Quid Est Veritas?

Ever since Pilate asked that question of Jesus, secular scholars and petit academicians have struggled to formulate an answer.  Jerome, pondering that question in the Latin version of the Scriptures stumbled upon the only answer.  By simply rearranging the letters, and neither adding nor subtracting from them, he discovered that “the answer to the question is in the asking”, thus “Quid est Veritas?” is answered “Est vir, Qui Adest!”  The Scriptures also state very emphatically, “the truth is in Jesus Christ”—since the “in” is in italics we know it was supplied by the translators and is not in the Greek text and thus it should read, “the truth is Jesus Christ,” (Eph. 4:21) and Jesus Christ stated, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father except through Me,” (John 14:6)

Based on those texts, underscored by Jerome’s discovery, when asked to write my philosophy of education out in three sentences or less, I formulated it this way:

“On the rocky and sometimes fearsome path one travels between being a ‘pupil’ and being a ‘student’ it is essential to grasp the awesome fact that ‘truth never fears a challenge,’ and to realize that as Christians we possess the liberty to challenge the existing order of things through critical analysis, and are charged with the responsibility to become the creative, thinking opinion leaders that this world so desperately needs.”  If a student will accept that challenge we can then begin to educate and train him (I refuse to bow to the PC crowd) in becoming a virtuous and disinterested servant- leader which, in turn, is a step toward becoming a Christian Statesman.

The first step in that process is for the student to understand what Truth Is—truth is objective and knowable.   Truth is not relative; there are not multiple “truths” with each person selecting his or her own set.  Truth also is absolute: if something is true it also is absolute—conversely, if something is absolute, it also is true.  To state that something is absolutely true or that one believes in absolute truth is merely to dabble in “repetitious redundancies.”  It stands, therefore, that there cannot be conflicting “truths”—your “truth” cannot be true if it conflicts with or stands in contradiction to my “truth,” and vice versa, assuming that one of our “truths” aligns with Truth and the other’s does not.

A glaring example of the foregoing is the recent publication of a Constitutional Law supplemental text entitled The Godless Constitution in which authors Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, state that they have dispensed with the usual footnotes and references in the interests of brevity.  The truth behind that lie is that there are no references from the Constitution, its authors, its early commentators, or its documentation that would support such an absurd concept as the authors purport to “prove” through their abjectly non-scholarly, opinion-only work.  The authors simply state that the Constitution is Godless because they state that it is (some 200 years after the fact and ignoring all of the documentation, freely available, that totally and flatly disproves their thesis).   The Christian principles of our founders are, in Al Gore’s words, “an inconvenient truth” to those who refuse to be honest in their research in order to promote a society free from the restraints that truth necessarily imposes upon them.

The false teaching that truth is “relative” has but one goal and that is to destroy the whole concept of Truth (to which one must be finally accountable) and thereby allow the development of a society for whom there is no final accountability.  Our Founding Fathers understood that concept quite well and insisted that no one was fit for public office who would not affirm a belief in God and in judgment after death.  They had seen the corrupting influence of power, and without doubt would be in agreement with Lord Acton, who later wrote in the Confederate War era, that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  If one were to be entrusted with public (governmental) power, one must recognize that he must give a final accounting of his use or misuse of that power to the One from whom that power derives, the One who is All Power.

It is but a small step backward from teaching that there is no final accountability to teaching that there are no consequences for one’s behavior.  If there is no accountability to a final ultimate Authority, then man is the only arbiter—and society must then attempt to bring behavior under control by appealing to its citizens to, as Nietzsche says, “be true to the earth.”  But if my truth allows me to participate in whatever I choose, then your truth needs to be tolerant and allow my behavioral manifestations of my truth for, “Who’s to say what’s right or wrong?  If it’s right for you who can say it’s wrong?” Without a proper concept of truth, there is no standard but man for man’s actions.

Even thinking proponents of the false religion of evolution know, as was stated by one such scientist in a television interview, “of course there is no scientific evidence for evolution, but the kids have to be taught something so that they can enjoy their sexual freedoms” (the statement was so fascinating that I forgot to write down the reference—very un-scholarly, I know).  Recognizing that truth is objective and knowable frees one from the shackles of secular philosophy and enables one to genuinely use the scientific method of investigation—observing what is there unfettered by philosophy of science falsely-so-called (which dictates that observation must be bent to fit itself–and woe be to the thinking scientist who fails to bend his observations to fit the philosophy).  In Isaiah, God says to man, “come now and let us reason together,” and the Psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.”  D. James Kennedy, recently deceased pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida, quoted an astronomer who said, “…the more you study (observation unfettered by philosophy) this thing (the Universe) going infinitely outward (telescopically) and infinitely inward (microscopically), the more you become convinced that is the result of one, single, gigantic mathematical thought—it had to be done all at once, or it could not have been done at all.”

Of course evolution is going to fall by the wayside, discarded on the trash heap of other failed philosophies that have tried to pervert truth for self-serving, anti-Bible, God, and Christ (or humanist) interests and it will be replaced by another of the same failed genre, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.  That is of no particular concern to me because

“Truth Never Fears a challenge.”

 

Quid est Veritas? Est vir, Qui Adest!