Today is the 44th anniversary of the two-hour dinner at Lüchow’s on Manhattan’s 14th Street to which Otis Q. Sellers treated his students, yours truly included, during his visit to my city. I was fortunate to be seated next to him for this first meeting. Sam Marrone told me (April 26, 2023) that I had sat at Sellers’s left, Sam at his right. I’d love to hear from anyone else who was there that day! See the photo (from the year before, 1978) at the end of this post. A.G.F.
When entertaining a proposition, Otis Q. Sellers’s first question was: Is it true? It guided all subsequent questions. Not: “Is it the scientific, scholarly, or ecclesiastical consensus?” Consensus be damned.
He took his cue from the apostle John who, carried by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), wrote that he had no greater joy (χαρά, chara) than hearing that his children walk in the truth (τῇ ἀλήθεια, tē alētheia) (3 John 1:4). This confession invites the sure inference that John’s pleasure was analogous to God’s.
That is, seeing His children walk in the truth is a divine delight second to none.
But what is truth? That’s what Pilate asked Jesus, his divine prisoner (John 18:39).
Jesus had just affirmed to Pilate the coming of His Kingdom and therefore His Kingship (vv. 36-37) to whom he’d soon intimate the heavenly source of the earthly authority (ἐξουσίαν, exousian) he had over Him (19:11).
During His ministry Jesus had told others that He is (among other things) the truth (ἡ ἀλήθεια, hē alētheia) (John 14:6); there’s no reason to think He’d have withheld that answer from Pilate—had he but stayed for it. The challenge, however, of placating a bloodthirsty mob and keeping the office he held at Caesar’s pleasure had concentrated his mind wonderfully, and so off to the balcony of his residence he repaired.
Continue reading “What Is Truth? Reflections on Christian Individualism.”