In Pursuit of Truth

Today I commit to writing here once each week, as a means of holding myself accountability to my own development as a Christian intellectual. Now the problem is that I don't see myself as an intellectual at all, and yet I find the Lord leading me into a ministry among intellectuals. This is going to be interesting. But here I will reflect on some reading (which I also hope to do weekly) and try to do some thinking for myself, and engage anyone who cares to spend their valuable time considering my words at all.

I promise to no longer be reserved in my writing. Too often I am guarded to the point of being unwilling to write anything for fear of its permanence. I recognize that this blog is part of a process of my own development, so I invite you to develop here with me.

Today I reflect on Richard Neuhaus' address to the Yale Veritas Forum in 1996, entitled "Is There Life After Truth?" He writes, "The Christian understanding is that truth is found only in following...We do not need to see the distant destination, we need to know only the company. We need to know only the One who travels with us, who says, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. And wherever the honest quest for truth is going to take you, it's going to take you to where I am.'" (p. 25, IVP's A Place For Truth, ed. by Dallas Willard). Here, truth is relational but not relative. It is absolute, but mysterious. Truth is a person, and his name is Jesus. Neuhaus' words bring greater insight to me as I have been trying to wrap my head around John 1:14, "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." The Word is logos in the Greek - engaging both Jewish worldview and Greek philosophy. On the philosophical end, how do we understand "Logic" - as logos is literally translated - to be embodied in the person of Jesus? Somehow, our love for logic and truth is satisfied in the person of Jesus.

Now Neuhaus is challenging the overarching view of the academy that the notion of truth itself is obsolete. He argues that of course it's not, and that the pursuit of truth will actually be much more interesting than operating as if there is no truth. But he raises the excellent point that this view is in large part reactive to the conflict that has resulted in history (in large part) as a result of Christians claiming to know the truth. The problem here is not with truth itself, but with the pride of those who claim to know the truth. He writes that the call on Christian intellectuals is "to demonstrate that we...have understood how Christians claiming to possess the truth can indeed be destructive of public discourse. Christians who are overwhelmingly confident that they actually possess the truth in the sense of being in control of the truth can become the enemies of civil discourse. ....It is a matter of religious obligation for us to be not simply tolerant of those with whom we disagree but to eagerly engage them, for that's the course of love." It is also the course of humility, and the way of the One who claims to be Truth.

So we have a challenge before us - the claim to know the Truth and yet understand that we can never be in control of the Truth. And the more we simply pursue Him who is Truth - the more we simply follow Jesus - the more we realize how little control we really have.