I BEGAN by wishing that the NRSV, AV, RSV, and NIV were all correct. The promise is so familiar: that, when he comes, the Spirit “will guide you into all the truth”. The New Jerusalem Bible steps cautiously away from the time-hallowed version, with “lead you to the complete truth”. The version in Raymond Brown’s commentary does something similar: the Spirit is to guide us “along the way of all truth”.
The Greek word en, which is our word “in”, has two basic uses. One is to indicate direction (“where I am going”). The other indicates location (“where I am”). The form of the word that comes after “in” tells us which of the two meanings we have. All the Bible versions I have mentioned go for direction (“to all the truth”), but the Greek indicates location (“in all the truth”).
From a small discrepancy in the English grows a big question. Is Jesus talking about further revelations of truth, or has the truth been fully revealed already? Christians have not always thought that God’s revelation in Christ was completed with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Some looked for further revelations: in new prophetic voices, or in new books that they saw as having scriptural status.
If the Spirit is to lead us “into all the truth”, then Jesus is apparently telling his disciples that God’s revelation is, as yet, incomplete. Pentecost may be a crucial moment, but the revelation will go on unfolding through human history. This interpretation has some advantages. It is potential encouragement, for example, to those who think that the Church needs a scriptural basis for new approaches to ethics and theology, even if we treat those approaches as clarifications rather than alterations.
The most straightforward way of translating John 16.13 is “The Spirit will lead you in the way of all the truth.” The idea of direction is still there in the verb (“lead you in the way”). But that leading must happen while we are already “in all the truth”, and not while we are progressing towards it.
I was initially reluctant to argue for this translation, because the old version is hallowed by time, habit, and usefulness. But wishing that scripture said what scripture does not say is bad Bible-reading. More positively, there may be net gains to the closer translation. For a start, it is orthodox.
This is Trinity Sunday: the day of celebration at the fullness of God’s revelation in Christ, sealed by the descent of the Spirit to be God at work in the world. From the moment of Pentecost, God has made himself known to us as three Persons with a single being, that threefold name of our baptism. To this divine being our every act of worship is directed. So, it is no trivial matter whether that revelation of divine identity is full or partial, permanent or provisional.
The Holy Spirit is not here to lead us to truth that was unknown to the disciples, later apostles, and unknown to the Church (once the Church had come into being). The Truth is our Lord Jesus. It is no exaggeration to say that John’s Gospel is saturated with truth, and that “truth”— the abstract concept — is revealed in John 14.6 and, from that moment, confirmed repeatedly, to be a person: both the Lord and the Spirit (14.17, 15.26, 16.13).
I can express this easily on paper: “The truth is the Truth.” What we once thought was an abstract concept, or a quality or characteristic of something, is, in reality, a person. Ancient Greek, without the precious writing technology of upper-case letters, cannot express this. Nor can it be clear from reading aloud (just try it).
Truth, in English, can still be an abstract quality or characteristic, as when witnesses in court promise to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. But for Christians, hearing these words, whatever we write on the page — “the truth” or “THE TRUTH” or “the Truth”— there is always the possibility that what is being referred to is the one who is the Way, the Truth, the Life. The Word, who is the Truth, pitched his tent among us at the incarnation (John 1.14); and in him the fullness of God’s being was disclosed. We are not progressing towards the Truth: we belong to it. Right now. And always.