As dusk was arising on an unusually gloomy spring morning in Palestine, the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate proposed the question, “What is truth?” to the badly beaten and scorned individual Whom he was in the process of interrogating. It is a profound question to ask, one which touches at the very character of life, of man’s purpose, of Who God is and Who He is not. The Latin “quid est veritas” lends itself to two translations: The first abstract ‘what is truth’ and the second concrete ‘what is the truth?’ Is there one truth rather than many and, if so, what must we do about it? What are the consequences of a world where everyone has their own truth? And how do we defend the truth in a world which does not recognise it?
Our Lord said to the Jews who believed in Him, “if you continue in my Word, you will be my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). Truth, according to St Thomas Aquinas, is a virtue in man insofar as man in knowing things outside of himself, such as certain words or actions or certain external things, speaks in conformity with the essence of those things. If I say that there is a table in front of me, I am speaking in accordance with the virtue of truth or truthfulness. If I say Ireland won the Six Nations in 2023 I am speaking in accordance with a reality external to myself. If, however, I were to say that there wasn’t a table in front of me I would not be acting in accordance with truth, nor would this do me any good since I would bump into that table (it’s not like I could bee-line out of this room without thumping my waistline or giving myself a dead leg). And so truth is the conformity of our minds to external reality. St Thomas calls truth a transcendental, something applicable to all things insofar as they relate to the intellect.
According to scholastic philosophy, everything which exists has a certain essence, being, or nature. This is what a thing is in itself, that by which we define a thing. A definition is nothing more than saying precisely what a thing is, not according to simply how it looks or the sounds it makes or by how it relates to other things but what it is on an essential level. For example, when you say, “Man is a rational animal,” you take a higher overarching identity, animal, and you give the specific difference, that by which man is different from all other animals, that is, rationality. Birds are feathered bi-peds; a shuttlecock is the feathered projectile used in the sport of badminton – is there anything which can be done about this? No, this is what they are essentially, by nature. If you take the feathers off of a shuttlecock, it becomes a defective shuttlecock, a piece of cork that cannot even be used to close a wine bottle. Another example: to say that a woman is someone who chooses to be a woman does nothing to tell me or you what a woman actually is inherently. And so the Thomistic or realist view defines truth as describing a being, this table, insofar as it is known by the intellect (‘ah! That is a table’). And so, truth is the intellect relating to everything which actually exists outside the mind: this table, that chair, this paper in front of you. Man has not only a natural capacity to know the truth but he also has a moral duty to live in accordance with the truth, to discern it, to call it what it is when he sees it.
This indeed was a cultural given until the seventeenth century and the Meditations of René Descartes. Perhaps without meaning to, Descartes undertook a series of rather flawed mental experiments whereby he began to deny the reliability of the senses in order to come to a purely intellectual proof for the existence of God. He started to posit that maybe the table in front of him wasn’t there after all: for how did he know his eyes weren’t deceiving him? Of course he didn’t think of knocking his head on it, but this sort of distrust of the eyes and ears became very prevalent in modern philosophy, a sort of popular fad.
Poor René kicked a veritable hornets’ nest by his work. For whatever reason, man’s inability to know the outside world became a given. David Hume would go on to explicitly deny the relationship between cause and effect (I can let go of this pencil, but I can never know with certainty that it will fall to the ground, I can walk into this table but I do not know that my leg swelling is directly related to it). Soon Immanuel Kant would make the distinction between phenomena and numina (what we see and what things are in themselves). Hegel would reject the idea that things have permanent natures altogether. Finally, Marx and Engels would posit that a thing can and cannot be at the same time, in the same respect. That ‘a thing can and cannot be, but not at the same time and in the same respect’ is the first thing man knows by reason. It is how we distinguish things from one another, how a baby knows that he wants the biscuit now and not the green plastic rattle. The contrary view has been the cultural philosophy of the last 400 years: the philosophy of the so-called Enlightenment, of the French revolution, of Darwinian macro-evolution, of the Communist Manifesto, of the general secularisation of society.
When we deny the world outside of us, we cut ourselves off from our ability to know the truth. Indeed knowing the world around us from our senses to our intellect is our God-given capacity. It enables us to make the true statement, “that is a table in front of me, that is a man in front of me, that is a woman in front of me.” How do we know? Not because of some bad make-up job. Rather, we need to ask, ‘what does it do?’ Can a man give birth? No. Can a woman impregnate? No. They have different bone structure, different neurological wiring, different DNA. We use the definition and we apply it to the thing in front of us. This is how we come to God’s existence through reason. By looking at the line of cause and effect, we know that there must be a first cause. When we look at the order of the nature of things, how the world moves and interacts, we see that there must be an intelligent design. Man, by denying the world around him and making himself into the arbiter of reality turns himself into an idol, a little-false god. René Descartes famously stated, “I think, therefore I am.” God in the burning bush told Moses “I am Who I am.” He is being itself. The modern world acts like a collection of little gods. We declare that morality changes, and so it is changed. We say that we are what we are not, and so we become.
The modern world of relativism is not only becoming more and more absurd―it must necessarily become so. Irish poet W. B. Yeats in his famous poem The Second Coming wrote, “the centre cannot hold.” This is true of our world today: a society which is not grounded in external truth is doomed to float and meander between one extreme and another, oscillating between whims and fads. That which was taboo ten years ago has become normal; the next macabre practice or belief will soon become a human right. Why is this? Because if truth doesn’t exist, there are not real consequences to human actions, physically, morally, socially. If we do not use our God-given capacity to raise our minds to discern the truth (and the good, which is nothing other than the will beholding the truth) by recognising what things are in themselves, then someone or something else will decide what is the pseudo-truth and the pseudo-good to be upheld and respected. If Christ is the Logos, the Divine Word, the Orderer of all things, then we cannot but expect that a society which rejects the truth of His message will descend into chaos and madness. This is why Christ said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Either you will believe the truth, or you will become the slave of anything and everything.
by Fra Angelico, 1429
On that gloomy spring morning Pilate asked, “What is truth?” What was ironic in all of this was that he proposed this question to Truth itself. The truth has a face and a name, it is Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” It is in and through Christ that we learn the truth about God, the truth about man, the truth about our nature, the truth about why we were created and what we are called to become. God is the arbitrator of truth. It is He Who created all things and knows all things as they are. He has ascribed to each thing a particular purpose and end. This is true whether or not we accept it. This is the beauty of objective truth―it is unchanging, it is eternally true because it comes from God and reflects God. Rejecting truth does not make man free but throws him into greater slavery, unhappiness, and nihilism. We are not little gods, but by embracing the plan of God for our life, namely, to know, love and serve Him, we become truly free and like God, being configured more and more after His image. We must thank God every day that He has given us the Catholic faith; that we are members of His Church; that we can know the truth and enjoy its goodness by conforming our lives to it. It is not always easy. There are many truths passed onto us by the Church which we can know by reason, but there are other truths which go beyond our human reason and must be embraced through supernatural faith. But we have the witness of God to what He says, for He cannot deceive nor be deceived. St Thomas, in his beautiful hymn Adoro te devote, writes, “that which truth doth holdeth, that for truth I hold.” We are Catholics: we embrace the truth. We must never be ashamed of it. We have a treasure in our hands. We cannot let it slip away. There’s enough of the truth for everyone, but we must be willing to share it.
But how do we do this in a post-Christian, secular society? How can we give the truth to a generation and a people who consider truth to mean a completely different thing than we do? I suppose all I can do is make a couple of practical suggestions.
First: Perhaps skip the long philosophy lesson, but find some way to get them to recognise that there are objective truths which apply to everyone indiscriminately. Do they believe that the whole custard cream is greater than half a custard cream? Do they believe that fire burns your hand if you touch it? Do they believe that the wooden table in front of them exists? If they do (I certainly think they do), well, then ask them to perceive other things in this same way, as being external to their mind, and objectively what they are regardless of what me or you think of them. If this can apply to fire and wood and custard creams, why can it not apply to God, man, good and evil?
Second: Remember that a relativistic society leans on cheap emotionalism. Don’t allow your friends to brush something off as a choice, as love, as spirituality―what do these terms mean? Can they apply to the things they say they apply to? Don’t allow people off with cheap cop outs. Remember, just because they may be sincere doesn’t mean that they are right.
Third: Nevertheless, be kind and patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Remember that most people are victims and not perpetrators of the culture of relativism, even if they claim to be very sophisticated and independent. This relativism has been their bread and butter from childhood. For many it’s all they have ever known. We are to preach the truth in love and through love. This requires sacrifice, the laying down of our lives for our neighbours.
Four: If you want a full-proof way of bringing people out of the culture of relativistic nihilism, let them see Jesus in you. Let the hope and the joy that is in you touch their hearts. Let them ask, “Why are they so happy? How can they be content in the midst of so many troubles and anxieties?” It is because we know and possess the truth, we trust in Him Whom we believe. We know our end; we know where we are called, and where hopefully we are going. There is nothing more attractive than this in a world of cheap consumerism and endless, vain pleasure-seeking: that one can bear witness to faith, hope and love in the midst of everything. That one can hold himself with certainty, showing oneself to be grounded in reality, in true and authentic happiness. A relativistic society seeks for a happiness it can never find. For it can only come through the truth. Let us show the truth to our neighbour, and let us treasure it within ourselves. Through this our witness God wishes to change the world.
By Seminarian Conan McGonagle, FSSP ― a talk delivered to young people at the July 2023 Juventutem weekend