Truth Revisited: What is Truth?
Truth is Important. • Pilate therefore said to Jesus: “Art thou a king then?” • Jesus answered: “Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth . Everyone that is of the truth, heareth My voice.” • Pilate saith to Him: “What is truth?”
Essential mark of ALL Truth: CONFORMITY … the correspondence between two things.
Truth is Important. How we understand truth and falsehood affects… • how we think, • what we know, • how we perceive the world/universe, • how we behave towards others, • who our friends are, • how we live our lives, and • how we die.
Truth is FUNDAMENTAL. • A small mistake in the foundation leads to bigger problems later. • Small error in the premises leads to bigger problems in the conclusion.
His Majesty to St. Teresa of Jesus: “All the harm that comes to the world comes from its not knowing the truths of Scripture in clarity and truth... Alas, daughter, how few there are who truthfully love Me!... Do you know what it is to love Me truthfully? It is to understand that everything that is displeasing to Me is a lie .”
Fr. Fredrick Faber: “Heaven is the land of love; but the hatred of heresy will not diminish there; for the hatred of heresy is the adoring love of God’s ever -blessed truth .”
Traditional Understanding of Truth St. Thomas Aquinas: Universal Doctor of the Church (1225-1274)
Different KINDS of Truth are based on what conforms to what. Different KINDS of Truth means there are LEVELS of truth. Different LEVELS of Truth means Truth is HIERARCHICAL.
First & Highest Truth is GOD Himself. • Conformity is between God knowing (the Father) and God as known (the Word or the Son). • Conformity is infinite and perfect. • God the Son (the Word of God) is Truth.
Truth is Personal “I AM the Truth”— John 14:6
All truth flows from this ONE Truth “All things were made by Him [the Word]: and without Him was nothing that was made”— John 1:3 “By the words of the Lord are His works”— Eccl. 42:15
Next Level: Ontological Truth Things outside conform to ideas inside.
1 st Kind of Ontological Truth: Creation Created things conform to God’s idea of them.
2 nd Kind of Ontological Truth: making Man makes things to conform to his own idea.
Creation made perfectly true… conforming to God’s Word. “He hath made nothing defective”— Eccl. 42:25
The Devil: the First Liar The abuse of the free choice of the will brought lies and perversions into creation.
“He stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof”— John 8:44
Adam and Eve embraced his lie. Man became divided.
A Consequence: Three Images of Man • That which we have of ourselves… which is flawed. Lack of truth or conformity between thought & thing. • That which God has of us right now. Perfectly true. • That which God wants us to be.
“No Word is impossible for God” “By the words of the Lord are His works”— Eccl. 42:15.
Truth precedes Power and Love • God cannot love what is not true. • God cannot make or do something that contradicts Himself… that contradicts His Word. • God cannot make another God. • If power and love are not based on truth, they lose their foundation… and become arbitrary… leading to might makes right.
Next Level: Logical Truth The mind conforms to things outside itself.
This is not mineral, This is a tree animal, etc.. This is an This is not a fruit or oak tree evergreen tree, etc..
Last Kind: Virtue of Truthfulness • Inclines man to manifest himself, in his life, in his speech, and in his dress according to the conviction of his mind. NO DOUBLESPEAK. • Perfects man’s ability to communicate outwardly, whether by word or action, what he holds to be true in his mind and heart. • The conformity is between interior and exterior of man. • “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one…” • Essential for a wholesome society & good gov’t .
Traditional Levels/Kinds of Truth God Ontological Logical Virtue of Truthfulness
Sciences and their objects • The sciences are defined ordered according to what truth is being sought. • Some truths are more universal than others. • The more universal the truth, the higher the science. • Lower sciences use the principles derived by the higher sciences.
Hierarchy of the Sciences 1) T HEOLOGY : study of the highest Truth… God, using Divine Revelation. 2) T HEORETICAL S CIENCE : Aristotle says these are sought for their own sake. – Metaphysics (Philosophy including psychology as study of the soul) – Physics (followed by Physiology, Zoology, Biology) – Mathematics 3) P RACTICAL S CIENCES : Doing something. – Politics -- study of right & wrong of human action as a society – Ethics -- study of right & wrong of human action as an individual – Logic -- study of right & wrong of human judgment – Rhetoric 4) P RODUCTIVE S CIENCE : Making. Building. – Art, poetry, engineering, drama All that are lower borrow from those above… e.g., engineering needs physics. ethics needs metaphysics. poetry needs mathematics.
These truths are OBJECT based According to this understanding of truth… • man ultimately strives to know God as the Supreme Being. (faith enables us to KNOW God). • the Creator can be known through His creation. • man humbly accepts that God made things from the beginning in a certain way. Thus, he seeks to know the objects of creation in themselves as well as something of the Creator Who made them. • man seeks to imitate His Creator by making things and doing things according to the truth.
Summary: Traditional Understanding of Truth The traditional understanding of truth is … • timeless since it starts with God Himself and flows from His creating all things through His Eternal Word. • vertical in that it seeks to elevate man’s mind upward to the Creator. • clear, ordered, hierarchical, and object based. • of the rational part of man. • unchanging and permanent in that it depends upon the essences God placed in things from the beginning. And these DO NOT CHANGE. • humble.
New Understanding of Truth Rene Descartes: “Father of Modern Philosophy” (1595 -1650)
Doubted EVERYTHING in order to seek fundamental truth • Rightly held that all truths were linked with one another. • Sought to find the fundamental truth that could not be doubted. • Proceed from there to open the way to all science/knowledge. • To find the one fundamental truth, take journey of doubting EVERYTHING until find what could not be doubted. • Instead of seeing the reality around him as certain and real, Descartes doubted its Existence since he had been wrong before (e.g., paddle looks bent in the water). • And so, he doubted and doubted and doubted until he realized that he was doubting. He could not doubt that he was doubting. Thus, he concluded, “I think, therefore, I am.” • He proceeded to build his entire philosophical system on man’s rational powers alone. He based even his existence on this… “I think, therefore, I am.”
Modern Thinkers Adopt Descartes Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): “Have courage to use your own understanding!” --that is the motto of enlightenment . Man is his own supreme guide.
New Truth is SUBJECT based • This leads to a near complete reversal of the traditional/classical understanding of truth. • No longer do we have an object based reality… but rather a subject based reality. All depends on the thinking and experiences of man. • Man himself becomes the highest truth. Man becomes the source of truth. Man has taken the place of God! • Descartes resurrects ...perverts the Ancient Greek Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things.”
New Truth involves Motion/Becoming • To understand the modern notion of truth, we need to factor in the contributions of men like Newton, Hegel, Marx and Darwin. • They saw the world under the aspect of motion, strife and struggle. • Newton spoke of forces, Darwin of natural selection and evolution, while Hegel and Marx used the notion of dialectic. • Key factor is that of BECOMING.
Hegelian Dialectic
Example of Hegel’s Dialectic Today
1 st CRITICAL Pitfall of New Truth • The rule of non-contradiction basically states that one thing cannot be another at the same time and the same way. • With the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic, modern man often does not abide by the rule of non- contradiction but allows contradictory and duplicitous situations to develop and even co-exist, working to bring some future synthesis. • This leads to many instabilities in the life of people and the working of a nation. Cognitive Dissonance. • St. Paul: there “shall come dangerous times. Men shall be… Ever learning, and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth”— 2Tim 3:7.
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