Handout - Western Christadelphian Bible School

What is Truth?
As a first step it is enormously helpful to understand a little about the philosophy of truth. If
we have a little insight into why we accept some ideas as true and reject others as false then
we should be better equipped to properly appraise various notions - on any subject, not just
prophecy.
Belief is based on one or more of four criteria:
(a) We believe things because they have been told us by a voice of authority.
For example, we believe many things that the Bible says just because the Bible says
them. We’ve first used other methods (mostly (c), below) to convince ourselves that
the Bible is the word of God; we then believe what it says because we’re convinced it
is the self-consistent voice of God. Or, to take a different example, most people (in the
world) believe in a theory of evolution - basically because the scientists speak with an
authority that the average person cannot challenge. Of course, it’s a bit more
complicated than that; nevertheless the underlying reason for belief in evolution is the
scientists’ authority.
Again, we use a dictionary to adjudicate when it comes to a question of spelling. We
don’t question its authority and invariably believe what it says.
So the voice of authority can be good, bad or neutral; but at least some people are apt
to believe it just because it’s authoritative, or because its message is constantly
repeated and “hammered in”.
The scriptures are our ultimate authority. While we don’t doubt this authority, our
scriptural beliefs are likely to be faulty if we misunderstand what scripture says. So we
must go further: we must identify reliable methods for interpreting the scriptures and
we need to know just how reliable these methods are, an idea that we will pursue in our
first session.
(b) We believe things that can be logically deduced.
It is by no means self-evident that the sum of the internal angles in any triangle is
always equal to two right-angles, yet it is possible to prove this to be true - along with a
great many other theorems of Euclidean geometry. The process uses strict logic and is
an entirely mental exercise. While it is easy enough to show empirically (as in (c),
below) that the sum of the internal angles of any number of given triangles is equal to
two right-angles, one can postulate an infinite number of triangles - all different - and
life is too short to test every one by empirical means. Very few of us care about the
sum of the internal angles of a triangle, but the illustration makes an important point.
There are many truths that can only be deduced. We can usually go on to demonstrate
that they are true in particular cases, yet even if this is not possible we will still accept
them as sound; we will be convinced by the power of the logic.
As we shall see in due course, deduction, sometimes nearly as elegant as Euclidean
geometry, is a highly valuable method for searching out the real meaning of prophecy.
(c) We believe things that can be demonstrated experimentally.
For example, much of medical science, ancient and modern, is based on empirical
knowledge. That is, we don’t necessarily understand how it works, but we believe in it
because we have seen that it does work. There are probably millions of people who
cheerfully climb on aeroplanes without the least understanding of the areodynamics by
which they fly. Yet they firmly believe that there is a very strong probability that
they’ll safely reach their destinations. An engineer confidently builds structures upon
which peoples’ lives depend because someone, somewhere, tested the strength of the
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