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Follow the Star: the Folly of Certainty

Follow the Star: the Folly of Certainty

Last updated on: December 5, 2016 at 7:10 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Follow the Star: the Folly of Certainty 2016-12-04T23:52:35-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Follow the Star by Faith
Image by Nina Aldin Thune on Wikimedia Commons.

Beauty, Truth, and the Good are real.

What do I mean by that?

Beauty, Truth, and the Good exist independent of human minds. They exist in the Mind of God (at least) and so can be known. If the Good can be known, the moral life is possible. If the Truth can be known, then error is avoidable. If Beauty can be known, then we can choose beauty over ugliness. The combination of goodness, beauty, and truth will produce a flourishing, happy, life.

There is a problem with this good news, however.

Suppose we had a perfect book, without error. We are broken and so we can misunderstand even the perfect book. No Christian can doubt our ability to mess up even the best of opportunities, since when we were sent the perfect man, we decided to kill Him. Our inability to be sure is not helped by a sure Word.

There is nothing I can say so clearly that somebody will not misunderstand it. Everyone who has ever taught knows this truth, but so does anyone with a Twitter account. The reader is the second participant in communication.

Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine a very, very difficult communication situation. According to a few scientists, modern physics hints that mind and experience are fundamental to the cosmos. “External” reality is on much less certain ground when it comes to certainty. We are sure our experiences exist, but as for the “world” . . . maybe not.

Let’s ignore objections (and there are some good ones) and assume this idea (that experience is reality) is true.

I once debated an atheist who made a big issue that my experience of God was just in my head, but this did not overwhelm me as all my experiences are in my head. If I start doubting my experiences (at least in a radical way), nothing is left. I only know the world through experience. The atheist might reply that I am “just my brain.” Sadly, for this counter-argument, I only know about brains through my mind and experience. In fact, for a philosopher, none of this is unfamiliar, particularly for an analytic philosopher from the University of Rochester. After all, some philosophers, like Bishop Berkeley, thought ideas (and minds) were real and ‘reality’ was dependent on mind.

Suppose this is true. Suppose there is no objective “reality” external to mind. There is still (then) the remarkable fact that we can translate language, that humans from different cultures can communicate. We talk and if we often misunderstand each other, there is the amazing fact that we get most things right. The world is also orderly for everyone. We examine it and it coheres. This is also amazing.

Good Bishop Berkeley was right: if this is so, then the most sensible explanation is that we are part of one great Mind, God. All things that exist are ideas in His Mind. He gives us autonomy: we are not God, but we are part of the great thought experiment in which He is engaged. Sadly, we are broken, bad programming, and so we can never be sure we are getting things right.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, but the only Beholder that counts (really) is God. We seek His Truth, His Goodness, and His Beauty, but we are never able to be sure that we have found the good, the true, and the beautiful. This gap in certainty is where faith is needed. Faith is (on this account) asserting something one has reason to think is good, true, or beautiful, but about which one might be mistaken. We have faith seeking understanding.

So with beauty, my tastes, experiences, even my prejudices, stand between me and being sure of God’s opinions. What makes this even more complicated is that my taste is not evil (in all cases)! Preferences are good. If my favorite ice cream (for me) is vanilla, then this is truth for me. This is a subjective truth that matters (especially in some circumstances!), but is generally not that important. There is (after all) no ice cream I should like. On the other hand, if I generally cannot hear the beauty in the music of Bach, there is something wrong with me. Bach is human, so imperfect, but he is very, very beautiful. If we were in harmony with the Divine Mind, then our experiences would show us that beauty.

We will make mistakes, we must make mistakes. Still, since God, the Divine Mind, is there our mistakes are limited. If we persist in thinking, experiencing, communicating, we can move toward truth. Centuries of people have done so and we can benefit by their progress. We will never be done with our journey towards the Good, Truth and Beauty, but that they are “out there” means our examination is not in vain.

And so:

Having a Truth, Good, and Beauty does not mean we can get any of those three “for sure.”
That these three exist means our mistakes will not be as great as they might be.
We can get closer to the Good, the True, and Beauty.

We follow the Star, because it seems like we are getting some place. We shall see. Things cohere and fit the experiences we have. We build larger communities (stay out of little cults like atheism!) and these help us get more experience, more ideas, and greater truth. Taste is always present, but in community, we can get beyond mere taste, especially if our community is diverse, multi-cultural. It will always be hard to know this side of Paradise. Very ugly things and very beautiful things might be easy to see (concentration camps versus roses), but most things will be harder.

We follow the Star, we are not sure just what we will see. When we see the King in a lowly place, in Bethlehem, then we see what we could not have guessed. It may all be in our head, but if it is, God is even more probable than ever.

_________________________________

Thankful to David “Roy” Martina for the questions that led to this initial post and to The Saint Constantine School college students who view Roy as a legend.

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