Church of the Holy City

Truth or Truths

Truth or Truths?
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 24, 2010

Genesis 25:29-34 John 16:5-16 Psalm 119

Last Sunday many issues came up in our discussion that followed the sermon. People felt that more needed to be said about the subject. This Sunday, I will take up the subject of truth. I will ask the question, “Do we have Truth, or merely truths?”
It was observed that truths with us have changed over time. Things that were held to be true at one time have given way to other truths that are different. So the questions came up, “What is truth?” And, “How do we know what is true?”
These questions are in the forefront of contemporary philosophy. Philosophers note that what society takes to be true has changed over time. In the middle ages, society thought that the earth was at the center of the universe. We now know that this is not true. It was also thought by society that time was always constant. Einstein showed that time can change according to gravity. So philosophers say that since truth has changed over time, that there is no truth at all. They don’t say that we can never know truth, they say that there is no truth at all. All we have is opinion that helps us get through life.
In many ways, contemporary philosophy is not far from Swedenborg’s view of truth. He claims that no one has pure truth. In one particularly pessimistic passage, he claims that our lower mind, called our natural mind, is possessed of many falsities. Not only that, he says that it is hard for our natural mind to grasp spiritual truths.
In the natural man there are knowledges, which are in a great measure derived from the fallacies of the senses, and which, notwithstanding their being false, he believes to be true; there are also things innumerable which the natural man does not comprehend, for he is relatively in shade and darkness, and what he does not comprehend, he believes either not to exist, or not to be so; there are likewise lusts, which are of the love of self and the world, and whatever things favor these, he calls truths (AC 3321).
This passage show how limited our capacity for knowing really is. Swedenborg is saying that it is hard for us to grasp real truth, and that the knowledge we do have is distorted by what our senses tell us. Then there is the persuasion that comes from selfish love and worldliness which impels us to want to believe things that favor those loves. This is a pretty dismal view of our capacity for knowing.
But we are not left in this condition by God. A very important part of our regeneration, or spiritual rebirth, concerns knowledge and truth. Just because we begin in relative shade and falsity doesn’t mean that we must stay there. God takes the things we hold to be true and forms conscience out of them.
with a person there is no pure intellectual truth, that is, Divine truth; but the truths of faith with a person are appearances of truth, to which join themselves fallacies of the senses, and to these the falsities of the desires of the love of self and the world. . . . But still the Lord conjoins Himself with man in these impure things, for He animates and vivifies them by innocence and charity, and so forms conscience (AC 2052).
We need to remember, here, that truth is not an end in itself. Mere knowing is not the final use of truth. Truth serves a purpose. And the purpose of truth is to bring us into love. Truth’s function is to show us how to love God and how to love our neighbor. Last Sunday I quoted Swedenborg about this. He writes,
They who are regenerated, first do good from doctrines, for of themselves they do not know good, but learn it from the doctrines of love and charity; from these they know who the Lord is, who is the neighbor; what love is, and what charity, thus what good is (AC3310).
The doctrines we know may indeed be flawed. They may not be, cannot be, totally true. What matters about our truths is whether they can make us into good people. What matters is whether the truths we know can lead us into good feelings and behaviors. So Swedenborg observes,
But it is to be known that never are any truths pure with a person, not even with an angel, that is, without appearances; each and all are appearances of truth; but still they are received by the Lord for truths if there is good in them (3207).
The many knowledges we have in our memory can serve as building materials for conscience. We start off the regeneration process with knowledge that we have acquired in childhood, from our parents, or from teachers, or from our own life experiences. But initially, these knowledges are merely facts in our memory without spiritual life in them. This is the inner meaning of the stew that Jacob cooked in our Old Testament reading. Stew is a bunch of food all heaped together in one pot. This is the condition of our knowledges as we begin our spiritual journey.
The first state of the man who is being regenerated, or in whom truth is being conjoined to good, is, that first of all in his natural man, or in the store-house which is called the memory, there are heaped together doctrines of truth without any certain order (AC 3316).
So in our younger years we are concerned with learning facts as a goal in itself. Our minds are that storehouse of facts in our memory. As we saw above, many of these facts are false, and some are tainted with fallacies from our senses. Then our thinking may be controlled by our worldly ambitions and our self-interest. We begin our spiritual journey by using what we know to guide our life. As we progress in life, we may find ourselves changing our outlook on things, or favoring other truths than those we began with. This does not mean that we are making up our own truths. This does not mean we are blowing here and there according to whims. What it does mean is that God is guiding us. God takes the truths we know, and leads us by them. And God’s leading is from what is less true into what is more true. God can’t stick absolute truth into our heads. What He does is to work with the truths we have learned and shape them into purer love and truer truth.
The truths of conscience are various, that is, they are according to every one’s religion; and these, provided they are not contrary to the goods of faith, the Lord is not willing to violate, because the person is imbued with them and has placed holiness in them. The Lord breaks no one, but bends him (AC 2052).
The Lord breaks no one, but bends him. This means that the Lord little by little bends us closer to purer loves and into truer truths.
So we come to the question, “How do we know what is true?” Here, I think we need some humility. We need to acknowledge that we don’t have total truth, and never can have total truth. Perhaps contemporary philosophers aren’t mistaken when they say all we have is opinion that helps us to get along in the world. For this is just what our truths do. They show us how to live. They show us who the neighbor is, how to love the neigbor, and how to love God. But all of these things are qualified. Truth teaches us who the neighbor is, how to love the neighbor, and how to love God according to our best lights. We will only know truth according to our best lights. It takes humility and trust to recognise this point. It takes humility because we have to admit that we may not be right. And it takes trust because we have to trust that God is leading us into purer love and truer truth. The fact that we have abandoned truths we held years ago does not mean that everything is relative. It means, rather, that we are in a process. It means that we are growing. It means that we are regenerating.
But the question of relativism is a very real question. If no one has total truth, does that mean that anything goes? I say no. There are sufficiently clear social norms that we can all agree on, such as the 10 commandments. But we need to be very careful of how we use truth in our dealings with others. Recall Swedenborg’s words. “The truths of conscience are various, that is, they are according to everyone’s religion; and these . . . the Lord is not willing to violate, , because the person is imbued with them and has placed holiness in them.” We need always to remain respectful of the religious views of others. If God is not willing to violate them because the person has placed holiness in them, we, too, must not violate the beliefs of others. We may discuss religion with others, but we may not denounce their beliefs. The truths we have are our truths; the truths others have are their truths.
We find ourselves testing truth as we live our lives. We may well find that one way of doing things doesn’t work very well. We may find that truths we lived by at one time are not as effective as truths we acquire later in life. The final answer to the question, “How do we know what is true?” is, “What teaches us to love?” The way we show love is a measure of the truths we know. We need to remember that we are in a process. We need to remember that we are regenerating. We need to remain humble and trustful in our understanding of truth. What we take to be true may change over time. But this does not mean that our search for truth is aimless. It simply may mean that we are in God’s guidance.