word for the “sight that comes only from hearing:” it’s the word “faith.”
Faith cometh by hearing. And hearing by the word of God, says the apostle Paul (Romans 10:17). Faith comes by akoe, from akouo, “hearing.” Faith never comes by ‘seeing.’
Stop trying to make faith come by seeing. God gives no ocular evidence of the kingdom. Stop telling the world that He does. Instead, ‘see’ what you ‘hear.’ Just like Jesus said to.
We walk by faith; that is, we walk by those words that we “hear,” akouo, not by sight, not by eidos, from eido, to “see.”
We walk by what we “hear,” not by what we “see.”
Stop inviting the world to walk by sight. God gives them no such invitation. Who authorized you to? The more you attempt to convince by sight, by veritas, the farther from faith, from aletheia, you actually distance them. And the farther you distance them, the farther you distance yourself in the process as well.
Jesus says you have a problem with your eyes. They’re still open!
When you attempt to produce evidence for the world to ‘see,’ you’re putting the candle under the bushel. And nobody sees when you do that. Everybody is left in the dark. Including you. The light is His word. It’s the only light that there is. And this light, His word, is not for your eyes. This light, His word, is only for your ears. The ‘hearing’ is the ‘seeing.’
Blepo tis akouo. Unlike the wise and prudent, see only what you hear.
They ‘saw’ the promises that they actually only heard.
These all died in faith, faith which they got only by hearing by the word of God, having seen, eido, the promises afar off. They saw what they heard. Even at a great distance. And they were persuaded, and embraced what they saw through hearing, and confessed that they, like the promises they had heard, were not of this world.
The just shall live by faith (Romans 1:17). And what is faith?
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).
Paul says, For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? (Romans 8:24)
Hope, the very substance of faith, must retain its ‘unseen’ quality, or it ceases to be hope, for why would you hope for that which you already ‘see’? reasons the apostle.
What a man seeth, the word blepo again, declares Paul, can never be that which saves you.
Faith is not the evidence of ‘things seen,’ insists the apostle. Faith is only the evidence of things not seen.
Not seen. Never seen. Always hidden. Only talked about, never shown.
Stop trying to make faith the evidence of ‘things seen.’
Faith is a wholly ‘non-seeing’ experience. It is an ‘hearing-only’ experience. Stop trying to make it something that it cannot possibly be.
Veritas says, “Show me and I’ll believe it.”
Aletheia says, “Just tell me and I’ll believe it.”
God gives the world only one thing to ‘see’ to prove His case: you.
Guess what the word Lo means in the Greek. It’s the word idoo, just another derivative of the same word eido. It means “to see or behold.” The kingdom cannot be “seen.”
Jesus said, the true messengers of the kingdom will never run around saying “See here,” or “see there.” Never! Don’t go around looking for visual evidence of the kingdom over here or over there. There is none. Behold, eidou, “see,” the kingdom of God is on display only within you.
You are the only ocular evidence of the kingdom of God that God will ever give the world. By God’s very own Intelligent Design, you’ll never find anything, anywhere else to prove it. Not in the stars. And not in the strands. You’re it. You’re all they get to ‘see.’
“But with no ocular evidence, and only His word to offer them,” you may protest, “will I not look utterly foolish in their eyes? And amazingly weak? And possibly base, and maybe even despised?”
I certainly hope so! Because that’s the actual stated goal!
In your wisdom, you’ve been trying to make the gospel look wise.
Do you not understand? By the very wisdom of God, it is now the foolishness of preaching that saves men. If the gospel is not offered as foolishness, but rather as wisdom, then you’ve violated the very spirit of its delivery intended by God. If you attempt to make the gospel seem wise and reasonable, it’s only because you’re wanting the wise and reasonable to see it. And if you’re attempting to do exactly what God Himself has sworn not to do, then stop!
It’s supposed to be ridiculous. He designed it to be ridiculous. You’re not authorized to make it look anything other than ridiculous.
After all, what could be more foolish than to ask someone to stake their eternal destiny strictly on the unseen and unverifiable word of an unseen and unverifiable God?
The only time that the eternally wise gospel of Jesus Christ ever really works is when it is presented as one foolish man’s foolish words about foolish things, foolishly spoken to another fool.
Otherwise, you just get the wisdom of men. And there’s no salvation in that.
It’s sound, not sight. It’s faith, not fact. It’s foolishness, not wisdom. And it’s aletheia, not veritas.
Veritas is non-faith. Veritas is un-faith. Veritas is anti-faith. Veritas is only ‘the evidence of things seen,’ and therefore cannot possibly also be the evidence of things not seen.
Veritas is devil’s-faith. “If you’re really the Son of God, show me,” says Satan to Jesus in the wilderness.
No, says Jesus. I will not ‘show’ you. I don’t need to ‘see.’ I live only by the words that I ‘hear’ proceeding from the mouth of God.
A man lives not by the bread that he sees, but rather by the words that he hears. Not by what goes into his mouth, but rather by what comes out of God’s mouth. Not by what goes into his mouth, but what goes into his ear. By every unseen word that is now proceeding out of the mouth of an unseen God into his ear, the just shall live by an unseen faith.
How serious is God about this ‘non-seeing,’ ‘non-ocular,’ ‘hearing-only,’ ‘no-observation’ way of relating to Him?
God says, I sware in my wrath they shall not enter my rest (Hebrews 3:11). And ... they could not enter in because of unbelief (Hebrews 3:19).
Rest is that particular word that God chooses to describe the relationship with Him that a man may only enter into by faith, where he rests on what He only ‘hears’ from God without the need to verify it for himself. It’s that restful relationship which comes only by hearing and never by sight.
Do your homework. Read the history. The affliction of the children of Israel was that they always believed what they saw instead of what they heard. They continually walked by sight and not by faith.
Want to make God so mad that He swears? Just keep doing it your wise and prudent and ‘ocular’ way.
God is so serious about providing an exclusively ‘non-ocular-evidence relationship’ with man that He swears, If any man draws back from this posture of faith, from this evidence of things not seen, my soul shall have no pleasure in him (Hebrews 10:38).
And according to God, when you draw back from faith, aletheia, you draw back unto sight, veritas. And when you draw back unto sight, God says, you draw back unto perdition, apoleia, “utter destruction” (Hebrews 10:39).
With aletheia, finding the truth becomes the simple process of God’s ‘unconcealment’ of His word to my ear. It is strictly the Source of the ‘unconcealment’ to which I must now have respect, not the substance of the ‘unconcealment’ itself. I must declare His word to be truth, even before the ‘content’ of the uncovering is examined. Before I measure it with my own eyes to see if it corresponds to my reality.
That is called faith. And faith allows God to do something astonishing with me:
Trust is the implicit requirement of aletheia. Another, Whose word I deem reliable, must see the truth for me, and then tell the truth to me. And in order to preserve the trust required in aletheia, faith allows me to do something absolutely remarkable: by faith, I can now allow God to give me truth that is impossible to verify! And God really likes that!
The phrase we who first trusted sounds like Paul is saying ‘we’ trusted before ‘you,’ but that’s not what he’s saying at all. First trusted is one word in the Greek, proelpizo, which means “to hope in advance of other confirmation.”
The apostle says he trusted the word that he heard in advance of any confirmation. And you, he says to the Ephesians, did the same. After you heard the word of truth, you trusted without veritas, just like me.
That is the extraordinary power of aletheia.
With aletheia as truth, like the centurion who came to Jesus on behalf of his sick servant, I can now say to Jesus what I could never say before:
With aletheia as truth, I can now say, Speak the word only. Only with aletheia is His word alone enough.
And with aletheia, Jesus can now say back to me what He could never say before:
Want to surprise Jesus? Amaze Him? Cause Him to stop and marvel?
Then close your eyes. And open your ears. And ‘see’ what you ‘hear.’ And believe it.
To attempt to verify aletheia is to draw back from faith and to make myself again the final arbiter of truth. To attempt to verify ‘by sight’ that which has been ‘unconcealed’ to me ‘by hearing’ is to ‘conceal again the unconcealing.’ The very thing the serpent did in the garden with Eve. To see is to die. To hear is to live.
Let Jesus make you blind so that you can really see.
The difference between veritas and aletheia is nothing less than the difference between death and life. To walk by sight is not to walk by faith. And not to walk by faith, according to God Himself, is to perish.
Veritas is the kind of truth that men got in the garden exchange, when their eyes were opened, and they could finally see for themselves. And open eyes, according to Jesus, are blind eyes. But now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. Veritas always demands observable proof.
Aletheia, on the other hand, is the kind of truth Adam and Eve had before the exchange, when simply hearing God’s word was enough all by itself. And aletheia always demands that there be absolutely no observable proof.
Stop trying to find observable proof for the kingdom of God. By God’s own Intelligent Design, there is none. Do you not understand? If you continue to insist that they ‘see’ your ‘evidence’ that’s not even really there, you will damn souls, not save them.
Close your eyes and simply listen. And bid them do the same. Then you’ll really ‘see’ the kingdom.
Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein (Luke 18:7).
If you don’t receive the kingdom like a little child, you can’t come in at all, declares Jesus. Little children always believe exactly what you tell them. Just say it and they believe it. It’s always as simple as that. They always ‘see’ exactly what they ‘hear.’ It’s called imagination. And children always have imagination in abundance.
But Jesus says the ability to ‘see what you hear’ is more than mere imagination. He says it’s ‘kingdom sight.’
Real faith, when it’s hearing by the word of God and not just a man’s made-up word, is simply God’s grown-up version of imagination for all the babes in His kingdom.
If I say it, says Jesus, see it. And don’t see it if I don’t say it.
If you ‘hear,’ and learn of the Father, you’ll come to Me. Nobody ‘sees’ the Father but Me. Trust Me when I ‘tell’ you what I’ve ‘seen.’ I’ll ‘declare’ unto you what I’ve seen, so that you can ‘see’ what I see.
That’s the way it works. And that’s the only way it works. It’s always aletheia. It’s never veritas. It’s always ‘hear and see.’ It’s never ‘see and see.’
For those of you who are already students of the scripture, “truth as unconcealment,” rather than “verification by observation,” causes all of the ‘truth’ scriptures to read much differently now. For example:
Now it can be understood that John is actually saying, “The law was given by Moses, but grace and unconcealment came by Jesus Christ.” Then the very next verse becomes the explanation for why there needed to be an unconcealment in the first place.
No man has seen God at any time before, because He has been ‘concealed.’ But Christ, Who is in the very bosom of the Father, and therefore the only One Who is in the unique position to do so, ‘unconceals’ God accurately for the very first time in Himself.
The word declared means “to consider out (aloud), to rehearse or unfold.” That’s the language of unconcealment. That’s the ‘hearing that gives sight.’ Those are the very words that create the sight of faith. The Father is declared so that you can see for the first time what you now hear from Jesus for the first time.
With truth as unconcealment, the implication of John 1:17 is also now astonishingly changed. It can now be understood in a wholly different way:
John says that Moses has given, didomai, the law, whereas grace and truth came by, genomai, “were brought into being,” by Jesus Christ.
And here is what now can be understood for the very first time:
Everyone agrees that there is no grace in the law. Law and grace are the very antithesis of one another. Paul clearly states that the law excludes faith, and that faith is the direct result of grace.
And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them (Galatians 3:12) and Therefore it [the promise of God to Abraham] is of faith, that it might be by grace (Romans 4:16).
By the law, righteousness is earned. By grace, righteousness is given freely as a gift. The law of Moses does not contain the grace brought into being by Jesus Christ. There is no grace in the law. That’s easy to understand and agree with.
But, according to John 1:17, it’s not just grace that is excluded from the law. Astonishingly, truth is also excluded from the law.
There is no truth in the law.
If the law was given by Moses first, and grace and truth were brought into being by Jesus Christ afterwards, then there is no grace in the law, and there also is no truth in the law. There couldn’t be.
That thought is astonishing, only until you remember that the word for truth, here and everywhere in the New Testament, is aletheia, not veritas.
John is simply saying that neither the grace – the unmerited favor of the Father – nor the ‘unconcealment’ of the Father are anywhere to be found in the law. If it could have been found there, there would have been no need for Christ to have “brought grace and truth into being” after Moses had given the law. But now, apart from the law of Moses, Jesus brings the grace and unconcealment of the Father into being for the very first time. In Himself.
Nowhere in the New Testament scripture is ‘truth’ said to be ‘in the law.’ In fact, Paul declares to the Jews that they only have the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law (Romans 2:20). The form, morphosis, “formation, i.e. (by implication), appearance (semblance or (concretely) formula); form.” The law contains only the appearance of the truth, the shadow, as the writer of Hebrews calls it. The substance of truth, that which fills up the shadow, is Christ Himself.
According to Paul, the law never unconceals God. On the contrary, it actually conceals Him:
Even to this very day, says Paul, when the law is read, God is concealed from the hearer. There is no truth, no aletheia, no unconcealment of God, in the law. The only unconcealment in the law is the unconcealment of man, not the unconcealment of God. The law only unconceals the sin of man.
By the law is the knowledge of sin. Not the knowledge of righteousness. The word knowledge, in this verse, is epignosis, from epiginosko, “to know upon some mark, i.e. recognize; by implication, to become fully acquainted with, to acknowledge.”
I recognize sin, not righteousness, by the law.
On the other hand, the gospel of grace and truth in Jesus Christ unconceals the righteousness of God even as it conceals the sin of man.
In the garden, God and man both began as unconcealed. When man, because of sin, covered himself with fig leaves, God covered Himself as well. On mount Sinai, God came to man covered and concealed in thick clouds and darkness and delivered to man His instrument, the law, for the uncovering of sin in man. When a man’s sin is now unconcealed and uncovered by the law, God in turn unconceals and uncovers Himself in grace by Jesus Christ. To those who refuse to have their sins uncovered by the law, God and His righteousness remain covered as well.
The law conceals the righteousness of God and reveals the unrighteousness of man. The gospel unconceals the righteousness of God and conceals the sin of man.
Is there veritas in the law? Yes. Absolutely. It’s obedience is strictly based on ‘verification by observation.’ The man who verifiably does these things shall live. The doing of the law is strictly a ‘seen’ doing.
Is there aletheia in the law? No. Absolutely not. There is no unconcealment of the Father in the law.
Despite what the Pharisee says, when a man looks into the law, he never sees God. The clouds are far too thick. And the veil is always upon his heart.
Jesus didn’t say to Philip, If you’ve seen the law you’ve seen the Father.
He said instead, If you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father. I am the Truth, the Aletheia. For the very first time ever, you can see what God is really like by looking at Me. I am the only Unconcealment of God that has ever been seen or will ever be seen.
When Jesus said, Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, He spoke with those who already had the law. If there was truth in the law, He could not have said, Ye shall know the truth. He would have said instead, Ye already know the truth.
Truth as ‘unconcealment’ completely changes how the relationship of ‘grace and truth’ has been perceived heretofore. Now grace and truth can no longer be foolishly pitted against each other as though they were equal and counterbalancing notions. As though grace and truth were paradoxical to one another. Truth is no longer seen as ‘verification,’ veritas. It is now seen for what God always intended it to be: ‘unconcealing,’ aletheia.
The ridiculous notion has been proffered that too much grace makes you liberal and too much truth makes you legalistic. How absurd! That’s veritas’ version of truth.
Veritas as truth floats the preposterous notion that authentic discipleship is always a delicate balance between too much grace or too much truth. But defining truth as aletheia changes all that nonsense. If truth is ‘unconcealment,’ how would you ever get too much of that? How could you ever ‘hear’ too much and ‘see’ too much of what Jesus Himself ‘declares’ about the Father?
To see truth as a counter-balance to grace is to render other verses in scripture equally absurd:
Do you think that when Paul declares, By grace are ye saved, that he should have added, “But not too much grace, lest you become liberal in your saved-ness”? “Don’t forget an equal amount of truth!”
And great grace was upon them all, but a balancing counterweight of great truth, you would need to quickly declare, lest your hearers be led into imbalance and error.
Thy word is truth. But no so much truth that you would become legalistic of course. Thy word, you would always need to remind your hearers, is an equal amount of grace.
And why did John say of his grace have all we received, and grace for grace? What happened to the truth? What a terrible imbalance John offers here! He should have said, “of his grace and truth have all we received, and grace and truth for grace and truth." Come on, John! Get it right!
I am the way the truth and the life, declares Jesus. But not too much truth! I am an equal amount of grace, Jesus would have quickly added.
Ridiculous. Nonsense.
The word for truth is not veritas. The word for truth was never veritas. That’s Aristotle’s word. That’s Aquinas’ and Anselm’s word. That’s Harvard’s word and the Church’s word. But it’s not God’s word.
Aletheia is God’s word.
Veritas as truth leads to nothing but scriptural error and dunder-headed absurdity. And veritas leads to nothing but unbelief and death. Aletheia is the word that God chose to convey His idea of truth. And it’s the only word He chose for truth. And aletheia is “unconcealment.” And “unconcealment” is what God really means when He says the word “truth.” And He never means anything else.
Veritas proudly says, “I will call nothing true that I cannot see and verify.” And all the Christians scramble around with eyes wide open, convinced that they can surely find somewhere, somehow, that which God the Expert Himself says does not even exist.
But aletheia humbly says, “I will call nothing true that I can see and verify. I will only call true that which I hear, and only that which I hear from Him Whose word I trust.”
And aletheia never ‘draws back’ and acts like it’s the teller at the First Worldly Bank of Faith by saying, “Yes, I can see here by Your word that it says You’re God. But do You have a second form of ID?”
Listen closely: never again ask God for a second ID. He may just decide to take His banking elsewhere.
God has intelligently designed His truth, aletheia, so that the only justifiable basis for believing it is the simple childlike consideration of Who said it.
Thy word is truth. Thy word is unconcealment, aletheia. And Thy word, without one additional ounce of veritas on my part or anyone else’s, is always precisely enough.
His thoughts are never your thoughts. And His words are never your words. And His truth is never your truth. And veritas is never aletheia.
Not by an entire universe.
1 Thomas Cole, Archaic Truth (1983)