YouCat Q#32 "God is Truth"

[hsmomforlife]

I’m not sure if this is the right forum or not, but if not, someone please let me know where it should go!

I am going through the YouCat with my jr high aged kids and would love some help on one of the questions. Q#31 asks “What does it mean to say that God is truth?” The answer provides many Biblical quotes such as “God is light and in him is no darkness (1Jn 1:5). His Word is truth (Prov 8:7; 2 Sam 7:28)…”
One of the sentences in the commentary states “Anyone who enters into a relationship with him can find this out by putting it to the test. * If God were not “true”, then faith and reason could not have a dialog with each other.* An agreement is possible, however, because God is truth, and the truth is divine.”

Can anyone provide some discussion points for the italicized sentence to help clarify the meaning of it? I am working with jr high level kids, so I hope to keep it to something that they can grasp.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[1AugustSon7]

I’m not sure if this is the right forum or not, but if not, someone please let me know where it should go!

I am going through the YouCat with my jr high aged kids and would love some help on one of the questions. Q#31 asks “What does it mean to say that God is truth?” The answer provides many Biblical quotes such as “God is light and in him is no darkness (1Jn 1:5). His Word is truth (Prov 8:7; 2 Sam 7:28)…”
One of the sentences in the commentary states “Anyone who enters into a relationship with him can find this out by putting it to the test. * If God were not “true”, then faith and reason could not have a dialog with each other.* An agreement is possible, however, because God is truth, and the truth is divine.”

Can anyone provide some discussion points for the italicized sentence to help clarify the meaning of it? I am working with jr high level kids, so I hope to keep it to something that they can grasp.

Thanks in advance for any help!

I recommend you pick-up (for you and your family) Saint Augustine’s Confessions. The whole (relatively short) book(let) is literally a dialogue between faith and reason, and is quite probably the inspiration for the YouCat quote. It would certainly at least serve as an excellent example!

God bless you and yours!

 

[Polycarp1]

The human race then had broken its right relation of friendship with God: men had lost the way because they had lost the life (without which the way cannot be followed) and the truth without which the way cannot even be known. To such a world Christ, who had come to make all things new, said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” In those three words–way, truth, life–Christ related Himself quite precisely to what man had lost: as precisely as a key fits a lock. In the precision of that threefold relation, we are apt to overlook the strangest word in the phrase–the word “am.”

Men needed truth and life: what they might have expected was one who would say “I have the truth and the life”: what they found was one who said “I am the truth and the life.” This strange word forces us to a new mode of approach. If a man claims to have what we want, we must study what he has. If a man claims to be what we want, we must study what he is. With any other teacher the truth he has is our primary concern–the teacher himself is of no importance save as the bearer of truth, and his work is done when he has given it. With Christ, the teacher is primary: He cannot simply give us the truth and the life, and then have done with us. He can only give us Himself, for He is both. This point must be insisted on, not as a figure of speech, but as a strict fact. It is a map we are making, not a poem; and what is now being said, mysterious as it is, is strictly and literally true. Our study of the road of life has brought us to an examination of truth and life: we cannot understand the road if we do not understand them. But if Christ is the truth, then we must understand Him: if He is the life, then He must live in us.
Frank Sheed “Map of Life”

 

[Polycarp1]

“Knowing belongs to man’s intellect or reason; loving belongs to his will. The object of the intellect is truth; the object of the will is goodness or love.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living

“That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity with the Church herself, if she shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black.” (Pearson Education). Ignatius is telling us that no matter if the teaching defies all logic and rationale, what the Catholic Church teaches us is absolute truth. Ignatius

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.

• Carl Jung

“We can’t believe what we believe to be untrue, and we can’t love what we believe to be unreal.” ― Peter Kreeft, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics

Truth is Relative What is Truth?
If truth is relative, then absolute right and absolute wrong become doubtful and obscure.
And if truth is relative, then only subjective and indefinite answers exist for the purpose and meaning of life. So is there any absolute or real truth in this complex and uncertain world?
Consider the statement: “There is no absolute truth” If that statement is true, then it automatically makes itself false. In other words, how can that statement itself be true, if there is no absolute truth?
However, if that statement is false, then it follows that there is indeed some absolute truth somewhere. If there’s no absolute truth: Then nothing you do matters. If one action is no better than another, and there is no standard by which to determine what’s positive or negative, then there is essentially no purpose to life.
You can’t say that you made a positive difference in the world because there is no measure of what positive action might be. Without a standard of absolute truth, there is no real difference between Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler. All that you do, whether “good” or “bad”, means nothing. CS Lewis

SEE: evidenceandanswers.org/articles/truth.pdf

 

[hsmomforlife]

I recommend you pick-up (for you and your family) Saint Augustine’s Confessions. The whole (relatively short) book(let) is literally a dialogue between faith and reason, and is quite probably the inspiration for the YouCat quote. It would certainly at least serve as an excellent example!

God bless you and yours!

I think I have a copy that I picked up somewhere…and it’s in latin…

Do you think that St Augustine would be a little heavy for a 6th grader?
Neither of my boys appear to be destined to be philosophers, so I’m afraid it might make it more confusing for them.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I think I have a copy that I picked up somewhere…and it’s in latin…

Do you think that St Augustine would be a little heavy for a 6th grader?
Neither of my boys appear to be destined to be philosophers, so I’m afraid it might make it more confusing for them.

Personally, I think Aristotle’s definition of truth (from Metaphysics 1011b25) using 39 single syllable words is a most useful one: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”

Essentially, that means when we speak of “truth” we are describing what really is. The truth is an accurate description of what is ultimately real. If all things come from God as the source of all being and reality, then God is the source of all truth. Truth is an accurate description of God who is the source of all that is. Since all things come from God then all truth comes from God. It is God who determines the existence and, therefore, the truth of all things.