Today, I had the distinct pleasure of having lunch with my uncle. As tends to happen when we talk, we started to wax philosophical. The topic of truth came up. Now this is a question that I have already been pondering for the last few weeks. So here goes.
Ultimate absolute truth is created by God. God is an impossibility for us to fully and completely understand. Therefore, the truth of God is impossible for us to understand. We can catch glimpses of it and gain some insight into the truth, but ultimately we can never fully grasp it. Any time that we try to define truth, it falls under our own imperfect view.
Therefore what we deem as truth is not necessarily truth, it is our best approximation of truth. And by definition, if it is not completely void of falsehood, it cannot be considered truth. Now read me very carefully here, I do believe in absolute truth. I believe that the God of the universe has provided us this absolute truth. I am just not at all convinced that what we call truth is actually truth, but a murky interpretation of perfect truth.
3 comments:
Just like Newtonian physics are only a simple approxiation of actual forces in our universe. Close but not dead on. However, 2 + 2 = 4 and always will. It cannot equal 3 or 5. That's truth. I don't think God creates truth. Truth is a quality of Himself and an artifact of His creation. I understand that two masses in space naturally gravitate towards one another and so if I step off a cliff I will fall. Truth. Is it absolute? As in will there be an occassion in which I will float? Perhaps not. But math is absolute. And I hate math.
I didn't really mean to say that God creates truth. I just wasn't sure how to say it. In the lunch conversation, I stated that God is truth, but that is not accurate either. I like your idea of truth as a quality.
As for math, 2+2=4 was created by humans. It uses our brains which are created by God, but ultimately math is a set of human rules to describe our existence. Since it is a human rule, it can be absolute because we can fully grasp. Now the fact is that 2+2=4 is not an obsolute truth. There are times where 2+2 doesn't have to equal 4. I won't get into this, but I ask you to believe me on this one. This is something we learned in college(i have a math degree) in my last and hardest math class. I won't explain for two reasons. I seriously doubt that you would be able to understand and 2, I know for sure that I would not be able to explain it well or even maybe completely. I will say this. These issues of 2+2 not equaling 4 usually come up in trying to describe a less-understood aspect of God's creation.
Remind me to slip you guys a copy of "I Rigoberta Menchu."
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