It may seem a far cry from contemporary philosophical analysis of the meaning of the word ‘true’ to the solemn use of the concept of truth in the Fourth Gospel. There the writer places on the lips of Jesus words which express his own profound conviction that the ultimate truth of God and man is revealed, indeed embodied, in the figure of Jesus himself. Before Pilate, Jesus says, ‘To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.’ Earlier he had said to the disciples: ‘If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ Similarly in the farewell discourses, he says of the Comforter, ‘When he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth … He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall shew it unto you.’ And of course, most concretely of all: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. But in reflecting on these pronouncements, the philosophical theologian is bound to ask himself what is the relation between the ordinary uses of the word ‘true’ and these profound religious uses.

The conception of personal truth which we find in the Fourth Gospel is very different from the ‘personal truth’ advocated by Wilfred Cantwell Smith. The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel is not just speaking of a quality of personal living, by comparison with which the truth of doctrines fades into insignificance.