Truth can stand the debate test. Poke it. Probe it. Explore it. Expose it. Turn it upside down. Turn it inside out. Put it under the microscope. Place it under the harshest of conditions. The truth will endure. It will always show itself to be true.

God is truth (John 14:6). In fact, truth is such an essential aspect of His character that He is called by the name “Faithful and True” (Rev. 19:11). He is absolute verity, unaltered by the variable tides of time and circumstance (Num. 23:19). The Maker of all things in heaven and on earth, He furnishes His creation with evident truth (Ps. 19:1–6). He loves the truth (Jer. 10:10) and speaks the truth at all times and in all ways (Ps. 119:160). He is Himself the source of all truth, the essence of all truth, and the standard of all truth (1 John 5:6, 20–21).

Herman Bavinck declared:

God is the truth in its absolute fullness. He, therefore, is the primary, the original truth, the source of all truth, the truth in all truth. He is the ground of the truth—of the true being—of all things, of their knowability and conceivability, the ideal and archetype of all truth, of all ethical being, of all the rules and laws, in light of which the nature and manifestation of all things should be judged and on which they should be modeled. God is the source and origin of the knowledge of truth in all areas of life.

Likewise, Keith Mathison asserts: “A God-centered view of truth demands that we affirm that all truth is God’s truth. That which is true is true because God said it, created it, or decreed it.”

According to article 2 of the Belgic Confession, God reveals truth in two ways:

First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.
Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.

God’s unchanging truth is sure, certain, and objective and is displayed in either the natural revelation of His created order or the special revelation of His inspired Word. He animates these two conduits of truth so that we might know the truth and be set free. Every true thing in art, music, literature, history, philosophy, science, and technology is therefore a manifestation of His providential and infallible revelation.

As best we can determine, that epigrammatic phrase “all truth is God’s truth” was first articulated by Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430). In his little book On Christian Doctrine, he wrestled with the difficulty that inevitably arises from the fact that there is a difference between God’s infallible revelation of truth (both general and special) and our fallible interpretation of that revelation (both general and special).

On Christian Doctrine was simultaneously one of Augustine’s earliest works and one of his latest. Shortly after he was pressed into service as a presbyter in 391, he asked for an extended period of study and meditation in order to immerse himself in the Scriptures. Apparently, the book began as a series of cryptic journal entries that grew out of that intensive time of study.

By about 394, Augustine had already begun his extensive expositions of Genesis, Romans, and Galatians. Soon after, he would begin work on his magisterial study of the Psalms. So it seemed like a good opportunity to expand his original notes into a fuller, more permanent discourse. In short order, he drafted the first three parts of On Christian Doctrine early in his ministry.

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