I hear people say so often these days, “My truth is mine and you can’t tell me I’m wrong.” That’s my characterization, but it implies that something is true if I say it is and nobody can object. However, I object.
There are many ways to discuss the meaning of the word truth. In my youth, I thought truth was not refutable. It was certain, absolute. Many people still think of truth that way and will go to their grave defending what they believe.
As I’ve written before, I studied Greek and loved doing so. However, I learned from Martin Heidegger, a 20th-century German Philosopher, that the word αληθεια (aletheia) meant to ‘uncover’; thus, it is closely related to the word ἀποκάλυψις or apocalypse. Most know the name of the last book of the Bible is “Revelation,” which is a translation of apocalypse. To reveal is to remove a veil, the literal meaning of apocalypse. Paul Ricoeur, a 20th-century French philosopher and religion scholar, wrote that in the process of discovering truth, we do a sort of archaeology of meaning. That is, as we begin to uncover the artifacts, we inadvertently cover something else with dirt or trash, effectively hiding them. As we clarify one thing, we may obscure another. Or, as we attend to one thing, we fail to consider another. Thus, in the process of discovering something, we obscure others.
2 Timothy 4:4 says, “They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” A danger for all of us is this trap. As we navigate the truth, we are often confronted with the question of what is true and what is a conspiracy, a fabrication, or a myth. We know that Jesus said of himself, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6). Later, as Jesus stood before Pilate, Pilate asked, “Are you king of the Jews?” Jesus responded, “The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:37) However, what Jesus means is enigmatic. One must do a lot of reading, learn a great deal about Jesus from the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament, and study the Old Testament and especially the prophets to make sense of the truth that Jesus speaks.
Thus, the metaphor of the archaeologist makes sense. Discovering the truth about Jesus is not a simple issue, and what that truth is does not depend on me. It is a question for all those who claim they follow Jesus’s way. I am thankful for those with whom I have walked this journey. At times, we came to amazing new understandings of the truth of Jesus, but these understandings are not mine but ours. In many cases, it was the quest to understand as much as what we understood. This points out that knowledge and truth are something that is shared by communities.
I grew up with a father with an insatiable curiosity and memory. His knowledge of the county where we lived and he worked was so vast that one of his acquaintances introduced me to someone saying, “His father had the most encyclopedic memory of St. John's County of anyone I know.” Dad read the St. Augustine Record cover to cover daily and also read the Miami Herald cover to cover. He read the Herald because of its award-winning reputation for covering world, national, and state news. He once showed me the editorial section, which covered two full pages. He commented, “On this side are conservative editorial comments and on this liberal comments. They are both important to know.” The Miami Herald was not delivered to our home. Instead, Dad stopped at the post office daily to purchase his copy. Learning requires diligence.
One has to work at it. Sadly, it seems, most humans are quite lazy about acquiring knowledge. Others just want to be told what will support their existing knowledge base. When I was going off to college, I was told by the minister not to be led astray by my professors; hold to what I had been taught.
Dad’s genes overruled the minister’s counsel. I became a sponge for new information and what for me was enlightening ideas. My studies in the Bible, theology and philosophy included learning Greek and Hebrew so I could study the Bible in its original languages. That study helped me grow in knowledge and wisdom. As those grew, my faith matured.
Luke 2:52 says, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Reading those words suggests more than many interpreters note. Wisdom is not something one automatically gains; instead, it is something one must experience and learn from life to grow in. One does not get wisdom by adopting the dogma one is taught at home, the synagogue, church, mosque or temple. Anything we may be taught, if true, will stand up and enlighten us through experience. However, we must take care lest we think that our experience of something is normative to all people. Thus, a truly wise person will listen to how others experience some of the same things we have experienced, but understand them differently.
None of us is an island unto ourselves. We share this piece of dust in the universe which we call Earth. The many things I experience are a sliver of all there is to experience. In the last few years, I have broadened my experience of the continental U.S. traveling by motorcycle alone at first and then with Sherry, crisscrossing the country. We always try to do things that the people who live in the places we go do. That is to experience their culture, trying not to be just tourists.
Needless to say, being a tourist is a worthwhile experience, given the country's incredible diversity of cultures and peoples. One is astounded to travel to the town of Wilson in rural Kansas, for example, to discover that people from the Czech Republic settled it. Why there? Their presence is marked by the largest Faberge egg in the town park. It is the largest such egg in the world and stands as a beacon of the culture.
The first time I visited Phoenix, we met my daughter, who was also passing through. She wanted to show me something, so we drove out of town to a park, up the hill, and parked. We walked a trail to the top, sat on a rock, and viewed the surrounding countryside. She pointed out this or that formation, places in the settlements below, and then said. “I look out here and see so much space. It goes on forever and ever. I can’t imagine having been in a wagon train after months of travel and coming here and saying, ‘I think this is where I want to live.’”
I had to agree, but the reason it happened is that people who went before had concluded it would be a good place for commerce. The lay of the land provided formations to guide travel to it and routes for wagons and people to make the trip. The distance from El Paso to the Pacific was known. There was much to commend this rugged, hot in summer and cold in winter, desolate place to set up shop and home. The first person to arrive there could not have known that, but the indigenous people did and generously shared their knowledge of distances, best routes, and the ways to survive what still looks to be desolate despite Phoenix being a very large city today.
We learn from our experiences and those of others. My wisdom is enriched by their knowledge and wisdom, as I hope I enrich theirs. My knowledge is mine, thus personal, as is the knowledge of others. I can only know what you know if I talk to you. We may disagree on how we interpret our experiences, but if we do not listen to each other, we’ll probably miss out on a kernel of helpful truth and fail to expand our own knowledge and wisdom.
All of us, when young, can be assured to grow in stature, that is, get taller, heavier, and stronger. But will we grow in the other meaning of stature, that is, in reputation and moral wisdom? Will we matter? Did we accept the cultural perspective of our family, community, and nation without question? Do we even notice that those cultural norms include things like that the government can’t do anything right, security matters most, family trumps all else, and so on and so forth?
Our religious backgrounds also provide us with a dogmatic orientation, like we must be saved by the blood of Jesus, meaning if we want to go to heaven and escape hell, we must accept Jesus as our savior. I have discussed some of this above, but that last sentence is packed with a dogmatic tone. Saved, blood of Jesus, heaven, hell, accepting Jesus, and savior are all dogmatic notions packed with additional dogmatic viewpoints. Is any of it true?
Sadly, so many in our culture accept the ideas without question and often without knowledge and understanding. For example, it is one thing to know that the New Testament is made up of 27 books written in Greek at least 30 years after Jesus was crucified and many not until the next century. It is something else to begin to understand what that fact may mean. To understand this fact demands that we ask other questions like how the many stories of the Gospels began to be told and ended up in one of the four gospels. But another issue is that there were other gospels that were not included in the New Testament as we know it. How were the four we have chosen? Who determined that and why?
Let me say, one need not know the answers to be a follower of Jesus. However, those who preach and teach the faith certainly should be conversant in that kind of information. Choosing ignorance over knowledge blocks the capacity for growth in stature and wisdom of faith. Sadly, we have some very intelligent persons who chose to ignore the knowledge gained over the last several hundred years, so they can continue to preach the dogma.
Once the Enlightenment began to develop, studies in history, archaeology, linguistics, textual issues about the Bible and about science grew exponentially. During the 17th to 18th century, scholars discovered that the New Testament Greek was not a special divine form of Greek but actually the language of the common folk in Jesus time. That knowledge led to archaeological and linguistic studies, which uncovered manuscripts from businesses and letters between family and friends. The Greek in those documents was not the formal Greek of Plato and Aristotle but the Greek of the marketplace, the tea shop, or the kitchen table. That discovery led to important new understandings of the New Testament.
Historians and archaeologists made other significant discoveries of previously unknown manuscripts of the New Testament. For example, there were complete codices (bound books of velum manuscripts) of the New Testament in Greek stored in the Vatican. Historians discovered mentions of them, and New Testament scholars went in search of them. Others wandered the Middle East and Northern Africa, seeking out monasteries, thinking some valuable artifacts of biblical times were to be found there. They found many artifacts, one of which is known as Codex Sinaiticus, found in a monastery in Sinai. It is considered one of the best manuscripts for a variety of reasons, which I cannot get into here.
If it were not for the insatiable curiosity and persistent quest for information, these discoveries would not have happened. The new knowledge and understandings that resulted from both the Codex Sianaticus and Vaticanus, along with hundreds of other partial papyri and portions of the New Testament, led to a better understanding of how we got the Bible we have.
Additionally, there was increased effort to understand the history and culture of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean societies during the time of Jesus. Such studies have resulted in the discovery of artworks that offer early Christian interpretations of scripture, insights into the relationships within the Trinity, the reverence for the. mother of Jesus—Mary, baptismal practices and their significance, and eschatological interpretations of the Bible.
Along with the knowledge being gained about biblical texts is the scientific understanding of the text of science, which is nature. That study led us from believing the universe was a static system to one today that sees it as an organism in process. Not only is the Earth evolving, but the whole universe is. Stars come and go, accompanied by planets, moons, and perhaps intelligent life arising in other parts. Today, science is even asking what is the nature of intelligence and consciousness. Do other animal species have it? What about plants? These scientific questions raise theological ones. If we live in a cosmos created by God, what is the divine-creation relationship? Is there a distinction between God the creator and the creation, or are they identical?
Many may say that these questions are more than they wish to consider. That is all right. Most of us, including Quantum Physicists, do not understand quantum physics or want to. We are saved by faith through grace, not by knowledge. But being saved by grace through faith does not mean we have to forsake knowledge. To do so impoverishes humanity.
Ignorance is not bliss. When considered culturally and globally, ignorance leads to death. If it were not for the studies of physics, life-saving medical technologies like CAT Scans, MRIs, and Proton therapy would not exist. Nor would the genetic capacity to cure Sickle Cell anemia, many cancers, and to perform stem cell transplants.
Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) Jesus was speaking to his disciples. They would know the truth, and it would set them free. We interpreted this saying as referring to knowing the dogma of the church or the way of Jesus. However, the more we learn about the universe, the more freedom we have from ignorance, conspiracy, legends, fables, myths, racial and gender prejudices, and disease.
Gospel writer Luke began his gospel with:
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4)
First, he implies that he knew of many sources, perhaps by eyewitnesses, that recorded events and sayings in the life of Jesus. Second, at least, some of these sources were prepared by eyewitnesses to the events and sayings. Third, he investigated everything from the beginning. Fourth, he wanted to present an orderly account for Theophilus. Fifth, his goal was for Theophilus to know the certainty of these things.
We can discern from this that Luke sought to provide a historical account from his sources. He was not the first historian in antiquity. There were many more. However, his purposes and methods appear to be those of historians of his age. Historians must discern what is hearsay, what is fabrication, and what is direct testimony from reliable sources. Since he also wrote ‘Acts’, we can assume he may have known some of the actual witnesses: Apostles, many original disciples, witnesses who were both believers and unbelievers, and persons who could verify the many stories spread by word of mouth. We do know he had the Gospel of Mark and shared a source with Matthew. He had materials or oral accounts that do not appear in Mark, Matthew or John. Some of that material may have been from non-canonical Gospels. The most crucial point is that he conducted research and wrote an orderly account of what he had learned. We can presume he followed the rules of fact-checking as far as that was possible in his day.
Thus, the Gospel writer relied on knowledge without indicating that salvation is built on dogma, but instead, that the telling of the life of Jesus would lead to faith and thus salvation. The persons who wrote scripture did not consider ignorance a virtue, and neither should we. Thus, followers of Jesus seek knowledge in order to discover truth in all things because wisdom does not come from ignorance but blossoms in knowledge, in the discernment between fact and fiction.
As Jesus says, “The truth will set us free.”