Friday pondering and question: The quest for truth
Steve over at Undeception has a very thoughtful and incisive blog post on seeking truth. Steve rightly highlights the danger posed by those who believe they have a monopoly on truth and says:
The greatest threat to Truth comes from those whose confidence that they have it lead them to root out everyone making a counter-claim. This conviction puts me on a collision course with heresy hunters, who in the name of defending the Truth of God have crammed it so tightly into a cage that I can scarcely imagine their having any real affection for it.
One of my greatest fears is to become the person that imagines they have laid hold of all truth and have nothing further to learn. This to me, is death itself. I heartily suspect that in the face of God, we will all be found wanting.
Steve also notes ‘affection’ for truth and this is a salient observation in my mind, as there has to be a love of truth; in fact, 1 Corinthians 13:6 informs us that love itself rejoices with truth.
Steve moves on to look at the interaction between behaviour and truth:
By far the best and most important way to serve Truth is by acting like we believe it, viz. through obedience to what we believe. I believe that the highest, most elusive truth of the universe is Love — so if my life is not characterized by Love-seeking, how can I pretend to be a Truth-seeker?
It’s interesting to note here that Steve alludes to the truth-seeker being a love-seeker. In other words truth should impact on our behaviour towards others. Of course this is echoed in 1 Peter 1:22:
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.
Steve articulates this thusly:
If I can’t act in love during my tousles for Truth, treating the other person as a child of God no matter how obviously, infuriatingly ignorant they are, then what I am upholding and defending is not Truth but my own pet truths, factoids that I cognitively assent to, at the expense of the greatest truth I know. There is nothing more false than conflating my truth with the Truth.
For me personally the following paragraph is the very crux of Steve’s post:
You see, fighting for Truth so often treats it as a trophy to be won, a public reward for our diligent Truth-seeking. I want to get out of this closed circuit of seeking Truth for seeking Truth’s sake. If we don’t live up to the light we do have – and I hope we can all agree that living a life characterized by loving humility qualifies – no matter how accurately and convincingly we argue for truths, we are not lovers of Truth.
How true.
It would seem to me that far too often, even within the Christian world, the search for truth can become dry, over-intellectualised and argumentative. Of course, for Christians, truth has been exemplified and personified in the person of Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life” and in the person of the Holy Spirit: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth”.
This truth is to have a profound impact on us:
John 8:32
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free
And
John 17:17
Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
I’ve always found it intriguing that the Bible does not necessarily equate the accumulation of facts with truth:
2 Timothy 3:7
always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
I equate wisdom with truth and I delight in the personification of wisdom in the feminine form in Proverbs:
Proverbs 4:6
Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.Proverbs 7:4
Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and to insight, “You are my relative.”Proverbs 8:1
Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice?Proverbs 8:11
for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.
And humility is intimately tied with wisdom:
Proverbs 11:2
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
The irony would seem to be that the more wisdom and truth we have, the more humble and loving we will become. Or could it be that the more humble and loving we are; the more open to wisdom and truth we become? Either way, based on this, it would seem that I have some way to go.
Here’s a lovely Scripture to end with:
1 John 3:18
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
So to the question; what is truth to you?
By the way, don’t feel you have to be Christian to contribute on this one
December 2nd, 2011 at 10:43 am
Hmm… Not so sure that the greatest threat to truth comes from those seeking to know the truth. I heard recently of a University whose Vice Chancellor wished to include something about ‘seeking truth’ in the mission or vision or whatever. The Scientists, Engineers, Medics and so on were happy with that. But the Humanities and Social Science people all cried out in anguish that the very notion of objective ‘truth’ is untenable. It is socially constructed, not out there to be found, according to them.
To me, that negation of the possibility, not only of coming to know the truth, but of its very existence, which is mainstream in our public intellectuals, is a more profound threat to truth. It was Pilate who derisively asked ‘What is truth?’, and Pilate who commanded that Truth be nailed to a cross.
Those whom I know who take the idea of absolute truth seriously are very slow to claim to know it absolutely. Paradoxically, it is often the relativists who make the most strident truth-claims: such as that there is no such thing as objective truth….
There are, of course, the fundamentalists (of many varieties) who I guess exemplify what Steve is getting at; and oddly, they have the same effect as the relativist intellectuals: they queer the pitch for intelligent philosophical discussion of these issues. But in my book, it is the relativists who pose the greater threat.
December 2nd, 2011 at 10:48 am
One of the reasons for my converting to the Catholic Church, was in my gradual understanding that the Church is the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth.
December 2nd, 2011 at 11:04 am
Pilate asked Jesus “what is truth?”. This really becomes the central question of Christianity. Not what that truth is, but what constitutes truth.
For scientists truth means the best we know at the moment. For religious people its about a gradually changing understanding of things given the limitations of human understanding.
Neither is really absolute.
December 2nd, 2011 at 11:17 am
Absolute truths are absolute and universal, whether one understands or believes them or not, is irrelevant.
December 2nd, 2011 at 11:37 am
For Christians, the answer to ‘What is Truth’ is Our Lord’s confession: ‘I am the way the truth and the light.’
To claim to know absolute Truth in its entirety is a claim to understand God – rather a large claim, I think.
On the other hand, to claim not to be able to know Truth is a claim not to be able to know God.
So I believe that we can know that absolute Truth, eternal and universal, exists; we can know something about it (or Him); we cannot know everything about it (or Him).
We need to proceed with utmost caution in making claims about Truth based on our own understanding.
We have a responsibility to share what Truth has revealed about Himself on His authority, above all via His Incarnation and His Church (His Mystical Body, which continues His work on earth).
December 2nd, 2011 at 11:45 am
Caral
How do you know that?
December 2nd, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Well I’m right and you’re all wrong and that’s the truth! Wait, no…are you saying we aren’t allowed to say that any more? Well now I’m just miffed.
December 2nd, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Hi Marvin,
Try defying the truth of gravity by jumping off the Eiffel Tower.
December 2nd, 2011 at 2:56 pm
It would seem that some of our most rigorous truth-seekers/defenders have lost all humility. Indeed they can be quite rude and cutting against those who disagree.
I’m with Caral on the reasons to convert though – there is only one truth and the closest we can get to that is through what God has revealed to His one church.
December 2nd, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Caral
I think what I’m trying to understand is to what extent the Truth and Love here are objective. If you are saying that the definition of Truth is as objective and as commonly accepted as the laws of physics, I would like to understand the nature of the process of validation that leads to this common agreement.
December 2nd, 2011 at 3:48 pm
“It would seem that some of our most rigorous truth-seekers/defenders have lost all humility. Indeed they can be quite rude and cutting against those who disagree.”
I totally agree, they can be so rude at times. If everyone just agreed with me all the time life would be so much easier.
December 2nd, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Stuart, thanks for bringing the importance wisdom into the mix. I wish I’d framed some of my remarks with that virtue in mind. Wisdom is precisely the nexus of action-informed-by-truth that I was advocating. Thanks!
December 2nd, 2011 at 4:43 pm
Hi Marvin
I don’t want to punch above my weight here, as I’ll never quite got my head around the subjectivity vs objectivity argument. So feel that my inadequate answer may disappoint.
I personally didn’t give a definition of Truth, what I actually said was “absolute truths (plural) are absolute and universal, whether one understands or believes them or not.” Hence why I gave an example of gravity.
With regard to Love, I would say that love is an universal truth, a constant across time and human experience, and so therefore an absolute truth. Yet the phenomenon of love and it’s experience is subjective, and so therefore to research objectively has difficulties, to say the least.
December 2nd, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Caral
I just have a feeling that everyone may be having a largely subjective (personal) understanding of Truth while at the same time assuming (maybe incorrectly) that others are sharing their experience. If understanding of the Truth is objective (independent of personal interpretation) then, as I said, I would be interested to learn how this common agreement is arrived at.
December 2nd, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Marvin, do you mean like qualia, if red was the objective truth?
December 2nd, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Marvin. For Catholics the truth is not decided by common consent, there is a universal truth which is whatever God says it is.
We rely on what hopefully were divine revelations to the early fathers and holy men and women throughout the ages.
December 3rd, 2011 at 10:17 pm
Nicolas
I had to smile at “hopefully”.
Was the Truth totally comprehensible to those to whom it was revealed, and subsequently to others? If not, then are there not ongoing attempts to find a common agreement about what exactly was revealed, and what might remain to be revealed? If so, then back to my original question about how this agreement is achieved.
December 3rd, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Caral
More private intellectual understanding than qualia.
December 4th, 2011 at 8:12 am
But what ‘Truth’ are we talking about. Gravity applying to someone jumping off the Eiffel Tower is of a wholly different nature to an edict that ‘killing is wrong’.
As a non-believer I would suggest that the former is absolute (in the sense that it appears to be consistent throughout time and space), wheras the latter is subjective or relative. I don’t think you’d find many humans who would disagree with the exhortation, but it is a value judgement informed by genetics and society rather than a ‘fact’.