What is truth? is the question that shapes chp 7 in Walsh and Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed. The concern of this book is to explore postmodern questions by reading Colossians; they do this creatively and in a variety of ways and much I find in this chp I agree with. This chp is a dialogue about truth — a clearly important subject to the apostle Paul in Colossians.
There was an inkling dissatisfaction as we closed the last chp, and chp 7 starts right there. Is truth just a claim to power, a rationalization of power? Paul, W-K argue, has no power; he’s in jail. His truth is on the losing side.
Is this claim to truth then just a Foucauldian language game? No, they argue, deconstruction reveals insights and one thing we have learned is that deconstructive suspicion is also at times nothing more than a power game. But often deconstruction exposes injustice and where justice needs to gain power.
Is truth, they imagine being asked, provable? Is it objective? Is it “out there” and independent of the rhetoric? Can it be verified or demonstrated? Is faith open to proof? Tomorrow.