12/8/25

The method in which we arrive at truth claims is one of the most, if not the most, important issue for those of us engaging in real life. I've heard the claim that the discovery of truth is irrelevant and a constructed objective that is unnecessary for human life, but these people are ignorant of the very things they state. The very claim that truth is irrelevant proves truth's relevancy as they themselves have just made a claim about what is true. It is simply impossible to live this way as everything we do is directly dependent on our ability to discern what is true about reality. From judicial courts to food production, from medicine to math class, from engineering to entertainment—life as we know it absolutely depends on our ability to distinguish what is true from what is false. And that doesn’t change when we step into the sphere of religion and philosophy. Today, however, I had a fascinating conversation with a mathematics student who disagreed with this premise. Luckily, his familiarity with mathematical axioms drove home the point of epistemological necessities!

We continued our whiteboard question from last week asking, "If God became a human being, what would that person be like?" However, this gentleman had little interest in writing on the board and merely had unexpected extra time to kill between classes, so naturally he stopped to see what we were doing. We began our conversation, and, after prompting him to answer the board's question, he expressed that this incarnate God would look like Jesus. Typical answer, but what does that really mean? I inquired to find whether or not this man is a Christian, to which he responded, "Catholic." There is certainly a debate present on whether or not Catholics are Christians, but that seems to be neither here nor there as I find it a relatively convoluted topic which can be simplified by assessing more directly the criteria by which we determine a Christian from a non-Christian. These can be the same conversation if understood properly, but, in my experience, the latter approach seems to bear better fruit and avoids unbiblical assertions and confusion. Regardless of whether or not my perception of this is completely satisfactory, my conversation with *Brian was off to a great start as I inquired about what he understood it to mean to be a Catholic.

This question is so absolutely important to ask people as they will very likely not align with the actual doctrinal positions of their supposed religion. This was exactly what happened with *Brian, and I can confidently conclude that according to Catholic doctrine, his view is not Catholic. Though *Brian thoroughly described various sacrament traditions to me, he concluded his Catholic explanation by stating that any religion can lead to salvation. This is a wildly un-Catholic claim as the normative path to salvation in Catholic doctrine teaches that the Catholic Church is necessary for salvation. There are nuances within the doctrine which allow for the potential of those limited externally from the Church to receive salvation, but it is clear that the normative path to salvation is directly tied to the Church in Catholic doctrine. All of that merely to say, *Brian is not a true Catholic. However, I was more interested in what caused this belief for *Brian, so I began asking questions about why he believes that those statements were true.

*Brian thought about this for a second, and then, fumbling his ideas around, stated that universalism is the only way to reconcile the fact that all people will enter the kingdom of heaven. Very fascinating reasoning, and relatively consistent if we grant the fundamental axiom on which the whole argument rests: that everyone will enter the kingdom of heaven. Here, the issue is not an inconsistency in logical reasoning, but rather a falsehood in a primary assumption which does not align with reality outside of that specific system of logic. This could be compared to the following argument:

1. All animals are fish.

2. Dogs are animals.

3. Therefore, dogs are fish.

You can see from this example how the system of reasoning and logic is internally consistent, but that the fundamental assumption that all animals are fish does not correspond to the facts of reality outside of the system of logic. In the same way, the following argument is false:

1. All people will be saved.

2. Not everyone believes in Jesus.

3. Therefore, any religion you follow results in salvation.

The internal logic is not the issue, but rather the foundational assumption that all people will be saved. So, from here I asked *Brian why he believes that everyone will be saved. He told me that this is among the axioms that exist unexplainably and then tried to demonstrate this with a parallel to his studies in mathematics. He wasn't able to provide any compelling case, and I'm actually moderately concerned with his education in mathematics as he somehow believes that axioms simply appear out of thin air without regard to anything else in reality. I suppose that means that the first mathematicians were merely lucky fantasy writers and were not basing their axioms off of the patterns that they observed in the physical universe... I think that the latter is far more compelling and historical. The early mathematicians and scientists were only able to develop systems of descriptive language (which we call mathematics, physics, etc.) because of the patterns they saw in nature. Side note, but this is actually a quite compelling witness to a divine Creator: that there is law in nature of which we can observe and rely upon.

The issue that *Brian was experiencing is due to an insufficient approach to acquiring truth. His approach resembles closest the Coherence Theory of Truth which holds that the nature and test for truth is coherence. That is that truth will not be inconsistent with itself and that we discover truth by testing it against what we know to be true. This is great unless we have faulty assumptions from which to build off of. I find a Sudoku puzzle to be a great example of this theory. The printed numbers are the axioms that we assume to be true, and the other places are claims we need to test for coherence. The more spaces that we fill in, the more certain we can be of the accuracy of our answers. However, if our axioms are wrong, the whole puzzle was doomed from the start. For this reason, it is necessary to rely on another method of discovering truth which ties us directly to reality and cannot fall prey to internal consistency while also being plainly false outside that system. Coherence isn't wrong, but it is certainly insufficient. We must also rely on a method that ties our beliefs directly to reality as it truly is - the Correspondence Theory of Truth.

In hopes to neither bore you to death nor deviate from the heart of the conversation, I will restrain from fully elaborating on this theory, but the premise is quite simple: truth is that which corresponds with fact/reality. This theory was not explicitly covered in my discussion with *Brian as he soon had realized that his worldview was built on axioms he hadn’t critically examined, which began to feel unstable once we explored them. Many times in conversations, I will feel that those I converse with don't fully grasp the things they claim to understand from what we are discussing; however, it seemed quite evident to me that *Brian realized the dangerous place that he was in as he promptly reconsidered the many axioms he has built his worldview on. He told me that he had mentally "hit a wall" as he reconsidered all of these things he previously assumed to be true without hesitation. Understandably so, this was quite a lot to wrestle with on an average Monday of finals week. As he left for his next class, *Brian thanked me for our conversation and expressed that he needed to go and rethink the very foundations of his religious and philosophical beliefs. Much better to wrestle with these foundational questions now than years later when life becomes even more complex! I hope that our conversation continues and I am able to provide *Brian some assurance in religious doctrinal security through a demonstration that the Christian scriptures are reliable and trustworthy in acquiring accuracy and truth regarding the realities in which we live. Most, if not all, religious disputes fall to the feet of our methods for determining what is true. Is it not the Scriptures which are all breathed by God and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God might be fully equipped for every good work? And is it not by the historical death and resurrection of Christ that we receive clear assurance that His words are true?