The Book of All Truths

January 17, 1960
Akron

There are those who believe that there is a Book of All Truths. A story from the Hindu tradition told by Simon Roof in the book, JOURNEYS ON THE RAZOR-EDGED PATH, p. 17 (Crowell, NY, 1959) goes like this:

"The truth seeker, after years of search, met a smiling old sage seated in a mountain cave.
"Books were everywhere.
"'These,' the sage explained, 'are the secret volumes which contain the sum of all human wisdom.'
'Each seeker may have one; which do you wish?'
"And the truth-seeker, surveying how endless the number of them seemed, at last replied slowly,
"'Only the book, sir, which can teach me what all the others contain.'
"'Such a book exists,' the sage said; and then smiling with a wise sadness, handed the truth seeker, "The Book of Doubt."

Socrates had a penetrating phrase, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Doubt is a word, which when examined, seems to imply weakness, uncertainty, and a reprehensible lack of faith. But I would set before you the proposition that when one probes deeper than the cloudy shallows of superficial exhortations to have faith in faith, it becomes clearer that doubt is the critical method of discovering truth. Faith without doubt is superstition. We are stimulated to doubt, not usually by undirected, rebellious hostility. More often, re-evaluation of propositions takes place because we become conscious of needs that the old ways will not fulfill. The truth of nationalism has started to erode on its foundations because the need for international ground has become indubitable. The truth of demon possession, held almost universally to be true only a few short centuries ago, has become falsehood in light of the human situation illuminated by advancing understanding of the human psyche. A flat world was no longer true when needs led to circumnavigation of the globe. Doubting that the world had four corners, the explorers discovered the spherical shape of the planet.

When Jesus said, "you will know the truth and the truth will set you free," he was condensing in enduring words, the human process by which truth is refined -- need, doubt of the old ways, re-evaluation, new truth. Freedom is mortgaged when truth is held as static dogma; truth is free when cherished as a process which always re-tests the old habits to insure their relevance for new needs.

There is a rather piquant illustration of this in an observation made by Clarence Randall, former head of Inland Steel. In his active career, Mr. Randall bitterly opposed the social measures usually described as "new deal" legislation -- pensions, Social Security and taxes. Whereas Mr. Randall fought against industrial pensions, Social Security and higher income taxes, [he] has now changed his mind in his years of retirement and believes these measures to be good. Concluded Mr. Randall "The number of times in my life when I have done an about-face on social questions so astounds me, as I look over my shoulder, that I am led to counsel younger men not to lock themselves in too hard on those favorite biases which we form so readily between twenty and forty.

Furthermore, to quote Paul Tillich, "Doubt is a condition of all spiritual life." In his SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Tillich speaks of the terrible inner struggle between the will to be honest and the will to be saved: "... Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith."

Tillich does not go so far, explicitly, as the Hindu sage who said the Book of Doubt is the Book of All Truths. But it is quite in harmony with the principles of free religion to affirm that doubt can be an act of faith in the universe, in humanity and in oneself.

Because the universe is dynamic, doubt is an act of faith in the process.

For fifteen centuries the static, Ptolemaic view of the universe was the official belief of the Christian Church and the prevailing idea held by the people. Ptolemy, the Egyptian mathematician and astronomer, had constructed a system which placed the earth at the center of the universe, with the sun and other planets revolving around our stationary globe. Earth was central; the stars and planets were its satellites.

In the fifteenth century, when Copernicus proposed an order wherein the earth, along with the other planets, revolved around the sun, this was not only religious heresy, but also a strong push along the road to modern astronomy. Although Giordano Bruno was executed and Galileo persecuted into silence, the new astronomy was gradually, but inevitably, accepted.

We have revised our image of the universe since those strange centuries. (..."for two hundred and two years, from 1633 until 1835, at the infallible dictate of the Pope and under the orders of the Holy Congregation, the earth stood still at the center of the universe." Homer Smith, MAN AND HIS GODS, p. 314). The universe now appears to be organic and in constant change, rather than like a wound-up watch ticking out its mechanical destiny.

New stars are born and the sudden bright glow of the Nova is noted by astronomers. There are dead stars, whose once glowing hydrogen bursts are dark and dusty cinders. The evolutionists see the process of birth, growth, decay. Mutations occur and new species intrude relentlessly, when the long view of time is the measure.

Thus we now appraise the universe as dynamic -- changing, not static--unchanging. To doubt and test yesterday's appraisal of the nature of things is the fitting method of understanding a process of growth, decay and change.

The old order passes. To doubt it is an act of faith in a universe that is never finished but is always being created.

A member of the Trinity in the religion of the Hindus is a fitting symbol of this changing nature of our universe. Shiva is one of the three principal gods (the others are Brahma and Vishnu). Shiva is sometimes worshiped as the "destroyer." But this god of destruction is not evil, for he destroys existing things so that Brahma may create again. Thus the order of the universe continues in the breathing in and breathing out of Brahma, symbolizing the progress of organic growth and change in the universe.

At one time, Christian missionaries attempted to identify Shiva with the "Devil." This was a most erroneous notion of Shiva. Shiva symbolized not only dynamic change, but also the integrity and courage of mind of those who accept the difficulties of an eternally creative universe.

Secondly, the book of Doubt -- the book of All Truths, is an act of faith in humanity.

The religions of Western culture blend many cultural strands, including the massive impact of Judaism. Not to be overlooked, however, is the Greek contribution to our inheritance. Most notably, the Greeks developed and taught the power of critical thinking. Edith Hamilton in her splendid book, THE GREEK WAY TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION illuminates this debt we owe to ancient Athens.

Socrates urged man not only to seek goodness, but also to discover what is goodness and truth. He believed that if men sufficiently examined and thought critically about good and evil, they would choose the better and forsake the evil way. Disdaining dogma, he even told his pupils not to be guided, even by Socrates. Said he, "Although my mind is far from wise, some of those who come to me make astonishing progress. They discover for themselves, not from me...." Socrates was the gad-fly. His stings caused enough critical thought that he was accused of leading the minds of young men astray from the Homeric gods.

Socrates never accepted the easy notion that confusion, perplexity and the hard necessity of re-thinking were justifications for abandoning the search for truth. As Edith Hamilton comments, "Four hundred years before Jesus, the world took courage from Socrates and from the conviction which underlay all he said and did, that in the confusion and darkness and seeming futility there is a purpose which is good and that men can find it and help work it out."

This critical factor in re-thinking propositions is seldom popular in its own day. The positive results of critical [thinking] are harvested in later ages, usually. People resent and resist being made to think upon vital and thorny issues, but it is an act of faith in humanity to nurture the courage to think and to question.

Theological speculation has tended to make us overlook many things in Jesus' life, including his use of creative doubt as an act of faith in humanity.

"Nobody puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins -- the wine will be spilled and the skins ruined. No, new wine must be put into new wineskins." (Luke 5 37)

Even more striking is Jesus' persuading people to doubt the old laws (Matthew 5).

"You have heard that the people in the old days were told, 'Thou shalt not forswear thyself,' but I say unto you, Don't use any oath at all...."

"You have heard that it used to be said, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy,' but I tell you, love your enemies."

Jesus was pleading for a re-thinking of rules, not just rebellion for rebellion's sake, but because people individually and socially deserved, and were capable of achieving, kinder ways and healthier emotions, Jesus was saying, doubt the old an act of faith in humanity.

A century ago during the evolution controversy, Thomas Huxley, the defender of Darwin, was labeled "infidel" for his championing of critical examination and thinking. His caustic reproof of religious rigidity and the closed mind went like this: "I verily believe that the great good which has been effected in the world by Christianity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine on which all churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in their more or less astonishing creeds is a moral offense, indeed a sin of the deepest dye."

Creative doubt, far from being a sin, is an act of faith in the laborious but continuing effort of peoples' progress toward better ways of living.

Last, doubt can be an act of faith in oneself. Perhaps the proverb, "doubt everything but yourself," overstates the case, although not by a great deal. There are a considerable number of the ways of our world which need to be weighed on the scale of conscience. We are exposed to the charlatan. The rule of law, "let the buyer beware," is founded on experience. This is good advice, not only when purchasing goods, but also when adopting points of view.

In Richard III, Shakespeare, in his matchless way, has Gloucester plotting devious, cruel ways to achieve his goal of becoming King Richard III. Deceitfully, he protests against accusations of treachery, which really are quite true. In soliloquy, Gloucester reviews his own infamy (Act I, Sc 2) "...But then I sigh, and with a piece of scripture Tell them that God bids us to do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd, old ends stole forth of holy writ
And seem a saint when I most play the devil."

Gloucester's victims should have trusted themselves more and him less.

The act of faith in oneself through doubt is no necessary indication that we will then be confused and indecisive. Rather there is no more precious possession than a belief in one's own integrity, no matter how widely opinions may vary from currently popular notions. In the Proverbs, wise words are offered (23/23) "Get truth and sell it not
Get wisdom and instruction and understanding."

Dan Richards in the line of his job in the field of industrial advertising has produced a vivid little brochure based on Sam Walter Foss' poem, "The Calf-Path." The "Calf-Path" essentially is home-spun verse which reiterates our obligation to doubt everything but ourselves. Throughout several centuries man built their roads and highways upon the path originally tramped out by a wandering calf. The last verse goes,

"For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind.
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done,
They follow in the beaten track
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path along a sacred groove
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old woods gods laugh
Who saw the first primeval calf."

The Book of Doubt is the Book of All Truths because truth changes and moves on. Only the tension of doubt can provide the necessary nudge to motivate us to keep faith "in truth known and to be known."

Paul's speech on the Unknown God at Athens is surely one of the great speeches. His rhetorical use of the Greek movement to the unknown god was an orator's device which must have been an extraordinary experience for his Athenian listeners.

It is interesting that the great oration was a failure, seemingly. The old record in Acts indicates that the Athenians were not persuaded. Then too, Athens apparently was one place, at least, where Paul tried and failed to establish a Christian Church. His approach might have been wrong, for when the speech was over his listeners were cold to it.

The altar to an unknown god might not have been represented as an Olympic deity whom the Greeks were not aware of, but were still fearful of offending, if there were no altar to him. The mythology surrounding the idea of the unknown god may well have represented something more profound than the Apostle Paul believed.

The stone may have represented the principle of modern thought -- the precious Greek heritage so nobly advanced by Socrates, Euripides and others. The truth to be known is now unknown and such a god cannot be named. When we feel strong inwardly, we know that the sifting process of mind and conscience will ever produce for us more finely-grained images of truth. But to realize this high advance we must remain faithful to the principles of the free mind and the inner-disciplined spirit.