‘So-called statements of Truth are often two-dimensional, little more than propaganda.’ Photo: courtesy of PXHere
Is truth as simple as we imagine? Keith Archer investigates by way of the Taliban and the Trinity
‘A cardboard cut-out Truth, or God, is easy to manipulate.’
A short time ago I wrote to an international group of friends bemoaning something I think has a negative cultural effect on the English. It is the fact that our language has become the world’s lingua franca. It saps our will to speak other languages, and perpetuates atavistic ideas about ruling the waves. Some of friends agreed, some not. The fullest reply was from a German friend, who said that the advantage to the rest of the world of having only one foreign language to learn outweighs any disadvantage for the English.
The truth of what she said was undeniable – but at the same time I remained convinced that what I had said was true. This made me realise that truth is many-sided. What we see when we look at the world depends on where we happen to stand. My truth is probably not the same as someone else’s, which means my truth is unlikely to be The Truth. There is always something else ‘on the other hand’, and it is only by taking all these ‘other hands’ into account that we can begin properly to delineate the truth. To see the picture clearly we need more than two dimensions.
If this is one reason why truth is so elusive, another is the nature of language itself. Because we can only use one word at a time, any word we use always leaves unchosen a dozen other possible expressions. In conversation we get round this by gestures, or by repeating ourselves differently; but in writing there is no such backup. As a result, written statements can be understood as statements of Truth even when their writer had no such intention. Writings regarded as sacred texts are particularly prone to this. The contexts in which they were written – where the writer stood – are often unknown, and even when known they are often ignored. So-called statements of Truth are often two-dimensional, little more than propaganda.
That, I suppose, is why we have poetry. When we read it we are challenged by its metaphor, its allusions and its rhythm to see images, find connections and hear tunes beyond what the words baldly state. This gives the impression of a further dimension – rather as perspective in a drawing or painting gives an impression of depth.
But multi-dimensional truth is hard to communicate exactly. One person reads a poem and experiences in it truth and beauty, while someone else sees just words. Attempts to explain a poem’s meaning always fall short of the poem itself. As WH Auden advised Harvard alumni: ‘Thou shalt not be on friendly terms / With guys in advertising firms, / Nor speak with those / Who read the Bible for its prose.’ Advertising-speak and biblical fundamentalism are two of a kind.
But for those with axes to grind, two dimensions are ideal. A cardboard cut-out truth, or God, is easy to manipulate. Some Israeli Jews seem to believe that God’s ancient promise to them of the Holy Land justifies their ignoring of Palestinians’ human rights. Extremist Muslims like the Taliban believe sharia law justifies violence and discrimination against women. Neither all Jews nor all Muslims think like that. A Jewish friend assures me that the Talmud is full of ‘on the other hand’. My Muslim friends are open and generous. But the distortions are there in both faiths, and in Christianity too. In January, some of the Proud Boys stormed the US Capitol in the name of Jesus, and this is by no means the only expression of Christianity that shows the marks of manipulative, propagandistic two-dimensionalism.
All three faiths emerged through the longing of oppressed people for a better world. Christianity came from an even darker place than the others, with its founder and inspiration defeated, humiliated and tortured to death. We proclaim Christ crucified, says St Paul, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. This, says Paul, is God’s foolishness: how can Jesus have died like that and still be Christ, God’s anointed one? The wisdom of God, the Truth, he implies, lies in that very contradiction, that fundamental ‘on the other hand’.
So there is no place for two-dimensionalism in Christianity. Perhaps that’s why Christians developed the idea of the Trinity. God is (in traditional gendered language) Father, yes, and on the other hand God is the Son; and then on the other hand again God is Spirit. Puzzle all that out, and you begin to get an inkling about who or what God really is. It is rather like how our brains process the different images from each eye and in their contradiction reveal a world in three dimensions.
Tragically, however, Christians over the centuries have often forgotten this. The Nicene Creed describes the Trinity thus: ‘I believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father… And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son…’
I find little poetry here, but that’s not surprising. The Roman emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea in order to whip his empire’s fractious bishops into line; it was designed not to inspire but to control. Much later Elizabeth I used it in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, to end decades of controversy and violence – enforced by more violence. No place for the other hand there. Interestingly, though today’s Church of England uses the Creed more or less as it stood in 1662, it makes one significant change. Instead of ‘I believe’, today’s Common Worship has ‘We believe’. Under Elizabeth I everyone had to make a personal statement – in effect a statement of loyalty to the crown. Under Elizabeth II that is no longer appropriate, as the monarch’s role in society has changed. The Creed is now a statement of loyalty to the community of faith, both today and in history. But it is not, and never was, seen as a window through which to glimpse the truth about God.
That approach, surely, is what made George Fox so famously interrupt the sermon in Ulverston parish church in July 1652: ‘You will say, “Christ saith this,” and “the apostles say this”, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light, and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?’
Characteristically, those who brooked no ‘on the other hand’ to disturb their two-dimensional image of God defended it with violence: ‘They fell upon me with staves and fists and books, and knocked me down and kicked and trampled upon me’, wrote Fox. In the century between Elizabeth’s Act of Uniformity and his challenge, nothing had changed. And the same tendency is here today, 350 years later.
It’s not just the Taliban who squeeze God into two dimensions and claim their truth is The Truth. Maybe we all sometimes do it. You will recognise them by their fruit, said Jesus.
Comments
Thank you Keith. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but your profound piece is a very helpful window into Anglicanism. I hope this or a version can go to the Church Times or somewhere similar.
As a Quaker at a church service I have to remain silent during the Creed. But someone recently said that hymns are a useful way of making people say things they don’t believe.
By Richard Seebohm on 26th November 2021 - 12:11
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