Veritas Rerum: Contrasting Cosmic Truth in Hellenistic and Christian Thought

VERITAS RERUM: CONTRASTING COSMIC TRUTH IN HELLENISTIC AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT The Truth in Things: Ontology THE DELIBERATE and systematic reflection of hinking believers on their lived belief, theology can choose from among many ways (hodoi) or methods of reflecting. Various historical forces have conspired to provide the preponderance to a particular kind of philosophizing theology , wherein deductive, syllogistic reasoning predominates. Valid and inevitable in itself, this type of theology is not simply sufficient, and if, falsely supposed sufficient, thins theological reflection and, ultimately, religious experience, of their proper profundity and richness. Other approaches to the meaning of being are not only helpful, but necessary. As J. N. Findlay has recently admonished us, Platonic myths " represent, with some decorative devices, a very serious ontology . . . and theology which we moderns would do well to take seriously, since they may well be true." 1 Centuries before , Dante's Divine Comedy had made it clear to Boccaccio that "poetry is theology." This idea was later elaborated by Charles Maurras, who suggested that "Ontology would perhaps be a better name, for poetry inclines above all to the roots of the knowledge of Being." 2 Not that poetic reflection and description are without their own proper dangers, both in discovery and in communication. Even (or perhaps, precisely) in the utterly symbolist mentality of the Middle Ages, Alain t J . .K. :Findlay, " The Myths of Plato," in Myth, Symbol and Reality, ed. Alan Olson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) 165. 2Cited by Jacques Maritain, Art and Ffoholasticism (London: Sheed and Ward, 1949) 173. 1 ROBERT L. KRESS de Lille cautioned that "poetry's lyre rings vibrantly with falsehood in the external literary shell." Nevertheless, "internally it communicates a hidden and profound meaning.... Whoever reads with penetration, having discarded the external shell of falsehood, finds the sweet tasting fruit of truth enclosed within." 3 Why is this the case? For two reasons. First of all, both philosopher and poet are petitioners of the truth, propelled thereunto by their experience of the cosmos which prompts in them wonderment (admiratio). St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Aristotle, well remarks: It is clear that puzzlement (dubitatio) and wonderment (admiratio ) proceed from ignorance. For when we encounter effects whose cause is hidden from us, then we wonder about their cause. And, insofar as wonderment was the cause leading to philosophy, it is clear that the philosopher is in some sense or other a philomythes , that is, a lover of fable (story), which is the property (the hallmark or characteristic) of poets. For this reason, the first who considered the principles of things (de principiis rerum) in a narrative (or story: fabularem) form were called theologizing poets, as were Perseus and certain others who were [known as] the seven wise ones. The reason why (causa quare) the philosopher is compared to the poet is this: both are concerned with mirandathings which evoke puzzlement and wonderment. For the stories with which poets are concerned are composed of certain " wonderfull " things. Philosophers, too, have been moved from wonderment to philosophizing. And because wonderment_ proceeds from lack of knowledge, it is clear that they have moved to philosophize in order to escape ignorance.4 The second reason poets and philosophers enjoy perichoresis in the pursuit of truth is the perichoresis of truth and being itself . According to the Scholastics, "ens et verum convertuntur ." 5 That is, being and true are interchangeable terms, for, 3 Alain de Lille, De Planotu Naturne, PL CCX, 451 C. 1 Thomas Aquinas, In XII Libras Metaphysicor11-1n Aristotelis EJJpositio, L.I,1.3 (Marietti 55) . 5 On this, see Joseph Pieper, Wahrheit der Dinge (Munich: Kosel, 1947) 11-27, 107. VERITAS RERUM 3 as Thomas Aquinas notes, " The name truth expresses the congeniality and coming together of being and intellect." 6 Later, he emphasizes that " each and every thing is true and no thing is false." 7 In a word, truth is a disposition of being which neither adds to being nor specifies a special mode of being. It describes, rather" what is found in being in general." For, as "the philosopher concludes, the same order obtains in being (esse) and truth (veritate) ... and thus the nature (ratio) of...