What is Truth? The Eternal Companion of Goodness and Beauty
What is Truth? The Eternal Companion of Goodness and Beauty.
“We have the mind of Christ!” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
When St. Paul exclaimed to the Corinthians that believers have the “mind of Christ,” He was speaking into a mystery. Jesus, fully God, fully man, had a human brain like the rest of us. But His mind was somehow full of God’s presence as well, shaped and inspired by His Spirit. What does a heavenly brain look like? We have a sense of what makes up the mind of God when we consider the divine qualities of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. These three primary qualities of the nature of God have been called “the Big Three, the “deepest realities,” the attributes of being,” and if we want to get fancy here, the “Three Transcendentals,” which simply means “that which exceeds.” I love the version of one old Bible translation of this verse, where the “mind of Christ” was translated as “the wit of Christ.” In other words, if we need to live with the mind of Christ, we must keep our wits about us.
The Three Deep Realities. Because God so lovingly made us in His image, we humans have the capacity to live into those same three elements of deep Reality. We are miraculously capable of participating in what really matters in life. We can grow in developing an identity that reflects our true, good and beautiful God. Creator Lord is the origin and source of the Big Three in our lives, and we can only acquire and grow into them through an intentional relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. As has often been observed… All truth is God’s truth; all goodness is God’s goodness; all beauty is God’s beauty.
The Tools of the Christian Mind. Once we are willing to accept the divine existence of Truth, Goodness and Beauty, we can start to consider what our human minds are made of. We can point to our intellect as the way to comprehend Truth, the conscience our mindful helper in developing Goodness, and the imagination as the key to participating in Beauty. Our inspired intellect with its ability to reason, think rationally, acquire knowledge; our inspired conscience with its ability to nurture a life of integrity, character and virtue; our inspired imagination with its ability to express our creative impulse, give shape to what is real, and enables us to have faith in what we can’t see. God gave us the tools in our mind to experience these ultimate desires of ours.
Historian Joseph Pearce put it this way in a recent essay… “Love is the path to goodness; reason is the path to truth; creativity is the path to beauty. Love, reason and creativity find their unifying principle in the Person of Christ; Who is not only the end to which we strive but the very means by Whom the end is achieved. He is the Way, the path of love, reason and creativity which leads to Truth, Goodness and Beauty. The way of love leads to the Good of God, reason leads us to God’s Truth, and creativity leads us to the presence of God’s Beauty. The beautiful always leads us back to love and reason.”
“This I why I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the Truth. Everyone who is a friend of the Truth, who belongs to the Truth, listens to my voice.’ And Pilate said to Jesus, ‘What is truth?” (John 18:37-38).
TRUTH: (Hebrew, “emet;” Greek, “aletheia”) Truth is the only absolute in the world. If everything else in the world falls part, only Truth will remain standing; the building blocks of all creation; the framework upon which we build our faith; the true Reality that has established the world’s reality; that which can never be truly altered or changed; that which is universally trustworthy as facts of life; the foundation of what is truly real in our experience; the plumblines from which to measure our lives; that which is common knowledge in God’s mind; that which lines up with God’s perspectives; established facts from God as opposed to a person’s changeable opinions or preferences; that which is solid and certain as opposed to a lie, deceit, an illusion or superstition; the tangible fundamentals issued forth from the intangible mind of God. Truth is always true even when discounted or disbelieved. Since the Almighty God is the ultimate source of all truth, then it follows that the ultimate presence of truth resides in the Trinity of Truth: Father God is Truth, the Lord Jesus is Truth, and the Holy Spirit is Truth.
“One word of truth outweighs the world.” (Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, Russian author, early 20th century);
Emet = a Hebrew word meaning primarily either truth or faithfulness. Emet has also been translated secondarily as stability, certainty, trustworthiness, constancy. In Hebrew, “faithfulness” and “truth” are interchangeable, and the literal meaning is: True to His word; steadfast loyalty; trustworthy; truthful about promises; reliable; constant and dependable; act in good faith; certain in commitment; His word is His bond. Many Biblical scholars believe that John 1:14, where John states that Jesus is “full of grace and truth,” is an intentional repetition of the phrase in Yahweh’s important self-revelation (Exodus 34:6), “abounding in love and faithfulness.” John 1 no doubt hearkens back to Yahweh’s nature in Exodus 34, flatly stating that Jesus is of the very same eternal nature as Yahweh, the glorious God of the Hebrew Bible. The fact that the Hebrews saw truth and faithfulness as interchangeable points to God’s character, that He is true to His word, true to His nature, that God keeps truth certainly and with stability and trustworthiness. God is literally, truly faithful.
God is Truth – the One who created Reality and established it on the earth; the universal Fact that founded the world; the divine Reference Point for all that is true; the one fundamental essence of trueness.
God is Faithfulness – the One who is perfectly loyal to His righteous nature; the Being who is purely committed to His trustworthiness; He who is permanently, unfailingly true to His promises.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23).
GOODNESS: A personal quality that puts the stress on kindly goodness instead of righteous goodness; moral excellence; uprightness of heart and life; virtue; integrity; mature in conscience and character; benevolence; wise discernment; God’s inspired energy to reflect one’s union with Christ; the vigor and courage behind attaining moral valor; the middle quality of the Three Transcendents… Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
A Picture of Goodness: “Whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things – fix your minds on them.” (Philippians 4:8, Amplified version).
Inner Goodness: The outward appearance of a virtuous life is inadequate. A noble lifestyle in public doesn’t meet God’s requirements. A consistent display of honorable actions as an end in itself may be necessary for society to thrive, but it will not bring eternal salvation. Simply being good is needed for humanity to survive, but that’s not good enough for God… “For I tell you, unless your righteousness is more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20). When Jesus said those shocking words to his disciples, the scribes and Pharisees were revered for their public piety, for their success in honorably keeping the written law of scriptures. Jews were generally in awe of the Pharisees’ religious obedience and devotion. Pharisees were considered the saints of their day. Jesus indeed shocked His followers when He told them they had to be more righteous than the Pharisees. He basically told them that the Pharisees’ goodness was not good enough. Their pride in being honored became a religion unto itself and their self-righteous religion was in fact distant from God, who is the point of the Torah in the first place. The Pharisees missed the point of life with God… union with Him and living into His divine energy and Spirit. The Pharisees wandered far from that main point in their pursuit of righteousness. In their personal life, their outside didn’t match their inside, because they didn’t understand the spirit of God’s earlier teachings. They closely followed minor matters, while aspects of the faith like forgiveness, mercy and humility flew right by their attention. They grew to love wealth and status. Their self-righteousness kept them from understanding God’s righteousness. The Pharisees did not produce the fruit of the Spirit because they were not tapping into the well-spring, the source of life, in a personal way. Despite their lives of honor and sacrifice and obedience, their heart attitudes kept them far from God’s heart. Their dutiful morality was akin to the classical Greco-Roman notion of the virtuous life as an end in itself for the basic running of society. We must all be careful that the pursuit of virtue doesn’t end up driving a wedge between an honorable life and life-giving union with God. The virtuous life operating on its own steam soon runs out of spiritual energy. A life lived merely on principle is empty of the divine power needed to produce goodness in each of us.
Beyond Goodness. “Though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things; everyone there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes.” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).
BEAUTY: The quality of outstanding excellence in appearance, in usefulness, in moral character, in creative expression; brings delight to the senses; well-designed and constructed; a harmony that reflects creation; extremely attractive; that which inspires awe, wonder, admiration, praise; profoundly pleasing; an act of pure goodness; the presence of loveliness and grace; something exquisite in form, function, and proportion; that which contains glory and splendor; The Hebrew word “towb” is translated many times as either “good’ or “beautiful,” as either “goodness” or “beauty.” Thus, God’s refrain in the creation story of Genesis 1-2 could be translated as “And God saw that it was beautiful!” God’s creative handiwork has been accepted by believers ever since as an absolute standard for beauty. Also, when Yahweh told Moses that His “goodness” would pass before him there on Mt. Sinai (Ex. 33:19), a legitimate alternative reading would be that Yahweh Lord caused all of His “beauty” to pass before Moses. Lord Yahweh then proceeded to reveal His essential character of mercy, compassion, patience, forgiveness, and faithfulness (Ex. 34:6-7). Ever since, God’s moral character centered on His love has been another absolute standard of true beauty. God’s beauty is truly His goodness. Because God is worshipped as beautiful (for example, Psalm 90:17, Ps. 27:4, and many other passages), and we are taught to “Taste and see the beauty of the Lord” (Ps. 34:8), it’s clear to anyone with eyes of faith that Creator God is the source of the world’s beauty, as He is with truth and goodness. Carrying this further, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was God in the flesh and was likewise filled with beauty and went about doing beautiful things on earth. As Messiah He was prophesied as to His beauty in Isaiah 4:2, “The Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious.” And seeing that the Greek word for beauty, “kalos,” is used in Mark 7:37, we can read, “And the people were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘Everything He does is beautiful!” In the life and ministry of Jesus we see the beautiful character of God in all His goodness, kindness and compassion. Jesus even made it abundantly clear that even the smallest act of devotion carries significant beauty as He proclaimed to the disciples after a woman anointed His head, “She has done a beautiful thing for me!” (Mark 14:9). Other qualities bear witness to God’s beauty, such as wisdom, holiness, grace, and even a “quiet and gentle spirit.” (1 Peter 3:3-4). But what is difficult to accept for many is that believers also consider Christ’s sacrifice to be a beautiful act of love, even though “He had no beauty that we should desire Him.” (Is. 53:2). Since the fallen world has developed a faulty and uninspired sense of beauty, and have even defiled beauty with pornography and ugliness, one can easily look around and say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But that’s a tragic mistake. We need to look no further that God’s creation and character to find our absolute standards of beauty. It’s true, beauty has a grid. The closer we get to those aspects of God’s beauty, the more beautiful we become. The stronger we are in harmony with the biblical absolutes of beauty, and the better we reflect those standards, the more beautiful our lives and creative expressions become.
“So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three? In that case Dostoevsky’s remark, “Beauty will save the world”, was not a careless phrase but a prophecy! After all HE was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination. And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from his 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech).
A Weaving of Three Cords. The Big Three have an innate harmony to them, they are interwoven into an intimate oneness, and so they are inseparable. But on the other hand, we can see them as distinct as they interact with each other and reinforce a support for each other. We dare not separate the strands in their eternal braid, because we don’t have the ability to weave those strands back together again. Only God can do that. We dare not have an imbalanced focus on reason at the expense of conscience or imagination. The world has had its share of evil geniuses and unimaginative faith. We all need to acquire a moral intelligence, an imaginative intellect, and a creative integrity. A full understanding of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is outside our grasp because of their common grounding in almighty God, but they can be experienced as we partake of God’s nature. God enables us to flourish only when the disordered and broken Three Realities are renewed in the Lord. Pastor Kenneth Samples says that, “Through the redemption of Christ, which takes man’s natural capacities that sin has disordered and brings back into a right relationship with God and His nature. When we pursue Truth, Goodness and Beauty in this life, we are tracking the majesty of the Lord.”
Subversive. Because the Big Three runs counter to our culture’s values these days, it is actually very subversive to reach our potential by growing in Truth, Goodness and Beauty. To reflect God’s nature in this way is a difficult task for each of us, so we all need all the help we can get. Our contemporary world understands truth to be merely personal preference, that virtues can change with the weather, and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Living into objective, universal qualities leaves one vulnerable to charges of being offensive, judgmental, arrogant, and anti-freedom. “Yes, that may be your truth, but it’s not my truth.” These days each individual person can foolishly define their own identity and value system, as subjective as that may be. So, to all you parents, teachers, coaches, pastors, mentors, the following are some ideas as to how we could help each other develop our divine identity, how we could help steer ourselves and others towards Truth, Goodness and Beauty in a world in which that is a foreign concept.
Truth and the Intellect. Give young people and each other the tools to pursue and understand the truth; train them in the ability to reason effectively; enable them to develop insightful common sense and logical thinking; help them be comfortable in exploring the truth intellectually and spiritually; strengthen the ability to memorize and grasp factual data; sharpen their discernment between wise and unwise, true and false, loving and unloving, mindful and mindless, logical and illogical.
Goodness and the Conscience. Nurture goodness in the lives of young people and each other; cultivate their integrity and virtue; hold them accountable so they are trained for righteousness; promote a wholesome character and moral intelligence; strengthen their will to make sound decisions; help clarify moral confusion; help them develop shrewd street smarts; enable them to apply biblical principles to daily choices; help them embrace a pedagogy of love; strengthen their ability to empathize with others.
Beauty and the Imagination. Inspire creativity in young people and each other; help them distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly; provide opportunities for creative self-expression; train them in basic artistic skills; capture their imagination in the classroom through story, music, drama, literature, and the visual arts; help them gain confidence in expressing themselves; help them take risks artistically; stimulate their God-given creative impulse; help them be sensitive to their intuition.
Final Thought. “Art in Hebrew – omanut– has a semantic connection with emunah, “faith” or “faithfulness.” Art is the shadow cast by the radiance of God that suffuses all things: ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.’ (Gerard Manley Hopkins). When art lets us see the wonder of creation as God’s work and the human person as God’s image, it becomes a powerful part of the religious life, with one proviso. The Greeks believed in the holiness of beauty. Jews believe in the beauty of holiness: not art for art’s sake but art as a disclosure of the ultimate artistry of the Creator. That is how omanut enhances emunah, how art adds wonder to faith.” (Rabbi Jonathon Sacks).