What Is Truth?

"Ecce Homo" ("Behold the Man"), by Antonio Ciseri 

When Pontius Pilate looked into the eyes of Jesus and asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), he voiced a timeless question that still haunts the human heart. Where philosophy is the search for truth, theology is the declaration of it, and the Christian faith proclaims that truth is the foundation of meaning, justice, and freedom, perfectly embodied in Jesus Christ.

Yet in a world flooded with personal “truths,” it’s easy to get lost in contradiction, unmoored from reality, and even from our own sanity. If everyone has their own truth, is Pilate right? Does truth even exist at all? To regain clarity and restore our footing, we can look to the great minds of Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, and G.K. Chesterton.

Truth as Alignment with Reality

Aristotle defined truth simply: “To say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.” In other words, truth is saying what is actually real. It’s the mind conforming to reality, not the other way around. For Aristotle, truth wasn’t subjective. It was grounded in being, which exists independently of our feelings.

So when Jesus said, “I am the Truth,” He wasn’t offering an abstract idea. He was revealing Himself as the fullness of reality, God made flesh, the ultimate standard of what is.

Truth Rooted in God’s Nature

St. Thomas Aquinas took Aristotle’s framework further. He defined truth as “the conformity of the intellect to reality,” but clarified that all truth originates in God, the Creator of all things. Aquinas taught that truth is both knowable through reason (natural law) and revealed through divine revelation.

In this light, Jesus doesn’t just speak truth, He is Truth, because He is the eternal Word (Logos) through whom all things were made. Pilate was unknowingly staring at the very Source of truth, and still missed it.

Truth as the Foundation of Sanity

Chesterton, writing centuries later in the chaos of modernity, warned that society was unraveling because it had lost its grip on truth. He once said, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” For Chesterton, truth was not a moving target, it was an anchor.

He believed that when we deny truth, we don’t just fall into error, we lose our ability to think clearly, love rightly, and live freely. For him, Jesus as Truth is the ultimate contradiction to the madness of moral relativism. Christ doesn’t shift with trends. He confronts us, divides light from darkness, and calls us to live courageously in reality, not illusion.

So, What Is Truth?

Truth is what is real, what is rooted in God, and what keeps us sane. It is not whatever we feel, fear, or dream up, it is what we are called to discover and conform to.

Our suffering, confusion, anxiety, and everyday hardships force us to confront that ancient and pressing question: “What is truth?” The deeper question is this: Will we seek it, and recognize it, when it’s standing right in front of us?