"Distrust every claim for truth where you do not see truth united with love..."

Now here's the kind of thinking we could do with more of. This is Paul Tillich preaching in a University Chapel on the text "What is Truth?" He finishes with these words:

"Distrust every claim for truth where you do not see truth united with love; and be certain that you are of the truth and that the truth has taken hold of you only when love has taken hold of you and has started to make you free from yourselves."

Imagine being told that as you come to the end of a worship service. That you can get a handle on who you are and what your life is about if you take seriously the connection between truth and love. How does that work? Well here's Tillich earlier in the same sermon:

"If you seriously ask the question, 'Am I of the truth?', you are of the truth. If you do not ask it seriously, you do not really want, and you do not deserve, and you cannot get, an answer! He who asks  seriously the question of the truth that liberates is already on the way to liberation."

Of course Tillich is talking about more than factual truth, establishing what is verifiable by investigation. He certainly includes that. But he is after the deeper levels and originating sources of truthfulness that we might call integrity of character, authenticity in behaviour, consistency in values and ethical choices, an absence of cynicism, an aversion to lies whether spoken, implied or by self-deceit. All of these grow out of the deep subsoil of the soul, the accumulation over time of mistakes and missteps, of good decisions and unselfish choices, those moments of self-discovery, self-awareness and self-correction which are the often hidden work of the Holy Spirit in the conscience and at the well-springs of motive and self-knowing.

Tillich in this sermon exposes our capacity for self-deceit, and our innate tendency to give a body swerve to whatever challenges our distorted notions of who we are, our perfections, importance and carefully constructed self-image. That's why he is careful to distinguish between our desire to grasp the truth, and our willingness to be grasped by the truth. Those who wish to control truth, to be the final arbiter of what is true, right, real for me, are unlikely to listen when even the truth addresses them, contradicts them, and judges them.

Even Pilate, who uttered that question, "What is truth?", and looked into the face of the truth of all things, knew somewhere deep down in a conscience hardened by military law and arbitrary power, that he could not master the truth. He could flog it half to death, he could crucify it and bury it. But truth will out. And the resurrection of Jesus became the truth that judges all other truth claims. Love, not hate, is true; life, not death, is true; hope, not despair, is true; light, not darkness shines with truth; reconciliation, not enmity, is built on truth. Pilate asked, "What is truth?" Angels answered him three days later, "He is risen."

The ending of Tillich's sermon is about that risen life and its transformative power: "be certain that you are of the truth and that the truth has taken hold of you only when love has taken hold of you and has started to make you free from yourselves." The words echo much of the teaching in the First Epistle of John; but they are themselves paraphrased, albeit unwittingly, by the last verse of Stuart Townend's excellent Easter praise song:

One with the Father, Ancient of Days,
Through the Spirit who clothes faith with certainty.
Honour and blessing, glory and praise
To the King crowned with pow'r and authority!
And we are raised with Him,
Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered;
And we shall reign with Him,
For He lives: Christ is risen from the dead!

This kind of truth is not a truth we grasp, but one that grasps us. The "Spirit clothes faith with certainty", but it isn't the empty certitudes of those who think they can win all the arguments, and impose their version of truth. It is the assurance of those who know that truth unites with love, and both unite with life, and these are found in Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified and risen.

Using Tillich's italicised emphasis, truth is found by those who seriously seek truth, those who are open to truth, not as a power to impose on others, but as a way of being which is expressed in the love of God and lived out in loving action for Christ's sake. When love and truth take hold of us, only then can we answer what is truth, and discover as Jesus said all along, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." John 8.32   

Comments

[Tom Currie]

Thank you for sharing the insightful excerpts from Paul Tillich's preaching on the text, "What is truth?"