Questions about the Concept of Truth

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PaLLaDiUm

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Hi guys, so I just want to skip to my point. Here are my questions:

If Jesus is the Truth, then why do we try to seek out the Truth in different places, like the physical/social sciences, other than The Church that He established? And what is this whole concept about “false truths” that I came upon while doing the Liturgy of the Hours? Is it that there are truths that lead us to life and truths that lead us to death?

If the reliance on reason alone is called rationalism (correct me if I’m wrong), then what is the utilization of Faith and Reason called?
 
God gave us our heads to be used!

That includes the physical sciences.

But there are and will remain areas of truth that cannot be found in that way, and for those, we must exercise faith.

ICXC NIKA
 
1 Corinthians 3:2. When I read your post this is the first thing that popped into my head. The people of that day were not ready to know all the truths of this physical world. Indeed they probably would not have been able to accept that the world was found, we are not the center of the universe, Gravity, etc…

Does this make them untrue? Or perhaps because Jesus did not teach them the laws of physics it means He is false? I say no to both. I think God reveals and allows us to discover things at the appropriate time.
 
Not to mention, if nuclear fission had been understood in say the 1700s, what the world would look like now!!!

ICXC NIKA
 
PaLLaDiUm said:
Hi guys, so I just want to skip to my point. Here are my questions:

If Jesus is the Truth, then why do we try to seek out the Truth in different places, like the physical/social sciences, other than The Church that He established? And what is this whole concept about “false truths” that I came upon while doing the Liturgy of the Hours? Is it that there are truths that lead us to life and truths that lead us to death?

If the reliance on reason alone is called rationalism (correct me if I’m wrong), then what is the utilization of Faith and Reason called?
Click to expand...
Truth became important to me as I came to experience this world-and myself- as often as not operating on half-truths and outright falsehoods. In the business and political as well as our personal worlds misrepresentations of the truth, i.e. “lies” are often the rule. Adam swallowed the first lie-that the fruit, of disobedience of God, was good; he stepped into a world where man determined truth for himself from then on, effectively separated from God’s direct control in the moral sphere. Man, in genuine innocence, would never even contemplate misrepresenting the truth in the slightest way, with the tiniest white lie. But even the clothes we wear often seek to make us into something we’re not; clothes, to begin with, cover our true selves which is why Genesis could tell us that the man and woman were naked and didn’t know it. We control the truth; complete transparency regarding ourselves-who we are-as well as in what we do is virtually impossible to find in this world. We’d have a difficult time being that open in this fallen world in fact.

Pride and selfishness with their related offspring, fear and shame, are the chief culprits to begin with in all this as they’re directly opposed to love, preferring darkness to light, but the world is what it is. We’re not to take this for granted, however, and Jesus came to show us the ugliness of falsehood, and what transparency-what truth- “looks like” even if it meant His suffering and death, which it did. Truth is precious; we must cultivate and protect and live it, to the best we can.
 
I don’t know, I guess you guys have answered part of my question, but I feel like it hasn’t been completely answered, especially in regards to my 2nd question. Right now, I can’t really think of any follow up questions, so I would like to thank all of you who have posted.
 
PaLLaDiUm said:
Hi guys, so I just want to skip to my point. Here are my questions:

If Jesus is the Truth, then why do we try to seek out the Truth in different places, like the physical/social sciences, other than The Church that He established? And what is this whole concept about “false truths” that I came upon while doing the Liturgy of the Hours? Is it that there are truths that lead us to life and truths that lead us to death?

If the reliance on reason alone is called rationalism (correct me if I’m wrong), then what is the utilization of Faith and Reason called?
Click to expand...
"Faith and reason are both sources of authority upon which beliefs can rest. Reason generally is understood as the principles for a methodological inquiry, whether intellectual, moral, aesthetic, or religious. Thus is it not simply the rules of logical inference or the embodied wisdom of a tradition or authority. Some kind of algorithmic demonstrability is ordinarily presupposed. Once demonstrated, a proposition or claim is ordinarily understood to be justified as true or authoritative.

Faith, on the other hand, involves a stance toward some claim that is not, at least presently, demonstrable by reason. Thus faith is a kind of attitude of trust or assent. As such, it is ordinarily understood to involve an act of will or a commitment on the part of the believer. Religious faith involves a belief that makes some kind of either an implicit or explicit reference to a transcendent source.

The basis for a person’s faith usually is understood to come from the authority of revelation. Revelation is either direct, through some kind of direct infusion, or indirect, usually from the testimony of an other. The religious beliefs that are the objects of faith can thus be divided into those what are in fact strictly demonstrable (scienta) and those that inform a believer’s virtuous practices (sapientia)."

The above quote is from a site which will answer your questions in depth.

iep.utm.edu/faith-re/
 
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