Three Questions about Truth

We have repeatedly encountered three different questions. Does a story express something true about reality? Does it preserve an event? Does it belong to divine revelation? These questions can receive different answers.

A Greek story may illuminate desire, power, mortality, or the relation between human life and the sacred. It might also preserve a transformed memory of an event. Neither possibility makes it revealed Scripture for a Catholic reader.

Christianity's claim joins meaning, historical event, and God's self-disclosure in Christ. That is more than an especially persuasive myth or a reconstruction of antiquity.

Keeping the three questions separate lets us give earlier testimony its proper value. We can recognize insight and investigate memory without silently lending the story an authority it does not possess. The distinction remains necessary even when the book's pattern becomes persuasive.