A friend sent this to me and gave permission to share here - see attached PDF as well.
David Grioli
20 January 2024
Unlike subjective truth, absolute truth, in my opinion, is an ontological primitive. Theories help us bridge our experiential encounter with reality with the facts that explain or reveal phenomena. Facts are the solid ground on which we walk while we explore and discover the more profound ontological primitives of meaning and purpose. Theories, however, are mutable and require a cautious approach to their adoption in constructing our worldview. Essential to discovering objective truth is to be conscious of how we attend to the world. It has been said that ‘how we attend to the world is how the world attends to us! Hence, attention is a moral act! We must attend to the world in such a way as to discover the primordial meaning and purpose embedded in all creation. Biblical wisdom declares that sacrifice and suffering are short-hand pathways to access the transcendent truth innate in the cosmos. (Matthew 5:10-12 “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”). Suffering serves to open the human consciousness to the metaphysical. Suffering is a brutal confrontation with the illusion of separateness and sacrifice is the antidote to suffering, illuminating our higher consciousness to the relational nature of reality. When times of tragedy and suffering strike us, and sooner or later, they touch all of us, if we do not have a metaphysics, a spiritual optics with which to comprehend said suffering, we are done for!
Concomitant to truth is the biblical notion of no separation. (1 Corinthians 15:28: “that God may be all in all”). There is no separation! The illusion of separateness is a construct of space and matter viewed through the lens of the flesh. In contrast, consciousness is the lens through which the spirit apprehends the implicit nature of the cosmos by considering the broader context. The spiritual man may assess all things from this elevated perspective. (1 Corinthians 2:15: “The one who is spiritual discerns all things, yet he himself is discerned by no one”. Greek anakrino: to estimate and determine the excellence or defect of any person or thing). Jesus brings this principle to the fore in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Mathew 25:31, where Jesus clearly states that good deeds extended to the least of his brothers are deeds extended to Him. In no uncertain terms, this is a declaration that to encounter Jesus in the world, all one needs to do is lift human beings out of their suffering. Every act of kindness towards the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the depressed and the sick is an act of profound discovery. Firstly, we encounter our Lord Jesus. Secondly, we discern the interconnectedness of all creation, that there is no separation; it is an illusion, and we are all
in this together. Thirdly, we discover the objective truth that how we attend to others is how we attend to ourselves. In other words, every deed we manifest towards another creature is an action that will ultimately manifest an equal reaction upon ourselves. The warning is evident in Jesus' words in Matthew 7:2, “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” how we attend to or measure others. Is ultimately a measure of ourselves.
In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” again, Jesus declares in John 17:17 “, Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth,”. Why is the truth said to be found in the human son of God rather than reduced to a neat statement of beliefs or a taxonomy of dogma and doctrine? Both Jesus himself and God’s Word are said to embody absolute truth and objective truth. God’s Word is truth; as such, it is the immanent expression of God’s transcendency and the primordial bedrock of all phenomena. God’s Words effectively operate as vectors of the Divine will within the space-time continuum. ( John 6:63: “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life”) God is transcendent, whilst His Words are immanent. Why is it appropriate for God’s word to be truth and for Jesus to be the embodiment of the word and wisdom of God? (John 1:14, “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." 1 Corinthians 1:32: “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”) The biblical insight is that objective truth is embodied. Objective truth is primarily discovered through relational experience. God is love, and love is, by definition, relational and experiential. Therefore, objective Divine truth can only be understood or discerned through experienced relational love!
Therefore, Jesus is ostensibly the embodied truth, word and wisdom of God, and rightly so! Biblical wisdom declares that objective truth is embodied in the person of Christ Jesus; in this way, objective truth is discovered through relational experience when we encounter Jesus' words and allow ourselves to be possessed by the ideology encoded in the life- giving words uttered by our Lord. Hence, Jesus is said to be in us, and we are said to be in Jesus, and finally, we are all said to be in God and God in all. This represents an embodied relational truth where love is preeminent. Only by embodying Jesus' teachings and acting them out in the world can we know the truth.
Words create worlds! The words we employ create the worlds we inhabit! This is the biblical insight recorded in Genesis. We do well to ask what kind of world do we inhabit in our families and societies? Is it a world defined by dogma and lists of rules or narrow principles built on the certainty that we have it right and all those that fall outside of our world view are in error and are thereby unworthy of our fellowship? Does our Christian world view marginalise people on the bases of doctrine alone? Do we find ourselves unable to listen to other Christians that may espouse a different understanding of scripture than our own? Are we open to the possibility that we may be wrong in some of our understanding in the pursuit of truth. Do we fear doctrinal uncertainty, or are we insistent or even obsessed with absolute biblical truth at the expense of human relationships. I would argue that Divine truth can only be discovered in our relationship with others, wether related to us in the faith or not. Discovering Godly truth will inevitable be a life long endeavour that in my opinion can only be undertaken by walking coherently and authentically in the embodied footsteps of our Lord Jesus. This means immersing in and mingling with people indiscriminately of culture, colour and creed, according each one the dignity of divinity, after all they too are made in the image of God. We should view each interpersonal encounter as an encounter with the divine. If we approach our Christianity with this mental attitude, I believe our understanding of doctrine and our pursuit of truth will be properly guided. In other words rather than allowing our doctrine to determine our Christian living, I believe the biblical examples embodied primarily in Jesus and his disciples show that it is Christian living that will elucidate us as to our understanding of truthful doctrine. What could be more truthful than acting out the truth by embodying the Christ like personality. The supposition I am offering is that by living and breathing what Jesus embodied in our own lives is the best path to objective truth we have available to us. Doctrine can only take you so far, in fact blind certainty and trust in our doctrinal integrity, in my experience, most often leads one astray. Blind doctrinal certainty or fanaticism is like looking at the moons reflection in a lake and mistaking the image on the water for the actual moon.
A problem occurs when we interpret the search for truth as a linear process where we tend to dogmatise truth and equate truth with a cold academic disembodied list of facts. To my knowledge, the bible nowhere states that to inherit everlasting life, one must have a correct list of doctrinal facts. Instead, Jesus, when asked, ‘What must I do to inherit everlasting life?’ He answered, ‘You must love your God with your whole heart, mind and soul and your neighbour as yourself ’. These statements imply a relational, experiential truth where there is no separation between one another and God himself. Love of the Divine and love of the other is a life-affirming act commensurate with our discovery of Divine objective truth. Too many Christians fall into the trap of dogmatism and fact-finding as a means to truth; they mistakenly equate truth with ridged, inflexible statements of belief. Their litmus test for truth is fundamentally unidimensional, disembodied and dogmatic. They obsess over the details to the detriment of the whole. The parts of the body of truth become more important than the sum of the body of truth. Such theological myopia is an enemy of Divine truth. My intuition is that the underlying motive for this approach to Christianity is a fear of uncertainty. For many religious truth seekers, uncertainty quickly translates to anxiety and fear, thus inhibiting in the main or paralysing in the extreme.
The perennial bible geek ensconced in his library sanitised behind a screen, often lacks social skills and awareness. They are like someone studying all he can find on swimming without ever diving into a pool. The practical has been subsumed by the theoretical to such a degree that Christianity, as lived wisdom in a world of experience, is sacrificed to a sterile set of dogmatic beliefs. The wise person knows that he knows less than he really knows, whereas the naive person is unaware of what he doesn’t know because he is convinced that he knows. Divine wisdom is lost on him; he is like a seed without soil; he is like sheet music without an instrument to interpret the sublime message of the music embedded on the page; he has
effectively reduced Christianity down to a two-dimensional map that serves as a guide and has confused it with the actual terrain that it describes. The doctrine may serve as a map to guide us in the Divine purpose; however, it remains facile and lifeless without orthopraxy.
So, how does one live as a Christian without the certainty of absolute truth? Coming to Jesus and receiving him in your heart means becoming a child of God. (John 1:12: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”). To enter God’s kingdom, one must be born from above (again). (John 3:5,7 Jesus answered, "I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. NET Bible: “Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must all be born from above”). It would seem the verses above indicate that finding Jesus and believing in Jesus is enough to gain life in the age to come, to enter the kingdom as it were. The person of Jesus is the fulcrum of Christian life; he alone is our security as Christians. Acts 4:12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
To conclude, I will answer my question in the affirmative, with a resounding yes! A Christian can and must live as Jesus commanded, even though we may never have the certainty of absolute truth. We may discover in the pursuit of truth that some doctrines appear more accurate than others, and we may meander along the path to truth, tacking here and there as we examine the scriptures more carefully; we will no doubt feel strongly about the truths we discover; this is normal and right. The only caveat I hasten to add is always be receptive and open to other points of view, hold an open mind, be reasonable with all and above all, be loving toward all genuine seekers of truth, even if their truth doesn’t align with yours, you may just learn some mote of truth you didn’t know.
David Grioli
20 January 2024
How to be Christian without the certainty of absolute truth.
John 14:6
Unlike subjective truth, absolute truth, in my opinion, is an ontological primitive. Theories help us bridge our experiential encounter with reality with the facts that explain or reveal phenomena. Facts are the solid ground on which we walk while we explore and discover the more profound ontological primitives of meaning and purpose. Theories, however, are mutable and require a cautious approach to their adoption in constructing our worldview. Essential to discovering objective truth is to be conscious of how we attend to the world. It has been said that ‘how we attend to the world is how the world attends to us! Hence, attention is a moral act! We must attend to the world in such a way as to discover the primordial meaning and purpose embedded in all creation. Biblical wisdom declares that sacrifice and suffering are short-hand pathways to access the transcendent truth innate in the cosmos. (Matthew 5:10-12 “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”). Suffering serves to open the human consciousness to the metaphysical. Suffering is a brutal confrontation with the illusion of separateness and sacrifice is the antidote to suffering, illuminating our higher consciousness to the relational nature of reality. When times of tragedy and suffering strike us, and sooner or later, they touch all of us, if we do not have a metaphysics, a spiritual optics with which to comprehend said suffering, we are done for!
Concomitant to truth is the biblical notion of no separation. (1 Corinthians 15:28: “that God may be all in all”). There is no separation! The illusion of separateness is a construct of space and matter viewed through the lens of the flesh. In contrast, consciousness is the lens through which the spirit apprehends the implicit nature of the cosmos by considering the broader context. The spiritual man may assess all things from this elevated perspective. (1 Corinthians 2:15: “The one who is spiritual discerns all things, yet he himself is discerned by no one”. Greek anakrino: to estimate and determine the excellence or defect of any person or thing). Jesus brings this principle to the fore in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Mathew 25:31, where Jesus clearly states that good deeds extended to the least of his brothers are deeds extended to Him. In no uncertain terms, this is a declaration that to encounter Jesus in the world, all one needs to do is lift human beings out of their suffering. Every act of kindness towards the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the depressed and the sick is an act of profound discovery. Firstly, we encounter our Lord Jesus. Secondly, we discern the interconnectedness of all creation, that there is no separation; it is an illusion, and we are all
in this together. Thirdly, we discover the objective truth that how we attend to others is how we attend to ourselves. In other words, every deed we manifest towards another creature is an action that will ultimately manifest an equal reaction upon ourselves. The warning is evident in Jesus' words in Matthew 7:2, “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” how we attend to or measure others. Is ultimately a measure of ourselves.
In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” again, Jesus declares in John 17:17 “, Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth,”. Why is the truth said to be found in the human son of God rather than reduced to a neat statement of beliefs or a taxonomy of dogma and doctrine? Both Jesus himself and God’s Word are said to embody absolute truth and objective truth. God’s Word is truth; as such, it is the immanent expression of God’s transcendency and the primordial bedrock of all phenomena. God’s Words effectively operate as vectors of the Divine will within the space-time continuum. ( John 6:63: “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life”) God is transcendent, whilst His Words are immanent. Why is it appropriate for God’s word to be truth and for Jesus to be the embodiment of the word and wisdom of God? (John 1:14, “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." 1 Corinthians 1:32: “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”) The biblical insight is that objective truth is embodied. Objective truth is primarily discovered through relational experience. God is love, and love is, by definition, relational and experiential. Therefore, objective Divine truth can only be understood or discerned through experienced relational love!
Therefore, Jesus is ostensibly the embodied truth, word and wisdom of God, and rightly so! Biblical wisdom declares that objective truth is embodied in the person of Christ Jesus; in this way, objective truth is discovered through relational experience when we encounter Jesus' words and allow ourselves to be possessed by the ideology encoded in the life- giving words uttered by our Lord. Hence, Jesus is said to be in us, and we are said to be in Jesus, and finally, we are all said to be in God and God in all. This represents an embodied relational truth where love is preeminent. Only by embodying Jesus' teachings and acting them out in the world can we know the truth.
Words create worlds! The words we employ create the worlds we inhabit! This is the biblical insight recorded in Genesis. We do well to ask what kind of world do we inhabit in our families and societies? Is it a world defined by dogma and lists of rules or narrow principles built on the certainty that we have it right and all those that fall outside of our world view are in error and are thereby unworthy of our fellowship? Does our Christian world view marginalise people on the bases of doctrine alone? Do we find ourselves unable to listen to other Christians that may espouse a different understanding of scripture than our own? Are we open to the possibility that we may be wrong in some of our understanding in the pursuit of truth. Do we fear doctrinal uncertainty, or are we insistent or even obsessed with absolute biblical truth at the expense of human relationships. I would argue that Divine truth can only be discovered in our relationship with others, wether related to us in the faith or not. Discovering Godly truth will inevitable be a life long endeavour that in my opinion can only be undertaken by walking coherently and authentically in the embodied footsteps of our Lord Jesus. This means immersing in and mingling with people indiscriminately of culture, colour and creed, according each one the dignity of divinity, after all they too are made in the image of God. We should view each interpersonal encounter as an encounter with the divine. If we approach our Christianity with this mental attitude, I believe our understanding of doctrine and our pursuit of truth will be properly guided. In other words rather than allowing our doctrine to determine our Christian living, I believe the biblical examples embodied primarily in Jesus and his disciples show that it is Christian living that will elucidate us as to our understanding of truthful doctrine. What could be more truthful than acting out the truth by embodying the Christ like personality. The supposition I am offering is that by living and breathing what Jesus embodied in our own lives is the best path to objective truth we have available to us. Doctrine can only take you so far, in fact blind certainty and trust in our doctrinal integrity, in my experience, most often leads one astray. Blind doctrinal certainty or fanaticism is like looking at the moons reflection in a lake and mistaking the image on the water for the actual moon.
A problem occurs when we interpret the search for truth as a linear process where we tend to dogmatise truth and equate truth with a cold academic disembodied list of facts. To my knowledge, the bible nowhere states that to inherit everlasting life, one must have a correct list of doctrinal facts. Instead, Jesus, when asked, ‘What must I do to inherit everlasting life?’ He answered, ‘You must love your God with your whole heart, mind and soul and your neighbour as yourself ’. These statements imply a relational, experiential truth where there is no separation between one another and God himself. Love of the Divine and love of the other is a life-affirming act commensurate with our discovery of Divine objective truth. Too many Christians fall into the trap of dogmatism and fact-finding as a means to truth; they mistakenly equate truth with ridged, inflexible statements of belief. Their litmus test for truth is fundamentally unidimensional, disembodied and dogmatic. They obsess over the details to the detriment of the whole. The parts of the body of truth become more important than the sum of the body of truth. Such theological myopia is an enemy of Divine truth. My intuition is that the underlying motive for this approach to Christianity is a fear of uncertainty. For many religious truth seekers, uncertainty quickly translates to anxiety and fear, thus inhibiting in the main or paralysing in the extreme.
The perennial bible geek ensconced in his library sanitised behind a screen, often lacks social skills and awareness. They are like someone studying all he can find on swimming without ever diving into a pool. The practical has been subsumed by the theoretical to such a degree that Christianity, as lived wisdom in a world of experience, is sacrificed to a sterile set of dogmatic beliefs. The wise person knows that he knows less than he really knows, whereas the naive person is unaware of what he doesn’t know because he is convinced that he knows. Divine wisdom is lost on him; he is like a seed without soil; he is like sheet music without an instrument to interpret the sublime message of the music embedded on the page; he has
effectively reduced Christianity down to a two-dimensional map that serves as a guide and has confused it with the actual terrain that it describes. The doctrine may serve as a map to guide us in the Divine purpose; however, it remains facile and lifeless without orthopraxy.
So, how does one live as a Christian without the certainty of absolute truth? Coming to Jesus and receiving him in your heart means becoming a child of God. (John 1:12: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”). To enter God’s kingdom, one must be born from above (again). (John 3:5,7 Jesus answered, "I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. NET Bible: “Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must all be born from above”). It would seem the verses above indicate that finding Jesus and believing in Jesus is enough to gain life in the age to come, to enter the kingdom as it were. The person of Jesus is the fulcrum of Christian life; he alone is our security as Christians. Acts 4:12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
To conclude, I will answer my question in the affirmative, with a resounding yes! A Christian can and must live as Jesus commanded, even though we may never have the certainty of absolute truth. We may discover in the pursuit of truth that some doctrines appear more accurate than others, and we may meander along the path to truth, tacking here and there as we examine the scriptures more carefully; we will no doubt feel strongly about the truths we discover; this is normal and right. The only caveat I hasten to add is always be receptive and open to other points of view, hold an open mind, be reasonable with all and above all, be loving toward all genuine seekers of truth, even if their truth doesn’t align with yours, you may just learn some mote of truth you didn’t know.
