A truth so foundational that it cannot be overturned by circumstance, culture, or consensus. In Scripture, verity is rooted not in human discovery but in divine self-disclosure. God's words are verity because God Himself is truth (John 14:6); His judgments are true and righteous altogether (Ps. 19:9). The Hebrew ʾemet (אֱמֶת) — often translated "truth" — carries the weight of verity: firmness, reliability, that which stands when everything else falls. Verity is truth with a backbone. It is not a proposition to be debated but a reality to be received. The verities of Scripture — God's existence, man's fallenness, Christ's atonement, the resurrection, the final judgment — are not opinions among opinions. They are the load-bearing walls of reality itself; remove them and the whole structure of meaning collapses.
VER'ITY, n. [L. veritas, from verus, true.] 1. Truth; consonance of a statement, proposition or other thing to fact. "The verity of this proposition is proved." 2. A true assertion or tenet; a truth; a reality. "The eternal verities of religion." 3. Moral truth; agreement of the words with the thoughts; the habitual observance of truth.
The concept of verity has been nearly annihilated by postmodernism's insistence that all truth claims are merely "narratives" shaped by power, culture, and perspective. Where the ancients spoke of eternal verities — truths that hold in all times and places — the modern academy speaks only of "truths" (pluralized, relativized, scare-quoted into impotence). "My truth" has replaced "the truth," transforming verity from an objective reality to be discovered into a subjective experience to be asserted. This is not intellectual humility; it is intellectual cowardice dressed in tolerance. The evacuation of verity from public discourse leaves a vacuum that is always filled — by ideology, by sentiment, by the will to power. A civilization that no longer believes in verities does not stop believing; it believes in everything and therefore in nothing.
John 14:6 — "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'"
Psalm 19:9 — "The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether."
Psalm 119:160 — "The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous rules endures forever."
John 17:17 — "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth."
Daniel 10:21 — "But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth."
H571 — אֱמֶת (ʾemet) — truth, faithfulness, firmness; from ʾāman (to be firm, to confirm). The root of "Amen" — truth affirmed.
G225 — ἀλήθεια (alētheia) — truth, reality; literally "un-hiddenness" (from a- + lēthē, forgetfulness/concealment). Truth as that which is unveiled, unconcealed, fully disclosed.
The eternal verities are not relics of a pre-scientific age — they are the bedrock truths that science itself cannot supply: that existence has meaning, that moral law is real, that persons have dignity, that death is not the last word. These are not conclusions drawn from data; they are the preconditions that make data intelligible.
To recover the word "verity" is to insist that some truths are not up for vote. They were true before you believed them, and they will be true long after your culture has forgotten them.