I opened a previous post (Post-Truth Certainty) with this question, asked by Pontius Pilate of Jesus during his trial.

John (Chapter 18, Verses 37-38)

‘So!’ said Pilate.  ‘You are a king, are you?’
‘You’re the one who’s calling me a king,’ replied Jesus.  ‘I was born for this; I’ve come into the world for this: to give evidence about the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’
‘Truth!’ said Pilate.  ‘What’s that?’
With those words, he went back out to the Judeans.

Much like Pilate himself, I didn’t hang around for an answer at the time, dwelling instead on untruth and why we seem compelled to chase that.  I’ve decided that it is time to look for an answer.

In my previous post I described how Pilate’s question had reverberated around my head since childhood, inspiring feelings of puzzlement (“Isn’t it obvious?”) and wonderment (“If it is so obvious, why ask the question?”).  As a mathematician, I suppose that the puzzlement arose from associating truth too closely with facts.  Facts are quite common in the realm of mathematics and science and so I thought of truth as being like a fact:  something that is provable beyond doubt.  In other areas of life, however, absolute facts are actually few and far between and truth is a much more nebulous quality.  Facts may help us find the truth of a given situation, but rarely contain the whole truth of that situation.  Although currently obsessed with facts, alternative facts and fake news, I would say this is very much true of politics.  It is also true of ethics and aesthetics (see the knots that Doctor Who fans can tie themselves in trying to ‘prove’ that one Doctor is better than another, or that football fans can tie themselves in trying to ‘prove’ that one team is better than another).  Once I grasped this difference between truth and facts, the wonderment about Pilate’s question subsided, although the puzzlement increased.  If truth doesn’t simply boil down to provable facts, what indeed is it?  However, I believe I can now see a way through the puzzlement.  It turns out that mathematics, which I’ve just described as being a stumbling block, is now a help.

In philosophical terms, I would subscribe to the pragmatic theory of truth.  This asks us to think of truth as being “that upon which our beliefs converge through the process of enquiry”.  As a mathematician, I found the idea found in convergent sequences or functions of always getting closer to a limit but never quite reaching it fascinating.  I am therefore quite comfortable with the consequence of this pragmatic definition that the truth may be something that we can never quite reach.  However, that shouldn’t ever stop us from trying to get closer to the truth.  Looking again to mathematics, not all functions or sequences converge to a limit.  Some may remain constant, others may diverge.  There are plenty of examples of this happening in enquiries in the realms of politics (e.g. the EU referendum campaign failing to converge on a truth about the EU) or ethics (e.g. the Church of England struggling to converge on a truth about homosexuality).  What conditions are required for our enquiries to converge on a truth?  I think that we firstly need to have a current position, secondly need to accept that our current position may not yet be the truth of the situation and thirdly need to understand alternative positions.  (Without understanding an alternative position, you can neither agree nor disagree with it.)  In other words, we need to have an opinion but also be prepared to change our minds and discuss with people who have different opinions.  You might not end up changing your opinion, but if you enter any enquiry with the statement “Nothing that I hear will change my opinion!” then you are denying yourself and your community the opportunity of getting closer to the truth.

As a Christian, I can go a bit further with this.  However, what emerges at the end makes no reference to God.  If you’ve made it this far I would therefore encourage you to stick with it all the way, whatever your beliefs.  When we enter our enquiries with such an open mind and (assuming we are heading in the right direction) consequently move closer to the limit of truth we move closer to the one who said of himself:

John (Chapter 14, Verse 6)

‘I am the way,’ replied Jesus, ‘and the truth and the life!’

Furthermore, the truth we seek is liberation itself:

John (Chapter 8, Verses 31-32)

So Jesus spoke to the Judaeans who had believed in him.
‘If you remain in my word,’ he said, ‘you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

Despite all my talk of limits that we never quite reach, the implication is clear that the truth is something that we will eventually reach.  We will know at the time when the earthly and heavenly realms join and God’s kingdom finally comes on Earth.  Paul sheds more light on this time when we will reach the limits of our enquiries and find the truth.  This is a long quote, but it doesn’t mention God and should be familiar from weddings or, for any self-respecting Doctor Who fan, The Curse of Fenric (Episode 2):

1 Corinthians (Chapter 13, Verses 4-13)

Love’s great-hearted; love is kind,
knows no jealousy, makes no fuss,
is not puffed up, knows no shameless ways,
doesn’t force its rightful claim;
doesn’t rage or bear a grudge,
doesn’t cheer at others’ harm,
rejoices, rather, in the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
Love hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.  But prophesies will be
abolished; tongues will stop; and knowledge, too,
be done away.  We know, you see, in part;
we prophesy in part; but, with perfection,
the partial is abolished.  As a child
I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child;
when I grew up, I threw off childish ways.
For at the moment all that we can see
are puzzling reflections in a mirror;
then, face to face.  I know in part, for now;
but then I’ll know completely, through and through,
even as I’m completely known.  So, now,
faith, hope, and love remain, these three; and, of them,
love is the greatest.

I made an assumption above that in order to approach the truth we must be heading in the right direction.  Returning to mathematics for a moment, the function f(x) = 1/x has two limits: one as x tends to 0 and one as x tends to infinity.  How do we know in our enquiries into the truth of an issue that we are heading towards the limit of truth rather than towards some alternative limit?  We need some kind of compass to ensure we are pointing in the right direction.  The compass we need is right there above, in 1 Corinthians 13.  It is the one virtue that will continue from this world into the next.  Love.  Love will carry us through to the time when we know completely.  Like any compass, however, it isn’t just something you look at just once before setting out.  If you want to avoid losing your way you need to keep checking in with it at regular intervals.  To seek the truth always guided by love is, I believe, the vocation of every Christian thinker.  Since it doesn’t mention God, it’s a vocation that I think any thinker could subscribe to, whatever their beliefs.

On reflection, the title that I would like to give this blog is “Seeking the truth; guided by love.”  Not because I make any claim as to my ability to find truth, but as a reminder to myself that it is what I should always be doing in my thinking and writing.  As for Pilate (a homophone of pilot, not a singular form of a popular physical fitness system), the answer to his question was right in front of him, if only he’d been able to see it.  A bit like me at the start of my quest for the raspberry jam.