Truth
by Paul Tyson, former Chaplain Brisbane State High School
Fifty years ago, most influential Western philosophers tended to hold that only
things that could be scientifically verified were true. So God, love, beauty,
meaning, values, good, evil, spirit, Heaven, Hell and ideals could perform
useful social functions, but they could never be true. The intelligent person
always "saw through" non-scientific beliefs, for all non-scientific "things"
were merely the creation of our own cultural imaginations. This view is the
back-drop to our current ideas about psychology, economics, politics, art and
education. This view of truth is a Modernist understanding of truth.
Now, however, a Modernist view of truth is old fashioned. Post-modern
(meaning "after Modern") philosophers tend to hold that any concept of truth, be
it scientific or non-scientific, is a cultural fiction. In this view, science
itself is as much a product of our cultural imagination as is religion.
Post-modern thinkers hold that truth is an unhelpful and tyrannical concept
because it seeks to impose one narrative of belief (story about meaning and
values) over other narratives of belief, as being somehow superior. The
Post-modern thinker holds that all views of meaning, value and belief are
equally the creation of our own imaginations, and hence all narratives are of
equal importance. It is not fair, in this radical democracy of belief systems,
to think about different narratives as true or false. This view shapes many of
our current notions about tolerance, lifestyle choices, morality, privacy and
freedom.
To the Modernist, only science gives truth - to the Postmodernist, truth does
not exist. Both Modernism and Postmodernism deeply shape the assumptions and
attitudes of our contemporary Western culture, so most people - even if they
have never been to uni or never read any philosophy - conceive of truth in
Modernist and/or Postmodernist terms.
The Biblical understanding of truth is radically different to both Modernist and
Postmodernist understandings.
Four texts will provide us with a very quick sketch of the Biblical
understanding of truth.
Psalm 51:6 "You [God] desire truth in the inward being: therefore teach me
wisdom in my secret heart." (NRSV)
Jeremiah 17:9,10 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is incurably
deceitful; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart; I test the secret
thoughts and motives to give to each man according to his ways, according to the
fruits of his deeds." (slightly paraphrased from "A Literal Translation of the
Bible" as used in The Interlinear Bible.)
John 8:31-32 "Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in Him, "If you
continue in my word [logos - see John 1], you are truly my disciples, and you
will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (RSV)
John 14:6 "Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me." (NIV)
We see from Psalm 51 and Jeremiah 17 that the Biblical understanding of truth is
not concerned with matters of scientific fact (like Modernism), or - negatively
speaking - with belief systems (as with Postmodernism), but with inner personal
integrity and the way in which that inner state is lived out in daily life. That
is, truth is not a matter of knowledge and belief - it is a matter of being and
doing, of who we are. Jesus takes this focus up very powerfully in John 8, and
equates this inner integrity and the power to live truly (in full fellowship
with the Father) with His own Person in John 14.
Both Modernist and Postmodernist conceptions of truth are concerned with mental
knowledge, not with inner integrity. In contrast, the Hebrew word for truth used
in Psalm 51 is specifically tied to our inner state and carries the meaning of
enduring solidity (genuine reality) in relation to our inner nature, and is not
focused on matters of mental knowledge. God desires reality in our inner being.
He desires that we in our inner being should be who He created us to be (which
is our real self) rather than the insubstantial, degraded and futile self (the
incurably deceitful heart) of our person which is who we are as marred by sin.
Reading further in Psalm 51, this inner truth can only be produced in us by the
redemptive act of God, as He creates a new, pure and true heart in us. The
outworking of this redeemed inner being is the walk of faith, which enables us
to rise above slavery to the power of sin, and to rise above the slavish
endeavour of obedience to the Law, and which rest in the true fellowship and
adoration of God and in the practise of true love, beyond fallen capacities, for
all people. This is the truth which God desires for us; if our churches are
communities of this truth, then the Kingdom of Heaven is manifest in power in
our midst, and the Church becomes the city set on a hill whose light attracts
those lost in the futility of darkness and the unreality of truthlessness.
From here we see that a Biblical understanding of truth is derived in a
fundamentally different manner, and is focused on fundamentally differing
concerns than both the Modernist and the Postmodernist understanding of truth.
How then did our Western culture - which is, after all, built on the values and
beliefs of Christianity - come to depart so fundamentally from a Biblical
understanding of the nature of truth?
René Descartes (1596 - 1650), mathematician, philosopher and a key fore
runner of Modern science, sent our Western understanding of truth away from a
Biblical understanding with this little phrase: "I think, therefore, I am." What
he means by this is that he can always think of reason why he may be mistaken or
deluded in his beliefs, but because he can't doubt that he does have beliefs,
hence he must exist. So he has found one thing in the universe which he can
never doubt (his own existence). From this foundation he believes he can
construct true knowledge. This may look harmless enough, but as a very
influential expression of his sceptical method of attaining knowledge, his
abstracted intellectualised conception of his own being, and his egocentric view
of truth, it departed fundamentally from the Biblical view of truth. For the
Biblical method of knowing is the opposite of the method of doubt and rational
objectivity, it is the method of faith which is the dependence on and
receptivity to God's self revelation. And the Biblical concept of what my being
is, is not some abstract and isolated "thinking substance" (Descartes 'mind'),
it is essentially personal and relational (and always in relationship with
others and The Other) and fully embodied in the real world.
The Biblical view of truth depends not on my powers of knowledge, but on God's
powers of revelation. So you see that the background to both Modernism and
Postmodernism is a view of truth which is, in a trinity of crucial issues,
totally contrary to the Biblical understanding of truth. In spiritual terms,
self-centredness (my mind is the repository, even the creator, of truth) and
self reliance (applying our scientific knowledge as power over our physical and
social environments) deeply infect the Western mind, blinding our spirits to
genuine spiritual light. This is not to say that science and technology are bad
things; not at all. But the inner attitudes of heart involved in the way we do
science and technology are often deep trouble to us spiritually, morally and
environmentally as a civilisation.
So it is clear that Modernist notions of truth tend to be tied to an objective
concept of the merely physical, and concerned with pragmatic power, manipulative
technique and technology. And it is clear that Postmodernist anti ideas about
truth radically relativise all beliefs and lifestyles, leaving every one only
with the deceitful imaginations of their own hearts and hence the inner truth
which the Bible proclaims, is inconceivable to this view. And, alas, as Western
people, we in the Church often unconsciously understand and practise our faith
in Modernist and Postmodernist terms. If we approach the Bible in a Modernist
manner, we will understand our grasp of truth in terms of our intellectual
knowledge about matters of doctrinal fact. That is, like Descartes, we have an
egocentric, abstractly intellectual and objective understanding of truth.
But God desires truth in our inner being; He desires an actual redemptive
integrity to be lived and expressed in our lives through the power of His Holy
Spirit. If we approach the Bible in a Post-modern manner, the deep mysteries of
the Scripture's paradoxes to the carnal mind, and the endless possibilities of
narrative interpretation opened up by post-modern concepts of textual analysis,
mean that you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say, and here truth
becomes totally meaningless. And so theologically, anything goes as "genuine"
Christian integrity. Functionally, we slip into the relativism of our culture
and refuse to hold members of our own fellowships accountable to the Way of
Truth in areas of morality, responsibility, orthodoxy or even just the absence
of discernment and wisdom.
Professor Yannaras, is an Eastern Christian, and a theologian and
philosopher at the University of Athens. As an outsider to the Western mind, and
yet as one effected by the West, his vantage point in viewing the problems of
Modernism and Postmodernism is very valuable. Professor Yannaras has a deep
understanding of how the Church should be a community of Truth, and how both
Post-modern and Modernist notions of truth are fundamentally opposed to such a
community. The key concept he focuses on here is the Biblical word koinonia
(imperfectly translated as 'fellowship'). Koinonia is truth expressed in a
community - it is the fellowship of people who live truly as people of inner
truth (people in fellowship with God), and who relate in truth to one another.
This lived truth will greatly attract those seeking truth outside of the Church,
and powerfully repel those seeking to justify the validity of their untruth.
This type of community would stick out like a sore thumb in our relativist,
morally confused, truth starved culture. The fact that we don't really stick out
should be cause for alarm. Are we compromised by what the New Testament calls
"the world?" (See David Wells' "God in the Wasteland" for a very insightful look
at this question.) Where is this lived reality of the truth of the gospel, both
in terms of the redemptive fellowship we experience with God, and the redemptive
fellowship the believers experience with one another?
As a church, we must pursue a life of genuine redemptive encounter with God, and
genuine honesty and depth of fellowship with each other. And we must remember
that only God can reveal truth in us, and only His Spirit can empower us to
realise the community of Truth which is the city on the hill; the community of
such light and attraction that both revival and persecution naturally follows.
Let us come in penitence before the Lord, as David did in Psalm 51, recognising
that God requires truth in our innermost being, and requires us as the church to
live out that truth in the power of His Holy Spirit, then let us see if God does
not reveal His redeeming arm in our midst.
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