We continue our translation of P. Bernward Deneke FSSP's lecture. See here for Part 1. - PAK
3. The basis of the Christian creed
It is now time to examine the matter of truth within the sphere of the Christian religion. This should be done on the basis of the following problem: What is the answer of a serious Catholic to the question of why he professes and practices this faith, of all things?
Reasons of subjective utility, such as pointing to personal advantages, the resulting prestige and social advancement, do not come into question; they have been eliminated almost everywhere in our time. The days when one had to be baptized a Catholic in order to become General Music Director in Vienna, like Gustav Mahler, are over.
Instead, motives of personal preference may be offered as an answer, for example in the subjective form: “Catholicism is simply beautiful, it corresponds to my personal taste,” or in a more objective form: “The Catholic world of faith, life and worship meets the highest aesthetic standards, which are not found in any other Christian denomination or other religion.”
There are indeed sincere people who find their way to the Catholic faith on the via aesthetica. The fascination that emanates in particular from our liturgy is described with a strong autobiographical coloring by Oscar Wilde in the 11th chapter of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray:
The argument is valid in itself, but not without problems at the present time. In the present hour, when wafts of ambiguity have been cast over the monument of unambiguousness by statements from high places, the moral authority and superiority of institutional Catholicism appears questionable in the eyes of not a few observers.
Furthermore, an analysis of the morally good shows that it is not self-justifying, but rests on a deeper basis. In philosophy, there has been and continues to be extensive debate about whether the sphere of ought, that is, the morally good, is connected to the sphere of being – and thus of truth. Without burdening the reader with the arguments about David Hume's being-should fallacy and George E. Moore's natural fallacy, it should be noted that, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas takes the reference of the good to the truth for granted, which he also substantiates with arguments. The often quoted sentence Agere sequitur esse, “Action follows from being”, expresses the essential, as does the other: Nihil volitum, nisi praecognitum, "Nothing is willed that has not been previously known.”
Josef Pieper, who has written a valuable booklet entitled “Reality and the Good” about the foundations of the “should” in being, summarizes St. Thomas' view as follows:
Therefore, the answer of our serious Catholic to the question of why he has adopted this faith and no other is: “I am Catholic because I am convinced of the truth of the Christian religion.”
“Truth of the Christian religion” means nothing other than: This religion is objectively true. Its contents are facts even if no human being recognizes them. The events, teachings and institutions faithfully accepted in Catholic Christianity really go back to the one and only God and have validity before him.
It is obvious that this view corresponds to the biblical testimony. When the disciples on the road to Emmaus had hurried back to Jerusalem to the eleven apostles after their encounter with the risen Jesus to tell them about their experience, they learned there that the Lord had truly risen and had appeared to Simon (Luke 24:34). The true – in the original Greek text ὄντως, “genuine”, “real” – is emphasized. In the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul also insists on the reality of the resurrection, without which faith is in vain. Inspired by this, in the Easter season, believers of Greek tongue greet each other with “Christòs anésti – alithõs anésti”, and Russians with “Christos voskres – voistinu voskres”: “Christ is risen – He is truly risen.”
The Christian faith is thus based on the truth and veracity of this event, and, as logic demands, everything that the resurrection implies as a prerequisite and what it subsequently explains is also established. Prerequisites are truths such as the Trinity of God, the incarnation of the eternal Son in the virginal womb of Mary through a conception brought about by the Holy Spirit, and his voluntary surrender of life for us on the cross. In the wake of the resurrection, we recognize the mission of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the visible Church with its sacraments and the offices authorized to represent Christ, with its perpetual sacrifice, the lasting presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, with its authority to forgive sins, its inerrancy and indestructibility. And our prospect of future bliss in the presence of God is linked to the resurrection of Jesus.
All this and much more is, so the Catholic Christian is convinced, true and real. Because he accepts it as true and real by faith, he is a Catholic Christian. It is not goodness or beauty that forms the keynote of the Catholic triad, but truth. It carries goodness as well as beauty, allows it to be truly good and truly beautiful.
4. What is truth?
In view of this emphasis on truth, the question raised by Pontius Pilate at the trial of Jesus may now arise. The Lord had given the following self-testimony: “Yes, I am a king. For this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” (John 18:37) The governor reacted to this in a manner that, according to Carl Schmitt's apt description, was not a genuine search for truth, but rather a tired skepticism and agnosticism or the superior tolerance displayed by the ideologically neutral statesman.[2] However, this should not prevent us from asking the Pilate question with a genuine desire for knowledge: What is truth?
In a formulation that has become classic, St. Thomas Aquinas explains truth as an adaequatio intellectus et rei, as an “approximation of the intellect and a thing (or a set of facts)” (S.Th. I 21,2). If I think about something, let it be x, and if it is actually true that it is x, then my judgment is true. My thought is measured here against reality. If the two coincide, then there is truth.
What is important here is that the opposite is also true. It is not only the state of affairs that can be the measure of knowledge, but also knowledge that can be the measure of the state of affairs. Instead of speaking of a logical truth, we speak of an ontological truth, namely the truth that does not lie in the post-cognitive thought, but rather in the thing itself.
This sounds very philosophical and abstract and should therefore be illustrated. An artist has a certain image in his imagination, it captures him, awakens his creative urge and his creative powers. He wants to place what he has seen as a work of art in the objective world of the visible, so he reaches for his paintbrush and begins his painting.
This will now be “true” insofar as it corresponds to the artistic idea, but it will be “untrue” insofar as it either falls short of it due to a lack of skill or is overgrown in its authentic form by additions, perhaps details that are intended only to show off mere skill. If, for example, Caspar David Friedrich, whose 250th birthday we are celebrating this year, had added beach huts and ships to his Monk by the Sea (Mönch am Meer), even if they were perfectly depicted, it would certainly no longer have been about the original inner vision. The painting would have become “untrue”.
In a higher sense, this ontological truth applies to the relationship of all created beings to their Creator. Whatever is created has truth in so far as it corresponds to the original, archetypal divine idea. The truth of a tree, for example, lies in the fact that it is as God conceived it. The same applies to man, albeit with the difference that he is endowed with truth not only in the sense of an objective gift, but that it was also given to him as an objective task in life. We are to become what we already always are in the creative thoughts of God; in the words of Friedrich Rückert: “Before each stands an image of what he should become: / As long as he is not that, his peace is not complete.”[3]
It should be mentioned in passing that this view is diametrically opposed to the existentialism of a Jean-Paul Sartre and his descendants, according to which man has neither a predetermined nature nor a divine mission, but must rather design himself and realize this design himself. Between such a view and the Christian view there is an unbridgeable gulf, which remains even if some moral theologians of our time try to combine the two.
At this point, if we briefly apply the ontological truth to the exalted object of the sacred liturgy, we can say that it is “true” insofar as it corresponds to the divine original model, as it appears in revelation and in the proclamation of the Church. A rite of the Mass in which the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his Eucharistic presence are validly expressed and which leads the faithful to genuine worship of God and fruitful participation in the mysteries, is undoubtedly in accordance with God's thoughts. Therefore it is “true”. And so it is a sure guide for us into the truth of the mysterium fidei.
Truth is therefore a relation; a relationship between thought and reality. From here, we have a glimpse into the very foundations of truth. Where else should they lie but in God Himself? However, it seems important to me to correct the frequently heard statement that God Himself is the truth, the “absolute truth”.
St. Thomas Aquinas also argues in this direction when he writes in his commentary on John: “All truth that our intellect can grasp is finite, and therefore there must be a truth that transcends every intellect, that is incomprehensible and infinite, and that is God” (Commentary on the Gospel of John, Prologue, 6).
On closer inspection, however, one is more likely to agree with St. Augustine when he distinguishes: “Truthful” (verax) is the Father, “the truth” (veritas), however, is the Son (Commentary on the Gospel of John V 1). While Scripture does not simply identify God with the truth, Jesus calls himself “way, truth and life” (Jn 14:6). This saying certainly requires a more extensive theological discussion, but this much is certain: the eternal Logos, from whom the Father was born before time and of one being with him, is from eternity "the radiance of his glory and the express image of his being“ (Hebrews 1:3) and as the incarnate Son, ”the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15); whoever sees him sees the Father (14:9). Since the Second Divine Person is the perfect image of the First, having emerged from the latter's self-awareness, it is more appropriate to ascribe truth or “being the truth” not simply to God, but more precisely to the Son.
In any case, truth consists in agreement and has its ultimate reason in God. In the briefest formula, one can say: the divine truth is the Son, the Christian truth is Christ. Jesus could have answered the governor's question, “What is truth?” quite succinctly: “I am.” On the foundation of this truth, everything rests. It is both the supporting basis and the all-encompassing whole; the principle that gives meaning and purpose to everything, without which everything, including the good and the beautiful, would fall into meaninglessness and aimlessness.
To understand the relationship between truth, goodness and beauty, let us take a brief look at the divine archetype. Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that the two inner-divine processes, the begetting of the Son and the breathing of the Holy Spirit, correspond to the knowing and the willing in God. There can be no process of love without a focus on the process of the Word, because the will only focuses in love on that which has been previously recognized. Although there is no before or after in God's eternity, the logical order of the generation of the Son must be attributed a priority (S.Th. I 27,3 ad 3).
Transferred to the relationship between the cognitively true and the volitionally good, this in turn means the priority of the true. As already stated: Nihil volitum, nisi praecognitum, “Nothing is willed that has not been previously known.” But beauty also presupposes truth. More will be said about this at a later point in order to understand it.
(To be concluded next time.)
NOTES
It is now time to examine the matter of truth within the sphere of the Christian religion. This should be done on the basis of the following problem: What is the answer of a serious Catholic to the question of why he professes and practices this faith, of all things?
Reasons of subjective utility, such as pointing to personal advantages, the resulting prestige and social advancement, do not come into question; they have been eliminated almost everywhere in our time. The days when one had to be baptized a Catholic in order to become General Music Director in Vienna, like Gustav Mahler, are over.
Instead, motives of personal preference may be offered as an answer, for example in the subjective form: “Catholicism is simply beautiful, it corresponds to my personal taste,” or in a more objective form: “The Catholic world of faith, life and worship meets the highest aesthetic standards, which are not found in any other Christian denomination or other religion.”
There are indeed sincere people who find their way to the Catholic faith on the via aesthetica. The fascination that emanates in particular from our liturgy is described with a strong autobiographical coloring by Oscar Wilde in the 11th chapter of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray:
It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle fascination for him.
Ten years separated the scandal-ridden author, when he wrote this in 1890, from his own last-minute conversion: On November 28, 1900, Father Cuthbert Dunn in Paris admitted the seriously ill Wilde into the Church before he died on November 30 as a result of an inflammation of the middle ear with penetration into the midbrain.
It is deeply gratifying when, in Catholic worship, especially in the offering of the sacrifice and the adoration of the Eucharistic Lord, that beauty shines forth which – according to Dostoyevsky's famous saying – “saves the world”. But is that always the case? And is a great aesthetic experience enough to justify the most important, all-important choice in life?
Even a hyperaesthete like Oscar Wilde would certainly have answered in the negative at the hour of his conversion, which was carried out without liturgical pomp in the squalor of his sickbed. And those who have grown up in the Church and matured as Christians are also unlikely to cite beauty as the ultimate reason for their Catholicism.
Another answer comes from the moral sphere. It is said, for example, “No other worldview has such a high-minded and coherent ethic; in no other religion or Christian denomination does one resist relativizing trends that undermine and erode morality as in the Catholic Church.
The argument is valid in itself, but not without problems at the present time. In the present hour, when wafts of ambiguity have been cast over the monument of unambiguousness by statements from high places, the moral authority and superiority of institutional Catholicism appears questionable in the eyes of not a few observers.
Furthermore, an analysis of the morally good shows that it is not self-justifying, but rests on a deeper basis. In philosophy, there has been and continues to be extensive debate about whether the sphere of ought, that is, the morally good, is connected to the sphere of being – and thus of truth. Without burdening the reader with the arguments about David Hume's being-should fallacy and George E. Moore's natural fallacy, it should be noted that, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas takes the reference of the good to the truth for granted, which he also substantiates with arguments. The often quoted sentence Agere sequitur esse, “Action follows from being”, expresses the essential, as does the other: Nihil volitum, nisi praecognitum, "Nothing is willed that has not been previously known.”
Josef Pieper, who has written a valuable booklet entitled “Reality and the Good” about the foundations of the “should” in being, summarizes St. Thomas' view as follows:
All ‘should’ is based on ‘being’. Reality is the foundation of the ethical. The good is in accordance with reality. Those who want to know and do good must turn their gaze to the objective world of being. Not to their own 'convictions', not to their 'conscience', not to 'values', not to arbitrarily set 'ideals' and 'role models'. They must look away from their own act and look at reality."[1]What is important in our context: anyone who states that the ethical height, the moral claim, in short: the goodness of the Catholic religion is the reason for their decision in favor of it, has not yet stated the ultimate reason. Goodness presupposes truth. A worldview can only be truly good if it is really real, that is, if it corresponds to reality, and that means: if it is true.
Therefore, the answer of our serious Catholic to the question of why he has adopted this faith and no other is: “I am Catholic because I am convinced of the truth of the Christian religion.”
“Truth of the Christian religion” means nothing other than: This religion is objectively true. Its contents are facts even if no human being recognizes them. The events, teachings and institutions faithfully accepted in Catholic Christianity really go back to the one and only God and have validity before him.
It is obvious that this view corresponds to the biblical testimony. When the disciples on the road to Emmaus had hurried back to Jerusalem to the eleven apostles after their encounter with the risen Jesus to tell them about their experience, they learned there that the Lord had truly risen and had appeared to Simon (Luke 24:34). The true – in the original Greek text ὄντως, “genuine”, “real” – is emphasized. In the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul also insists on the reality of the resurrection, without which faith is in vain. Inspired by this, in the Easter season, believers of Greek tongue greet each other with “Christòs anésti – alithõs anésti”, and Russians with “Christos voskres – voistinu voskres”: “Christ is risen – He is truly risen.”
The Christian faith is thus based on the truth and veracity of this event, and, as logic demands, everything that the resurrection implies as a prerequisite and what it subsequently explains is also established. Prerequisites are truths such as the Trinity of God, the incarnation of the eternal Son in the virginal womb of Mary through a conception brought about by the Holy Spirit, and his voluntary surrender of life for us on the cross. In the wake of the resurrection, we recognize the mission of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the visible Church with its sacraments and the offices authorized to represent Christ, with its perpetual sacrifice, the lasting presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, with its authority to forgive sins, its inerrancy and indestructibility. And our prospect of future bliss in the presence of God is linked to the resurrection of Jesus.
All this and much more is, so the Catholic Christian is convinced, true and real. Because he accepts it as true and real by faith, he is a Catholic Christian. It is not goodness or beauty that forms the keynote of the Catholic triad, but truth. It carries goodness as well as beauty, allows it to be truly good and truly beautiful.
 |
| St Thomas teaching students |
In view of this emphasis on truth, the question raised by Pontius Pilate at the trial of Jesus may now arise. The Lord had given the following self-testimony: “Yes, I am a king. For this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” (John 18:37) The governor reacted to this in a manner that, according to Carl Schmitt's apt description, was not a genuine search for truth, but rather a tired skepticism and agnosticism or the superior tolerance displayed by the ideologically neutral statesman.[2] However, this should not prevent us from asking the Pilate question with a genuine desire for knowledge: What is truth?
In a formulation that has become classic, St. Thomas Aquinas explains truth as an adaequatio intellectus et rei, as an “approximation of the intellect and a thing (or a set of facts)” (S.Th. I 21,2). If I think about something, let it be x, and if it is actually true that it is x, then my judgment is true. My thought is measured here against reality. If the two coincide, then there is truth.
What is important here is that the opposite is also true. It is not only the state of affairs that can be the measure of knowledge, but also knowledge that can be the measure of the state of affairs. Instead of speaking of a logical truth, we speak of an ontological truth, namely the truth that does not lie in the post-cognitive thought, but rather in the thing itself.
This sounds very philosophical and abstract and should therefore be illustrated. An artist has a certain image in his imagination, it captures him, awakens his creative urge and his creative powers. He wants to place what he has seen as a work of art in the objective world of the visible, so he reaches for his paintbrush and begins his painting.
This will now be “true” insofar as it corresponds to the artistic idea, but it will be “untrue” insofar as it either falls short of it due to a lack of skill or is overgrown in its authentic form by additions, perhaps details that are intended only to show off mere skill. If, for example, Caspar David Friedrich, whose 250th birthday we are celebrating this year, had added beach huts and ships to his Monk by the Sea (Mönch am Meer), even if they were perfectly depicted, it would certainly no longer have been about the original inner vision. The painting would have become “untrue”.
In a higher sense, this ontological truth applies to the relationship of all created beings to their Creator. Whatever is created has truth in so far as it corresponds to the original, archetypal divine idea. The truth of a tree, for example, lies in the fact that it is as God conceived it. The same applies to man, albeit with the difference that he is endowed with truth not only in the sense of an objective gift, but that it was also given to him as an objective task in life. We are to become what we already always are in the creative thoughts of God; in the words of Friedrich Rückert: “Before each stands an image of what he should become: / As long as he is not that, his peace is not complete.”[3]
It should be mentioned in passing that this view is diametrically opposed to the existentialism of a Jean-Paul Sartre and his descendants, according to which man has neither a predetermined nature nor a divine mission, but must rather design himself and realize this design himself. Between such a view and the Christian view there is an unbridgeable gulf, which remains even if some moral theologians of our time try to combine the two.
At this point, if we briefly apply the ontological truth to the exalted object of the sacred liturgy, we can say that it is “true” insofar as it corresponds to the divine original model, as it appears in revelation and in the proclamation of the Church. A rite of the Mass in which the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his Eucharistic presence are validly expressed and which leads the faithful to genuine worship of God and fruitful participation in the mysteries, is undoubtedly in accordance with God's thoughts. Therefore it is “true”. And so it is a sure guide for us into the truth of the mysterium fidei.
Truth is therefore a relation; a relationship between thought and reality. From here, we have a glimpse into the very foundations of truth. Where else should they lie but in God Himself? However, it seems important to me to correct the frequently heard statement that God Himself is the truth, the “absolute truth”.
St. Thomas Aquinas also argues in this direction when he writes in his commentary on John: “All truth that our intellect can grasp is finite, and therefore there must be a truth that transcends every intellect, that is incomprehensible and infinite, and that is God” (Commentary on the Gospel of John, Prologue, 6).
On closer inspection, however, one is more likely to agree with St. Augustine when he distinguishes: “Truthful” (verax) is the Father, “the truth” (veritas), however, is the Son (Commentary on the Gospel of John V 1). While Scripture does not simply identify God with the truth, Jesus calls himself “way, truth and life” (Jn 14:6). This saying certainly requires a more extensive theological discussion, but this much is certain: the eternal Logos, from whom the Father was born before time and of one being with him, is from eternity "the radiance of his glory and the express image of his being“ (Hebrews 1:3) and as the incarnate Son, ”the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15); whoever sees him sees the Father (14:9). Since the Second Divine Person is the perfect image of the First, having emerged from the latter's self-awareness, it is more appropriate to ascribe truth or “being the truth” not simply to God, but more precisely to the Son.
In any case, truth consists in agreement and has its ultimate reason in God. In the briefest formula, one can say: the divine truth is the Son, the Christian truth is Christ. Jesus could have answered the governor's question, “What is truth?” quite succinctly: “I am.” On the foundation of this truth, everything rests. It is both the supporting basis and the all-encompassing whole; the principle that gives meaning and purpose to everything, without which everything, including the good and the beautiful, would fall into meaninglessness and aimlessness.
To understand the relationship between truth, goodness and beauty, let us take a brief look at the divine archetype. Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that the two inner-divine processes, the begetting of the Son and the breathing of the Holy Spirit, correspond to the knowing and the willing in God. There can be no process of love without a focus on the process of the Word, because the will only focuses in love on that which has been previously recognized. Although there is no before or after in God's eternity, the logical order of the generation of the Son must be attributed a priority (S.Th. I 27,3 ad 3).
Transferred to the relationship between the cognitively true and the volitionally good, this in turn means the priority of the true. As already stated: Nihil volitum, nisi praecognitum, “Nothing is willed that has not been previously known.” But beauty also presupposes truth. More will be said about this at a later point in order to understand it.
(To be concluded next time.)
NOTES
[1] Josef Pieper, Reality and the Good (Munich, 1949), 11.
[2] Carl Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes (Cologne, 1982), 67.
[3] Friedrich Rückert, Werke, vol. 2 (Leipzig/Vienna, 1897), 44.
