another old draft.. partially completed. I may continue this later.
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one of the dangers of being an intellectual in an intellectual culture is this: to ascribe far more importance to logic and thought than is deserved. this is just as true in modern Christendom as in the secular world. the fundamental error is a failure to understand the essence of Truth.
here we note the capitalized Truth, which we denote differently from mere truth; what is the distinction? truth is something we can appropriate with earthly knowledge, systematic or otherwise. truth is a thing that is passed down from one generation to another; a man works for a lifetime to understand a problem or create an invention, and having succeeded, enables his successor to reproduce his work in nary a month. once found (a key word!), truth represents a piece of the absolute and is not regarded as truth unless it can be found by means of a systematic walk. this is all well and good - how else do we make sense of our moon-lit world? - until we do the inevitable and mistake the systematic for the absolute. the systematic was employed to find a facet of the absolute, but that is all! it is a most severe conflation to equivocate in this way, for it leads to confused thinking and even more confused living.
and so it is with all human religion, philosophy, and science.
but this is a description of truth rather than a distinction with Truth. to distinguish we must know what we mean by Truth. but Truth, if it exists, can not be given a clean and simple definition by man, for otherwise it would have been appropriated by the same earthly knowledge that characterizes truth. no, this 'Truth' - naively relating to the sense of Absolute things independent of concept, construction, language, et al - must not, cannot have a definition from human lips. but what sense does it make to talk about something we cannot even precisely discuss?
at this point in our analysis, we are like a man searching his hometown for a distant relation whose name he does not know, whose face he has not seen, and of whom he has only heard scattered fragments from distant travelers. is this man still alive? he does not know. what is this man like? our man can only hazard pieces that uniquely mark his relative as distinct.
but this is precisely where Jesus enters! in the same verse where He identifies Himself to be the (unique) Way and the Life, He also identifies Himself as the Truth! we must stop here to appreciate the audacity, offense, and uniqueness of this statement.
this Veritas is given form in a Person, in fact in the Person. not systematized nor a methodology, not a structure of laws or principles, not a morality or code of living, but a PERSON! outrageous!
[aside: on these grounds alone, it is clear that Jesus claimed to be God]
but how do we respond to such a claim? what means do we have to verify or falsify it? absolutely none. for what means does earthly knowledge have for searching out Truth? (here the language informs and self-organizes) the response is simple: free choice. anything else is masquerade or self-ignorant compulsion.
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and thus the title of this short piece. apologetics and argument are worthless and deceptive, for they seek to elucidate Truth by means of truth, obscuring this persistent and unalterable fact of choice.
may we never substitute the loving affection of our Redeemer with irrelevant and idolatrous apologetics, whose goal is to make the Truth subject to and governed by earthly inquiry.
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"for since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to those who believe."
- 1 corinthians 1:21
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