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The Vicar of Christ on earth argues that the human
mind can know some objective truth
and it can know it with certitude.
The Pope of Truth
By Kenneth Baker
n Eighteen years ago I wrote a column in HPR entitled, “The Pope of Truth.” At that time, just a little over two years into the present pontificate, I noticed that Pope John Paul II often spoke about truth and frequently quoted John 8:32, “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” What I propose to do here is to expand on that idea, especially in the light of two recent papal documents, The Splendor of Truth (1993) and Faith and Reason (1998). We all know that the Pope is a creative philosopher and a deep thinker on divine Revelation. As such, he is passionately concerned about the importance of “truth” in both areas. One reason for this is that many modern thinkers have lost confidence in the ability of the human mind to attain any certain and universal truth; they claim that all statements are purely relative to sense experience and what is true today may be false tomorrow. The Pope sees this situation as very dangerous for the Catholic faith; in fact, it tends to remove faith from the realm of reason and to push it into a type of fideism, that is, mere blind faith or subjective feeling so that what is true for one person is false for another. This view is a serious threat to the truth of the faith which is meant for all men of all time (see Matt. 28:18-20).
Today in the public forum there is also a crisis of truth. We are bombarded with false or misleading information in the daily news coming from Washington and New York, in advertisements which make false claims for their product, in biased TV programs and infomercials on radio and TV, in the statements of politicians who are looking for votes, and so forth. Often today it is hard to find the truth, because too many people think that truth is determined by opinion polls—and they change every day!
John Paul II is well known for many things—his defense of human life, his defense of the dignity of the human person, his defense of the rights of the family, his defense of the male priesthood, and so forth. But a universal theme that runs through most of his talks and writings is the importance of “truth” because it is truth that puts man in contact with the real world and not just the imaginary world of his own mind; that contact with the real world is essential in order to find God in one’s life and to learn how to live in a way that leads to everlasting life.
The Pope has meditated often and deeply on our Lord’s statement found in John 8:31-32, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, (32) and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” I have not made a full count in all his writings and talks, but I am willing to wager that John Paul II has quoted that text more often than any other text in the Bible. It is for this reason that I call him “The Pope of Truth.”
The Pope has come to see many ramifications of this profound statement of Jesus. For example, one finds the full truth by “continuing in his word,” that is, by accepting him as the only Savior of the world and by acting accordingly. Also, by “knowing” the truth of Jesus one is set free from error and from falsehoods of all kinds. This is true liberation because error in the mind and evil in the will are a type of bondage or slavery. Why? Because they divert man from his true end, the reason of his existence, which is the attainment of God and the face to face vision of him in life everlasting.
Rejection of truth and the ensuing errors also affect man’s civil or common life. John Paul has said on several occasions that neglect of truth on the part of governments leads to totalitarianism. You will find that stated explicitly in Veritatis Splendor and in Fides et Ratio. Given the lies and perjury we have been subjected to in Washington during the past few years, the total breakdown of our democratic system of government seems more and more a possibility. For, if politicians are not governed by truth and if they can commit perjury and get away with it, then who is to say that our form of government will survive the collapse of power, banking, communications and other public services if the worse case scenario regarding Y2K becomes a reality? If Clinton were to take over the government by martial law in order to provide some order amidst chaos, would he ever freely relinquish power and go back to a system of representative democracy?
At this point it might be helpful to answer the question, What is truth? Truth is something that philosophers have been thinking about since the 6th century B.C. in Greece. Many theories of truth have been proposed over the centuries, but the best answer to the question, and the one most commonly accepted, is that truth is the correspondence between the mind and reality. This principle was elaborated by Aristotle and later adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas. In normal discourse, truth is in the mind, and the fullness of truth is found in the judgment. Thus, if I judge that 2 plus 2 is 4, or that a dog is an animal, we say those are true statements because they correspond to reality outside the mind. If I say that a circle is square, or that a dog is a cat, then we have false statements because they do not correspond to reality. For truth, the mind must be conformed to what is real outside of the mind or objectively.
It should be noted here that the Pope is concerned with judgmental truth, the conformity of the mind with reality. He is not talking primarily about veracity, or the virtue of telling the truth. That is a moral question and follows on the prior question of first achieving the truth in judgment. For veracity or speaking the truth means that I affirm to others what I know to be true and I deny what I know not to be true. When the Pope speaks about truth he is not talking primarily about veracity.
Let me say briefly, without getting too philosophical, that truth is one of the transcendentals of being, that is, everything that exists, insofar as it exists, is true. Therefore all being is true and so is intelligible and either is or can be understood by some intelligence. Ultimately, God is the source of all truth and intelligibility because he is the source of all being. Thus, all really existing things are true because they correspond to the idea of them in God. Think of this: Since all things were made by the Word of God, and Jesus Christ is the eternal Word of God (John 1), it follows that Jesus is the Truth, Jesus is the fullness of truth. This is an idea that the Pope likes to repeat in the documents mentioned above. He bases himself on the statement of Jesus in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Only God Almighty, the source of all being, could truthfully make a statement like that! The kind of truth that is found in things when they correspond with the idea God has of them is called in philosophy “ontological truth,” that is, the truth of the being of things that is in them independently of my thinking about them. It is a higher type of truth than logical or epistemological truth.
The Pope’s defense of truth found in Faith and Reason is a further development of ideas he expressed in The Splendor of Truth (VS) in 1993. In that letter, which was the first Encyclical Letter of a Pope explicitly addressing moral theology, John Paul II defends the Church’s teaching on morality. There he offers philosophical and theological arguments to show that there is an objective moral law which man must live by if he hopes to attain his final end, namely, life in God forever. By the light of human reason man can know the natural moral law, namely, do good and avoid evil, and also many of the specifics of that law, such as not lying, stealing, killing or committing adultery. For the Christian, the natural moral law is strengthened and made clearer by divine Revelation as found in the Bible and in Church teaching.
So in VS the Pope defends the reality and objectivity of moral norms that are binding on all men. He says that there is no such thing as “creating one’s own truth” or creating one’s own moral code that in any way conflicts with the natural law which is known by all who have the use of reason (see Rom. 1:18-20). Living according to that truth is what makes one free. But by his unaided human reason man can know only some of the truth—he cannot know all the truth, especially that he has been called by God to a supernatural end. The fullness of truth, the Pope says, is to be found in Jesus Christ who is the Truth in Person.
In VS the Pope rejects the so-called “Fundamental Option”; he also rejects all forms of moral relativism, such as, situation ethics, values clarification, proportionalism and consequentialism—all of which try to make exceptions to the universal negative norms of behavior, such as “thou shalt not commit adultery,” or “Thou shalt not kill.” They tend to put too much stress on good intentions and so fall into the old error that “the end justifies the means,” in the sense that, as they say, if one does something wrong, like robbing a bank, in order to get money to help the poor, there can be circumstances that would make that moral and good. In general, then, we can say that the Pope in VS defends traditional biblical morality against the relativism and skepticism contained in many modern theories of ethics.
Next I would like to offer a few comments on the Pope’s recent letter on the relationship between theology and philosophy; it is called in Latin Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason). The letter is a continuation of his defense of moral truth in VS, but on a deeper and broader level, since here he argues in defense of the human mind’s ability to know the truth, not all truth but some truth, and to know it with certitude.
In the past the Church has often been accused of being against science, of being against human reason, and of being a purveyor of myths and fables. It seems to me to be extremely odd, and even a bit comical, that, in the age of computers and space exploration, the Roman Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, should step forward as a leading champion of the value and reliability of human reason. Why is the Pope spending so much time and effort in the defense of human reason? Because many modern intellectuals, as a result of the false philosophical theories they hold, have lost confidence in the ability of the human mind to know anything for certain. Everything seems to be in flux so, in a certain sense, they have adopted the position of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said that everything is changing and that nothing is permanent.
In the 19th century there was great confidence in reason and faith was looked down upon. Now at the end of the 20th century many thinkers have lost confidence in human reason because it has not been able to solve the problems of humanity, it has not been able to eliminate crime, it has not been able to change human nature—something the Communists tried to do and failed. Therefore, many now refer to our present time as “Post-Modern,” although there are different meanings to the term. In general it means a time in which one no longer trusts reason to solve all of mankind’s problems.
The Pope points out that, in the last hundred years or so, the Church has condemned two extremes—rationalism or those who say that reason is sufficient to itself and does not need God or revelation, and fideism which has no trust in human reason and sees salvation in total trust in God or blind faith. In this system there is no room for theology or reflection on the fuller meaning of divine Revelation.
Given this situation, John Paul says that a wholesome and realistic philosophy is necessary for theology. Philosophy defends and explains knowledge and certitude. In the process, it has developed many important ideas and terms that are very useful in coming to a better understanding of God’s revelation of himself to man as Tripersonal, as Creator, as Redeemer in Christ Jesus, and as Holy Spirit in the sanctification of the faithful. Essential to the development of theology is the use of such philosophical terms as substance, accident, relation, person, cause, effect, action, passion, motion, matter & form, and so forth. The Church has in the past and continues in the present to use these terms, and many others like them, to explain and clarify the Christian faith and the mysteries of the faith.
The Pope distinguishes between the “hearing of the faith” (auditus fidei) and the “understanding of the faith” (intellectus fidei). It is one thing to hear the faith and to make an act of faith; it is something else to go on to a deeper understanding of the faith in matters of the Trinity, Incarnation, divine grace, the Seven Sacraments and the Church as instituted by Christ.
Philosophy and theology, though using different methods and principles, actually help each other to attain new insights. Thus, philosophy would not be where it is today in its consideration of the human person, freedom, human dignity, civil life and many other areas if it were not for what it learned from Catholic theology.
The Church does not espouse any one philosophy, since all philosophers are searching for the truth. But the Church does not hesitate to criticize and even condemn philosophical positions which deny truths of the faith. There is only one truth and one source of truth, which is God Almighty who cannot contradict himself. Therefore, if any philosopher contradicts certain truths of the faith, such as Three Persons in one God, or that the world and everything in it was created by God or that the Ten Commandments are binding on all at all times, the Church does not hesitate to single out such errors for criticism and condemnation.
If there is any thinker to whom the Church is partial it is St. Thomas Aquinas, but he is primarily a theologian and only secondarily a philosopher. Surely he is both. Many Popes have recommended the works of St. Thomas to seminarians and theologians and he was the only theologian mentioned by name in the Second Vatican Council. Thomas’s works were highly recommended by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 in his Encyclical Letter Aeterni Patris, which was the beginning of a Thomistic revival with such thinkers as Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and many others. The movement flourished in the first part of this century and then almost died after the Council in the 1960s. The Church does not endorse any one philosophy because she is willing to accept the truth from any source, since all truth comes ultimately from God.
In summary, the main point of “Faith and Reason” is to defend human reason against modern attacks on it. His concern is primarily the faith, because the faith can be corrupted by false philosophical ideas. In the recent past many good Catholics and seminarians and priests have lost their faith because of their exposure to false philosophies, such as that of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and the Lutheran Scripture scholar Rudolf Bultmann with his existentialism and demythologizing the Bible. Actually, it seems that most errors in theology and outright heresies get their start in false philosophical ideas.
John Paul II defends the basics. He shows that man can know some objective truth with certainty; he can know the natural moral law, he can know that every effect must have an adequate cause, he can know that God exists, he can know that man’s mind transcends this world of time and space. Man does not have perfect knowledge of these matters, but he can attain some true knowledge of them and he can know for certain that he possesses such knowledge. So this Pope rejects all forms of subjectivism, relativism and skepticism.
Another key point in Fides et Ratio is that philosophy and theology need each other. Each science helps the other to progress in the search for truth. Theology would be severely limited without the help of philosophy, and theology offers to philosophy new avenues of discovery in many questions relating to man, such as original sin and the problem of evil, to God (three Persons in one God), and the world—that it was created in time and at some point in the future will come to an end with the Second Coming of Christ.
The Pope stresses that there are two levels of knowledge for man: 1) what is known by reason based on human experience, and 2) what is known by faith in Jesus Christ based on God’s revelation. Revelation has taken place in history and in it God offers man the ultimate truth about his life and human history—a truth he cannot find by human reason alone. Without revelation the mystery of human existence remains an insoluble enigma. But by freely accepting revelation, man comes to an understanding of the mystery of his existence (#15). So there is a profound connection between the two types of knowledge (#16).
In one sense, the whole letter is an argument of the Pope for the validity of metaphysics or the philosophy of being. He wants both philosophers and theologians to take metaphysics seriously because it impinges directly on the truth of the Catholic faith. So if philosophers lose confidence in human reason, this will have dire effects not only on philosophy but also on theology which makes use of philosophy.
In conclusion, I would like to say that the Pope is very courageous to challenge the anti-metaphysical thinking of the world today, which is characterized mostly by positivism, empiricism, relativism and skepticism. Also there are large pockets of crypto-fideists among Catholics and evangelicals who, because of their mistrust of reason, settle for a rigid form of “biblicism” which has no use for philosophy or theology. Amazing as it may seem, John Paul II reaffirms the value and importance of metaphysics! He argues with all the authority of his exalted position as the Vicar of Christ on earth that the human mind can know some objective truth and it can know it with certitude.
The Pope has elevated the status of man by praising what is most noble in him: the power of human reason which can know the truth and grasp universal reality, which can know God and penetrate his mystery in some ways. In fact, the greatness of man consists in being a spirit in the world, in his power of reason which is what distinguishes man from the beasts, not only by degrees but by his nature or essence. Thus the Pope is taking direct aim at naturalists who seem to hold that there is no essential difference between a tree and human being.
Fides et Ratio exalts man as an image of God and so it will be prized by all those who believe in man and in his ability to arrive at truth which is universal and absolute, at truth which is objective and real, at truth which is God himself. So for this Pope, man is not a prisoner in time and space. He is rather a free person made in the image of God with an eternal destiny and therefore each man deserves our love and respect.
For the reasons given above, I think it is thoroughly fitting to call John Paul II “The Pope of Truth.”
Reverend Kenneth Baker, S.J., has been the editor of HPR since 1971. In addition to his editing work, he also teaches theology and lectures on topics in theology and ecclesiology. This article is based on a recent lecture on John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter, Fides et Ratio (“Faith and Reason”), which was published at the end of 1998.
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