You will know the truth

Jesus had the role of a prophet, as was acknowledged by some of those who heard him, and he claimed to bring the very words of God whom he called his Father: “He who sent me is true; and the things that I heard from him, these I speak to the world” (John 8.26). We need to examine if this is believable; if you’re not convinced, that’s OK – just keep following my reasoning and I trust it will become not only clearer but compelling. But I can’t say it all in one short blog post; in further posts I hope to lead on to those authentic answers we all hope for and we all need.

You may have heard the expression sometimes quoted, “the truth shall make you free”. It seems a great sound-bite, but you may not know where it comes from. It was Jesus who said it, but it is often quoted without the important words just before it. In the context just before, Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”. These words are to be found in one of the Gospels (John 8.31-32) recounting the life, teaching and ministry of Jesus. They are intriguing words indeed, for they offer truth – indeed, they promise to be the key to knowing the truth. May this be the key we need? Might this be the way to authentic answers from God himself?

In that same chapter 8 of John’s Gospel we find other astounding statements (it’s a chapter well worth studying and reflecting on). In a previous blog post we saw that God revealed himself and spoke to identify himself using the expression, “I am who I am”, and calling himself “I am” – the self-existing one. Well in John chapter 8 Jesus takes this very expression to define who he is. He uses the emphatic expression in Greek five times in that chapter, insisting on the importance to believe “that I am” (v24). He also uses the expression in affirming: “I am the light of the world” (v12). Now that is no meagre statement! We are in the dark: light is what we need. And Jesus brings light into the world.

Human beings have sought in vain for the light of truth to enlighten our path, and have not obtained the answers by our own intellectual activity. We should consider if this may be the light that we need! Indeed, as all the world is still trying to penetrate the deep mystery of existence and wondering if God may exist, all of a sudden here is one who claims to be “The Light”. And not just a wee candle shining to lighten some forgotten corner, but the light for the entire world – of all men and women everywhere who are seeking answers! We call that “universal truth”! Truth such as only God himself could know and communicate!

If we can discover that Jesus is actually telling us truth about himself – then we would have authentic hope for true answers to our existential questions. This deserves to be thought through…

Clive Every-Clayton

July 24, 2023 0

Moses wrote of me

We have considered how Moses recorded that God spoke to him, introducing himself by the name “I AM”. It is an astonishing phenomenon that God has broken the silence, communicating with man, revealing something about himself. He is a God who speaks! This is very important, first, because man’s mind is too tiny to teach truth about God unless God reveals himself. And second, it is vital, because if we are to obtain authentic answers to our many personal questions about life and everything, a God who speaks should be a major source of understanding. Indeed, the Creator of humankind must supremely be the one who can help us make sense of who we are and what life is all about.

Moses wrote of this encounter with God in Exodus chapter 3 in the Bible. Along with the account of God creating the heavens and the earth, Moses wrote of the divine intervention where God called Abraham, promising him that he would become the father of a multitude of descendants. Moses recounted the history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and his children who became the twelve tribes of Israel. He related the exodus of the Israelites from their time of bondage in Egypt and he received and wrote down numerous laws and precepts that God gave him for the people to obey, notably the Ten Commandments.

One striking thing about the writings of Moses is the number of passages where God is speaking, giving him words to write; “the word of the Lord” is what defines his will and purposes for his people. Numerous chapters in Leviticus, for example, begin with, “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying…” The same is true of the great biblical prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for example – so literally hundreds of communications of God are thus recorded.

But a most extraordinary thing happened over a thousand years after Moses, when another of Abraham’s descendants made the mind-boggling statement, “Moses wrote about me”! It was Jesus of Nazareth who said that: he dared to assert that Moses wrote about him (see John 5.46)! What did he mean? He was probably referring to a passage where God predicts to Moses that he, God, would raise up another prophet like Moses, and he specifies: “I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (Deuteronomy 18.18). Just listen to what Jesus went on to say: “The Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment – what to say and what to speak… What I say therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (John 12.49-50). Jesus is basically saying God put his words in his mouth. So many of Jesus’ contemporaries thought that he was “the prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6.14), for the Jews had taken note of God’s prediction through Moses.

“God spoke to our fathers by the prophets”, says the New Testament, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1.1-2). God’s communication of the answers we need got a huge step nearer.

Clive Every-Clayton

July 24, 2023 0

God has spoken

Only God can speak properly of God. So where has he spoken? Here we are at a key moment in our journey. Over 1,000 years before Christ, Moses was intrigued to see a bush on fire but which was not consumed. He approached. Then God spoke to him out of the bush. This vital moment of divine communication, where God took the initiative and spoke into our world, is recounted in the Book of Exodus, chapter 3.

This was not the first time God had spoken, but it has particular significance because God was speaking about God! God told Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. What was God saying about himself here? That he had already been in touch with Abraham, the great progenitor of the Jewish people; indeed he had given promises to Abraham which actually were fulfilled – giving an extra weight to the truth he spoke.

And when Moses asked God who exactly he was, what his name was, God gave an astounding reply. Here is God, explaining who he was: “I am who I am”. Now that seems to us to be a strange way of defining God, but that reminds us that we are dealing with an entity unlike any other. God repeats his name to Moses, shortening it to “I AM”. By this he means something we are able only with difficulty to take on board – that God has existence in himself; he is the eternal one; he is there – he has always been, and ever is, present. In other words, God, speaking well of God, tells us he exists; indeed, he has always existed! Wow! This could prove to be a first key that we puny ignorant humans need, for gaining access to real truth – truth first of all about God, but then, by listening to what God says, truth about ourselves, his creatures. Well – this is only the beginning. We still need to check whether this is actually true. There is more to be said to back this up, as we shall see.

Clive Every-Clayton

July 19, 2023 0

No answers in philosophy

While many university students choose to study the scientific field of psychology in order to get closer to answers about their personal inner quest, others hope that there will be some light shed on their dilemma by studying philosophy. When I studied philosophy I was struck by the fact that these great minds were trying to explain reality by starting out from themselves. That is obligatory in philosophy, though of course, philosophers build on those who have gone before them. But ultimately, it is a human being who sits down and tries to think through reality and come to some sense of it all. A huge task! And who has ever succeeded at it?

After many centuries of serious effort by the greatest minds of humanity, nowadays philosophers admit that they have not been able to come up with the answers. Already Blaise Pascal in his day, (whom the modern French atheist philosopher André Comte-Sponville calls “an exceptional man, one of the greatest ever – by his intelligence, by the lucidity and depth of his thought”) had this enlightening pensée: “Men, it is in vain that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your intelligence can only bring you to realise that it is not within yourselves that you will find either good or truth. The philosophers made such promises and they have failed to keep them”.

The modern thinker Peter Van Inwagen avers that after a few thousand years of beginning with the tool of reason, metaphysics has yet to establish any viable body of knowledge, and K. Scott Oliphant comments that since this is the case “a good argument could be made that a change in thinking is long overdue. It seems high time to introduce into the discussion something altogether different”.

This failure of philosophy to find the answers can have one of two consequences. Post-modernity is one of them – where people give up hope of ever finding rational answers at all, and this produces the despair and hopelessness and meaninglessness of our generation. The other, which Scott Oliphant proposes, is to take as “starting point… the basic truth provided by Scripture”.

Philosophical reasoning obligatorily has to start out from given propositions which are neither proved nor even absolutely provable. Humans, building their philosophy on postulates (i.e. presuppositions or assumptions) that are merely their own ideas, cannot come to absolute truth – hence the relativism of our day. Human reason cannot justify its own ability to establish truth. In pensée §188/267, Pascal says that “reason’s last step [or finest effort] is to recognise that there are an infinite number of things that are beyond it”. It is the supreme accomplishment of reason to realise there is a limit to reason; and from there to seek a higher source of truth.

We should be very grateful to God, who, seeing our total inability to come up with truly helpful answers, has been pleased to send us One who brings us truth from God, which does provide the answers we seek.

Clive Every-Clayton

July 19, 2023 0

No answers in science

Maybe some reading these blogs will not be keen on a “God” path to truth, but rather hold to a hope that science or philosophy would have the key to the answers. So I will briefly comment first on whether science can come up with answers; then next, about philosophy.

We are all grateful for the many blessings that science has brought into our lives, from smartphones, to electric cars, to vaccinations and so much more. Although science studies the body with very positive effects in medicine, it is inept in trying to grasp the soul, our inner spiritual reality, our consciousness, our personality – in short our heart that longs for answers to questions about who we are and why we are here.

Science brilliantly studies the physics of existence, matter, energy, scientific laws of nature etc. But our existential questions are of a different order. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project affirms: “Science is powerless to answer questions such as, ‘Why did the universe come into being?’ ‘What is the meaning of human existence?’ ‘What happens after we die?’”

It is therefore helpful to recognise the limits of science: in its own domain, it is wonderful; but sometimes scientists use the authority of their science to endorse their personal philosophy of life or moral values. When they do that, they step out of their proper domain. They have the right to their opinions, of course, but in non-scientific matters, that is all they are – opinions. Some scientists are atheists; others are Christians. If an atheistic scientist uses his reputation as a scientist to put forward the philosophy of atheism he is misusing his authority. The unfortunate thing is that many people take the irreligious opinions of such scientists as scientific truth; they even adopt them as generally-held assumptions. But it is this that actually adds to the complication of finding real answers to our inner questions. For example, to deal with humans as if they were just complicated amalgams of matter, or freak advanced animals thrown up by chance processes, is of no help at all to people suffering with issues of self-esteem: rather such beliefs, or assumptions – for all their seeming scientific backing – actually contribute to our psychological disarray, for they undermine our personal value.

It is worth bearing in mind that according to numerous commentators, it was the Christian consensus in place after the Reformation that enabled the rise of modern science. Science flourished from Isaac Newton’s day, on the basis of the freshly rediscovered biblical worldview made widely known through the Protestant Reformation – which made a biblical basis accessible as it had not been under Roman Catholicism. Biblical Christianity is perfectly reconcilable with the efforts and findings of science – which can be seen as, in Kepler’s words, “thinking God’s thoughts after him”.

Clive Every-Clayton

July 19, 2023 0