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D&C 93:24
And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.
When LDS leaders and educators define truth they do so using this canonized definition that they say was revealed on Date:May 6, 1833 at Kirtland, Ohio. Mormon truth like their canon is open and changing.
Mormons have a high view of personal revelation. They have been taught to believe they must study the Book of Mormon and obtain from God a "testimony" of the truthfulness of that work and of the prophet who brought it forth.
7. Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. 8. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. 9. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong; therefore, you cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me. (Revelation for Oliver Cowdery, April 1829; the Book of Mormon is translated by study and by spiritual confirmation) [Doctrine and Covenants 9:7-9].
"And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost." A physical sensation called a "burning in the bosom" is the spiritual confirmation from the Holy Ghost often said to accompany the conviction that a given thing is "true." [Moroni 10:4-5].
2. This test ignores Biblical examples of examining the Scriptures as the standard for truth. Both of these quotes limit the search to the Book of Mormon.
3. Truth is not "what feels good" this means a warm fuzzy feeling is not the same as evidence for objective knowable truth.
4. Mormon youth are surrounded by people from their youth who keep on claiming that their own testimony experience changed their lives. They are never asked to examine other wider sources of knowledge. Mormon youth are almost programmed to have this experience with the Book of Mormon.
5. Truth does not contradict itself. Since the Book of Mormon and other Mormon scriptures deeply contradict the Biblical record one or the other must be in error. Mormons are being taught to ignore any scientific evidence. This tends to perpetuate Mormon families remaining loyal in the face of incredible revelations about the frailty of the documents they are placing their faith in.
6. Mormons are very dogmatic in defending their message. Mormons from their youth are being exposed to this dogmatism in ways that makes it nearly impossible for young people to leave the church.
7. Truth never changes yet Mormon doctrines and beliefs are constantly changing. Most Mormons are proud to say their church is flexible about beliefs saying times change so must the message.
8. Truth is not deceptive. An examination of the way the church relays the way they have changed their beliefs demonstrates evidence that the church itself deceives. One example is Joseph Smith's revelation to take more wives. This was done in complete secret for most of his life. This caused pain and suffering to the families he touched with his lust for more wives. Today the church would refuse to send out a missionary who had a lifestyle like Joseph Smith. But there are more than 50,000 polygamists who take the authority for their lifestyle from the writings of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor.
9. Professor Stephen Robinson of BYU wrote a book in 1991 asking "Are Mormons Christian?" He came away from that project claiming the Mormon Church was in fact the only true example of Christianity. A few years later we see him being challenged by Evangelical scholar Craig Blomberg in "How Wide the Divide?" Both wrote their own chapters and one comes away with the idea that Robinson's claims are not Biblical but are solely based on modern revelation.
Because many are confused about how Mormons define and use truth I will include entire articles from Official Published Messages of the First Presidency as well as their own 1992 Encyclopedia on Mormonism. I even include all notes and bibliography.
First Presidency Message
Receiving and Applying Spiritual Truth
By President Marion G. Romney
First Counselor in the First Presidency
Marion G. Romney, “Receiving and Applying Spiritual Truth,” Ensign, Feb. 1984, 3 I have always been impressed and instructed when I contemplate the interview the Master had with Nicodemus, the learned member of the Jewish Sanhedrin who came to Jesus with the purpose of learning more about him, his identity, and his message.Nicodemus “came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” (John 3:2.)
In his search for truth, Nicodemus was moved to question and pursue understanding from the Lord. Yet, at this moment, all he could see in the Son of God was a superior teacher. As his statement notes, he based this conclusion upon what he had both seen and heard of the Master’s miracles.
Jesus, however, immediately taught Nicodemus that the knowledge he sought was not to be had on such evidence alone, the evidence of seeing and hearing a miracle or seeing some great event. Jesus promptly pointed to the truth that without the aid of a superior learning process, a process sensitive to the infinite world of reality above and beyond the world of sensory perception, the kingdom of God could not be discovered, seen, or entered.
“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3.)
Now, as learned and skilled and wise as was Nicodemus, he could not grasp the concept of that which the Master was presenting. In fact, Nicodemus was baffled by it, for he said: “How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” (John 3:4.)
Jesus persisted, seeking to enlighten the mind of Nicodemus. The Lord explained, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:6.)
Nicodemus, however, not having yet been born of the Spirit, lacked the perception that comes from the Spirit. He simply could not understand that Jesus was saying there are two sources of knowledge, two different processes of learning—one through the normal senses of the flesh, the other through the voice of the Spirit.
The Apostle Paul’s explanation to the Corinthians on this same matter focused on the same truth that the Master discussed with Nicodemus. To the Corinthians, Paul said: “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit …
“That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. …
“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. [That is to say, the things of the Spirit, the verities of eternity, the meaning of great events and signs, and the ultimate truths are not to be had alone through the learning process of men.]
“But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. …
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:4-5, 9-10, 14.)
In Jesus’ interview with Nicodemus, the Master continued to instruct him regarding the spiritual source of knowledge. The Lord said, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:7-8.)
As I have contemplated this text, I am persuaded that the Master was here affirming that the knowledge to be obtained through the gift of the Holy Ghost—the rebirth of which the Lord had spoken is just as sure and certain to us as the wind that blows, even though we cannot see it. The Lord was teaching Nicodemus that the process of learning about things from the Spirit is real, even though the Spirit’s workings cannot be understood by those who have not been born again.
In the latter days, the Lord reaffirmed these basic truths through the Prophet Joseph Smith. In the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple, a prayer given by revelation to Joseph Smith, the Prophet prayed: “And do thou grant, Holy Father, that all those who shall worship in this house may be taught words of wisdom … and that they may seek learning even by study, and also by faith, as thou has said …”
And for what purpose?
“… that they may grow up in thee, and receive a fulness of the Holy Ghost, and be organized according to thy laws, and be prepared to obtain every needful thing.” (D&C 109:14-15.)
This prayer makes it clear that the Lord views one’s learning as complete only when one is guided by the Holy Spirit. On another occasion the Lord said, “If ye continue in my word … ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31-32.) The truths that can free us from our sins, guilt, false concepts, erroneous understanding, and unproductive habits and behavior are to be had only through the Holy Spirit.
There has never been a day such as now in all of earthly history when secular learning was so far advanced and widespread as it is today. Yet so many of those around us do not enjoy the truths and the freedom those truths bring of which the Master taught. Rather, to so many people, it seems that truth and true freedom elude their grasp.
The central core of the Father’s plan of salvation is that to obtain these truths and the peace, happiness, security, and freedom these truths bring to their righteous adherents, we must draw upon a source of knowledge that lies above and beyond the reach of ordinary learning processes.
The road to this sure knowledge is a sincere and honest desire to obtain truth from God, seeking such truth through sustained prayer, through devoted study of God’s scriptures, and through righteous, charitable behavior in our daily lives.
The Lord knows, however, that not all persons will bring themselves to these standards, and thus he reminded us that “the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” (D&C 88:49.)
But if we Latter-day Saints will follow the steps outlined by the Lord and his prophets, we can and will obtain understanding regarding the great latter-day dispensation in which we live, and of the great preparatory events and tribulations prophesied for the last days.
Through the gift and power of the Holy Ghost, divine truth has been revealed to mankind from the beginning. To Father Adam, and continuing through all dispensations, heavenly truths have been communicated to prophets, who in turn have taught and recorded these truths for the benefit of those who will use them in their lives.
From this inexhaustible source of eternal truth has come true knowledge concerning the nature of God and our relationship to him, without which no one can comprehend the purpose of life and its significant events.
As Latter-day Saints, we know of God’s love for his children and of his desire that each of us learn and use in our daily lives the processes of spiritual sensitivity so that we may draw upon the limitless source of knowledge and guidance that is open to all of us.
We need such inspired knowledge as we live our lives, as we seek to find God and apply his teachings, as we seek to find marriage partners, as we perform our responsibilities of parenthood, as we help others around us learn gospel truth and find God for themselves, as we seek understanding from scripture, as we implement present-day prophets’ counsel, as we contemplate the signal time in this dispensation in which we live, and as we seek to endure faithfully to the end. In all these and many more matters—indeed, in all aspects of our lives—we need guidance and knowledge from the Sure Source.
As we seek to draw closer to God and taste the fruits of applying his teachings in our lives, we must ever be mindful that God expects us to apply our knowledge in our daily lives in service to others. We need to remember that “when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
“And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
“And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
“Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
“Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
“When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
“Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
“I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
“Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
“Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” (Matt. 25:31-46.)
We are to learn to obtain truth and understanding from the Holy Spirit—for such truth fundamentally affects every aspect of our lives; then, our test is to apply our knowledge, our lives, our actions and behavior with love and charity to all those who come within our circle of influence and daily living.
First Presidency Message
Absolute Truth
By President Spencer W. KimballSpencer W. Kimball, “Absolute Truth,” Ensign, Sept. 1978, 3
I wrote, some time ago, a letter to a disbeliever. Much of what was said in that letter has been on my mind lately and I wish to share the substance of those thoughts. With that explanation you will better understand the point of view assumed and the style in which it is given. Writing to this young man, who was battling with his thoughts, I said:Dear John:
Your resistance and argument against the truths of the gospel have given me grave concern.I realize I cannot convince you against your will, but I know I can help you if you will only listen and let me call to your attention some salient truths, and if you will listen with a prayer and a desire to know that what I say is true. I would not, even if I could, force your thinking, for free agency is the basic law of God and each one must assume the responsibility for his own response; but certainly each of us must do his part in influencing for good those who might need some assistance.
The Lord said unto Enoch:
“Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency.” (Moses 7:32.)
I have lain awake many long hours contemplating and have offered many fervent prayers on my bended knees, hopeful that I might say the right thing, and that you would receive it in the humble spirit in which it is given.
This true way of life is not a matter of opinion. There are absolute truths and relative truths. The rules of dietetics have changed many times in my lifetime. Many scientific findings have changed from year to year. The scientists taught for decades that the world was once a nebulous, molten mass cast off from the sun, and later many scientists said it once was a whirl of dust which solidified. There are many ideas advanced to the world that have been changed to meet the needs of the truth as it has been discovered. There are relative truths, and there are also absolute truths which are the same yesterday, today, and forever—never changing. These absolute truths are not altered by the opinions of men. As science has expanded our understanding of the physical world, certain accepted ideas of science have had to be abandoned in the interest of truth. Some of these seeming truths were stoutly maintained for centuries. The sincere searching of science often rests only on the threshold of truth, whereas revealed facts give us certain absolute truths as a beginning point so we may come to understand the nature of man and the purpose of his life.
The earth is spherical. If all the four billion people in the world think it flat, they are in error. That is an absolute truth, and all the arguing in the world will not change it. Weights will not suspend themselves in the air, but when released will fall earthward. The law of gravity is an absolute truth. It never varies. Greater laws can overcome lesser ones, but that does not change their undeniable truth.
We learn about these absolute truths by being taught by the Spirit. These truths are “independent” in their spiritual sphere and are to be discovered spiritually, though they may be confirmed by experience and intellect. (See D&C 93:30.) The great prophet Jacob said that “the Spirit speaketh the truth. … Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be.” (Jacob 4:13.) We need to be taught in order to understand life and who we really are.
God, our Heavenly Father—Elohim—lives. That is an absolute truth. All four billion of the children of men on the earth might be ignorant of him and his attributes and his powers, but he still lives. All the people on the earth might deny him and disbelieve, but he lives in spite of them. They may have their own opinions, but he still lives, and his form, powers, and attributes do not change according to men’s opinions. In short, opinion alone has no power in the matter of an absolute truth. He still lives. And Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Almighty, the Creator, the Master of the only true way of life—the gospel of Jesus Christ. The intellectual may rationalize him out of existence and the unbeliever may scoff, but Christ still lives and guides the destinies of his people. That is an absolute truth; there is no gainsaying.
The watchmaker in Switzerland, with materials at hand, made the watch that was found in the sand in a California desert. The people who found the watch had never been to Switzerland, nor seen the watchmaker, nor seen the watch made. The watchmaker still existed, no matter the extent of their ignorance or experience. If the watch had a tongue, it might even lie and say, “There is no watchmaker.” That would not alter the truth.
If men are really humble, they will realize that they discover, but do not create, truth.
The Gods organized the earth of materials at hand, over which they had control and power. This truth is absolute. A million educated folk might speculate and determine in their minds that the earth came into being by chance. The truth remains. The earth was made by the Gods as was the watch by the watchmaker. Opinions do not change that.
The Gods organized and gave life to man and placed him on the earth. This is absolute. It cannot be disproved. A million brilliant minds might conjecture otherwise, but it is still true. And having done all this for his Father’s children, the Christ mapped out a plan of life for man—a positive and absolute program whereby man might achieve, accomplish, and overcome and perfect himself. Again, these vital truths are not matters of opinion. If they were, then your opinion would be just as good as mine, or better. But I give you these things, not as my opinion—I give them to you as divine truths which are absolute.
Some day you will see and feel and understand and perhaps even berate yourself for the long delay and waste of time. It is not a matter of if. It is a matter of when.
Experience in one field does not automatically create expertise in another field. Expertise in religion comes from personal righteousness and from revelation. The Lord told the Prophet Joseph Smith: “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it.” (D&C 93:30.) A geologist who has discovered truths about the structure of the earth may be oblivious to the truths God has given us about the eternal nature of the family.
If I can only make clear this one thing, it will give us a basis on which to build. Man cannot discover God or his ways by mere mental processes. One must be governed by the laws which control the realm into which he is delving. To become a plumber, one must study the laws which govern plumbing. He must know stresses and strains, temperatures at which pipes will freeze, laws which govern steam, hot water, expansion, contraction, and so forth. One might know much about plumbing and be a complete failure in training children or getting along with men. One might be the best of bookkeepers and yet not know anything of electricity. One might know much about buying and selling groceries and be absolutely ignorant of bridge building.
One might be a great authority on the hydrogen bomb and yet know nothing of banking. One might be a noted theologian and yet be wholly untrained in watchmaking. One might be the author of the law of relativity and yet know nothing of the Creator who originated every law. I repeat, these are not matters of opinion. They are absolute truths. These truths are available to every soul.
Any intelligent man may learn what he wants to learn. He may acquire knowledge in any field, though it requires much thought and effort. It takes more than a decade to get a high school diploma; it takes an additional four years for most people to get a college degree; it takes nearly a quarter-century to become a great physician. Why, oh, why do people think they can fathom the most complex spiritual depths without the necessary experimental and laboratory work accompanied by compliance with the laws that govern it? Absurd it is, but you will frequently find popular personalities, who seem never to have lived a single law of God, discoursing in interviews on religion. How ridiculous for such persons to attempt to outline for the world a way of life!
And yet many a financier, politician, college professor, or owner of a gambling club thinks that because he has risen above all his fellowmen in his particular field he knows everything in every field. One cannot know God nor understand his works or plans unless he follows the laws which govern. The spiritual realm, which is just as absolute as is the physical, cannot be understood by the laws of the physical. You do not learn to make electric generators in a seminary. Neither do you learn certain truths about spiritual things in a physics laboratory. You must go to the spiritual laboratory, use the facilities available there, and comply with the governing rules. Then you may know of these truths just as surely, or more surely, than the scientist knows the metals, or the acids, or other elements. It matters little whether one is a plumber, or a banker, or a farmer, for these occupations are secondary; what is most important is what one knows and believes concerning his past and his future and what he does about it.
When we were spiritual beings, fully organized and able to think and study and understand with him, our Heavenly Father said to us, in effect: “Now, my beloved children, in your spirit state you have progressed about as far as you can. To continue your development, you need physical bodies. I intend to provide a plan whereby you may continue your growth. As you know, one can grow only by overcoming.
“Now,” said the Lord, “we shall take of the elements at hand and organize them into an earth, place thereon vegetation and animal life, and permit you to go down upon it. This will be your proving ground. We shall give you a rich earth, lavishly furnished for your benefit and enjoyment, and we shall see if you will prove true and do the things that are asked of you. I will enter into a contract with you. If you will agree to exercise control over your desires and continue to grow toward perfection and godhood by the plan which I shall provide, I will give to you a physical body of flesh and bones and a rich and productive earth, with sun, water, forests, metals, soils, and all other things necessary to feed and clothe and house you and give to you every enjoyment that is proper and for your good. In addition to this, I will make it possible for you to eventually return to me as you improve your life, overcoming obstacles and approaching perfection.”
To the above most generous offer, we as sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father responded with gratitude. We took our turns and came to earth, as bodies were prepared by our earthly parents. We are now on trial—on the proving ground. This, also, is an absolute truth. It cannot be disproved. It is an incontrovertible fact. If one can accept these unassailable truths, then he is ready to start his experimentation and his laboratory work.
A few more salient facts, which I shall not attempt at this moment to elaborate upon: Adam and Eve transgressed a law and were responsible for a change that came to all their posterity, that of mortality. Could it have been the different food which made the change? Somehow blood, the life-giving element in our bodies, replaced the finer substance which coursed through their bodies before. They and we became mortal, subject to illness, pains, and even the physical dissolution called death. But the spirit, which is supreme in the dual man, transcends the body. It does not decompose but proceeds to the spirit world for further experience, with the assurance that after sufficient preparation there, a reunion will take place where the spirit will be housed eternally in a remodeled body of flesh and bones. This time the union will never be dissolved, since there will be no blood to disintegrate and cause trouble. A finer substance will give life to the body and will render it immortal.
This resurrection referred to is the work of Jesus Christ, the Savior, who, because he was both mortal (the son of Mary) and divine (the Son of God), was able to overcome the powers governing the flesh. He actually gave his life and literally took it up again as the “first fruits,” to be followed by every soul that has ever lived. Being a god, he gave his life. No one could take it from him. He had developed, through his perfection in overcoming all things, the power to take up his life again. Death was his last enemy, and he overcame even that and established the resurrection. This is an absolute truth. All the theorists in the world cannot disprove it. It is a fact.
Before his crucifixion, the Savior recognized the absolute necessity for an organization of persons duly empowered to carry on his work, teach his plan to the world, and persuade people to follow the eternal program. He therefore organized his Church among his faithful followers, with apostles, prophets, and other officials to give his people guidance. He sent those officials into all the world to teach his truths—but to teach them without using force, for the basic law of this world is free agency. Certainly men and women may use their free agency to do as they please, but they cannot ever evade the penalties that might come by reason of any error they make.
The Lord set up his program of organization fully, gave the governing principles and doctrines, and delegated his full authority to his officers to teach and perform ordinances. He ignored all the multitudinous religious organizations then extant and all their man-made doctrines and philosophies and set up his own divine plan. This is true. If all the proponents of the “-isms” on all the continents disbelieve it, it is still true—an absolute truth.
Even before he went to Calvary, the Lord knew that his young and pitifully small organization could not long resist the wolves of antagonistic philosophies and the terrific persecutions which would come, but he left some stalwart apostles and others to guide and build the kingdom. The Savior knew beyond doubt that an apostasy would come. It did.
Persecution was intolerable. The apostles are said to have suffered martyrs’ deaths. Innumerable others, both priesthood and laity, suffered unbelievable tortures. The Church was uprooted and almost destroyed by physical horrors; then finally, through pagan rulers who were not truly converted, Christianity was accepted and made popular. In order to do so and to get the nations to accept it, pagan superstitions and doctrines were superimposed upon the Christian doctrines and intermingled until the doctrines and ordinances established by the Christ were changed and diluted so that they had only a faint resemblance to the truth. With the authorized servants martyred and both authority and doctrines gone, the world went into a spiritual tailspin and plunged into the Dark Ages, wherein the true understanding of God and his plan was not upon the earth, when gross darkness enveloped the people, when there was little progress even in material things and an almost complete void of spirituality.
This apostasy is a certainty. There is no room for doubt. God’s church was lost for the moment, as it had been through many centuries in the past. The true plan of life was placed upon the earth in the beginning when it was given to Adam. After a few generations, the descendants of Adam went the way of the world and most of the earth’s children lost the truths and the knowledge of God and of the gospel. One descendant of Adam—Enoch—again established good communications with God and again established the truths upon the earth, but only comparatively few of the inhabitants listened and accepted; hence, there was another great apostasy from the truth.
The people of the world became so wicked that they were literally drowned and washed off the earth. Noah, a righteous prophet, reestablished communication with the Lord and carried on the work of the Lord, but only for a brief period, for weak mortal man permitted the flesh to control the spirit again, and another great apostasy took place and most of the people were without a knowledge and understanding of God.
Time passed, idolatry prevailed, wickedness increased—but finally the Lord sent a superior spirit to the earth, born the son of Terah. Though all on earth were apostate, having turned to the worship of idols and to murder, adultery, drunkenness, bribery, and all manner of evil, this child—Abraham—grew up with sufficient power and goodness to cause the heavens to open again, and God revealed again to him all these truths I am writing about. Abraham spent a glorious life teaching righteousness to his own numerous posterity and to others. As in all other dispensations, the majority went foul, ignored the true way, and followed the way of the world.
Then the Savior was born in Judea, ushering in another dispensation. He reestablished his truths on the earth—the priesthood, the power, the organization, the knowledge to save and exalt men—but, as stated earlier, this lasted only a few generations and was gone again.
Now, with the doctrines perverted, the priesthood gone, the organization corrupted, and the knowledge lost, there must come another awakening. And, as the prophet Daniel prophesied millennia ago, there finally came a day when another restoration of truth should come, this time never to be lost. We have that promise now, that even though individuals may fall, the Church and the gospel are here to stay, and all the powers of the earth and hell cannot effect total apostasy again. This much-needed restoration came through the Prophet Joseph Smith, who followed in the march of the prophets Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, and the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the Church organized through revelation by the Savior: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was organized by revelation from Jesus Christ. It was given full and complete authority, full and complete plans and programs.
This restoration was preceded by a long period of preparation. The Pilgrims and other Europeans were inspired to find this American haven of refuge and thus people this land with honest and God-fearing citizens. Washington and his fellows were inspired to revolt from England and bring political liberty to this land, along with the more valuable treasure of religious liberty so that the soil might be prepared for the seed of the truth when it should again be sown.
So, in the early nineteenth century, the “marvelous work and a wonder” was reintroduced into the world. The youthful Prophet, whose mind had not been contaminated with the sins of the world or prejudiced by false philosophies of men, was the instrument of the Restoration. As in all of the other dispensations, and especially the one preceding it when Jesus personally came to restore it, the little seed of truth had to fight a mountain of falsehood.
Church organizations made by men, without claim to divinity or revelation, were everywhere in abundance. The corrupted doctrines of former centuries were all there. Religious confusion reigned and most of the world opposed the work bitterly and cried “false prophet” at the first mention of the restored truth.
The tiny organization, begun in 1830 with six members, has had phenomenal growth to some four million in that short period. It is here to stay. This church of Jesus Christ (nicknamed Mormon) is the “only true and living church” that is fully recognized with the authority to perform for him, and the only one with a total and comprehensive and true program which will carry men to powers unbelievable and to realms incredible.
This is an absolute truth. It cannot be disproved. It is as true as the near-spherical shape of the earth, and as gravity; as true as the shining of the sun—as positive as the truth that we live. Most of the world disbelieves it; ministers attempt to disprove it; intellectuals think to rationalize it out of existence; but when all the people of the world are dead, and the ministers and priests are ashes, and the highly trained are mouldering in their graves, the truth will go forward—the Church will continue triumphant and the gospel will still be true.
The Lord has defined truth as being a “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” (D&C 93:24.) God’s existence is a reality. Immortality is a reality. These realities will not go away simply because we have different opinions about them. These realities will not be dissolved just because some have doubts about them.
Opinion? Of course, there is a difference of opinion; but again, opinion cannot change laws or absolute truths. Opinions will never make the earth to be flat, the sun to dim its light, God to die, or the Savior to cease being the Son of God.
Now, it is a good question which has been asked by millions since Joseph Smith phrased it: How am I to know which of all, if any, of the organizations is authentic, divine, and recognized by the Lord?
He has given the key. You may know. You need not be in doubt. Follow the prescribed procedures, and you may have an absolute knowledge that these things are absolute truths. The necessary procedure is: study, think, pray, and do. Revelation is the key. God will make it known to you once you have capitulated and have become humble and receptive. Having dropped all pride of your mental stature, having acknowledged before God your confusion, having subjected your egotism, and having surrendered yourself to the teaching of the Holy Spirit, you are ready to begin to learn. With preconceived religious notions stubbornly held, one is not teachable. The Lord has promised repeatedly that he will give you a knowledge of spiritual things when you have placed yourself in a proper frame of mind. He has counseled us to seek, ask, and search diligently. These innumerable promises are epitomized by Moroni in the following: “And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” (Moro. 10:5.) What a promise! How extravagant! How wonderful!
May I repeat, the time will come when there will be a surrender of every person who has ever lived on this earth, who is now living, or who ever will live on this earth; and it will be an unforced surrender, an unconditional surrender. When will it be for you? Today? In twenty years? Two hundred years? Two thousand or a million? When? Again, to you, John, I say, it is not if you will capitulate to the great truth; it is when, for I know that you cannot indefinitely resist the power and pressure of truth. Why not now? Much time has been lost. The years ahead can be far more glorious for you than any years in the past.
How foolish would be the enslaved Israelite who was born in slavery and had never known anything but slavery to say to himself, “This is life. There is nothing better than this. Here I get my belly full daily and a fair space in which to sleep.” How short-sighted he would be to prefer such status when he is told that across the sea and across the desert a promised land awaits where he can be free and well-fed, be master of his own destinies, and have leisure, culture, growth, and all one’s heart could rightfully desire. What does it matter? What is the difference between light and darkness—growing and shriveling—a giant and a pygmy—freedom and slavery—eternity and the one day—life and death?
Now, with great humility, I send this message to you, John, and to all others who may hear it, with a prayer in my heart that you will not cast it aside, but that you will think it through and ponder about it as you pray about it. There must be an open mind, a sincere heart, a desire, a reaching. The assurance will definitely come to you, but not unless you make an effort. I bear testimony to you that this is true. I know it. I send to you a solemn warning; and when you stand before the judgment bar in the not-too-distant future, you will know then that I spoke the truth with your eternal welfare in mind. Please remember that I have tried to bring this matter to your attention with such force that it would impress you. The true and living Church and its members and representatives stand ready to provide answers to any questions; and I promise you faithfully that if you will study and pray, keeping your mind open, you will receive the light, and it will be to you as the dawning of a new day after having gone through the night of darkness.
Again, I offer the assistance of the Church, but I will not push this matter upon you nor force it. You are mature, you have a good mind, you have a strong background, and the seeds of truth were sown in your life in your youth. All the powers of earth and heaven cannot bring this knowledge to you. It cannot be hoped for nor purchased. It must come by a careful, honest, and sincere investigation. The Church stands ready to furnish such assistance as you may require.
You cannot cast off this appeal and warning without grave responsibility. You will have to answer to your Creator if you ignore it, just as I would have to answer if I ignored it. I am doing my best to present it. I know that this is the only complete, divine, eternal program which is recognized and approved of God!
Joseph Smith went into a grove, spent a long time on his knees, and came out with a knowledge of the divinity of Elohim and his Son, Jesus Christ—such a firm conviction that he went voluntarily to his martyrdom rather than deny it.
Paul, on his way to Damascus, saw a glorious personage and heard his voice; and yet, after even these unusual manifestations, Paul prayed so that he could know beyond the shadow of doubt of the divinity of Jesus Christ, and of his Father, and of his eternal program, the gospel. He finally knew it so positively that he gave the balance of his life teaching it. He was stoned nearly to death and raised again. He suffered hunger, thirst, persecutions. And then, knowing full well that his life would be taken, he went gloriously to his death, thus giving not only his energy, time, and earning capacity, but his very life for the cause. Paul knew more about the healing and saving truths that were necessary for the welfare of human souls than all of the sages and the doctors of his time or this time. He knew that God lived, Jesus was the Christ, and the gospel was a way of eternal life, mortal and immortal, never ending; he knew that the rewards of eternities were worth the sacrifice of comforts of this life. You may know, as did Joseph Smith, Paul, and Peter, and as do a great number of your contemporaries. This is not another church. This is the Church. This is not another gospel or philosophy. This is the church and gospel of Jesus Christ.
Our Father lives; his Son lives. I am so sure of this that I am willing to bear witness of it with the last effort of my tongue and lips. I am willing to go into eternity and face my God with this testimony on my lips. Of these truths I bear witness in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Gospel topic: truth
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First Presidency Message
“The Truth Shall Make You Free”
By President James E. Faust
Second Counselor in the First PresidencyJames E. Faust, “The Truth Shall Make You Free,” Ensign, Sept. 1998, 2 Pilate asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). People have been struggling with this question for centuries. Each man or woman has the responsibility to find the truth.
Another appropriate question is, “Where can truth be found?” Perhaps a clue to the answer can be found in the following story:
Ali Hafed, an ancient Persian, owned much land and many productive fields, with orchards and gardens, and had money out at interest. He had a lovely family and was “contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented.”
An old priest came to Ali Hafed and told him that if he had a diamond the size of his thumb, he could purchase a dozen farms like his. Ali Hafed said, “Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?”
The priest told him, “If you will find a river that runs through white sands, between high mountains, in those white sands you will always find diamonds.”
Said Ali Hafed, “I will go.”
So he sold his farm, collected his money that was at interest, and left his family in the charge of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds, traveling through many lands.
The man who purchased Ali Hafed’s farm led his camel out into the garden to drink, and as the animal put his nose into the shallow waters, the farmer noticed a curious flash of light in the white sands of the stream. Reaching in, he pulled out a black stone containing a strange eye of light. Not long after, the same old priest came to visit Ali Hafed’s successor and found that in the black stone was a diamond. As they rushed out into the garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers, they came up with many more beautiful, valuable gems. Thus were discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the most valuable diamond mines in the ancient world. Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar or anywhere in his own fields rather than traveling in strange lands, he would have had acres of diamonds (adapted from Russell H. Conwell, Acres of Diamonds [1915], 4-9).
The search for truth is often not unlike Ali Hafed’s search for diamonds. The truth is not in distant lands but under our feet. Sir Winston Churchill once said of someone, “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened” (in The Irrepressible Churchill Stories, ed. Kay Halle [1966], 113).
One of the significant legal trials of all history was the trial of Socrates. The charge against him in the Athenian court was twofold in nature: first, that he was atheistic and did not believe in the gods prescribed by the state; and, second, that he was corrupting the youth, in the sense that it was contended he influenced the young people to inquire for themselves as to the wisdom of the Athenian society. Socrates was convicted by the majority of the jury and was sentenced to death by poison.
As a means of coming to truth, people in the Church are encouraged by their leaders to think and find out for themselves. They are encouraged to ponder, to search, to evaluate, and thereby to come to such knowledge of the truth as their own consciences, assisted by the Spirit of God, lead them to discover.
Brigham Young said: “I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security. … Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not” (Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe [1941], 135). In this manner no one need be deceived.
Searching and inquiring are a means of coming to a knowledge of all truth, whether that truth be spiritual, scientific, or moral. The restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and all that it means to us came about because of the inquiring after truth of the 14-year-old Joseph Smith, guided by the passage, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).
Many years of experience in courtrooms have taught me that truth, in the sense of obtaining justice, is arrived at only by questioning in a searching way.
Members of the Church are encouraged to seek learning from all good books and from any helpful source. For “if there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things” (A of F 1:13).
The Queen of Sheba, having heard of the fame of Solomon, came to visit him to learn if his fabled wisdom, his great wealth, and his splendid house were as great as had been reported to her. It is recorded that “she came to prove Solomon with hard questions” (2 Chr. 9:1). Solomon answered her questions, and she became satisfied and said to him, “It was a true report which I heard in mine own land of thine acts, and of thy wisdom” (2 Chr. 9:5).
The principal question that we each must answer for ourselves is that question spoken of by Amulek in the Book of Mormon: “And we have beheld that the great question which is in your minds is whether the word be in the Son of God, or whether there shall be no Christ” (Alma 34:5).
Some people in their searching, however, are not seeking for truth but are given to contention. They do not sincerely seek to learn; rather they desire to dispute,to show their supposed learning and thus cause strife. The Apostle Paul said to Timothy, “But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes” (2 Tim. 2:23).
Since each one of us has his free agency, the ultimate determination of what is inspired of the Lord, what is right and wrong, true or false, can be made by each of us. President J. Reuben Clark Jr. (1871-1961) made this statement: “The Church will know by the testimony of the Holy Ghost in the body of the members [themselves], whether the brethren in voicing their views are ‘moved upon by the Holy Ghost’; and in due time that knowledge will be made manifest” (“When Are Church Leaders’ Words Entitled to Claim of Scripture?” Church News, 31 July 1954, 10). Each must bear the accountability of accepting or discarding the values of truth, which values if followed will produce his greatest happiness.
As we each ask Pilate’s question, we can learn from the wisdom of Sir Francis Bacon, who said there are three parts in truth: first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the belief, which is the enjoyment of it (see “Of Truth,” in Essays [n.d.], 18).
President Harold B. Lee (1899-1973) on many occasions counseled the leaders of the Church to make time to think and ponder, to withdraw and evaluate. This wise counsel would be beneficial to anyone.
A key to individual knowledge and truth is contained in the ninth section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which promises that if inquirers will study a thing out in their mind, they shall have a burning feeling within their bosom of that which is right (see D&C 9:8).
Yet while the gathering of many facts may be very helpful and productive, the inquiring mind must not stop there. Henry Alford said: “Truth does not consist in minute accuracy of detail, but in conveying a right impression; and there are vague ways of speaking that are truer than strict facts would be. When the Psalmist said, ‘Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because men keep not thy law,’ he did not state the facts, but he stated the truth deeper than fact, and truer.”
Those who earnestly inquire, under the Spirit of God, will enjoy a companionship, not only of the Spirit, but of others who seek truth. Thomas Carlyle said, “I have always found that the honest truth of our own mind has a certain attraction for every other mind that loves truth honestly.”
There is no greater truth than that spoken of by the Savior: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32), and, He continues, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6), and “Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice” (John 18:37).
All who seek to rise above themselves must make a humble and honest inquiry to determine where truth lies: an inquiry in their hearts as well as in their minds and in their lives. May each of us consciously seek to know the truths of God and to courageously live those truths in love and thanksgiving.
C. Terry Warner
The LDS conception of truth does not fit any of the categories in which it has been discussed in the Western philosophical tradition. For Latter-day Saints, truth is found in living the type of life exemplified by Jesus Christ.In the Western philosophical tradition, truth is the characteristic or quality of an idea or statement that justifies belief in it. What this characteristic might be has been the subject of long-standing philosophical debate; some have said it is the correspondence with reality that true statements possess; some, their "tie-in" or coherence with other statements; some, their consequences or practical usefulness. So devastating have been the attacks upon each of these theories that in recent times many philosophers have abandoned altogether the traditional assumption that a firm or absolute kind of truth is possible. These philosophers say that because our knowledge of the world is heavily conditioned by the peculiarities of the particular language in which it is expressed, it is an interpretation at best; we have no basis for claiming we can ever know "how things really are," they argue, and therefore, whatever truth exists is relative to the speaker's language, culture, and situation. Absolute truth, thought of as a property of ideas or statements, is a concept that has fallen on hard times.
Commonly it is supposed that for Latter-day Saints truth is absolute in a way that makes it vulnerable to the relativist's arguments. But for Latter-day Saints, as their scriptures and everyday discourse reveal, truth is not primarily a matter of the correctness of ideas or statements, and consequently their view is not to be found among the traditional alternatives or any combination of them. Though they do speak of the truth of statements, they most often use the word "truth" to signify an entire way of life—specifically, the way of life exemplified, prescribed, and guided by Jesus Christ.
This conception of truth preserves senses attached to the word from the earliest times of which we have record. For example, central to the original idea of being true was "steadfast…adherence to a commander or friend, to a principle or cause,…faithful, loyal, constant, trusty," "honest, honourable, upright, virtuous,…free from deceit, sincere" ("True," Oxford English Dictionary). And among the main original senses of "truth" was "troth"—a pledge or covenant of faithfulness made uprightly and without deceit ("Truth," OED). It is in the spirit of these ancient etymologies that Latter-day Saints believe that to walk in truth is to keep one's commitments to follow Christ's way uprightly.
Because Christ perfectly embodies the virtue of being true and faithful (in his case, to the life his Father required of him), there is a crucial sense in which he himself is the truth. "I am the way," he said, "the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). He "received a fulness of truth" (D&C 93:26). His cosmic influence, called "the Light of Christ," is also the light of truth, giving life to everything and enlightening human minds. By means of this light, he is "in all and through all things" (D&C 88:6), a permeating presence. Given this sense of the word "truth," it is not odd, as it otherwise would appear, to say, as does a key doctrinal revelation, that "truth shineth" (D&C 88:6-13).
Latter-day Saint scriptures indicate that people can come to "know the truth of all things" by the power of the Holy Ghost (Moro. 10:5). The relevant contexts suggest this means to enjoy that comprehension of things that comes to the person who receives the light of truth and walks obediently in it. "He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things" (D&C 93:28). To the brother of jared, a Book of Mormon figure of extraordinary faith, the Lord showed "all the inhabitants of the earth…even unto the ends of the earth. For he had said unto him…that if he would believe in him that he could show unto him all things" (Ether 3:25-26). Other prophets have had similar experiences (Moses 1:8, 27-29; 7:21; Abr. 3:12).
A certain scriptural definition of "truth" is especially familiar to Latter-day Saints: "Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come" (D&C 93:24). Taken out of context (as it often is), this definition sounds like a statement of the correspondence theory of truth; but in context it expresses the morally richer idea of the comprehensive vision of reality that comes to those who walk in truth faithfully.
Understood in this way, disobedience and unfaithfulness are rejections of the light of truth. Satan "was a liar from the beginning" (D&C 93:25) and seeks always to "turn…hearts away from the truth" (D&C 78:10), partly by enticing people to become liars and deceivers themselves (D&C 10:25). The reason "men [love] darkness rather than light" is "because their deeds [are] evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved" (John 3:19-20). It is not for being mistaken that people are damned, but for their resistance to the truth they could receive if they would.
For Latter-day Saints, salvation is a matter of growing in truth and particularly in knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith taught that "a man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge" (HC 4:588) and that "it is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance" (D&C 131:6). In context these statements mean that one cannot be saved in ignorance of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Latter-day Saints who recognize that truth is not merely a property of language but is central to a life of obedience to the Savior do not interpret these passages to mean that the learned—the scholars and scientists—have a better chance of being saved. Gaining knowledge and becoming more godlike are two aspects of a single process, which helps explain the Latter-day Saint emphasis on education and personal scriptural mastery as well as on righteous living.
The prophets of the present dispensation, from Joseph Smith onward, have championed the idea that the Latter-day Saints have no exclusive access to truth. God enlightens people everywhere, and therefore, as Presidents of the Church have all insisted, insofar as other peoples have any principle of truth (and they do), "whether moral, religious, philosophical, or of any other kind, that is calculated to benefit mankind,…[we] will embrace it" (John Taylor, JD 1:155). However, these same prophets also claim that the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ that are necessary for salvation have been revealed in modern times exclusively through them.
Bibliography
Hinckley, Gordon B. "The Continuing Pursuit of Truth." Ensign 16 (Apr. 1986):2-6.
Roberts, B. H. Excerpts from The Truth, the Way, the Life: An Elementary Treatise on Theology. Provo, Utah, 1985.
Tanner, N. Eldon. "Ye Shall Know the Truth." Ensign 8 (May 1978):14-16.
C. Terry Warner
Neal Maxwell has been an assistant to the quorum of the twelve since 1976. He was ordained an apostle in 1981 at the age of 55. He is fourth in line to the presidency of the church in seniority.
Chapter 1
A View of Truth
Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.3
"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be... ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (2 Timothy 3:1-2, 7.)"There is no democracy of facts." (Author unknown.)
The Christian's view of truth sets him apart from others in a very strategic way, for there is a profound difference in his valuation of truth — though not necessarily in his fervor for finding out about all kinds of things — and in his view as to what the big issues are. Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.3 - p.4
We live in an age that is flooded with facts and issues, big and small. But, ironically, in some respects men are, as never before, . . . ever learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth," or of the real issues. The poet, e. e. cummings, described one view of learning when he wrote: "All ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again, a process which would be a reflection of futility as much as humility. Much of the flood flowing from the frontiers of knowledge is very valuable, but in the deluge of data there are also many insignificant truths. There are also isolate truths which are, in many respects, like the isolate individual— both wander in perpetual search of companionship and meaning. Some research is actually undertaken in reaction to the human condition— not to alleviate it. President John R. Silber of Boston University has observed:
"One can forget the meaninglessness of his own existence by occupying himself with scientific experiments of dubious import. Countless scientists and scholars spend their lives in the search of truths that are irrelevant to them." Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.4
Something can be both true and unimportant. Therefore, just as there are, in Jesus' words, "the weightier matters of the law," there are "weightier" truths! We must not only distinguish between fact and fancy, but know which facts are worthy of fealty.
The gospel of Jesus calls our attention to the reality that there is an aristocracy among truths; some truths are simply and everlastingly more significant than others! In this hierarchy of truths are some which illuminate both history and the future and which give to men a realistic view of themselves— a view that makes all the difference in the world.
In this context, one can see how being "learned" (by simply indiscriminately stockpiling a silo of truths) is not necessarily the same thing as being wise, for wisdom is the distillation of data— not merely its collection and storage.
So far as is known, the question Pilate put to Jesus, apparently without expecting the Savior to answer— "What is truth?"— has been answered only once: the Lord later said, ". . . truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come." Truth is a knowledge of reality of "things."
LONGITUDINAL TRUTH
Some realities are transitory and inconsequential; some realities maintain themselves everlastingly, or longitudinally, over vast spans of time. In the hierarchy of truth, therefore, some truths describe those realities which persist from age to age — which are more significant than fleeting facts. A knowledge of such central realities as the existence of God and his presiding and purposeful role in the universe, the great rescue mission of his Son Jesus Christ, and of man's co-eternality with our Heavenly Father is sovereign sense!Other gradations of truth reflect knowledge of those things which are often important, but passing and proximate. Neal A. Maxwell,
THREE TIMES ZONES PAST PRESENT & FUTURE
In point of value, longitudinal truth, when compared to truth which reflects reality as it exists in only a portion of one of the three great time zones — past, present, and future— is like the Bible when it is compared with the single issue of a newspaper.Telephone directories are useful, but inevitably obsolescent reflections of reality. Many of us still store in our memories old phone numbers, and veterans usually know their military service serial number. These are once useful but now useless facts. The Smallest Part, p.5
ULTIMATE REALITY
Knowing how, through the process of irrigation, land can be made more productive is actually very useful — proximately — but in terms of ultimate utility, man's need to know about soils does not compare in importance with that knowledge which concerns souls!Our stunning success in understanding physical nature is well known, but one irony that is little appreciated is the fact that many of the critical data about human nature are already available in the scriptures; these data do not need to be discovered — but merely openly accepted and seriously applied. Cataclysm for the people on this planet is most likely to flow from technology created by men who cannot also tame that technology because they cannot tame themselves by using the taming truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The truth which is most liberating, therefore, involves a knowledge of the controlling, cosmic realities in the universe.
NO VALUE FOR TRUTH THAT FATALLY CONFUSES
As Paul noted directly (1 Timothy 2:5) "the truth" is: "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." But life and education, of necessity, must be concerned with truths that are related to realities of all kinds — as long as we are not fatally confused about the gradations of truth. Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.6The Savior noted that if we are really serious about our discipleship, and continue in his word, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Knowing the truth about those things that really matter frees us from our inhibiting and finite perspective in the same way that turning the light on in an otherwise darkened room can keep us from stubbing toes and breaking furniture.
Plastic freedom, by contrast, is a naive freedom; it is filled with a kind of ersatz exhilaration such as a man might have who is unknowingly speeding along the white rapids of a river that takes him to a Niagara of consequences.
C. S. LEWIS
Only the all-pervasive perspectives of the gospel — walking in the bright light of the full truth about man and the universe — can make us free, for to achieve real perspective one must not only, as C. S. Lewis said, "keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through" his mind, but also those teachings and truths which transcend time.HARSH ARISTOCRACY AMONG TRUTHS
Thus, while the disciple of Christ is urged by the scriptures to seek out the best books, to learn about history and law and cultures (for Christianity is not a religion of repose — intellectually or behaviorally), he is also given potent reminders that there is no democracy among facts; indeed, there is a harsh, not-to-be-deposed aristocracy among truths, and one must come to final terms with "the truth" cited by Paul— not merely "a short armistice.Some truth can even be carried forward with us into our resurrected state and will give us "so much the advantage in the world to come," because such truth pertains to those dimensions of physical nature and human nature which will persist.
HIGHEST TRUTH FOCUS ON HUMAN HAPPINESS
These truths involve a knowledge of things which transcend and cut across all three great time zones. It is the acquisition of these truths which God has stressed through his prophets that should have priority, for they involve a particularized kind of knowledge that most often focuses on things pertaining to human nature and happiness. Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.7
KEY WORDS OF KNOWLEDGE
When Jesus criticized the lawyers of his time (Luke 11:52), he said they had "taken away the key of knowledge." In the inspired translation of the New Testament, Joseph Smith added five words: "for ye have taken away the key of knowledge, the fullness of the scriptures.Without the divine disclosures God has given to us, we face all the usual dangers of incomplete information, but these are compounded by cosmic consequences when we are ignorant, or heedless, of these key truths.
SEEK "KEY" TRUTHS
We should seek these "key" truths, not simply because such truths are shiningly there, but because it is by their light "that we see everything else!"INEVITABLE GRADATIONS OF TRUTH
The illustration may help us to understand how some realities, whether these realities are expressed as events or as laws of human nature, persist through all three time zones, but also, though important at the time, how other realities are but a micro-dot on the landscape of history. Therefore, all truth, as a knowledge of various realities, is similar in that respect, but there are inevitable gradations, both in the significance of truths and in our grasp of their implications. Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.8Thus, like the time-lapse photography we see on TV weather shows, clouds come and go, drop their water, shade us, cool us, vex us — but the land and water masses that persist beneath the passing clouds are like the unchanging truths by which men must manage their lives.
UNIQUE APPROACH TO TRUTH
This unique approach to truth, far from denigrating reason, gives us added reasons to develop our intellectual powers because, as John Locke said:"Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties: revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God. . . ."
Hence, to huddle in contentment without extending oneself intellectually and socially merely because one has knowledge of key truths is a betrayal of our trust. When one fails to stretch his "natural faculties," or to use the light God gives him, his is a stewardship gone sour. Brigham Young said:
"The laws that the Lord has given are not fully perfect because the people could not receive them in their perfect fullness; but they can receive a little here and a little there. . .
"Hence, if you wish to act upon the fullness of the knowledge that the Lord designs to reveal, little by little, to the inhabitants of the earth, we must improve upon every little as it is revealed." Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.9
It is no accident that men like Abraham, Moses, and Joseph Smith, who learned to see so much with their "eye of faith," were given splendid supplemental insights about the universe.
But God's desire to share must be met by our readiness to receive. We must be appreciative of, and skilled enough to deal with, the truth that is already "within reach" of our natural faculties. By discovering truth in its many independent spheres, and yet still being humble enough to be enlarged by "a new set of discoveries," truth begets truth. Without divine guidance, our cerebral calisthenics, though often fascinating to engage in, can be empty exercise.
Such an approach to knowledge is not other-worldly at all. The key, longitudinal truths are highly relevant because they are irretrievably connected with the very things that matter most "here and now." We need to see more clearly how such cosmic concepts have their mortal implications and consequences. Otherwise, we are apt to be confused about causality— like the weary soldier in the ballad of my old infantry division of World War II, who wanted to avoid any more beachheads: "I don't mind guns, but I can't stand bullets. Don't send me in."
CRUCIAL REALITY
Knowing the truth about "who" man really is involves both his identity and destiny, and the implications of such persistent realities include crucial information about what man's mortal environment should contain for his well being. The institution of the family is at "peril-point," for instance. Professor Urie Bronfenbrenner warns with regard to our spreading generational separateness:"In today's world children are deprived not only of parents but of adults in general. . . . What is needed is a change in our patterns of living that will bring adults and children back into each other's lives."
A rational scholar will not exclude data about the physical sciences which persist in breaking through with a statistical shout. Yet with regard to critical data about human nature, so many seem to be always "looking beyond the mark." Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.10
One would think it folly, for instance, if Holland spent a significant portion of its citizens' time and money destroying the dikes that hold back the sea; it would seem even more absurd if the Dutch people stood by cheering the wrecking crews! Yet, so much of what we are doing currently in our own culture is the equivalent of breaching the dikes, of removing tried and proven safeguards.
MUDERED BY A BRUTAL GANG OF FACTS
So little honest attention is given to such matters as family and self-discipline on which so much else depends, yet others clearly pay a social price for the hollowness of someone else's childhood, and we all have a stake in each other's capacity for self-discipline! LaRochefoucauld's words seem to describe some of today's programs which are sincerely designed to compensate for fundamental family failures: "There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts."One of the "brutal gang of facts" of our time concerns the reality "of things as they are"— that citizens who are untutored in restraint and who are driven by their unchecked appetites can neither behave as free men, nor leave other men free; truth includes a knowledge of that harsh reality!
He who is merely a "bundle of appetites" and has no capacity for self-discipline is neither educated nor free. A permissive climate is really a cruel climate, for it deludes its citizens into believing they must confront others— but not themselves; it elevates appetites by suggesting that we be accountable to these drives but not to people.
REAL INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM TIED TO TRUTH
Real individual freedom is tied to truth, it is not freedom a la carte — not freedom apart from everything else — not just to the absence of restraint! Freedom is the catalyst in the chemistry of choice; it is not an outcome to be achieved by itself alone. Free agency in its fullest sense requires the individual to be in command of himself, for one who is a prisoner of his bad impulses cannot really choose; another truth about "things as they are," therefore, is that we either control our bad impulses or they control us. Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.11EXAMPLE OF SODOM
We do not have much history about "things as they were" in the sensuous society that once was Sodom, but it is not likely that the citizens of Sodom decided at one gigantic civic rally to become the most wicked city in the world. The Sodomites simply sought pleasure, and things got out of control, and there followed lasciviousness, arrogance, idleness, and, significantly, a profound neglect of the poor and the needy. Indeed, sensuous souls often love their neighbors as themselves— i. e. not at all! Thus, Sodom was a free-wheeling, but very unfree society!Education often gives little more than a curricular curtsy to those kingly truths about family and freedom, even though there is an alliance between moral absolutes and tactical ideals. It is a temporizing tutor who plays his bellows on the fires of student idealism, while insisting that there are, after all, no absolute truths to which idealism can be inseparably connected. Jesus did not drive the money changers from the temple because of vague or relative indignation; he was indignant his Father's house had been made "a house of merchandise!"
Moral education based on eternal truths is necessary for the development of the selflessness each of us needs in order to persist in serving our fellowmen, for relativism does not lend itself to an appreciation of one's fellowmen. It was G. K. Chesterton who wisely observed that, "The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything."
APPLICATION OF TRUTH FOR BEHAVIORAL OUTCOME
Religion must, therefore, press for an emphasis on the application of truth and have a demonstrated concern for behavioral outcome. Rhetoric is an easy religion, and conversational Christianity makes few immediate demands of us, while permitting us to exclaim and despair over distant wrongs. Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.12Our individually imperfect attempts at applying these powerful truths are lamentable, but this is not an indictment of the truths involved; man's early attempts at flight produced many failures, but not because the laws of aerodynamics were unreliable.
Our perspective does affect our behavior and our view of our fellowmen. In fact, when men and women look at life through the lens of the gospel they will see not only more clearly, but more broadly, the realities, obligations, and opportunities around them, as the illustration suggests.
A PEEPHOLE OF PESSIMISM
Life, or any particular situation, if viewed only through the peephole of pessimism, presents a puzzling or discouraging picture indeed. Instead of wonder, awe, and pattern, which the Christian sees, the disciples of despair disclaim any knowledge of a "big picture" of life in which "all things denote there is a God. . . yea,. . . and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." The degree of divine disclosure — from peephole to a picture window view of things — is up to us, for so many today are like the Romans to whom Paul preached and whom he described as follows:"For the heart of this people is waxed gross and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted......(Acts 28:27.)
Without, for instance, some perspective about family, an individual is apt to slip into social error or be confused about the role of the state. Chesterton once wrote:
"Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city."
BALANCE TRUTH AND JUSTICE
Without a standard of truth, Society courts subtle disaster, and the basic human hunger for truth goes unmet. John Lukacs cautioned us about the need to balance our concerns for truth and justice:"Our world has come to the edge of disaster precisely because of its preoccupation with justice, indeed, often at the expense of truth. It is arguable, reasonably arguable, that there is less injustice in this world than a century ago. Only a vile idiot would argue that there is less untruth. We are threatened not by the absence of justice, we are threatened by the fantastic prevalence of untruth. . . . Truth responds to a deeper human need than does justice. A man can live with injustice a long time, indeed, that is the human condition; but he cannot long live with untruth." (The Passing of the Modern Age, New York: Harper & Row.) Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.14
This is certainly not to say that we should leave off our concerns about justice, but that we must begin to level with ourselves in the context of truth.
We not only need "the truth" to avoid the random life, to see good in others, and to meet a basic hunger — but also to provide a moral basis for society.
As Edward C. Banfield found in assessing the incapacity of citizens to cooperate in the area of Montegrano, Italy, ". . . the moral basis of the society may usefully be regarded as the strategic, or limiting, factor." Situations, Banfield wrote, "may be understood, or altered, better from this standpoint than from any other."
ANCHOR ETERNAL TRUTHS WITH SENSE OF AWE
Without the anchor of eternal truths, men may wrongly reason that the turbulence we have known in the physical sciences is characteristic of all knowledge. A geophysicist said of the Apollo 17 moon trip, "Everything we've learned from Apollo has been a surprise; there's not been one correct guess." Scientists, or at least many of them, are still open and capable of surprise and wonder. Perhaps this is a vital clue for men in dealing with the "key of knowledge" to which Jesus referred. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel has observed:"There is only one way to wisdom: awe. Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a marketplace for you. The loss of awe is the great block to insight." Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.15
Sir Isaac Newton had this sense of awe:
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." (Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, II, ch. 27.)
Thus the real "famine in the land" is the absence "of hearing the words of the Lord."
THE SKEPTIC SINKS BACKWARDS
For the Christian, mental progress means hungering after truth and righteousness and growing as Chesterton wrote, into more and more definite convictions..... It is the skeptic who sinks "slowly backwards into... vagueness.C. S. LEWIS
Intellectual nomads and behavioral gypsies knock on many doors but turn away because the rule is, says C. S. Lewis:"You must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language, the question should never be: `Do I like that kind of service?' but `Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?'"
NEED FOR KEY TRUTHS
So much turns, therefore, on one's view of truth and how deep his hunger is for what is contained in "the key of knowledge." So far as its view of truth is concerned, the gospel is galactic whereas secularism is so insular!Little wonder the prophets have been so concerned with theological truancy — for it reduces human happiness.
Some individuals are simply too busy to be concerned with key truths; others mistake their particular secular passion for the purpose of life; still other individuals specialize in tiny tactical truths and shrink from the strategic truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ because the latter are not only difficult to accept, but "too large to be managed"; many souls are kept from the truth "because they know not where to find it." Neal A. Maxwell, The Smallest Part, p.16
SPECIAL LONGITUDINAL TRUTHS
The special, longitudinal truths of the gospel help us to feel more and to see more clearly our circumstance — a vital thing in this secular dispensation of despair.Each of us may begin like the young servant of Elisha who feared for the future until "the Lord opened the eyes of the young man so that he could see what Elisha saw: celestial cavalry!
"And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?
"And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.
"And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." (2 Kings 6:15-17.)
STAND UNMOVED WITH A PROPER VIEW OF TRUTH
As the disciples of Christ seek to "stand in holy places" unmoved, theirs is a place with a view— a view of truth that, in a time of turbulence, can help us to "fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." For our own `holy place" can be a "heaven upon earth" when truth is honored as Francis Bacon prescribed:"Certainly it is a heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind to move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." (Francis Bacon, Essays, 1, "Of Truth.")
Maxwell, Neal A. Behold, I Say Unto You, I Cannot Say The Smallest Part Which I Feel. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1973.
I. The War Against Truth
The very term philosophy refers both to wisdom and love. Philosophy as the love of wisdom was always conceived as being intimately related to truth. For wisdom consists in the knowledge of those truths which are most central to human life and in a life based upon this truth. In the Presocratics, in Plato and Aristotle, and in the whole great tradition of Western philosophy which followed them, this relationship between truth and philosophical knowledge was always central. The idea of severing philosophy from the concept of truth or even of attacking truth as the foundation of philosophical and human life was unthinkable. Such an idea appeared indeed in various Greek sophists and skeptical schools but was never accepted by the great thinkers whose philosophy shaped the Occident.Not only was philosophy conceived as the loving quest for wisdom as knowledge of truth but it was also assumed that this loving desire for truth could be fulfilled, at least partially, through philosophical knowledge. Cognitive certainty and the liberation of man from mere opinions through indubitable knowledge of the truth was by no means a modern idea introduced first by Rene Descartes, but constitutes the classical ideal of philosophical knowledge, in Parmenides and the Presocratics, in Plato and Aristotle, with special emphasis in St. Augustine and throughout medieval philosophy.
The situation in the philosophical world has changed drastically over the last 250 years. Both central foundational assumptions of Western philosophy, that it seeks to achieve truth and that it can attain indubitable certainty about truth, were shaken at the roots. Philosophy, or rather philosophers or people considered to be such, began to eliminate truth, to dethrone it, to attack its very concept, or to replace it with other ideals of philosophy and to engage, in a word, in an all-out war against truth. This despair of the truth, this attack against it, this sapping of the foundations of truth and of certainty, took on many different forms which can hardly be even listed here.
At the root of this attack on truth there lies, perhaps, a profound skepticism which throws its shadow on man's previously unchallenged conviction that he was able to know reality and objective truth about reality. Fundamentally, this skepticism denies that man is able to know or to achieve any kind of certainty about reality and truth. Some skeptics argue to this position from an analysis of human subjectivity and from the impossibility of conceiving anything except by subjective acts of consciousness. Why would not all being and all truth be nothing but the object of man's thinking so that, to use Nietzsche's words, man knows nothing about the world as it would be if man's "head were cut off?" This form of skepticism which challenges the self-transcendence of consciousness (of the subject) to objective being "in itself" appears in various forms in Kant, in the late Husserl, in Nietzsche, and in many others.
Another possible reason why skepticism has become a dominant trend in Western thought is perhaps increasing historical knowledge, the living together of people with various religions and world-views in the same communities, and the kind of reflection on history we find in Hegel and other thinkers influenced by him. In these views it appears impossible to break out of the bounds of historically conditioned consciousness. Dilthey's work gave rise to a radical historical skepticism according to which all man can do is to feel himself and think himself into past cultures and world-views, reliving them and understanding them. Yet he can never rise to any trans-historical judgement on the truth or falsity of the opinions prevalent at different historical epochs. And while Hegel seeks to overcome historical relativism with his absolute standpoint, Kierkegaard points out in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript that, ultimately, such an attempt to overcome relativism with Hegelian assumptions is impossible. It is never clear in Hegel's work why his own opinions, too, could not just be one phase in the historical development of the Absolute Spirit and why their content might not be canceled and shown to be untrue by future historical developments such as occurred after Hegel. A similar historical relativism also dominates much of Existentialist philosophy and Marxist thought.
Other roots of skepticism lie in modern science and modern mathematics in which those truths that seemed prime examples of indubitable certainty to Euclid and Plato were challenged by such theories as the relativity theory of time or non-Euclidean geometries.
Along with these roots of skepticism, we also find the problem of the antinomies and paradoxes which play a crucial role in the Critique of Pure Reason,[1] but not realist philosophical thinking. Paradoxes and antinomies play an immense role in modern science and mathematics, too, where they led to a foundation crisis in mathematics and logic that is associated today with names such as Godel and others.
Again another root of skepticism lies in the empiricist and positivist philosophy of David Hume and his followers. According to them all human knowledge must be based on experience which they narrowly conceive to be nothing but sense impressions and ideas arising from these. From such a philosophical standpoint it appeared impossible to make any universal claims to truth because future experiences could always falsify any general claim. But if there are no absolutely universal principles that can be known with certainty, it follows that nothing can be known with certainty because there is no empirical thesis which does not presuppose universal logical or other propositions some of which at least must be "informative" or "synthetic a priori." For this reason, the doubt cast upon the possibility of knowledge of universal natures and essences of things led to a more universal doubt cast upon all knowledge.
Can we as thinkers, and not exclusively as Christians, escape the tremendous impact of such skepticism?
While skepticism threw into doubt the possibility of knowledge of the truth, it still accepted the fundamental notion of truth, it still presupposed that the truth of a proposition lies in some form of conformity between that proposition and things themselves. Truth is "adaequatio intellectus ad rem" or "adaequatio intellectus et rei." (Truth is a "conformity of the intellect to reality" or "a conformity between the intellect and reality.") Skepticism only doubts the possibility of ever knowing the truth of a proposition but simultaneously presupposes that truth would exactly lie in such a correspondence.
Therefore we are confronted with a much more radical attack on the notion of truth in those philosophies which replace the very concept of truth by other concepts. This is found, for example, in Pragmatism where we are no longer confronted with the understanding of truth as the conformity of a proposition to those states of affairs that obtain independently of it but where the truth of a proposition is identified with its success, be it with its success in the prediction of other events or be it with the success in a social or political sense. The most varied brands of Pragmatism pervade modern thought. A certain type of historical-political pragmatism also constitutes an element in Marxist philosophy. Here truth becomes functionalized. Propositions are true insofar as they contribute to social progress, to overcoming alienation, to the liberation of the proletariat, and so on. A similar reinterpretation and distortion of the concept of truth takes place in many traditionalist philosophers such as Mauras or de Bonald. For them the truth of propositions is identified with their function in the support of the ancien regime, of the established political order and traditions. Again, truth is no longer conceived as the conformity of propositions with reality but instead identified with some success that is wholly foreign to the questions of their conformity with reality. Similar forms of relativism and radical reinterpretations of the concept of truth implied in any relativism dominate the philosophies of transcendental German idealism and psychologism. The truth of propositions is identified with a relationship between beliefs of the subject and propositions, or with the social acceptance of propositions at a certain historical epoch, or with the coherence of propositions in a given system, and so on. Thus when we look at the overall situation of philosophy in our time, philosophy presents itself not as the simple effort to search for the truth and as achieving the supreme certainty of truth of which human reason by itself is able. Rather, much of the philosophy of the last few centuries and of the present shows itself to be a concentrated effort to attack the two notions that were fundamental for philosophy of the past: truth and certainty.
Thus the question poses itself: Can philosophy today in a critical form that remains mindful of what Hume, Kant, and other philosophers have posed as problems, recuperate knowledge and certain knowledge concerning reality itself? The question is larger still in scope: Can man, modern man, still reach, be it in religion, be it in philosophy or science, truth and certainty of knowledge? This journal, as its very title states, is dedicated to laying anew the foundations of intellectual and religious thought, to preserving these two great ideals which, uniquely modified, also apply to the Christian faith which is based upon the rock of truth and achieves a certainty peculiar to the act of faith. As there is no supernatural faith without nature, as there is no knowledge of Christ without some fundamental experience of the nature of things and of man, so the task of working towards the foundations of Christian faith also implies eminently the task of reason and of philosophy to clarify the natural foundations of any truth and knowledge. As I attempted to show in a book on the Philosophical Presuppositions of Faith, there is a great variety of epistemological, logical, ethical, metaphysical, anthropological truths which are necessarily presupposed by Christian revelation but which are never spelled out by revelation because their exploration belongs to the domain of natural human reason. This theme cannot be developed further in this context but the task of this paper is to show briefly that a rational foundation of a realist and objectivistic philosophy is possible today-despite the attacks of Hume and Kant and many of their successors against such a possibility.
The International Academy of Philosophy which was founded five years ago in Dallas, Texas, and continues its work, in 1986, in the principality of Liechtenstein, has set to itself the task of showing that an authentic philosophical renewal which returns to things in themselves, to reality and objective truth, is still possible today on a critical philosophical basis. In a book, to be published in 1986 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Press in the new IAP series, Studies in Phenomenological and Classical Realism, we have attempted to lay these foundations in a broader way. In the next few pages I shall only attempt to point to a few insights formulated by Augustine which allow us to overcome any form of skepticism and relativism, as well as any other replacement of authentic philosophy with substitutes. The importance of these insights can hardly be exaggerated, at a time when some of the greatest champions of liberal education, for example Leo Strauss, can write: "Philosophy is a quest for wisdom or quest for knowledge regarding the most important, the highest, or the most comprehensive things; such knowledge, he (Plato) suggested, is virtue and is happiness but wisdom is inaccessible to man . . . From this we must draw the conclusion that we cannot be philosophers- that we cannot acquire the highest form of education. We must not be deceived by the fact that we meet many people who say that they are philosophers. For those people employ a loose expression which is perhaps necessitated by administrative convenience . . . We cannot be philosophers, but we can love philosophy; we can try to philosophize. This philosophizing consists at any rate primarily chiefly in listening to the conversation between the greatest philosophers or, more generally and more cautiously, between the greatest minds, and therefore in studying the great books . . . Let us face this difficulty-a difficulty so great that it seems to condemn liberal education as an absurdity. Since the greatest minds contradict one another regarding the most important matters, they compel us to judge of their monologues, we cannot take on trust what any one of them says. On the other hand, we cannot but notice that we are not competent to be judges."
Here it is assumed that no knowledge of truth is possible. For it is silently presupposed by Strauss that the sufficient and necessary condition for knowing truth and achieving wisdom is the brilliance of a mind. In the light of Christianity this is of course a great mistake because very many simple people may be more open to the faith and receive it as a gift from God than the greatest minds. But it is also an illusion in the light of the insights philosophy can gain: in many of his dialogues Plato outlines the important ethical conditions of philosophical knowledge of the truth and the tremendous obstacles to the knowledge of truth and the sources of errors which afflict most of all the most brilliant and gifted of the Sophists. In his Republic, Book VI and VII, for example, he points out with great profundity that the most dangerous minds and those which fall into the deepest errors are precisely the ones that are most gifted but for one or another reason are misguided. But can we be the judges between a Plato and a Protagoras! Is not Strauss right and truth altogether hidden from us? Is it accessible to us simple minds and accessible through reason?
The universal accessibility of truth and certainty, even on the level of natural philosophical knowledge, becomes not yet sufficiently evident when we realize the great moral obstacles to the knowledge of truth which may explain the conflict of opinion between the greatest books but will appear more clearly when we now turn to a further unfolding of insights which Augustine has developed and in which the evident givenness of things themselves, and the evidence of objective truth discloses itself to our minds.
II. Indubitable Knowledge of Truth in the Cogito
In De Trinitate (X,X,14) St. Augustine formulates with great precision how the human mind, even when it finds itself threatened by the most radical skeptical doubt, can reach indubitable certainty of knowledge, a certainty which is immune to any possible skeptical objection because it reaches that which is both evident in itself and which is presupposed by any skeptical doubt. He writes:On the other hand who would doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives; if he doubts, he understands that he doubts; if he doubts, he wishes to be certain; if he doubts, he thinks; if he doubts, he knows that he does not know; if he doubts, he judges that he ought not to consent rashly. Whoever then doubts about anything else ought never to doubt about all of these; for if they were not, he would be unable to doubt about anything at all.
Transl. by Stephen McKennaIn this and many other formulations, Augustine takes his sole starting point in doubt, more radically still than Descartes, and he overcomes this radical doubt in a more grandiose fashion than Descartes, by showing that the reality of doubt itself presupposes necessarily what will turn out to be two types of indubitable knowledge.
Indubitable Knowledge of Real Being in the Cogito: Cogito; ergo sum; ergo esse est
Even if I doubt the reality of everything, I still discover in this act with absolute certainty that I live and that I am conscious as subject.
At first, we have to marvel at the datum of the immediate experience of myself as knowing existing subject which is an experience of such an original structure that it is entirely irreducible to anything else.
To begin with, this knowledge of myself is in no way arrived at by mediation of other premises, but it is immediate and not a conclusion of a logical argument. But it is not enough to characterize the inescapable givenness of my own being in indubitable knowledge by referring to the immediacy of the cognition of my being. We have to add that our own being is accessible to us in an entirely interior fashion-by being consciously lived from within. There is no more immediate and interior givenness of a being than this self-awareness of the person. It is decisive to see with Augustine that my being is not given here like an object over against me of which I would be conscious, as this occurs in explicit reflective self-knowledge (se cogitare). I know myself already prior to any such objectifying, turning myself into an object as it occurs in conscious reflection-in which my being becomes an object of which I gain consciousness and over which I return-in what Plotinus and Thomas Aquinas called a reditio perfecta mentis in seipsam. Augustine distinguishes the immediate self-awareness of my concrete individual being which I constantly possess and identifies it as nosse se. He contrasts it in another famous passage with the cogitare (cognoscere) se, saying that only in such a cogitatio a full thematic cognition of the mind itself happens:
But so great is the power of thought that not even the mind itself may place itself, so to speak in its own sight, except when it thinks of itself. And consequently nothing is so in the sight of the mind, except when one thinks of it, that not even the mind itself, by which is thought whatever is thought, can be in its own sight in any other way than by thinking of itself. But how it is not in its own sight when it does not think of itself, since it can never be without itself, just as though itself were one thing and its sight another thing, I am unable to discover. It remains, therefore, that its sight is something belonging to its nature, and the mind is recalled to it when it thinks of itself, not as it were by a movement in space, but by an incorporeal conversion; on the other hand, when it does not think of itself, it is indeed not in its own sight, nor is its gaze formed from it; but yet it knows itself, as if it were a remembrance of itself to itself.
Saint Augustine, The Trinity (XIV, VI, 8), translated by Stephen McKenna (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1970), p. 420-421. Here we see that the vivere se, our own conscious being, life, and acts, are known to us more immediately than by reflective thought: in the very performance of consciousness itself. We are our own conscious being and live it, and in living it is given to us in a most interior fashion prior to any objectivizing reflection in which we think of ourselves (cogitare se). Moreover, our actions, so we may interpret Augustine's philosophy of consciousness in the light of some contributions of K. Wojtyla, are reflected by our consciousness, even after they have passed, in a memoria which is again prior to any explicit act of reflection. As it appears clearly in moral conscience, we know ourselves prior to thinking about ourselves, as this occurs in explicit reflection and self-knowledge. In fact, as Augustine puts it audaciously, it is "as if we were the memory of ourselves." Our acts are reflected, illumined, and judged in some fashion prior to them becoming explicit objects of reflection.
Nevertheless, this immediate, pre-objectivizing acquaintance with our own being, in spite of its indubitable immediacy, is not yet what occurs in the cogitatio sui ipsius (thought = explicit knowledge of oneself). For only when we make our being an object of acts of reflection and thought, can it be known fully by us. Tanta enim est cogitationis vis-"for so great is the power of objectivizing thought" that even the mind, which knows itself most immediately and by which we know everything else, can know itself only when it places itself as it were in front of its own thought. While on the level of such objectivizing thought about our being and life many errors and distortions can occur which do not exist on the two previously mentioned more immediate forms of self-acquaintance, the philosophical knowledge "that we live" is not less evident and absolutely indubitable. It is indubitably certain and makes the evident and immediate cognitive contact with our own being the starting point of the knowledge: "I am." The philosophical knowledge of ourselves grasps the concrete fact of our own being with indubitable certainty.
Someone might object: Is this not a merely subjective knowledge that we (I) exist? This knowledge does not refer to the objective reality of the material world explored by science, the object of our sense-perception and social relations. We reply: Far from establishing any merely "subjective" knowledge, the thrust of Augustine's insight is precisely that not only is the I just as objective a reality as all the trees out there and all the stars and the entire material world but also the mind is far more wonderful than all the mountains, trees, and material beings. Thus we touch in our own being one objective and real being, and one which is far more important and real than the whole material universe. Therefore we can interpret Augustine with Hildebrand and say that the point of the cogito really is: "I am; therefore one objective entity is; therefore being itself is."
In this indubitable knowledge of real facts I grasp not only that I as subject exist, but also that I doubt, that I do not know, etc. Hence, each and every act of mine is given to me with a similar certainty to the one in which I grasp the reality of the sum in self-knowledge in the strictest sense. And in knowing the vivere se as well as the existence of all the acts in me I grasp also the truth, the truth that I am, and that I think, doubt, lack certainty, judge, etc. This indubitable discovery of truth in the Cogito is explicated by Augustine in another important passage:
Then conceive the rule itself which you see, in the following way. Everyone who knows that he is in doubt about something, knows a truth, and in regard to this that he knows he is certain. Therefore he is certain about a truth. Consequently everyone who doubts if there be a truth, has in himself a true thing of which he does not doubt; nor is there any true thing (verum) which is not true by truth. Consequently whoever for whatever reason can doubt, ought not to doubt that there is truth. Where this is seen, there is a light without the spaces of place and time, and without the deceiving imagery associated with such spaces. Can these truths in any way corrupt, even if every thinker were to die or would long be in the grave? For the thinker does not make such (truths) but he finds them. Therefore also before he finds them, they remain in themselves; but when they are found, they renew us.
(translation mine).The truth of these facts, the truth of the proposition that I exist, and that I doubt, is likewise discovered in the indubitably known fact that I exist. More than that, Augustine says that each of these facts and truths implies even infinitely many others which formally follow from it:
But if such things alone belong to human knowledge, then they are very few; unless it be that they are so multiplied in each kind that they are not only not few, but are even found to reach an infinite number. For he who says: 'I know that I live,' says that he knows one thing; if he were then to say: 'I know that I know that I live,' there are already two things, but that he knows these two, is to know a third thing; and so he can add a fourth and a fifth, and innumerable more, as long as he is able to do so. But because he cannot comprehend an innumerable number by adding one thing to another, or express a thing innumerable times, he comprehends this very fact and says with absolute certainty that this is both true and so innumerable that he cannot truly comprehend and express its infinite number. Likewise if someone were to say: 'I do not will to err,' will it not be true that whether he errs or does not err, yet he does not will to err? Would it not be the height of impudence for anyone to say to this man: 'Perhaps you are deceived,' since no matter in what he may be deceived, he is certainly not deceived in not willing to be deceived? And if he says that he knows this, he adds as many known things as he pleases, and perceives it to be an infinite number. For he who says, 'I do not will to be deceived, and I know that I do not will this, and I know that I know this,' can also continue from here towards an indefinite number, however awkward this manner of expressing it may be.
Augustine, De Trinitate XV, XII, 21 (translation McKenna, ibid., p. 480-2). Thus from the indubitable truths of fact about my own existence and acts follow infinitely many other factual truths about my knowledge. This discloses also the access to number, to infinite number, with all the necessary lawfulness of numbers explored by arithmetic, as contained in the indubitable knowledge which is given with, and is the condition of, even the most radical skeptical doubt. Yet this leads us already to a new point to which we shall instantly return: the cognition of universal necessary truths contained in the Cogito. If this can be justified, both Hume and empiricism, which seek to reduce them to analytical propositions, and Kant, who denies their objective foundedness in the essences of things themselves, can be overcome and therewith the two main roots of modern subjectivism, skepticism, and relativism.
Knowledge of Universal Necessary Truths Implied in Skeptical Doubt Yet all of these things could not be known by me, had I not also some knowledge of universal fact, of eternal truths. In the everyone contained in the quoted passages Augustine already refers to this fact. Indeed, without knowing such strictly necessary and universal facts, I could also not know the individual facts of the "that I live" and all the others discussed thus far. Let us explain this, following again the lead of Augustine's and Descartes' texts. The reality of my own conscious existence and life is known indubitably precisely because I understand that my being cannot just appear or seem to me but is real and is in itself. For every "seeming" to a subject, every "appearing" to him, presupposes the real subject to which something appears or seems. And this subject of deception cannot be an appearance again. This is a universal essentially necessary fact, which I grasp in a synthetic a priori knowledge which is founded on the objective essence of appearing, seeming, and being. Augustine expresses this in another important passage, the best known form of his cogito- argument:
But, without any delusive representation of images or phantasms, I am most certain that I am, and that I know and delight in this. In respect of these truths, I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians, who say, What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived: and if I am deceived, how am I deceived as to my existence? For it is certain that I am if I am deceived. Since therefore I, the person deceived, would be, even if I were deceived, certainly I am not deceived in this knowledge that I am. And, consequently, neither am I deceived in knowing that I know. For as I know that I am, I know this also, that I know. And when I love these two things, I add to them a third thing, namely my love, which is of equal moment. For neither am I deceived in this, that I love, since in those things which I love I am not deceived; though even if these were false, it would still be true that I loved false things. For how could I justly be blamed and prohibited from loving false things, if it were false that I loved them? But, since they are true and real, who doubts that when they are loved, the love of them is itself true and real? Further, as there is no one who does not wish to be happy, so there is no one who does not want to be. For how can he be happy if he is nothing?
Augustine, De Civitate Dei XI, XXVI (translation by M. Dods, Basic Writings of Augustine, Vo1 II, New York, 1948).
My own being and my acts can never be only an irreal object of conscious acts, without really being in themselves. Noemata (Husserl's term for objects of any conscious, intentional act) of the form of seeming and appearance have no other being except the "thin" existence which they possess as pure object of our consciousness. Augustine's and Descartes' insight is precisely that it is impossible that our own being and acts only appear to be. They are existing real beings and part of my real being. Any possible deception and error in which we are fooled by seeming facts which are not, presupposes this absolute Archimedean point of the real being of the subject who is deceived and who therefore cannot be deceived in this cognition that he exists.
Any form of theory which interprets the being of the subject as merely constituted object of some transcendental consciousness (which would also constitute itself) falls into the same untenable contradiction pointed out by Augustine, and denies the eternal truth which Augustine uncovers: that any possible object of thought and constitution presupposes the non-constituted reality of the subject, and therefore of one real being.
Yet with equally indubitable evidence I find, says Augustine, that I cannot doubt without remembering what I am doubting about. Again, this fact is not just found in myself as the individual fact of my own doubt discussed above. Rather, I grasp from the very essence of doubt that no man, no thinking subject in any possible world, could doubt without having some awareness and cognition of the object of his doubt. This intentional structure of doubt as necessarily going beyond an immanent state of consciousness towards something which is doubted, is disclosed as belonging to the very essence of doubt itself. Moreover, we can see that this object of doubt must possess a certain structure, that is, it cannot be simply a man, a rose, etc. which I doubt. Rather, only a "state of affairs," the "being-b of an A" can be the object of doubt: only that something exists, or that something has or does not have a certain predicate, can be the object of doubt.
I doubt not simply the one state of affairs but I doubt whether or not it obtains. This "whether or not" which characterizes the complex object of doubt reveals another essentially necessary fact about the object of doubt. In doubt we always regard at least two contradictorily opposed states of affairs (Sachverhalte): that something is or is not X. Thus the radical doubt of all truth implies that it is not certain whether or not there is truth. I doubt all truth, that is, I am uncertain of whether or not it is.
But if this is the case, Augustine explains in an earlier version of his Cogito, I grasp at the foundation of doubt also the universal principle which Aristotle calls the "first and most certain of all principles," namely the principle of contradiction. For if it were not impossible that one and the same thing A possesses and does not possess existence or a predicate B, then the meaning of doubt is undermined. Doubt, in order to be meaningful at all, presupposes the absolute validity of the principle of contradiction. I grasp that either there is truth or there is no truth, but both cannot occur. If they could both be, A and its contradictory opposite, then doubt would make no more sense.
Count, if you can how many there are: . . . if there is one sun (only), there are not two; one and the same soul cannot die and still be immortal; man cannot at the same time be happy and unhappy; . . . we are now either awake or asleep; either there is a body which I seem to see or there is not a body. Through dialectic I have learned that these and many other things which it would take too long to mention are true; no matter in what condition our senses may be, these things are true of themselves. It has taught me that, if the antecedent of any of those statements which I just placed before you in logical connection were assumed, it would be necessary to deduce that which was connected with it . . .
Augustine, Contra Academicos, III, XIII, 29.
Hence the most radical skeptic sees that a thing cannot be and not be in the same sense and at the same time. The unfolding of this knowledge would make us understand how many additional evidences it implies, and how all the things Husserl's Logical Investigations and Pfaender's Logik unfold about the essence of the principle of contradiction, about the distinction between its ontological and its logical sense, about the difference between the immediate knowledge in which it is given, about the difference between its evident objective truth and its mere presupposedness by thinking, etc., are contained and implicitly seen in the most radical doubt. They form part of the nucleus of indubitable truth without which the person cannot live and perform any conscious act at all, including doubting.Moreover, everybody who doubts also understands (intelligit) that he doubts. This implies the truth that no apersonal unconscious being could ever doubt. Doubt presupposes not only the directedness towards an intentional object of doubt but also the self-awareness and self-consciousness which permits the unique act of reflection, the understanding that I think and doubt. A being which would be totally absorbed in objects and which could not take the step back involved in reflection, a being which could not bend back over itself in what Augustine calls an entirely immaterial conversion over itself and in what Thomas Aquinas called the "complete return of the mind over itself," could also not doubt. This fascinating act in which the subject is both subject and object of reflection, is again necessarily implied-at least as possibility-by doubt. The type of consciousness which suffices for feeling physical pain, which animals can likewise experience, would not suffice for doubt, because doubt presupposes precisely that higher mode of personal consciousness that permits that its subject "understands that he doubts."
Moreover, I do not only understand that I doubt but "I know also that I do not know." This refers again to an absolutely universal fact that in order to doubt I have to know that I do not know. First of all, when I doubt, at least in the sincere doubt which is not just a pretext and rejection of knowledge, I do actually not know the fact of which I am doubting. For it is impossible for me to doubt the indubitable truths which I have just discovered. I can only doubt if my knowledge is uncertain in virtue of some deficiency, and if there is, for this reason, some dubitability in my conviction about a fact or state of affairs. But the mere lack of (certain) knowledge is not sufficient for doubt. Rather, I have also to know that I do not know, in order to doubt. This is another reason why doubt presupposes necessarily a subject which is capable of the act of reflection and of grasping the absence or limits of knowledge. Another essentially necessary fact which is presupposed for any act of doubt is the will to be certain and to avoid error. Any genuine doubt presupposes the desire for knowledge. This implies again a whole world of related facts. In seeking to know, the one who doubts also understands what knowledge is, and that only a receptive- discovering contact with being in which that which is the case manifests itself to the spirit, is knowledge, not any mere assuming or positing which does not coincide with that which is.
But also the nature of truth is thus discovered in doubt, the nature of truth as a unique sort of conformity between judgements and the states of affairs posited in them. And with truth which I wish to attain, also the essence of the error which I wish to avoid in doubt is known. For I could not doubt if I did not wish to avoid error. Then it would make no sense to doubt.
Thus knowledge, conviction, judgement, truth, error, certainty-all of these are given in the act of doubt, and countless further essentially necessary facts about each of their natures can be brought to evidence by simply carefully attending to the act of doubt. Insofar as doubt contains the question about truth, one could also unfold the necessary essence of the question both as act and as thought, and show that the latter cannot be true or false, etc.
Insofar as nobody doubts who does not prefer knowledge to error and to doubt, I also perceive that some axiological knowledge is gained in doubt. The value of knowledge and truth when compared to falsity and error, the superior value of knowledge when compared to doubt, etc. are known in doubt. Even the difference between the purely intellectual disvalue of error as opposed to the moral disvalue of the person who does not even seek truth or who lightly claims its possession, can be known by delving into the nature of sincere doubt.
One can also see that, apart from their intrinsic value as a positive importance which they possess in themselves, knowledge and the desire and love of truth are goods for the person who possesses them and that error is an evil for him. Even hierarchical gradations of values and goods for the person must be known, in order for genuine doubt to be possible. The doubting subject must understand that it is a greater evil to err than to doubt, otherwise he would have no motive to doubt instead of putting forth blind claims. He must understand that his doubt differs from a cynical rejection of truth as well as from a hypocritical untrue claim to certainty where it is lacking.
Finally, everyone who doubts judges that he ought not to assent rashly. In this again the doubting subject has to make at least two judgments: that he does not possess sufficient knowledge to give his assent to a proposition, and that he ought to abstain from judging if he possesses insufficient knowledge to warrant the judging assent. The doubt is then recognized as the response due to this situation and as preferable to the blind assent of the one who judges lightly. Also the existence and essence of time-in the transition from the moment in which I doubt to that in which I gain certainty and in the impossibility of doubting and being certain about the same thing simultaneously in the same sense-can be known by grasping the essence of doubt.
"If these things were not, he could not doubt of anything."
Of all of these things of which Augustine says that their knowledge is presupposed for even the most radical doubt to be possible, we shall examine, in a sequel to this paper, more closely only one, in accordance with the topic of this paper, namely truth. http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth14.html Monday, October 28, 2002