"What do we mean by Truth and Absolute Truth?"

This is an extensive series of posts rom the CathNews Discussion Board in response to a series of questions put to me by PeterS on these questions...

Peter,

: In saying that the "the pursuit of truth is
: the prime spiritual quest"you are
: acknowledging that there is TRUTH to be
: FOUND. How can the "pursuit of truth" be an
: END in itself?

Yes, Peter, I am acknowledging that there are a number of levels of truth to be found. In the context of this present discussion I think the three most important "truths" to be found are (a) those "absolutes" such as we find through Divine Revelation in Scripture, those that have been passed down to us through the centuries by human reflection on Scripture, direct prayer and meditation with the Divine and through the revelation that is slowly given to humankind through the sciences and non-Church fields of human activity.

It is the foregoing "truths" which form "the raw material" for the second order of truth. So, (b) these truths, which I believe are actually the most immediately important truths in the process of "salvation" or "getting to heaven", are the truths we have to work out for ourselves by navigating, and applying the truths in (a) to the practical moral decisions we have to make in our lives. It is our navigation of, and increasing competence in gradually becoming better and better at discerning these particular "truths" that actually grows us in "universal holiness" and "sanctity" and "fitness for heaven or salvation". Salvation itself I believe to be achieved as a result both of the grace of God and of "the Way (of thinking and acting)" that we develop through the process of discerning the truths in this (b) category. The application of category (a) truths in the lived situations of category (b) does often involve us in having to disregard, disobey or modify the category (a) truths. This is no great "ooooh, aaaah" thing though. We are all doing it "all the time" and hardly notice that that is in fact what we are doing. For example almost no one obeys the speed limits 100% of the time. All Church-sanctioned moral decisions in the realm of "Double Effect" to some extent break, suspend or disobey some category (a) "truths".

Thirdly, I believe (c) the most important "Truth" of all though is the final "ABSOLUTE TRUTH" which alone is found only in the Divine. These are these things and insights that Christ says to us "will be revealed finally at the end of time". It is these truths in (c) which I believe are our ultimate destination. Christ himself is telling us that, along with other things like "love" and "peace" and other qualities which we can only vaguely understand in a supernatural frame of reference but use natural frame of reference words in order to try and describe.

I submit that the foregoing paragraph answers your question: "How can the Œpursuit of truth¹ be an END in itself ?"

: Also by saying that you are in "pursuit of
: truth"Tom, you appear to acknowledging that
: you haven't yet FOUND truth or the
: fullness of truth ?

Yes, Peter, I am acknowledging that I haven't found it yet. And in fact Christ himself tells us that we cannot find it "until the end of time". I am happy with that limitation that God has imposed on us. I do though believe there is a hierarchy of truths. Using the a, b, and c categories above. I think the highest truths are found in (c) category. They are the only "Absolute Truths". I believe all other truths are relative. But I do not mean that in the "relative sense" that we can choose to believe whatever we feel. I mean they are "relative" in the Einsteinian and Quantum Physics sense that they are modified through time, through increasing knowledge of the attendant parameters or variables, and even through the medium through which we view something. Truth can often change simply because of the different pair of glasses one is figuratively wearing or because of some slight change in the angle of frame of reference from which you are viewing what you think is some "absolute" (deliberate small "a"). The "Truths" though in category (a) in the schema above though tend to have a higher level of "absoluteness" to those in category (b) though.

Let me deal with category (a) truths first. I accept, for example, that the tenets of the Nicene Creed are "absolute truths" in the realm of Revelation and my Catholic Faith. I accept them partly on faith but as much, that as my life lengthens my increase in faith and just lived experience and wisdom, demonstrates to me that they are "true". There are other Church truths which I do not accept with the same level of "absoluteness". For example, and as I argue at length in this and other forums, I do believe the Church has seriously skewed the relationship between the Ten Commandments and particularly how certain aspects of the Sixth Commandment need to be interpreted. I sincerely believe the Church has to go "back to the drawing board" on all of that stuff. I believe the Ten Commandments are "dogmatic truths". I do NOT believe all the particular interpretations placed on the Ten Commandments by anyone, or even by Pope John Paul II are necessarily "dogmatic truths". Truths that come to us from scientific knowledge, or from the thinking of mystics, theologians and scholars are in another category again and they would require a book to describe. Let me briefly just give one small illustration in the next paragraph though.

From the sciences we know, for example, about gravity today. The Laws of Gravity I also accept as Laws of God. They enable us to see something of "the mind of God" and the principles by which he constructed the Universe. These laws are "discovered" by human beings, and sometimes even by atheists, but the architect of these laws I believe is God. Some of these "laws" are only partially understood, or they may still be in the realms of hypothesis (such as certain aspects about "Evolution" or "the Big Bang"). Sometimes one needs to specify a frame of reference in which they are "absolute". For example Newton's Laws of Physics can be considered "absolute" within a macro or Newtonian frame of reference. In other words around the size and scale of things we deal with in our ordinary everyday lives. Some of Newton's Laws of Physics though break down and no longer apply in a micro or cosmological frame of reference. (i.e. very, very small, or very, very large frames of reference.) Similarly some of the Laws of Quantum Physics only seem to meaningfully apply in the Quantum (very, very small) domain. There is an emerging understanding though that the Quantum Laws have a higher order of truth to them than, say, Newtonian Laws. For example Quantum Laws still operate and apply at the macro level but we simply cannot see them applying there because of scale factors. And they also seem to apply at the Cosmological scale but again we cannot see them operating there in the same way that we see their effects at the, say, sub-atomic scale. Newton's Laws though are basically only true in their own frame of reference.

Category (b) truths are the most relativistic truths of all. They are, as I've already said, derived from the category (a) truths, but they are modified by the parameters in which life is lived. In recent days I've given a detailed example of the difficult moral journey I went through when my father was dying. These were category (b) moral truths I was dealing with here. One day "the moral truth" was that I was comforting him and providing pastoral assistance in helping him make the transition to the next life. A day or so later I was in a sort of "no man's land" not knowing clearly what I was supposed to be doing. As the hours went by that gradually clarified and the "moral truth" I had to follow is that I was seeking to help him recover. Almost in the flash of an eye on the last Thursday night though this all bounced back to the exact opposite position again and I was again providing pastoral care and comfort to help him make a peaceful transition to the next life. Over the last few years I have now given many, many examples of these category (b) truths in this forum. There is no priest there to help us decide what these "truths" are. The Church simply does not have enough priests to be able to sit on everyone's shoulder telling them how to make these decisions. We have to make them ourselves. We do so through our knowledge of category (a) truths and by meditation, reflection, intellectual endeavour evaluating the various parameters and variables that are impinging on the changing situation we have to make an assessment about.

I have only recently come to the conclusion that it is how we navigate these category (b) truths that "grows us in holiness, sanctity, goodness, nobility or saintliness". We do have to learn the category (a) truths but we do not "get to heaven" by demonstrating how well we have memorising them. We get to heaven by how well we have gradually become over our lifetimes in learning to apply them, and sometimes break them, in the lived reality where category (b) "truth" has to be discerned.

I'll reply to your further questions later.

Footnote: I believe the category (c) "ABSOLUTE TRUTHS" are none other than the "relative" (as defined in the previous post) category (a) and (b) truths that will, in the fullness of time, be revealed to us by God fully and "ABSOLUTELY"!