Truth is a Person

The following are some of my random and amateur thoughts concerning Truth and our participating in Him.

“Oh, Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Ps. 34:

“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (Jn. 1:14)

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” (Jn. 14:6)

Jesus Christ is the Truth which means that Truth is personal and incarnational since Christ is personal and incarnational. It seems then that the way we as human beings are to know Truth is in a personal and embodied way rather than approaching Truth through mere abstract logical syllogisms.

The best way I know to demonstrate this is in the way we know other people. Recently, I met a friend of mine’s wife for the first time. My friend had told me certain facts about his wife that I had put together in my head, but when I met her in person, she was a totally different person than I had imagined from his description. We can know certain facts about a person, but in order to know the person we need to experience or participate in their embodied life.

It seems to me then that the way to know Truth (Jesus Christ) is similar to how we know persons. We only really know a person by being with them or participating in their lives. This personal knowing includes reason but it goes beyond reason. A personal knowing includes the person’s full embodied participation in what is other.

We do not know Truth through arguments and logical syllogisms. These things can help us organize some facts relating to the Truth, but knowing something involves more than just the mind. If we are to reduce knowing to any one thing, I think it would be what the Bible and the Fathers call “the heart.” Our logic helps us participate in the Truth only as our mind is used within a humble and repentant heart - a heart that is humble and repentant in the “fear of God”.

The way we know other persons and things is by participating with all that we are in them. The way we know the Holy Trinity is by participating in the life of God. In this way, only the one who really loves God and his neighbor knows what love is. A person can logically prove that love exists and describe all the facts concerning love, but if he does not actively love then he does not know Love (I Cor. 13:1). It is only through participation in God’s life by repentance and prayer that we know the triune God and it is only as we humbly live a holy life that we know Truth. So Truth can be described in a limited way but a mere description or abstraction should not be confused with the real thing. A person only knows Truth by living or participating in it.

Theosis is the goal of the Christian life which means that we partake of the divine nature. This means that God is in us and we are in Him without being absorbed and without loosing our personhood as pantheism teaches. This is one of the reasons why the essence/energy distinction of the Holy Fathers is so important. The Fathers taught that we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pt. 1:4) by participating in God’s energies. If we partook of the divine essence, then we would become God. Theosis is possible only because we participate personally in God’s divine energies. If God was only essence then theosis would be impossible and our knowing of Truth would be impossible. In summary, we know Truth only by prayerfully participating in the uncreated energies of the Holy Trinity with our whole heart.