Sheryl raised some great questions in her reply to my Dec 28th post.
The claim is often made that “truth is truth” with the assumption that such a claim stands on its own. Why should we expect it to? For followers of Christ truth is best understood as God revealed in Christ by the power of the spirit (or something along those lines). Thus we often state that “Christ is the Truth” or “Truth is a person”. An understanding of Truth as a person immediately raises questions regarding the nature of “absolutes.” What is a person?
Given this Christian construct of truth, how we understand “personhood” will shape our understanding and experience of truth. From Descartes until the 20th century the dominant metaphor for understanding person was mechanical and atomized. Our understandings of the world have and are changing: For instance, Trinitarian theology is helping us see God perichoretically relating with Godself and creation dynamically and lovingly; the postmodern turn to philosophical relationality has opened the doors for social constructivism which says “We are therefore I am”, and for systems thinking/network theory/etc which says that all that is, is interconnected and interanimating and relationally self-constitutive.
Thus, if truth is a person and our understanding of person has and is changing then our understanding of truth must change. The “essential self” (person) of modernity is now largely seen as a myth, today, to be a person is to be relational. A person is seen as dynamic, always changing in and through interactions with any and everything.
If truth is a person, truth cannot be objective in the modern understanding of objective. Truth becomes relational and dynamic. Static understanding of truth which can lead to arrogance such “my truth is better than your truth” which is characteristic of fundamentalism of every stripe are being invited to dance with a dynamic relational constructs – and yes Modern Christian absolutes stand in this theological intersection scratching its head.
My bottom-line, as best as I understand it at this point, is that following Christ invites faith because we don’t have objective truth. God gave us living relational truth in Jesus Christ, and invites us by faith to journey in God’s presence relationally linking with any and all. I don’t need to conceive anyone of my “absolutes” rather I embody the living truth of Christ in self-emptying love in the service of the other. And as we dialogue with another (with a sense that we does in conjunction with the Holy Spirit) truth happens.
On first hearing these words one might be concerned with potential erosion of “Christian truth” however I believe that this construct raises the bar on discipleship. It would no longer be enough to intellectually know dogma but to live and speak truth as it may have never been lived/spoken before. Do we trust God’s Holy Spirit enough to guide us into truth? Dogma has typically answered “No.”
Dogma can be a form of distrust of God.
peace, dwight
Good thoughts Dwight. I cant help but think that Christs designation of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth testifies to this.
I had a similar conversation with family over the last few days that sharing the gospel is something more akin to embodying Christs love to the other in relationship than speaking any propositional truths.
Doug this is my first post to your blog. You may recall an email I wrote you about your paper on scale-free networks – I connected to you through Tim Keel.
Anyway – this post caught my attention and stirred a number of thoughts.
You say in your post "The claim is often made that truth is truth with the assumption that such a claim stands on its own." I believe that truth does stand on its own – but that doesnt mean that people are at the place where they have the ability or inclination to embrace a truth and in this regard I agree with your statement truth often needs an incarnation for someone to embrace it. It seems we are often not actually talking about whether something is true but instead, about someones ability to imagine the truth and see how it is real for their life or the life of others and, sometimes more importantly how to live the truth they have imagined. For, if we can only imagine the truth but find ourselves unable to live that truth we will often find ourselves reaching the conclusion that what we had rightly imagined as true in fact must not be or it would be possible to also live the truth or at least that the truth is not relevant to me.
You also stated, "For followers of Christ truth is best understood as God revealed in Christ by the power of the spirit" – I struggle with this definition of truth for I think it maybe to narrow. It presupposes that the only truth God wants us to know is the truth often referred to as "special revelation", truth we gain from the knowing the bible and through direct "revelation" from the Holy Spirit. I think we need to include another category of truth "general revelation". This truth is not contrary to Christ as Truth or the special revelation that is available in the bible but, it is still important truth as it is truth that God gives through observations of his creation. I also think our ability to embrace a truth is directly related to our ability to imagine that truth. So, I think if we are to embrace the entirety of who God is and what it means to live as his creation and within the full expression of what he created – we need to include in our definition of "Christian" truth both categories.
One other comment that caught my attention is, "Thus, if truth is a person and our understanding of person has and is changing then our understanding of truth must change." – This reinforces that the truth is not what is changing – it is a persons ability to fully or rightly imagine the truth that is changing. What I find interesting in this idea that truth is from a person and that person is God – and he makes choices – it is not possible to know truth predictively – you can only know the truth experientially – you can not know in advance what God will do – you can only know that He will act and that act will typically look like something that is consistent with his character (characteristics repeatedly demonstrated over time).
Then you said, "If truth is a person, truth cannot be objective in the modern understanding of objective." I think an important point of clarity here is that truth cannot be entirely objective (I suppose this is the modern understanding of objectivity) – but it can be objective to a degree and therefore absolute to a degree, just not completely absolute so the truth is both objective and subjective in nature at the same time and, is this not what we see in Gods reality over and over – that it is not "either or" but "both and" (judgment and mercy, life and death, restored yet broken) – this says we should know truth as something that is alive, not dead, and that sense always changing. It says you can count on the truth to be predictable – but you can not know the truth exhaustively so you can not count on your ability to know what the truth will be before the truth "appears" at any given time.
And finally, the comment that brought me here in the first place – "Dogma can be a form of distrust of God." – This has been deeply true in my life, I am sad to say. I have discovered that in most cases, possibly all, when I have transformed a living truth into dogma – meaning it has become static and that I have come to a place where I will not consider what questions anothers life may bring to bear about my dogma – I dont trust God, I dont trust myself, and I dont trust others. I find myself hiding behind the wall I have labeled truth so my life will not need to be subject to the reality that anothers life brings to bear upon my truth. It is not that I will be constantly exchanging what is true because of what I see in another persons life (though this may be the case if it helps see that what I thought was true is not) – it does mean that I will allow anothers life to raise questions I do not have answers to and will seriously consider those questions and respect the person that is before me enough to say "I dont know." when that is true and to trust God enough to say "He does know" and to then pursue God with the other person to find out what we can discover together – even if the discovery takes a very long time.
Well, I new to this blogging thing and I sense that this is much longer of a comment that is proper blogging etiquette if so, sorry.
Dwight – I apologize that I addressed you as "Doug" – I was also reading Doug Pagitts blog that same night and I guess I had his name in my head instead of yours when I wrote this. Please feel free to change it your real name and feel free to call me whatever you life.
Totally embarrassed – David