What Is the Semantical Precondition for Truth in Christianity?

Please Help Us Keep These Thousands of Blog Posts Growing and Free for All

$5.00

To affirm the truth of any proposition—including those made by Christianity—requires that the proposition be meaningful. Meaning is the necessary precursor to truth. A statement must possess cognitive content before it can be evaluated as true or false. Thus, before we can determine whether Christianity’s truth claims are valid, we must first affirm that they are semantically intelligible. This fundamental relationship between meaning and truth lies at the heart of biblical apologetics, and it exposes serious flaws in prevailing modern theories such as conventionalism, while grounding the case for biblical theism in a realistic framework of objective meaning.

Meaning as the Precondition of Truth

Christianity asserts objective truths—that God exists, that Jesus is His Son, and that the Bible is inspired and authoritative. These are not simply personal beliefs or cultural preferences; they are claims about objective reality. But such claims can only be evaluated if they are meaningful. For instance, the sentence “The capital of the United States is Canton, Ohio” is false, but it is meaningful because it makes a propositional claim that can be tested. By contrast, a nonsense string like “Zuplops cadlure gugemonts” is neither true nor false—it is meaningless. Thus, meaning is the gate through which all truth must pass. If Christianity’s affirmations are to be evaluated as objectively true, they must first be established as objectively meaningful.

The Threat of Conventionalism to Objective Meaning

The dominant linguistic theory in modern secular thought is conventionalism, the view that meaning is culturally and contextually constructed. According to this view, meaning has no fixed, objective reference; it shifts with societal norms, language games, and human experience. This relativism poses a direct threat to the objective truth claims of Christianity because if all meaning is relative, then all truth is relative, and Christianity’s claim to universal truth becomes incoherent.

Conventionalism arose in response to essentialism, the Platonic idea that words reflect unchanging essences or forms. While Platonic essentialism itself is flawed due to its static view of meaning, conventionalism overcorrects by denying any stable relationship between language and reality. Philosophers such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Gottlob Frege, and Ludwig Wittgenstein advanced this view, particularly through critiques of referential theories of meaning.

Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, as found in Philosophical Investigations, rejected the idea that words have determinate meanings rooted in their reference. Instead, he argued for meaning based on language games, family resemblances, and forms of life. While he acknowledged that religious language can be meaningful within its own system, he denied that it can convey any objective knowledge about ultimate reality. Thus, in Wittgenstein’s framework, theological statements are linguistically valid but epistemologically void.

This leads to the assertion that Christian doctrines—such as the resurrection, the judgment, or God’s moral commands—are not informative about the real world. They may have experiential or commissive force (impacting how we live), but they offer no cognitive knowledge about God. This undermines the heart of biblical theism.

Critique of the Conventionalist View of Meaning

The conventionalist model is self-refuting and intellectually unstable. It suffers from at least eleven fatal flaws:

Self-Falsification: The claim “all meaning is relative” is itself offered as an objectively meaningful statement. If true, it refutes itself.
Universal Translatability: Statements like “All triangles have three sides” are universally understood, which would not be possible if meaning were culturally bound.
Mathematical and Logical Absolutes: Truths such as “2+2=4” and the law of noncontradiction are universally valid. They transcend cultural or linguistic frameworks.
Pre-Linguistic Knowledge: Some truths (e.g., basic arithmetic) are grasped before the conventions of language are known, showing that meaning is not derived from language alone.
Independence of Logic: The laws of logic are not human inventions; they are discovered, not created. They are necessary for thought itself.
Distinction Between Source and Grounds: While learning may be cultural, justification is logical. For instance, “All bachelors are unmarried” is true by definition, not by cultural agreement.
The Infinite Regress Problem: If meaning is derived only from prior linguistic experience, we face an infinite regress with no ultimate anchor for meaning.
Lack of External Criteria: Internal coherence (consistency within a language game) cannot resolve competing truth claims. Without an external criterion, all views are equally valid, which leads to relativism.
Circular Reasoning: The theory argues in a circle by assuming what it is supposed to prove—that all meaning is conventional.
Illegitimate Vantage Point: The distinction between “surface” and “deep” grammar presumes an external perspective, which conventionalism itself forbids.
Denial of Descriptive Theology: If meaning is merely experiential, God-talk becomes subjective and unverifiable. This reduces theology to anthropology and leads to religious agnosticism.

Realism: A Viable Alternative

Against both essentialism and conventionalism, realism presents a biblically consistent framework. Realism holds that:

Meaning is objective, even though the symbols used to convey it are culturally conditioned.
There is an absolute Mind—God—who has communicated objective truth to human minds.
The medium of language, though imperfect, is sufficient to convey truth because it operates through universal laws of logic.

In this view, the objectivity of meaning does not rest in unchanging Platonic forms, nor in cultural consensus, but in the intention of an intelligent, communicative Creator. Meaning exists in the form (the actual linguistic structure) of the text, not merely in the mind of the speaker or in the usage of individual words.

The Six Causes and the Structure of Meaning

Drawing from classical philosophy, the understanding of meaning can be structured through six causes:

Efficient cause: The writer or speaker.
Final cause: The purpose or intent behind the statement.
Formal cause: The structure of the language (grammar, syntax, semantics).
Material cause: The actual words or symbols used.
Exemplar cause: The idea or concept the statement intends to convey.
Instrumental cause: The laws of logic used to frame the statement.

The formal cause—the sentence or linguistic structure—is the true locus of meaning. Individual words only have potential meaning; they become actualized only within the context of coherent propositions.

The Unity and Objectivity of Biblical Meaning

Because God is both the ultimate Author and the final Interpreter of Scripture, biblical texts have one intended meaning—the sensus unum. However, they can yield many implications and applications (the sensus plenior). These do not introduce new meanings but unfold the richness of the one original meaning.

For instance, both God and the human author affirm the same proposition in any given biblical text. God, being omniscient, sees infinitely more implications than the human author, but there are not two meanings—one divine, one human. The same meaning is known in fuller depth by the divine Author.

As 2 Timothy 3:16 affirms, “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness.” Scripture is both God-breathed and linguistically coherent, showing that objective meaning is not only possible but essential for divine communication.

Conclusion: The Foundation of Christian Truth Claims

The entire Christian worldview hinges on the premise that truth is objective, which in turn requires that meaning be objective. The prevailing secular model of conventionalism collapses under its own weight, being internally contradictory and philosophically unsustainable. It renders theology cognitively meaningless, thus disqualifying it from even evaluating the truth claims of Christianity.

By contrast, realism upholds the semantic foundation upon which truth stands. It affirms that meaning is grounded in the text, expressed through language, governed by logic, and ultimately rooted in the mind of God. This framework ensures that Christian affirmations about God, salvation, sin, and eternity are not merely emotionally or culturally meaningful, but objectively true and intelligible—for all people, in all times, and in all places.

You May Also Benefit From

Miracles: The Supernatural Precondition

About the Author

EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 220+ books. In addition, Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).