What is Truth? – Sunday, December 15, 1940
One listener has written to suggest that we speak to the question: “What is Truth?” Of course, a word, being, after all, merely a symbol of a thing or an idea, means only what we allow it to mean by common consent. By some “truth” has been defined as a variable – as a relative term.
Those who argue thus take the position that what is commonly thought to be true by the constituted authorities of any particular generation is true for that time. That is to say that what is generally believed to be true today is true for this day.
But to say this is also to say that what was believed to be true yesterday was true yesterday. In other words, if a man stands in the pulpit or in the market place or in the classroom and proclaims what he and his generation believe to be the truth, it is said by some that he is speaking the truth. This sounds very plausible until we reduce it to specific cases. There was a generation that believed and proclaimed that the world was flat. They were sincere in this belief, and thought they were proclaiming truth – but that didn’t make the world flat, and the truth was and is that the world was not and is not flat. And so we could multiply examples of what people have believed and have not believed, suddenly to come to the realization that no matter what men at a given time happen to believe, if it isn’t true, their belief doesn’t make it true, no matter what the constituted authority of the day has to say about it. Truth cannot be made by authority — nor can it be unmade.
Truth is eternal. To quote the sacred record on the subject, “Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come; and whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning; the spirit of truth is of God.” Doctrine and Covenants, 93:24, 25 and 26) Elsewhere it is written: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make vou free.” (John 8:32) A falsehood or an error couldn’t make a man free. Indeed, it would shackle him with chains of ignorance. And so we must come to the conclusion that truth is not a variable, but, fundamentally speaking, a constant. It can be discovered. Our knowledge of it can be increased. Popular conception of what constitutes truth can change – but not truth. And it doesn’t matter where it is found or who discovers it.
It is not peculiar to any school of thought or any race of people, or any age of scholarship. It is the common property of the whole universe, and so far as man is concerned, it is limited only by our knowledge of it and our ignorance concerning it. Now we know a little, and our appetites to know more are insatiable — but never shall we be called upon to discard any fragment of truth, because what was fundamentally true when Adam walked with God, when Solomon spoke his Proverbs, when Shakespeare wrote his plays, is still fundamentally true even today.
December 15, 1940
Broadcast Number 0,591