In the previous essay I argued that Christian universities should not include the “search for truth” in their academic missions. Though Christian colleges may think slogans about truth seeking will provide good defenses against accusations of dogmatism and relativism, eventually they will subvert the Christian identity of the college. Inevitably, searching replaces finding, keeping, enjoying, and communicating truth.
In this essay I want to explore briefly the meaning of truth, being true, reality, certainty and understanding and argue that Christian universities should define their academic missions as “seeking understanding” rather than “seeking truth.”
What is Truth?
Definitions
TRUE: The word “true” names a relation of adequacy between a proposition and the reality to which it refers.
TRUTH: We use the word “truth” to refer to the content of a true proposition, the particular thing it asserts. Truth is the adequate representation or a formal duplication of a real thing in a finite mind.*
REALITY: Reality is the thing in itself as it exists apart from being known by a finite mind.* To say that a thing is real—as opposed to being nothing—is (at least) to say that it possesses causal power and can be known by some mind.
KNOWLEDGE: “To know” refers to the way a finite mind possesses a true proposition. Even if you believe a true proposition, you may not “know” it. You may have guessed correctly or acquired your belief in some other irrational way. Knowledge requires more than true belief. You need good reasons for holding that belief.
CERTAINTY: Certainty is the subjective strength with which one holds a belief. Certainty is compatible with false belief.
The Illusive Nature of Truth
It is important, then, to distinguish between truth and reality. We use the word “real” of things and the word “truth” of the content of propositions that refer adequately to real things. To oversimplify matters a bit, we can say truth exists inside the mind and things exist outside the mind.* But if truth exists in the mind and things exist outside, how can you ever know that your beliefs are true, that is, that their relation to the thing is adequate? You cannot stand outside your mind “to take a look.” It is one thing to define knowledge as “true belief held for good reasons” and quite another to know that a particular belief is true. At best, we can trust that the belief-forming mechanisms with which we are endowed work under normal conditions to form true beliefs or at least good approximations of true beliefs.
The Quixotic Search for Truth
Now we can see clearly why a Christian college should not include searching for truth in its academic mission. To seek truth directly is to seek to duplicate reality in the mind through a critical use of reason. But this is a task for which we are not equipped. As I said above, we cannot leap outside our minds to judge the adequacy of our beliefs to things in themselves. If our ordinary belief-forming mechanisms do not have producing true beliefs as their proper function or if they are incapable of doing so, scientific or critical reason won’t help us; they are even less capable. It is one thing to possess a true belief and another to prove that belief true. The former is possible but the latter is impossible.
The slogan advocating the “relentless pursuit of truth” asks us to set about proving our beliefs true or false, adequate or inadequate to things in themselves, as they are outside our minds. On first hearing the slogan one imagines that we are embarking on a noble task, marked indeed by self-sacrifice and toil but with hope for progress that will lead from pursuit to possession of truth. But this vision is an illusion, and seeking to realize it is quixotic. Its practical result is to render all the college’s Christian beliefs and moral principles moot, subject to perpetual debate and revision. Demands for academic freedom and free speech unrestricted by the school’s founding religious and moral beliefs are sure to follow. The university’s efforts to enforce doctrinal and moral standards will appear arbitrary and dogmatic. The adjective “Christian” in the designation “Christian university” has become meaningless.
The Search for Understanding
So far, I have argued that Christian colleges should not define their academic mission as “seeking truth.” In the second part of my argument, I will maintain that they would be better off to define it as “seeking understanding.” Above, I defined truth, being true, and knowledge. What is understanding, how does it differ from knowing, and what makes it a better fit for the Christian college?
UNDERSTANDING: To understand is to receive something given to our consciousness under categories native to our minds. Among the categories are cause, substance, quantity, quality, relation, etc. Aristotle proposed ten categories of understanding while Immanuel Kant proposed twelve. Our power of understanding organizes our raw perceptions into intelligible objects of thought.** It enables us to think what otherwise would only touch us in a brute way.
What, then is the difference between seeking understanding and seeking truth? To understand is to make sense of what appears to us, what impresses itself on us. To seek truth is to seek to know, and know that we know, the truth; it is to wish to rise above our minds and think the hidden causes of what appears to us, that is, things in themselves apart from our experience of them. To set our aim directly on truth—to know, and know we know, the truth—dooms us never to arrive, to be forever unsatisfied, unable to enjoy the truth.
To understand is a more modest and realistic aim. It aims to make sense of what actually impresses itself on us–nature, human actions and words, our mind’s experience of itself, and other appearances. It is content to live within the limits of our minds. It does not dream of leaping outside of our minds to get a God’s eye view of the inner reality of things.
Are we, then, to give up on possessing truth? By no means. We can still believe that the reality of things impresses itself on our perceptive powers in ways that fit our native belief-forming mechanisms to create true or approximately true beliefs. But why believe in this fit? Perhaps one does not need a reason to believe it. It is just what we do and can’t avoid doing. But I also find that my belief in God who is the creator of nature and my mind reinforces my belief that our minds are made for truth. But if I attempt to attain direct knowledge of the reality of things apart from these two beliefs—the fit between the mind and things and the activity of the Creator—my quest ends in futility! Don’t miss this: enjoying truth begins in faith!
The Christian University Seeks Understanding and Enjoys the Truth
I hope this somewhat complicated argument helps you see why I argue that the Christian university should renounce the futile “search for truth” and embrace the fruitful quest for understanding. A Christian college can seek understanding even though in faith it presupposes the truth of Christianity as a given. The search for truth will not allow this. It insists that we treat Christianity as we treat any other truth claim, that is, as a proposal to be interrogated, doubted, and possibly rejected. And it implies that the faculty should have the academic freedom (for the sake of the search for truth!) to do this. I argue that a Christian university that ceases to take the Christian faith as a given to be understood and makes it a hypothesis to be proven or refuted has ceased to be Christian.
Ironically, by rejecting the futile search for truth, the Christian college can enjoy the truth given to it in the faith preserved in the Scriptures. It can seek with all rigor and without fear to understand what God has given us. It can explore all its presuppositions, implications and inner structures, and in this search, it possesses a well-founded hope of success!
*I am speaking here of finite, created minds. Nothing exists outside God’s mind because God is the creator and sustainer of everything that exists.
**The difference between Aristotle and Kant are significant. I am not taking sides in this debate, though to the philosophically trained I will sound sympathetic to Kant.
Your thinking here is confused for several reasons. At a high level, however, it suffices to point out that your argument appears to be that no Christian university should take as its aim to seek the truth. By implication, this means no *Christian* should desire to seek the truth. I take it already that this by itself serves as a reductio against the argument you lay out. However, it’s possible you may not find this compelling, so below I have listed four reasons for thinking Christians can and should pursue truth after all.
First, here are four short syllogisms to show your conclusion is wrong.
2. In Christ are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Knowledge requires possession of truth. Christians should seek Christ. Therefore, Christians should seek truth.
3. Jesus promises that “the truth shall set you free.” Christians should seek to be free. Therefore, Christians should seek truth.
4. The Bible says that “love rejoices in the truth.” Christians should be loving. Therefore, Christians should rejoice in the truth. One can only rejoice in the truth after it has been found. Finding the truth requires seeking. Therefore, Christians should seek the truth.
Second, you seem confused about the nature of knowledge and this infects your reasoning about truth. You seem to suggest, for example, that knowledge is unattainable; you write, “It is one thing to define knowledge as ‘true belief held for good reasons’ and quite another to know that a particular belief is true. *At best,* we can *trust* that the belief-forming mechanisms with which we are endowed work under normal conditions to form true beliefs or at least good *approximations* of true beliefs” (emphasis mine). At best we can only trust that our minds are apt to form true beliefs? This is absurd. We can do more than trust. I know I have two hands, that torturing babies for fun is wrong, that there is an external world, that other persons have a mind like mine, that George Washington was the first president of the United States, that the earth rotates around the sun, and so forth and so on. If you think knowledge of such things is impossible and that the best one can do is *trust* that these things are true, then you have misunderstood the nature of knowledge. Knowledge does not require proof, because as you have said, none of these are formally provable. And yet we know them. Truth is therefore far less illusive than you seem to suggest. It should also be said that there is nothing about the aim of seeking the truth that requires anyone to “know that they know.” I suspect this confusion again is born of poor epistemology.
That you misunderstand the nature of knowledge is perhaps not surprising given that you “define” knowledge at the beginning of your essay as “the way a finite mind possesses a true proposition.” This is hardly a definition! There are many ways a finite mind might possess a true proposition, not all of which would count as knowledge; accidentally true beliefs are the obvious example. If you want to give a proper definition of knowledge, you should say what the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge are, which is hardly accomplished by saying knowledge is “a way” minds possess truth.
Third, there is an irony in your accusation that the attempt to seek the truth at Christian universities inevitably subverts the Christian identity of the institution, and that irony is this: it is precisely those who have been skeptical about the human capacity to arrive at knowledge of God, His creation, and morality that have historically been guilty of not only subverting Christianity, but abandoning it entirely. Those who have thought that the external world is entirely and necessarily alien to us, that our minds cannot reach out and touch reality, and that the best we can hope for is merely to contemplate the world as it *appears* to us are the same thinkers most prone to reject Christianity entirely. This story begins with Kant and ends with the likes of Hume, Nietzche, and Derrida. This is not good company to keep, and I suggest you remove yourself from it.
Fourth, in case you think it is woke quackery that one insist on seeking the truth—an insistence that inevitably leads to the abandonment of Christian identity—I submit as counterevidence the following quotation from the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church: “It is in accordance with their dignity that all men, because they are persons … are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to *seek the truth,* especially religious truth.” (emphasis mine).
Thus, Christians and Christian universities *should* seek the truth. They must not apologize for seeking the truth. And they should rest assured that by God’s help, they will find it, and it will set them free.
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Derek
Thank you for taking my essay seriously enough to reply so extensively! I am sorry that I cannot reply as extensively.
My first suggestion is to readers of your comment. Before you take Derek’s analysis and critique as having defeated my essay, I suggest you read the essay again and ask yourself whether he has really understood the argument. Make your own judgment about that. I think he is doing battle with a straw man. Ask yourself whether Highfield rejects desiring and working toward attaining truth (not true!) or rejects a misuse of the rhetoric of “seeking truth” (see Part one). Does Highfield argue that we possess no truth? Does Highfield reject seeking truth in any way whatsoever or does he reject only seeking it directly by skipping over reliance/trust on our native mechanisms of belief formation or does he recommend seeking truth indirectly by trusting the reliability of our natural belief-forming mechanisms and seeking understanding directly?
Perhaps Derek too will reread the essays and reply to the real argument.
rch
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Perhaps I have misunderstood the argument, but you should be careful about accusing others of strawmanning. Perhaps my confusion is due to the unclear definitions that I asked for clarity on.
In any case, perhaps answering this question would help: what did you mean in the conclusion paragraph when you said Christian universities should “reject the futile search for truth”?
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There are so many ideas to which I would love to reply…but I will reply only to two: As a philosopher, you know that the basic weaknesses of even the valid syllogism is the hypothetical nature of the antecedent in premise and the truth of the first premise as a whole. You state your first syllogism thus:
Jesus is the truth. Christians should seek Jesus. Therefore, Christians should seek truth
Why did you begin with a thesis rather than a hypothesis? Shouldn’t you have begun “If Jesus is the truth.” Moreover shouldn’t the syllogism go something like this rather than the way you put it:
1.If Jesus is the truth, then we should seek truth.
2.Jesus is the truth (Scripture affirms this).
3.Therefore, we should seek truth.
As I stated it, this is a valid syllogism…but the truth of the conclusion depends on the truth of the first hypothetical premise as a whole and the truth of the antecedent. The truth of the whole first premises depends on an unstated assumption, that is, We should seek to know Jesus. But both the truth of the first premise as a whole and the truth of the antecedent are known only on the basis of faith (or authority). Hence our search for truth begins and ends in faith…the goal being a faith better understood! The very point of my essay!
The second point I would make is in reply to the last sentence of your rebuttal to my first reply. You quote me as saying Christian universities should “reject the futile search for truth.” I said something like that more than once…but my words must be set in context. My final statement using words similar to the ones you quote goes as follows:
“Ironically, by rejecting the futile search for truth, the Christian college can enjoy the truth given to it in the faith preserved in the Scriptures.”
A “futile” search for truth is the search that wishes to grasp the truth “directly” without faith in the apostolic witness or our natural belief-forming mechanisms. A fruitful search seeks to understand the truth the possession of which faith makes possible. And as a matter of practice, this means limiting ourselves to the search for understanding.
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