My new editor is the brilliant John Zmirak and the new publisher--Herder Crossroads. For the new edition I'm writing short pieces to kick start each of the chapters.
Here's the one on the chapter about 'he shall come again to judge the living and the dead'
If there is such a thing as truth then it must be something, like air, which is outside myself and inside myself at the same time. If truth is only inside me, then it can only be understood by my own inner responses: what I think and what I feel: my thoughts and emotions. If what determines my truth is merely my own thoughts and emotions, then truth is fickle because not only do my thoughts and emotions contradict those of other people, they often contradict themselves. So I sometimes think and feel that chastity and temperance and self control are good and other times I think that lust and gluttony and drunkenness are better.
Therefore truth must be outside me as well as inside me. In other words, there has to be some greater standard for what is true (and therefore for what is right and wrong) than my own inner thoughts and emotions. I have to have some external standard to go by. Now, where that standard comes from is what is most interesting. Where does that external standard for what is true, what is beautiful, what is good and right originate? It must originate in a mind that is greater than mine.
If there is such a thing as external truth, then there is also such a thing as choice. I can choose to align my own ‘truth’ with The Truth. Or I can choose not to. This element of choice is at the heart of what we mean by judgment. Judgment is choice, and when we say that Christ will come to judge the living and the dead you could say he is coming to exercise his choice between who will live forever and who will die forever. How he makes that choice is what is intriguing. I, for one, think his choice is rather simple and revolutionary: he chooses what we have already chosen. His judgment confirms our own choices--and there’s a fearful thought!
Father Dwight,
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a discussion that I had with two of my sons a couple of years ago. I was arguing for the existence of subjective truth, and they dismissed this as the ravings of a misguided baby boomer.
You mention that truth must exist both outside myself and inside myself. You then go on to explain why it must be that truth exists outside myself. (This would correspond to the "objective truth" championed by my sons.) But you never explain why it must also be that truth exists inside myself. You assume it, but you do not defend it.
One of my (apparently unconvincing) arguments for the existence of subject truth, if it is to be accepted, is the term "hallucination." How is a hallucination different from a lie? A liar is someone who tells something that is not true, either objectively or subjectively. A hallucinator tells something that is not objectively true, but we do not condemn him as a liar, if we believe that he is telling something that he experiences to be subjectively true. Instead, we say that he is suffering from a delusion, that is, his subject truth is disordered.
It seems that it would be possible for objective truth to be totally divorced from subjective truth. That is, that we are all hallucinating 100% of the time. However, this would make the truth unknowable.
For the outer truth to be knowable, there must be a meeting place, an intersection, of inner and outer truth.
-- Mike T.
AS I understand it, subjective truth would be my perception of the Truth which corresponds exactly to objective Reality
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on getting John Zmirak to edit--everything he writes is golden! (Same for you, of course).
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