TERTULLIAN

THISELTON Anthony

THUCYDIDES

TILLICH Paul

TOLKIEN J.R.R

TAGORE Rabindranath *

(Indian poet and philosopher, 1861-1941)

The truth of the universe is a human truth, the perfect comprehension of the universal human mind.

     1. For Tagore, the truth of the universe is human truth. The world is a human world - the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. Therefore, the world apart from human beings does not exist; it is a relative world, depending for its reality upon human consciousness. Truth is the perfect comprehension of the universal mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experience, through our illumined consciousness.

    During their famous discussion on the nature of truth, Tagore and Einstein expressed an important difference of opinion over whether there was truth in the world independent from human mind. While Einstein argued that the truth is independent of human beings, Tagore disagreed : ‘The truth of the Universe is human truth; when our universe is in harmony with man, the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty.’ Einstein replied: ‘I agree with regard to this conception of Beauty, but not with regard to Truth.’ Tagore insisted that ‘truth is realized only through man’. Einstein illustrated his point of view: ‘For instance, if nobody is in this house, yet that table remains where it is.’ To which Tagore replied: ‘Yes, it remains outside of the individual mind but not the universal mind’. Tagore summarized the discussion: ‘I could see that Einstein held fast to the extra-human aspect of truth. But it is evident to me that, in human reason, facts assume a unity of truth which is only possible to a human mind.’

    2. Truth in the Religion of Man is not that which was revealed only to a chosen few in the distant past. It is not reached through the analytical process of reasoning. It does not depend for proof on some corroboration of outward facts or the prevalent faith and practice of a group of people. Rather, the truth is revealed to every person every day, if we but listen. Truth comes like an inspiration and brings with it an assurance that it has been sent from an inner source of divine wisdom. This truth comes through an illumination, almost like a communication of the universal self to the personal self. Every human being is capable of experiencing such illumination (the mystical experience). Although some people are more successful at actualizing this potentiality than others, most people have had at one time or another at least a partial vision of the universal unity.

    The truth, Tagore the poet says, is inside us, like a song which has only to be mastered and sung. It is like the morning which has only to be welcomed by raising the screens and opening the doors.

*Tagore Rabindranath, The Religion of Man, Harpercollins, 1994

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TARNAS Richard *

(American philosopher, b.1950)

The mind of post-modernism on truth

        1. For the post-modern mind human knowledge is subectively determined by a multitude of factors. It is fallible and relative rather then certain and absolute. Concrete experience prevails over absract principles. No a priori thought system can govern beliefs. The quest for knowledge must be endlessly self-revising. It takes nothing for granted, treats every argument as provisional , assumes no absolute. Reality is an open universe, a fluid, unfolding process. It is possibility rather than fact.
        The knowing mind is not the passive reflector of an external world, rather it is active and creative in the process of perception and cognition. Reality is constructed by the mind, There is no empirical “fact” that is not already theory-laden. All human understanding is interpretation and no interpretation is final. No one can transcend the manifold dispositions of his own subjectivity and make any truth-claims. One can at best attempt a fusion of horizons.

        2. Post-modernism does not offer any ground for any world view. It presents the picture of a world whose significance is utterly open and without warranted foundation. Its encouragment of creativity does not erase a debilitating sense of anxiety in the face of unending relativism and distressing incoherence left by pluralism.
        Its scepticism in regard to truth has taken its most radical form in the epistemologies of the philosophies of language All human thought is bound by cultural-linguistic forms of life. Human experience is linguistically predetermined and therefore not referent to reality. One has no access to any reality except to those determined by the local form of life. Language is a “cage” (Wittgenstein). Meanings of texts are undecidable, texts refer to other texts. Language posssesses no privileged connection to truth. Nothing certain can be said about truth. There is no point from which to judge whether a given perspective validly represents the truth.

        3. The academic world of postmodernism is concerned only with the critical deconstructon of traditional assumptions through several overlapping modes of analysis: sociological, political, historical, psychological and linguistic. The new intellectual ethos is disassembling established structures, deflating pretensions, exploding beliefs, unmasking appearances. It promotes a hermeneutics of “suspicion, deconstructionism, decentering, demystification, discontinuity, difference”. Such terms express an epistemological obsession with fragments or fractures. To think well for post-modernism is to refuse the tyranny of wholes, totalitarian systems, the pretence of omi-science, grand theories, all product of intellectual authoritarianism. To assert general truths is to impose the spurious dogma on the chaos of phenomena. On the contrary one should show respect for the contingency and discontinuity of events. Any alleged comprehensive, coherent outlook is at best no more than a temporarily useful fiction masking chaos, an oppressive fiction masking relationship of power and violence.

        4. There is no post-modern world-view, not even the possibility of one. The postmodern mentality is by its nature fundamentally subversive to all paradigms. Reality is without demontrable foundation. The essence of postmodernism is, according to Lyotard: “ incredulity towards the meta-narratives”. Its sense of superiority comes from its special awareness of how little knowledge can be climbed by the mind, itself included. Hence in recognizing a quasi-nihilist rejection of all forms of “totalization” and “ meta-narratives” (conceptualisation, systematisation, overall understanding), aspiration towards intellectual unity, wholeness or comprehensive coherence, it recognizes also that it is itself a position not beyond questioning. It cannot justify itself. It presupposes a “meta-narrative’ of its own. Implicitly the one postmodern absolute is critical consciousness, which, by decontructing all, seems compelled by its own logic to do so to itself as.

* Tarnas, Richard, The Passion of the Western Mind, Ballantine Books, New York, 1993, p. 305-401

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TARSKI *

(Polish born American mathematician and philosopher of logic, 1901-1983)

The semantic concept of truth
What we say when we say that a sentence is true

        1. Tarski is the advocate of the semantic theory of truth for which truth is attached only to linguistic items. He is not concerned with the substantial concept of truth but with the functional concept of truth in language. Truth is not regarded a property of the relation between world and thought, reality and language. Truth has only a linguistic or semantic function. “What is truth” ? this question is abandoned and replaced by the semantic functionning of the predicate “true”. How does “is true” function in language? In proposing a semantic solution to the problem of truth , Tarski turns his back to the philosophical (epistemological) problem of truth. He makes it clear that the semantic view of truth is (philosophically) neutral. In short his thesis about truth is : “Truth is defined by the satisfaction of sentences of a language in a meta-language.” This requires some explanation.
        Firstly, the reason why Tarski introduces the notion of “metalanguage” is as follows. One can never say that the sentences of a language are true because that would lead to unbridgeable paradoxes, for instance the well known paradox of the liar: “What I have written is not true”: this sentence is true if and only if it is not true and the same sentence is not true if and only if it is true. To avoid the paradox one needs to introduce the idea of a metalanguage which contains all the sentences of the first language plus the predicate “ is true”. The first language (the object language) is not qualified to use the predicate “is true”. The price to pay for this explanation is that one can never predicate truth in a natural language, but only in the metalanguage. That means that the philosophical problem of truth is eliminated. “What is truth” can no longer be defined in a natural language. Truth is reduced to a relation between a natural language and a metalanguage. Truth becomes a platitude, the equivalence between a natural language and a metalanguage. For Tarski truth is a kind of correspondence, but not the correspondence of thought and reality, only the correspondence of a natural (“object”) language and a metalanguage.
        Secondly, what Tarski calls “the convention T” states the condition of adequacy for truth-statements. For instance the sentence S: “ ‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is white”. All true statements must be of that type, he says. The sentence S expresses the idea of correspondence, but not correspondence to the fact (as wrongly interpreted by K. Popper who wrote that Tarski had rehabilitated the classical theory of truth as correspondence). Truth identifies the state of affair or fact. This is correspondence as captured by language. What is true or false is defined in the language itself. The sentence “snow is white” is true because it identifies the state of affair. The saying of that sentence is true if it agrees with the sentence, and that only is what is left of “correspondence”. But the language alone cannot capture and settle what for a correspondence theory are the criteria of truth.
        Likewise, “’snow is blue’ is true if and only snow is blue”. We know that the fact is not true but that is not the question. The question is that the saying of “snow is blue” is true if it agrees that snow is blue. Truth is not in the fact but in the saying what the fact is. In the supposition that snow is blue, then the saying that “snow is blue” is true. Tarski is not interested to know whether, in fact, snow is white or blue. All what he says has nothing to do with the criterion of truth and it is not his intention to deal with that question. In Tarski’s explanation we depend on our knowledge of snow as white or blue. We presuppose that knowledge and on that we build our “definition” of truth. Truth is in the asserting what is and we know “what is” a priori or by experience beforehand. The bearer of truth is not the fact or state of affair but the assertion, the sentence itself. Our knowledge of snow as white is established before and it is only when it comes to be said and asserted that there is truth.
        In a realist correspondence theory, true statements are true because things are the way they are. We find out by checking the facts. In the semantic conception, true sentences are true because they are specified to be so. We find out by checking the rule-book. Why was the rule-book written one way rather than another, making snow white instead of blue? The semantic conception of truth offers us no criterion of truth. It is not interested in the correspondence of what we say to the facts, it is interested in the correspondence between what we say and the rule-book. On the semantical point of view, once the need for the metalanguage (of the rule-book) is realized, everything becomes clear. Another kind of correspondence than correspondence to facts is established and that suffices to determine the concept of semantic truth.
        Knowing through the lexicon what is meant by “snow”,“white” and “blue”, one can say that snow is white or blue even if there are neither snow nor white, nor blue. Thus the statement is true by definition. The semantic theory of truth has sense only if one establishes a domain of definitions - through the lexicon and the rule-book - composed of objects to which correspond terms of the first language called object-language. It all comes to this that the Tarskian theory of truth tells us only what is understood by the speakers when they understand their language.
        Tarski’s semantic theory of truth is to propose a linguistic approach to the problem which ultimately amounts to a redundancy theory of truth. The metaphysical or philosophical or epistemological question of truth is discarded and made irrelevant. The Tarskian theory of truth may be an interesting semantic theory of truth but on the epistemological viewpoint, it is of no use whatsoever. Tarski’s minimal purely semantic theory of truth has not been able to eliminate the basic question to know whether our beliefs are true or false. Our knowledge presupposes the possibility of truth and our will to know what is truth. The epistemological question of truth remains fundamental.

        2. No wonder then that the Tarskian theory of truth has been criticized (for instance, by Strawson) for not being a theory of truth but a theory of meaning. Tarski’s approach comes to this that every meaningful sentence is true or false by definition. In Tarski’s explanation we depend on our knowledge of snow as white. That knowledge is presupposed and on the basis of that knowledge we build our definition of truth. To say that snow is white is to say the truth (because snow is white). Truth is the assertion of the meaningful sentence. The bearer of the truth is not the fact or state of affair, but the assertion. But then, says Strawson, “is true if and only if" is synonymous with “means that”, “is the same as”. Tarski reduces truth to meaning, equivalence, and identity.
        A sentence is true if it identifies the state of affair. A true sentence says what is. Truth is in saying , asserting, making one’s own. The truth-predicate does not describe a state of affair. It says it. It states it. Truth is explained in a minimal way, to remove all theories of truth, to replace them with the platitudes of the “equivalence’ theory. This is a minimal explanation of truth. The truth-predicate does not describe any metaphysical (realist or non-realist) status of the sentence. The old theories of truth are removed and replaced by truisms. Truth becomes purely conventional. We define truth and then see whether our definition of truth is satisfied. For Tarski who is interested mostly in formal languages (symbolic logic, mathematics, etc) in which the truth-conditions are established by the logician and the mathematician, this notion of truth is relevant. But it is useless for ordinary language in which truth means much more than that, and in which we have an intuition of the truth. In formal language one can “create” the truth and define it conventionally but not in ordinary language.

        3. In conclusion let us say that semantic truth does not explain our common use of the word “true”. It is out of keeping with our actual use of the term. It states only the platitude that” a statement is said to be true when its particular truth-conditions are satisfied”. Or, to put it in another way, “this being true by definition , here are all the sentences that are true”. The semantic conception of truth cannot tell us what it is to be true , but can only record what is true by definition
        It has been suggested (by Polanyi) that in order to avoid the ambiguity of Tarski’s formulation: “ Snow is white is true, if and only if snow is white” it is preferable to recast the statement in the form:” I shall say that snow is white is true, if and only if I believe that snow is white”. The function of the personal coefficient in objective commitment and reference is made unambiguously clear in order to distinguish the assertion of the truth as of a different order than the statement asserted to be true
        The Tarkian theory of truth is of no help at all on the epistemological viewpoint. The question about truth is to know whether there exists reliable procedures of acquisition of true beliefs. This is the question of justification and criteria of truth. The question is important because it is a fact that human beings love the truth and that they are made to know the truth. As Aristotle says it:” All human beings have a desire to know”. Such natural desire cannot be in vain.

* See Johnson L.E., Focussing on Truth, London, Routledge, 1992, p 81- 119; Vidal-Rosset, CohÈrence et Correspondence, in Quilliot, La VÈritÈ, Paris, Ellipses, 1997, p. 179-188; Campbell, Truth and Historicity, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p.364-378

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TAYLOR Charles *

(Canadian philosopher, b. 1931)

       Authenticity: to be true to oneself in dialogue with others

    In The Ethics of Authenticity Taylor refers to the contemporary drive to be true to oneself, to achieve self-fulfillment through self-expression. Authenticity involves deep-rooted senses of inwardness and freedom. It promotes self-creation as well as self-discovery, an emphasis on originality, and an opposition to externally imposed norms.

    He makes a radical claim that we only become capable of understanding ourselves and defining our identity through dialogue. He says humans are fundamentally dialogical creatures and cannot develop into individuals without interaction with others. Through dialogue we are able to exchange our ideas with others and construct our values and beliefs from bits and pieces we hear. This is how we become authentic humans. Authenticity is being true to oneself. It almost seems paradoxical: to discover our individuality we must converse with others.

    Taylor relies on his conception of the self as "dialogical" - fundamentally born of exchanges with others. He asserts that identity is always built out of dialogue with, or struggles against, the perceptions of significant others. He draws a contrast between Socrates and Oedipus. Socrates is a believer in the value of dialogue. In fact all of his teachings are in the form of a conversation. Through dialogue Socrates can challenge the idea of those he talks to. The challenging of ideas is the most important part of dialogue because it forces people to defend their ideas, and therefore realize what exactly it is that they believe. If a philosophical conversation is approached with an open mind, conflict can either strengthen one’s belief, or cause to modify former beliefs to something that works better.

    Contrary to Socrates, when Oedipus talks to others, he only listens to what he wants to hear. When some one tries to tell him the truth, he becomes angry and says, “And who has taught you the truth?”. He is unwilling to engage in true dialogue, because he is afraid that it might cause him to question his own beliefs. Oedipus is not living his life authentically; he is not being true to himself. In his arrogance he believes himself greater than he really is, and this prevents him from truly seeking his own individuality. Oedipus becomes so caught up in himself that he cannot see his own shortcomings. This prevents him from truly knowing himself. His lack of self-knowledge leads to a lack of interest in dialogue. For Taylor dialogue is essential to find out one’s own individuality. He opposes the moral ideal of authenticity to the debased form of authenticity, that leads to individualism, in pointing at the dialogical nature of authenticity.

*Taylor, Charles, The Ethics of Authenticity, Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass.,2007

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TERTULLIAN *

(Latin theologian, 155-240)

Philosophers are corrupters of the truth

There can be no relationship between philosophy and Christianity, no relationship between the foe and the friend of error, between the man who corrupts the truth and the one who restores and teaches it. Truth can only be ‘Christian’ and its substance is found in the ‘Rule of Faith’, transmitted from Christ through the apostles and the Churches.. “The truth that the Son of God dies is to be believed because it is absurd, and the fact that he rose again is certain because it is impossible”. Truth is only a matter of revelation, which has been corrupted by heretics under the influence of philosophy. Heretics are “equipped with philosophy”. “From philosophy come those fruitless questionings, those words that spread like cancer”. The apostle Paul testified expressly in his letter to the Colossians that “we should beware of philosophy or vain deceit, after the tradition of men”.
Philosophers, Tertullian writes, are “mockers and corrupters of the truth: they pretend to care for the truth; what they really care for is the glory”. Their moral life is no better than their writings; Socrates was a corrupter of youth. Having located the root of heresy in philosophy, Tertullian poses his famous rhetorical question: “What does have Jerusalem have to do with Athens, the Christian with the heretic. I have no use for a Stoic or a Platonic or a dialectic (i.e. Aristotelian) Christianity. After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research. Once we have come to believe we have no desire to believe anything else”. (Prescriptions against heretics, 7).

* Tertullian, Prescriptions against Heretics, See Internet: “Tertullian, prescriptions heretics”

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THISELTON Anthony *

(American theologian and philosopher of religion)

The polymorphous concept of truth in the Bible

        The Hebrews had no single uniform concept of truth. They used the concept in certain contexts or language games. It is not correct to oppose – as many have done – the Greek abstract concept of truth as correspondence to the Hebraic concept of truth as faithfulness (emet).
        - The Old Testament offers many examples of the “factual” use of the term truth in the sense of correspondence with the facts of the matter.
        - Other passages which use a different language-game use the term with the meaning of emet or faithfulness, honesty, reliability, notably when they say that God is true. But even then the connection of faithfulness and truth depends on the fact that when God is said to act faithfully the issue at stake is a correspondence between word and deed. We are now only in a different language-game than that of factual report.
        - In other contexts truth means neither correspondence nor faithfulness, but “revealed doctrine”. Paul, for instance, contrasts the truth to “another gospel” and to myths.
        - Sometimes the term truth is used in the ontological meaning of “real”. Jesus, in the fourth Gospel is said to be true food and true drink , true in the sense of real.
        - St John’s Gospel uses the word “truth” in a polymorphous meaning. It proclaims that Jesus is the truth, his testimony is valid, he reveals the truth of the Gospel, his words correspond with his deeds and his statements with the facts.

        All this goes to show that it is not possible to define the “essence” of biblical truth in a single uniform way. The procedure adopted in the past was wrong in drawing a clear-cut contrast between the “theoretical” Greek concept of truth and the “practical” concept in Hebraic thinking. The Hebrews have no special concept of truth, rather they employed the concept in certain contexts or language-games more frequently than those used in Greek literature. What is truth cannot be asked outside a language-game without creating confusion.

* Thisleton, Anthony, The Two Horizons, Exeter, The Paternoster Press, 1980, p 411-415; “Truth”, New International Dictionary of New testament Theology, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1979

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THUCYDIDES *

(Greek historian, 5thth c. BC)

Truth in history: facts and not fictions

Thucydides is often considered the first scientific historian because he led the way in writing history which consisted of bare factual statements together with causal explanations. Thanks to him a significant change took place in the fifth century B.C. Before him there were not two distinct ways of talking or no definite ways of moving between the real and the mythical. All preceding narrations were intermixed with fables. Thucydides was concerned with drawing the contrast between fact and fable, between the true and the mythical and in doing so he made clear the kind of responsibility that the communication of truth brings with it. Facts must be reported as they really were with no desire to say something that would please the general mass of opinion. He understood that the truth of a statement has nothing to do with whether a given audience will be pleased to hear it. He did not write history to win present applause, as was the use of that age. He wrote for a monument to instruct the ages to come and as he said himself as "a possession for everlasting". Furthermore he followed the principle that what is claimed to have really happened in the past must make explanatory sense and the explanations must be the same as they are of things now.
Herodotus, writing a few decades earlier than Thucydides, recorded almost all he heard, whether he believed it himself or not. But that was not the method adopted by Thucydides. Thucydides stood at the other pole: he gathered all available evidence, decided what he thinks is the truth, then shaped his presentation to emphasize that truth. He decided that to learn about the course of human affairs, he would not consult oracles, prophets, sacred texts or the sanctioned scribes of the era. Rather, he would go out, witness events himself, compile other evidence only from those of whom he had made the most careful enquiry, and then draw conclusions that his evidence would support.

* Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton

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TILLICH Paul *

(American theologian and philosopher, 1886-1965)

Truth and verification: not only experimental but experiential

        1. The predicate ‘true’ - for logical positivists and others - is reserved either for analytic sentences or for experimentally confirmed propositions. Such terminological limitation is possible; it is a matter of convention. But it means a break with our Western tradition and its concept of verum and alÍthÍs. This break, says Tillich, is not necessary.

        2. Modern philosophy speaks of true and false judgements. Reality itself is not said to be true or false. Nonetheless we can go further and ask: what makes our judgments true or false? It seems that reality itself conceals its being, its essence. Its appearance or surface must be penetrated for the depth to be reached, that is, the essence of things, their true being, the really real different from the seemingly real. Evidently this true being has to be true for some one who knows, for the mind. In any case the problem of the truly real cannot be avoided. It comes to this that truth is on the one side the essence of things or the really real and on the other side the cognitive act in which the essence is grasped. We must use the concept of truth both in its ontological sense as well as in its logical-epistemological sense and use. Truth is both subjective and objective.

        3. Now verification plays am important role in the question of truth. Statements that cannot be verified - we are told - are either tautologies, emotional statements or meaningless propositions. One can agree with that and admit that verification is the method of deciding whether a judgment is true or false. If not self evident or unverifiable, a statement has no cognitve value. Verification belongs to the nature of truth. In other words there must be criteria of truth. The main question is to agree on what is meant by ‘verification’.
        There are two types or methods of verification: not only the empirical but also the experiential. On the one hand truth for the scientists is subjected to empirical verifications obtained by objective methods apt to account for an explanation of the objective world. Every cognitive assumption must be tested and the safest test is the repeatable experiment. Scientists adopt a controlling cognitive attitude verified by the success of controlling actions. On the other hand experiential verifications – different from experimental verifications – must be used in the analysis of life processes. They require and imply a receiving or participating cognitive attitude. Here verification is achieved by the creative union the knowing and the known. The verifying experiences of a non-experimental character are truer to life, though less exact and definite. Tillich stresses that it is not permissible to make the experimental method of verification the exclusive pattern of all verification. Unfortunately the value of experiential verification is rejected by many philosophies - positivism, rationalism, pragmatism – that do not admit the element of participation in knowledge. This is the basic conflict between two ways to understand cognitive reason: either controlling knowledge which confines itself to certain, safe, empirically verified results but not ultimately significant or receiving (participating) knowledge based on experiential verification which is always risky, not certain , but ultimately significant.

        4. The distinction between the experiential and the experimental, that is, between the receiving or participative cognitive attitude and the controlling cognitive attitude is particularly relevant to understand the knowledge of revelation. The knowledge of revelation does not interfere with ordinary knowledge. It does not increase our knowledge about the structures of nature, history and man. Revealed truth is not ordinary truth. The truth of revealed knowledge is to be judged by its own implicit criteria which lie within the dimension of revelatory knowledge. Revealed truth is such that it can neither be confirmed not negated by those outside the situation of revelation. Philologists, historians, psychologists may study the documents of revelation but their knowledge is non-existential, non-experiential. Revealed knowledge is experiential and existential. In contrast with ordinary knowledge it can be communicated only to those who participate in this situation. It is a truth for believers, not communicable, not accessible to those unwilling to receive and participate.

* Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, Vol.I, University of Chicago Press, 1951, p. 100-105, 129-132

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TOLKIEN J.R.R *

(English philologist and writer, 1892-1973)

Myths are the ‘divine’ echo of the truth

According to J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the worldwide popular “The Lord of the Rings”, the key to understanding the story requires an understanding of "the power of myth." A myth is a story that captures a universal truth about human experience in a fashion that cannot be matched by ordinary fiction, historical narration or scientific theory. Furthermore, a genuine myth has the quality of seeming not to be the sort of thing that anyone invented. According to Tolkien myths are given as found, not made. He thought an understanding of the truth at the core of myth was central to grasping the nature of religious truth. Tolkien's view was that mythic literature reflected the fundamental nature of the world. Moreover Tolkien believed that humanity's storehouse of ahistorical myths prepared the way for one particular myth: a myth that became literally incarnated in the form of a historical person, Jesus of Nazareth.
Myths for Tolkien are a vehicle for exposing profound human truths. It is not reason which exposes truth, or turns wishes into reality, but it is the imagination which saves the day, completes the cycle. So 'Fantasy is a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality, exposing universal truths which are usually called morals. It is the power of words that give humans the healthy ability to see the underlying reality and to evoke faith. We remember the poem, a painting, a song, or a story precisely because when we first experienced them, they changed our way of perceiving the world, and our feelings about life. The imaginative experience modifies our sense of reality, and satisfies our deep need for mythology.' According to Tolkien there are truths that man knows exist, but they cannot be seen - they are immaterial, but no less real, to us. It is only through the language of myth that we can speak of these truths.
Tolkien's opinion was adopted by the Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, in their conversations: "Tolkien explained to Lewis that the story of Christ was the true myth at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality." C. S. Lewis freely called the Christ story a "true myth", and he believed that even pagan myths express spiritual truths. In his opinion, the difference between the Christ story and pagan myths is that the Christ story is historically as well as spiritually true. "The story of Christ," writes Lewis, "is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myths: i. e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call real things."
To the contemporary unbelievers, of course, all this is absurd. According to this view, the Christian story contains no more truth than any other fabulous stories. These stories, says the secularist, are nothing but myths. What Tolkien argued for, and what helped give power to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, was that, for him, the myths of religion are truer than the facts of science.

* J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Millennium Edition, Houghton Mifflin, 2002, 7 hardcover volumes

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TOLSTOI, Lev *

(Russian novelist, 1828-1910)

Reason is the only instrument for the attainment of truth

        Man has received from God only one instrument wherewith to know the truth about himself and the world: that instrument is reason. Still people are told that to clear up the most important truths, those on which their whole life depends, they must in no account use their reason but accept credulously what is offered as truth by infallible books and the infallibility of some holy men. The fact is that man cannot even believe apart from his reason. If a man believes one thing and not another, he does this only because reason tells him that he should not believe this but should believe that. As soon as the believer of a certain faith sees another professing another faith in the same way he professes his own, he is inevitably obliged to decide the matter by reason. If a Buddhist becomes acquainted with Islam and still decide to remain a Buddhist, it means that his former blind faith in Buddha has been replaced by one based on rational ground.
        One must not check reason by tradition but contrariwise must check tradition by reason. Traditions may come from human beings and be false, but reason certainly comes from God and cannot be false. Hence no specially great capacities are needed to know and express the truth; we need only admit that reason is not only the highest, the divine quality in human beings, but that it is the only instrument for the attainment of the truth. The only reasonable meaning of our life consists in the fulfilment of the will of God. But the will of God is known , not by some extraordinary miracles or the writing of his law in sacred books or the infallible teaching of prophets and holy men, but only by the use of reason by all men, transmitting the consciousness of truth that is ever more elucidating itself to them.
        Special talents are needed, not for the statement of the truth, but for the invention of falsehood. Once reason is abandoned and credulity embraced, people pile up complex and contradictory propositions (in the guise of creeds and dogmas) that to connect them with any truth requires exceptionally tortuous and deceitful subtlety of mind.
        Tolstoi divides humankind in two lots. Some are free-thinkers and some are not. Free-thinkers are those willing to use their minds without prejudices, without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges and beliefs. One may be a Buddhist, a German and a capitalist and yet be a free-thinker. But if he puts his religion, his nationality or his interest above reason, he is not a free-thinker for his mind is in bondage.

* Tolstoi, On Life and Essays on Religion, Great wolrd’s classics, Oxford University Press, p.166, 200-203

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TORRANCE Thomas *

(Scottish-Canadian Presbyterian theologian, b.1913) The truth of being and the truth of statement:
authoritative truth versus authoritarian truth

        In his assessment of the foundation of "Christian truth", the theologian Torrance starts with a couple of distinctions: between primary and secondary authority, and between the authoritative truth and the authoritarian truth. According to his reading of the biblical teaching, all authority derives from God himself, he is the primary and ultimate authority, but there are secondary authorities, or delegate authorities, whose function is to serve his supreme authority, and they function authoritatively when they serve his supreme authority in such a way as not to obscure it. However when these secondary authorities arrogate to themselves the authority delegated to them, thus constituting themselves authorities in their own right then they become perverted. The authority of the law is presented by St Paul as deriving from God: it is its function to reveal and serve the divine majesty. But owing to the dialectic of sin, the law tends to become an authority in itself for it exercises an authoritarian tyranny over the consciences of men and enslaves them. The law, instead of being authoritative, has become authoritarian.
        It is the same basic issue with which we are concerned in the distinctions between the truth of being and the truths of statements, and between the truth of created being and the truth of the Supreme Being. The truths of statement are what they ought to be when they serve the truth of being, and the truths of created being are what ought to be when they serve the Supreme truth. When this structure becomes inverted, then we attempt to subordinate the Supreme truth to the truths of the creature and his statements, and we become entangled in a perverted authoritarianism.
        The crucial question is to whether the assent and consent to the truth rests directly upon the truth of God in its own self-light and self-evidence, or whether it is indirectly induced through some sort of special illumination, independent of the truth, but enabling the receive the truth. It is the latter which opens the way for an authoritarian exercise of Church magisterium, but the former which invites an authoritative exercise of the magisterium in serving the ultimate authority of truth itself.
        In every science there inevitably arises a structure of tradition and authority: they are methodological necessities in the clarifying of our understanding and expressing of the truth, but they rightly fall into secondary place before the actual disclosure of the truth in its own right, and are therefore constantly relativised by the priority of that truth over them. Institutional authorities in the Church can never be authoritarian tyrants over personal conscience but authoritative instruments of the Truth that makes people free. It is only when the institutional authorities in the Church are rigorously subordinated to the majesty and authority of the Supreme Truth, that they evoke and gain the respect that is due to them, for then they are not authoritarian tyrants over human conscience but authoritative instruments of the Truth that makes people free.

* TORRANCE, Thomas, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge, William Eerdman Publishing Co, Grand Rapids Michigan, 1986

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TOYNBEE, Arnold *

(British historian, 1889 -1975)

The historical collision between prophetic and philosophical truth

        According to Toynbee the essence of primitive religion was not belief but action, and the test of conformity was not assent to a creed but participation in ritual performances. Primitive religious practice was an end in itself, and it did not occur to the practitioners to look beyond the rites that they perform for a truth which these rites may convey. The people in primitive societies understood that their creation myths are not statements concerning matter of fact that can be labeled 'true' or 'false'. There was no disagreement between philosophy (which makes statements which have truth claims) and religion as defined by ritual.
        But when the higher religions emerged, their novelty was the emphasis on belief over praxis. The distinctive new feature of the higher religions was that they based their claim to allegiance on personal revelations held to have been received by their prophets; and these deliveries of the prophets are presented, like the propositions of the philosophers, as statements of fact, to be labelled "true" or "false". Therewith Truth became a disputed mental territory; henceforward there were two independent authorities, prophetic Revelation and philosophical Reason, each of which claimed sovereign jurisdiction over the intellect's whole field of action. It became impossible for Reason and Revelation to live and let live on the auspicious precedent of the amicable symbiosis of Reason and Ritual.
        "Truth", it now seemed, had two forms, each claiming an absolute and overriding validity, yet each at odds with the other. In this new and excruciating situation there were only two alternatives. Either the rival exponents of the two now coexisting forms of Truth must arrive at a compromise or they must fight it out until one party or the other had been driven from the field.
        The would-be reconciliation of the two kinds of Truth in terms of the new mental discipline called Theology was no more than verbal, and the formulae consecrated in creeds were doomed to prove impermanent because they left the equivocal meaning of Truth as ambiguous as ever. The solution could not be found until it had been recognized that the same word "truth", when used by philosophers and scientists and when used by prophets does not refer to the same realities but is a homonym for two different forms of experience.

* Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Oxford University Press, paperback, 1987

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TRACY David *

(American theologian, b.1939)

Truth is the reality we know through our best linguistic

interpretations


        1. Science is a hermeneutic interprise. With science we interpret the world. We do not simply find it out there. Reality is what we name our best interpretation. Truth is the reality we know through our best interpretations. Reality is constituted through the interpretations that have earned the right to be called relatively adequate or true. This means that we do not first experience or understand some reality and then find words to name that understanding. We understand in and through the language available to us, including the historical languages of the sciences.
        The two radically conflicting approaches of positivism and romanticism shared the fundamental (wrong) belief that language is instrumental, secundary and derivative. The positivist uses language to communicate scientific results as facts rather than interpretations. The romantic uses language to represent some deep, non-linguistic truth inside the self. According to both the “real” thing is purely prelinguistic: either deep feeling from inside the self or the clear grasp of scientific facts. In both these interpretations of language as instrument, what is ignored is the subtle relationships of language, knowledge and reality as well as the social and historical character of all understandings through language.
        All understanding occurs in and through language. Language is not an instrument that we can pick up and put down at will. We belong to our language far more that it belongs to us, and through language we find ourselves participating in a particular history and society. In challenging the instrumentalist interpretations of language of positivism and romanticism, we not only reintroduce society and history into all notions of reality and truth, we displace the autonomous ego from its false pretensions to mastery and certainty. We must realize that we have become de-centered egos; we are linguistic, historical, social beings struggling for new interpretations of ourselves, our language, history, society and culture.

        2. The theological interpretations of religions are no exceptions to the rule: they can only be relatively adequate. Only a full conversation among all interpreters of religion, faithful to the demands of interpretations, is likely to reach anything like a responsible consensus. Theologians must be willing to put at risk their own present self-understanding. For them too it is hermeneutically sound to pay critical attention to their claim to truth. Everything is at risk: the interpreter’s present understanding and expectations, the text’s former receptions and its central claim to meaning and truth. The interpretations of religions cannot be absolved from these hermeneutical demands.

*Tracy David, Plurality and Ambiguity, SCM Press, London, 1987, p.47-51

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TROELTSCH, Ernst *

(German theologian and philosopher of religion, 1865-1923)

Religious truth: not historical but experiential

For the liberal theologian Troeltsch history and sociology are schools of relativity. This relativity extends to the Christian religion. Christianity belongs within the sphere of religious and human history as a whole, and no absolute claim can be made for it. The principles that Troeltsch lay down as a guide to the critical study of history deprive Christianity of certainty in its historical basis and disallow it of any final and absolute character. But then the problem for him was to confront the question of how the traditional absolute truth claims of Christianity could be maintained within an ocean of relativizations. As a historical phenomenon, Christianity is a relative phenomenon: the relative and the historical are identical. It follows that the quest for religious certainty is bound to be frustrated as it cannot be located in the historical claims of the Christian religion. Now the fact is that intellectuals and even more believers have a need for certainty. Troubled by this problem, Troeltsch’s contention was that a very restricted notion of absoluteness could suffice for the religious needs of human beings. Piety requires truth, but not necessarily in the old sense of absoluteness. The conviction that one has encountered God and heard his voice is not touched by the relativizations of historical consciousness. There are encounters that carry within them an intrinsic conviction of truth. The individual can find certainty in this conviction. Even if he is confronted with historical and sociological relativizations, he is confident that what he experiences by himself as truth will never come to be seen as untruth. No final experience of truth in history is possible but there is a process in which each individual has access to the truth. There are experiences of contact with the supernatural that carry with them absolute certainty, but this certainty is located only within the enclave of religious experience.
Thus Christianity is not absolute, but it is sufficient for the Christian. When Christianity is cut down to its proper dimensions as a phenomenon of history, and is seen within the framework of man’s spiritual development as a whole, its truth and greatness become apparent.

* See Berger P.L., The Heretical Imperative, New York, Anchor Press, 1979, p.149-154; also Macquarrie, John, Twentieth-century Religious Thought, Harper & Row, New york, 1963, p.140-144

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TRUDEAU Richard *

(American mathematician, 1920-2004)

The ‘story’ theory of truth, rather than the ‘diamond’ theory of truth

Richard J. Trudeau, in ‘The Non-Euclidean Revolution’ , opposes what he calls the Story Theory of truth ( for instance, nominalism, postmodernism) to the traditional Diamond Theory of truth (for instance, Plato, realism).

Trudeau claims that people have always longed for truths about the world - neither logical truths, for all their utility, nor even probable truths, without which daily life would be impossible - but informative, certain truths, the only \'truths\' strictly worthy of the name. Such truths Trudeau calls \'diamonds\'; they are highly desirable but hard if not impossible to find.

According to him a new epistemology is emerging to replace the Diamond Theory of truth. He calls it the \'Story Theory\' of truth: there are no diamonds. People make up stories about what they experience. Stories that catch on are called \'true.\' The Story Theory of truth is itself a story that is catching on. It is being told and retold, with increasing frequency, by thinkers of many stripes. Trudeau’s own viewpoint is the Story Theory. He asserts that each enterprise contains only stories (which the scientists call \'models of reality\'). He says that he had started by hunting diamonds, but he found were dazzlingly beautiful jewels, but always of human manufacture.

* Richard J. Trudeau, The Non-Euclidean Revolution, Birkhauser Boston, 1987,

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TUTU Desmond *

(South African Anglican Archbishop, b.1931)

The Ubuntu theology: ‘Truth and reconciliation’

    The South African Anglican archbishop, Desmond Tutu, president of the “Truth and Reconciliation” commission does not conceal that his actions for the commission are partially based of what is called UBUNTU theology. "Ubuntu” is an ancient African code of ethics that is based on the inherent humaneness of the human spirit. It embraces the hospitality, generosity, warmth and togetherness that is so typical of the African people. One expression of Ubuntu: “I am because you are” points to a feeling of belonging, of sharing, and of having a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others - thus promoting respect for elders, youth and women, and co-operation and trust between individuals, cultures and nations.

    Ubuntu is much more than a philosophy; it is a way of life, a state of “being”, a code of principles for living together, and a strategy for conflict resolution. The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu has guided the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ Commission in South Africa, helping to heal wounds of apartheid by bringing out the values of compassion, forgiveness, personal accountability and dignity.  Reconciliation is possible only if one starts from the foundation of the truths.

    The philosophy of Ubuntu has similarities with concepts found in other cultures, such as Ahimsa (non-violence) promoted by Gandhi, the doctrine of Agape, and the Christian principle expressed as “do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you”. More recently, European notions of Humanism are associated with similar ethics and values, especially understanding, respect and acceptance of others. It is clear that similar values-systems exist or have existed in most cultures in the world and that they have served as a healing and civilizing force to reduce conflict and bring about reconciliation within families, between tribes and clans, even nations. When exploring different traditional cultures in the world, whilst recognizing that many values are shared worldwide, we need to acknowledge the unique ways of interpreting and expressing those values in each culture. Contributions should, wherever possible, come directly from people who belong to and live those cultures. It is important to recognize that the aim of the Ubuntu project is not to invent something new, nor to impose values on others, but more to re-discover, re-awaken, re-ignite and share that which already exists within human hearts, and can be found especially in the traditions of societies around the world. It involves an exploration of what is specific to each culture, and of what is shared with other cultures and which unites the human family.

* See Michael J. Battle, Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu, Pilgrim Press, 1997

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TWARDOWSKI *

(Polish philosopher, 1866-1938)

    The conception of truth as something absolute, never relative

Twardowski argues forcefully in favour of a conception of truth as something absolute, a conception which would rule out the possibility that the truth of a judgment might change from occasion to occasion or from subject to subject. He argues that the thesis that truth can change and judgment remain the same follows from a confusion of judgments on the one hand with their statements or expressions on the other.

    The differentiation between relative and absolute truthfulness exists only in the area of sayings, to which the truth feature applies only in a figurative indirect sense. When the judgements themselves are concerned we cannot talk about relative and absolute truthfulness, for each judgement is either true, and then it is true at any time or place, or it is false, and also false at any time or place. The existence of relative truths may be sustained only thanks to the lack of differentiation between judgements and sayings and loses its basis when the difference between judgements and sayings is strictly and systematically observed.

    Generally, it can be shown that all the instances of ‘mutable’ truths include, either implicitly or explicitly, egocentric particulars. An essential feature of egocentric particulars is their reference to the speaker, to his experiences and his space-time position. Sentences which contain egocentric words have a different meaning and, accordingly, might be true in some circumstances and untrue in others. This does not imperil the view that for every p, if ‘p’ is true, ‘p’ is absolutely true. For once the context in which p is stated is fully specified and, thus, the various meanings of the seemingly identical expressions are distinguished, we obtain two or more statements, each of which, if true, is absolutely true.

    From the viewpoint of formal logic, which, among its primary principles, includes the principles of (in)consistency and of excluded middle, the differentiation of relative and absolute truths is nonsense, and even groundless and unacceptable. It destroys the rationality of the human efforts for it involves us in a conflict with what has been considered the canon and main measure of rational activity, thinking and learning.

    Twardowski writes "If we encounter a case that a particular hypothesis or theory was – as the relativists say – true only for a certain scope of experience, the fact is that the hypothesis or theory was not true at all, but was false from the very beginning. However at the time when it was accepted, some facts proving its fallacy could not be perceived, and it was accepted, for at that time the hypothesis/theory was deemed more probable than all the others”.

    Some authors try to deduce the relativist thesis from their epistemological subjectivism, but then Twardowski argues that such a foundation is a total delusion. No subjectivism has ever proved that considering a judgement as true makes it true. For at least on the grounds of the classical theory of truth, its truth is proved by the existence or non-existence of the object of a judgement, not simply the subjective consideration of it as true.

* Twardowski, On the content and object of presentations. A psychological investigation. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1977.

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