THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF REVEALED TRUTH

Let me begin with a brief statement about the meaning of epistemology. The term refers to the philosophy of knowing: how do we know, different kinds of knowing, and such issues as the “fit” between the truth content of a knowledge-event and the reality it is supposed to represent. To help you catch onto the point, I’ll use the “fit” statement I just made as an illustration. That “issue” as I presented it actually makes an epistemological assumption. It assumes a dualism between truth and reality, and a “representational” relation between them as in simple mapping. But this is already a presupposed epistemology, and one that has some merit but also has shortcomings in some applications. It is not always appropriate. Does direct perception, like the color of grass, follow this “representational epistemology”? Were you and I to get into a discussion of this question, we would be discussing epistemology. We do not need a great deal of depth in epistemology for the issue at hand. Notice very simply that there are a variety of ways that we can come to know something. We can read it in a book. We can see it with our eyes; hear it with our ears, etc. We can show elements of instinct, we can measure, we can use instruments, we can watch TV, and we can notice what our emotions are telling us. Ultimately, the vast “stew” of the accumulated content of this knowing becomes unwieldy. We develop philosophies and ideologies to help us make sense of the world and organize our thoughts. And different people at different places and times and different cultural contexts have different philosophies and ideologies, sometimes contradictory one with another. This in itself becomes an issue of epistemology – how do we know how to sort out all this mess of diverse ways of interpreting the world? Among the various answers that have been presented to this question, one of the common ones largely in vogue in my own time and culture is social relativism. This seems to be especially popular in ethical philosophy. Social relativism honestly notes that people do not agree and that they also don’t agree on criteria to assess their disagreements, and different positions are taken seriously by different people in different places, times and cultures. Therefore, they argue, it is all relative – there are no objective criteria, and no one can say their version of the truth is any better than someone else’s. Taken to the extreme, I sincerely hope that even the social relativists know this would end up absurd: the answer to two plus two is not relative or culturally dependent. The relativists would counter that I miss the point, as they are not talking about such straightforward facts, but opinion issues and perspectives. And the domain of the content of what is included in that is very broad. All of religious doctrine, for example, belongs squarely in this domain. Therefore, they would say, one person’s opinion is as good as another’s essentially. This is popular even among supposedly intelligent people. I do not see this as intelligent because it leaves no room whatsoever for greater or lesser authority. Sure, people recognize differences of authority in certain categories. No one would let a barber do brain surgery on their child. People seem to understand that in matters of medicine, science, technology and many other fields, there are experts who can be trusted, and these are the people who should be taken seriously. But in matters of the soul, or even very broadly in religion, people will listen to anything. And they will resent even the notion that one should demand a certain credentialed authority. One merely needs to stand behind a pulpit and shout “Jesus” a few times. And yet, it is here as much as anywhere else that competence is critical. It is also exceedingly rare. But I am not just concerned with people who consider themselves true believers. I wish to include a broad, loosely defined group that includes almost all secularists, agnostics, and casual social “Pharisee” church-goers. There is a certain form of relative religious epistemology that can be seen among all of these. Not many, perhaps, take social relativism to the extreme, but most will give a cold reception to any claims that a person knows better on religious subjects than they themselves or, for that matter, than anyone else. They may admit to more knowledge or academic learning, but not more reliability. It is taken as arrogance. One is supposed to admit that one cannot understand these things. You cannot say that you understand certain things. God’s answer to Job is the ultimate epistemology of religion. It is labeled as humility, but more realistically, it is usually a security blanket for a lazy and cowardly mind. What I want to make perfectly clear is that social relativism and spirituality are flagrantly contradictory in their epistemologies. Spirituality denotes the idea of the sacred. In terms of human understanding, it specifically denotes a sacred truth. This is usually to be found in certain writings that are considered to be sacred texts. Thus we have the Bible for Christians, the Koran for Muslims, and so on. Now the fundamental premise behind all sacred texts is the idea of revealed truth. This is what makes the texts sacred – what separates them from ordinary writings. What is revealed truth? It is truth that purports to derive from God or some sort of transcendental level beyond that of ordinary mortal consciousness. It is claimed in principle that this gives the truth a level of authority beyond what ordinary mortals can claim in ordinary states. No one who believes in God would say that God’s opinion is merely on a par with everyone else’s. So social relativism does not pertain to God. By extension, it does not pertain to revealed truth. Revealed truth by very definition says that its knowing is at a greater level of authority than ordinary people in ordinary states. Therefore, the epistemology of revealed truth is incompatible with social relativism. At this point, most people will simply agree and wonder why I am making an issue of this. It is in fact a very important issue, because we have to consider how revealed truth gets to be revealed. We find that the actual ink to the paper comes from human hands. Sacred texts are written in human languages and show human contexts in the times and places of their origin. Structuralists who analyze the texts accordingly might lay bare much of this context, but will face serious challenges trying to unravel the presumed transcendental content. Their toolbox will not have all of the right tools. Sacred texts incorporate built-in metalanguages, as the Russian philosopher P.D. Ouspensky examined in the gospels decades before Barthes. They achieve universalism in time and place (every culture, every age) by means of the tools that can do that: myth, symbol and parable – an insight that, even if not fully articulated, was understood and employed by Jesus, Socrates and Buddha (and their text authors) millennia ago. Many simplistic religious people tout the Bible as the “Word of God” in such a manner as to suggest that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets downloaded God’s word on their PC after God handed it to them on a flash drive. Obviously this issue is complex, and a full analysis is beyond the scope of my intentions here. But I wish to reiterate wording I have already employed and state categorically that ordinary people in ordinary states do not write scripture. This is true if you accept the idea of revealed truth. Of course, if you do not accept that idea, you are renouncing the texts as sacred. In that case, you can be a relativist with these texts and tout your own opinion as just as good as those of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, if you find that suggestion outrageous, you are denouncing relativism in regard to these texts. You can’t have your cake and eat it too – it is either one or the other. And to accept the texts as revealed truth in spite of human authorship requires acceptance of my statement that ordinary people in ordinary states do not write scripture. We are confronted directly with the mechanism of revelation – how is revealed truth revealed? Simply put, people cross an epistemological threshold by virtue of transcendental inner states collectively appropriate for the domain of mysticism (for a technically accurate definition of mysticism see my June, 2008 blog post “Proper definitions of “mystic” and “mysticism”). So a person undergoes a mystical state (or a master like Jesus or Buddha attains the state permanently) and is privy while in that state to insight unavailable in more ordinary states. This gives the insight of the person a level of authority that cannot be challenged by people in ordinary states without committing the MTE fallacy (see my June, 2008 blog post “The fallacy of Misconstrued Transcendental Empiricism”). Notice that social relativists would simply denounce the validity of the fallacy (which I applied to transcendental states collectively). But many of these people claim to believe in revealed truth. They may get around the contradiction by saying they accept the concept of revealed truth only for certain texts, which came about as a miracle from God. But they continue to “play ostrich” with the mechanism. They have no epistemology. They are back to the flash drive. They are not facing human authorship and its implications. Now we come to something very interesting. Either we open the door to revealed truth or we do not. If we open that door, we must accept that the door is open and all that is implied by it. We cannot say that the door is open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but not on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We cannot say the door is open in Europe and not America. We cannot say that the door was open for Moses but not for Socrates. We cannot say the door was open two thousand years ago but not today. There exists a vast literature of consistent mystical writings that give testimony in virtually all cultures and periods of history to revealed truth. This literature, stripped of cultural embellishments, proclaims in some form or fashion various more-or-less consistent ideas that belong to the body of revealed truth. These ideas are fundamentally consistent in general with the concept of spirituality and its content. Spirituality pertains to the notion of hierarchy in inner development, and the possibility of an inner evolution. In broad strokes, this is what all spirituality proclaims. Revealed truth is consistently concerned with proclaiming that possibility – the “good news” of the gospels – and casting some light upon it. Authentic spiritual traditions ostensibly harbor some portion of an inner technology for achieving this evolution, although the actual practice has always been confined to one-on-one oral teaching and is essentially absent from the literature. Here we find ourselves confronting the MTE fallacy leering in our face. Notice a very curious thing that has just happened here: we can no longer confine our discussion of relative versus revealed epistemology to the issue of sacred texts. Again, either the door is open or it isn’t. If the door is open to revealed truth it is open universally. There will always be mystics and pseudo-mystics. For the real thing, we cannot rule out the possibility of revealed truth from them unless we rule out the entire concept completely in all applications. Mystics can actually know things that are only opinion issues for others. If you do not accept that, don’t turn around and tell me the Bible is the “Word of God”, because you are contradicting yourself. The mechanism is essentially the same. Either both are possible or neither is possible.