The most important question.

Author: Douglas Yeo
December 04, 2025

For several years during the time our family lived in the Boston area and I was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1985–2012), I was asked to take part in a lecture at Harvard University. The class, in the School of Education, was for students who were interested in a public school leadership position, such as principal or superintendent. The professor asked me to come to the class once a year to talk about how my Christian worldview informs everything I think, do, and say. In the class, students were exposed to people from a great many different backgrounds, their views, and some of what made them tick. I always found the dialogue with those students to be invigorating. 

After the main part of the class had completed, it was my turn to speak directly to the students. And I always started the same way, by asking a question: 

“What is the most important question that has ever been asked in the history of humankind?” 

There were a lot of answers. “What is the meaning of life?” “Why is there evil in the world?” “Why does pain exist?” “How can we solve political differences?” 

They’re all good questions—these were smart students who thought deeply about issues. But I challenged them and said that while I agreed those questions are important, they hadn’t hit the mark. Then, I reached into my briefcase and pulled out my Bible and read this passage about the trial of Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate (John 18: 37b–38a): 

“[Jesus said] I have come into the world—to be a witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” 

That question—“What is truth?”—I told the class, is the most important question ever asked. How you answer that question defines everything about you: your thoughts, your actions, and your words. Everything. 

I continued, and, since I was at Harvard, I asked the students another question: “What is Harvard’s motto?” 

Every hand shot up, and their voices raised as one: 

VERITAS 

That’s Latin for “truth.” But then it was time for me to teach the class.

You see, the word “truth” is meaningless unless it has a reference point. Just because someone says something is true doesn't make it so. I remember a curriculum for elementary school students in the 1990s that taught that 2+2= 5 as long as you felt good about how you came to the answer. But 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 5. That answer isn’t true. Just try to build a bridge with that kind of arithmetic in your head. It will fall down. 

Think now about our current cultural moment. Fake news, AI generated deep fake videos, manipulated photographs. If you can have your version of truth and I can have my version of truth and those truths are different, there is no such thing as truth. If we can make up things and call them true, then “truth” has no meaning. Two things can’t be true at the same time when it comes to truth. 

“Truth”—“Veritas”—needs a reference point to make Harvard’s motto meaningful. And, as I told the class, Harvard's motto actually has that reference point. It’s just that it’s usually—but not always—scrubbed away. What is that reference point? Jesus Christ. 
Observant graduates of Harvard's colleges will note that the Great Seal of Harvard University that appears on their diploma today carries the motto: 

VERITAS CHRISTO ET ECCLESIAE 
TRUTH FOR CHRIST AND THE CHURCH

The Great Seal of Harvard University 

New College was founded in New Town, Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1636, to train Christian ministers. In 1638, New Towne was renamed Cambridge, and the College’s name was changed to Harvard College in 1639 in honor of its patron, Puritan clergyman John Harvard. The Massachusetts Constitution recognized Harvard as a University in 1780.

Harvard’s motto has passed through several iterations. In December 1643, Harvard’s Board of Overseers sketched a shield with three open books inscribed VE-RI-TAS (“truth”), and its meaning was embedded in the College's Christian formation. Two of the books represented the Old and New Testaments, and a third book represented future revelations that would become known at the second coming of Christ. But the seal was not formally adopted at that time. 

The sketch of a shield for Harvard College, 1643 

When Harvard College adopted its first corporate seal under its 1650 charter, the seal lost VERITAS, and it was replaced with the explicitly Christological motto IN CHRISTI GLORIAM (“For the Glory of Christ”). 

The Harvard Seal, 1650

A later seal, from 1693, replaced that phrase with Christo et Ecclesiae (“For Christ and the Church”), the form reproduced on Nathaniel Hurd’s famous Harvard bookplates of 1765. 

Nathaniel Hurd’s Harvard College bookplate design of 1765 

In the nineteenth century, Harvard President Josian Quincy III rediscovered the forgotten VERITAS shield and reintroduced it on a bicentennial banner in 1836. Harvard then placed VERITAS on the official seal adopted in 1843, removed it again in 1847 in favor of CHRISTO ET ECCLESIAE, and finally united the two in William Sumner Appleton’s redesign of 1885, with VERITAS on the books and CHRISTO ET ECCLESIAE in the encircling legend. This form remains Harvard’s official seal today. Although Harvard University now usually presents its motto in the shortened form, VERITAS, Harvard’s Great Seal still today carries the full combined motto with its all-important context, VERITAS CHRISTO ET ECCLESIAE— TRUTH FOR CHRIST AND THE CHURCH.

Today, we can see Harvard’s full motto in several places on campus. You have to look for it, but it’s there.

Here is the motto on a pillar supporting a gate to Harvard Yard: 

Here it is on the top of one of the iron gates to Harvard Yard:

And here it is again, on the back wall of the stage in Sander’s Theatre in Harvard's Memorial Hall. The motto appears in identical three lunettes:

What is truth? That’s the most important question we can ask. Just any old idea of “truth” won’t do. Truth needs context; it must be rooted in an immutable reference point. Here’s a good reminder for Harvard University—and everyone: VERITAS CHRISTO ET ECCLESIAE—true truth—is “truth that sets you free” (John 8:32).

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