Some years ago, a friend asked me why I was studying theology, to which I answered that I was searching for the truth.
At the time, it seemed rather an innocuous question but as time has passed, it has assumed greater import for me. Faith is a foundational aspect of any belief system, no more so than in mine, but is it compatible with the truth? To borrow from an early writing of mine:
To seek the truth should be one of the fundamental elements in the noble quest of all people, not only of Christians. Christ said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the light…’ He enjoins – ‘For My Way is the way of life, the road that leads to the Father, trust in Me for I am the fount of all that is true and just, for I am the light of eternal salvation and in Me you will find the fullness of life’
In this context, we still need to ask the questions:
– What is truth?
– What is the truth that we seek?
– Are truth, that which we seek and faith compatible?
These are far-reaching questions. For the sake of this work though, let us define that truth as an ultimate reality which exists outside of our own sphere of perception. A reality, which is perhaps best embodied in Pontius Pilate’s question to Jesus: Quid est veritas – What is truth? Or rather the rhetorical nature of that question – for as a coincidental anagram of ‘quid est veritas’ would have it, ‘est vir qui adest’ or ‘It is the man who is here ‘! Christ is truth – God is truth, it is He who is sought by a great many others and me, for He is the path to ultimate reality and truth.
As truth by virtue of the foregoing is difficult to hold to empirical values, that truth becomes faith but not before, we have applied our minds!
As children and in the normal human sense, faith is a product of the trust relationship we have built with others – with our mothers for example. We come to accept the trustworthiness, the honesty of others; consequently, we rely on the previously mentioned relationship as a foundational support in that truth claim.
The faith that derives out of the search for ultimate truth is analogous to the trust bond that we build between ourselves; only it is so much more profound. As children, we gain our religious insight in the same way as we do in the normal human sense, but as we mature and our minds become more critical, we begin to need more. To accept blindly the views of another as the truth, no matter the source or the trust bond that may exist, without adding our own intellectual assent makes that faith irrational; indeed, it is not faith but a gamble! It is also a prime source of personal deception; of trapping oneself into believing only what one wants to believe. Demosthenes said ‘Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true’
A human being, in general, is by nature an inquisitive being; this together with his intelligence has, more than most, contributed to his advance in nature – he is always seeking. However, his intelligence has been the interpretive cornerstone of his search and the wellspring for his ideas; it is the support, the foundation to his subsequent belief structures.
Thus, for example, in the apologetic of my own belief structure, my belief is best described as being based on thought, research, logic, reason and experience or spiritual awareness. These are the building blocks, the logical progressions of what I have witnessed, how I have reasoned that witness and which allows me to commit to intellectual assent. This ‘process’ helps lead me to an ever strengthening commitment in those convictions.
It is at this point that I can embrace faith. It has been said that faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation – a trust based on the convictions aforementioned.
So, belief is grounded in the search for truth, a truth we seek in many different ways; through prayer and stillness, through participation in the sacraments but also in study, the study of theology. To me theology is, in essence, the search for the truth.
We have seen the truth that we are seeking and that it is compatible with faith. However, the question ‘What is truth?’ will always be for me ‘The Holy Grail’, the ultimate prize. One that, I believe, I will come to know only when I meet Him to whom Pilate addressed that profound question:
‘Quid est veritas’
Amicus Christi 