{151}
APPENDIX
RELIGIOUS TRUTH1
The radical moment of the truth of religion, I have indicated, is in its conception of the gods. Displayed in the course of history as a growing experience about the complex power of the deity, this movement takes us to three types of answers to the mystery2 of the deity, to three conceptions of those things in which ultimately the deity resides. These three types are, in the first place, the distribution or dispersion of the power of the deity in various things: polytheism. In the second place, the type of transcendence, by which the power of the deity keeps concentrating as His attributes, all the richness and complexity of the power of the deity. In the third place, the power of the deity ascribed to the structure of the whole cosmos: immanence. These three types of conception —distribution, transcendence, and immanence— are the three types of ways with which man accesses definitely and essentially, from the power of the deity, which is actualizing him in his constitutive religation, to what divine things are, i.e., to divinity, to the gods.
Now we must ask two questions:
In the first place, what is religious truth as such?
And, in second place, what is the act in which this religious truth occurs?
{152} Only afterwards we shall be able to enter directly into the strict historicity of religions.
A) What is religious truth? Surely, we are not going to discuss here which one may be the religious truth. That is a question for theology. Our interest here is to find out in what does religious truth consist insofar as religious. That is a strictly philosophical problem. A question, which is far from otiose. Because, one might think that truths distinguish themselves purely and simply by the object to which they refer. We may have mathematical truths, physical truths, biological truths, moral truths, historical truths, etc., which would be called this way simply by the object to which they refer. The different truths would only be “classes” of truths, classified by their object. That this may be partially so is undeniable. However, is this the whole diversity of truths? Because the object of a truth is not limited to being an extrinsic object to it, but affects the truth itself in its own mode of being true, it intrinsically modulates the veritative moment as such. From this follows that, using our terminology with full rigor, it is not completely exact to say that we only have classes of truths; we must also say there are different “types” of truth, because at least the great specific differences of the objects modulate the very manner of being a truth as truth occurs in the human mind. In this sense we talk about religious truth not simply because it refers to the gods. Then we ask, in what does the intrinsically religious character of religious truth consist?
To answer this question it is necessary to reflect on what is understood by truth as such, independently from the fact that it may be {153} religious, scientific or philosophical3. Truth is the simple actuality of the real on the intelligence. This truth does not refer simply to what the thing is, but in addition refers primarily and formally to the characteristic of reality, which things have. If an animal were able to think it could also say “this notepad is yellow”. But the fact is that we also think of something further, we think that the notepad is “really” yellow. The moment of reality is what characterizes the real truth as such specifically, or at least radically. Therefore, this characteristic of reality transcends each of the real things. Actually, all things coincide in being real, each one in its own way —it does not matter in this case—, and not only through a conceptive coincidence, but in their internal moment of respectivity by reason of reality as such. This is what constitutes the world.
It follows that when a real thing is actualized in human intelligence in the form of that, which I have called real truth, this intelligence that apprehends truth, or apprehends the thing as true, has two dimensions. On the one hand, to know intellectively means to know intellectively what one has directly in front. On the other hand, to know a thing intellectively encompasses a different dimension. The fact is, that since the moment of reality of a thing transcends all its other dimensions, when knowing a thing intellectually as real, we are forcefully turned by the reality of the thing itself in the direction of other things, which are not present in front of us: to know intellectively has this second moment of “towards”, of directionality. The tyranny of the presentiality of intellection is what has led to the conception of knowledge {154} as a re-presentation. Knowledge, besides its presentative or re-presentative dimension, has essentially and structurally a directional dimension: goes towards what is not present, but is going to discover. Furthermore, we are forced by things themselves to discover it on another point. The truth reached in the “towards” is a consequential truth, not a real truth: it is the subsequent intellection of what the characteristic of being real actually is, or consists of, in the thing we have in front of us, or in the other things towards which this reality turns us. Hence, we say that truth is the conformity or adequation of thinking with what we know intellectively, with things. Which obviously is something absolutely certain. That is the way truth is. However, these two terms of conformity, and adequation are radically different. In order to have truth, there has to be a conformity, no doubt at all. It is necessary that what I think be actually realized in reality; then, we can and should talk about conformity. Yet, does this mean it is adequation? Adequation not only entails a conformity. It entails for thought to think in a manner perfectly adequate (adæquare) to what the thing is in reality. But, while it is certain that every truth entails a moment of conformity, it is equally true that this moment of conformity possesses very different degrees of adequation. That is why the two dimensions of truth, while being radically congeneric, however, they are not equivalent. When we talk of conformity we cannot talk purely and simply of adequation, but shall have to examine the degree of adequation, which a truth has.
With this clearly established, let us think about religious truth qua religious. Evidently, this truth, to start with, concerns {155} something it has present. Indeed, the power of the deity is something constitutively patent to it by the mere fact of its personal religation. But this power of the deity resides in things. And just as the mere transcendental characteristic of a reality takes us to the naked intellection of others, the form of this power of the deity being present in each thing receives a precise name: mystery. And the mystery is something not only obscure, but dynamic. Precisely by being dynamic, it takes us inexorably towards (here is included the other dimension of truth) something which is not immediately patent in the first real truth of the deity. Precisely this moment of the mystery is what constitutes the specific “towards” in which religious truth is going to move. Then we ask, what does a conformity mean under these conditions, and what does an adequation mean?
Let us begin with the second point under question: no religious truth is or can be totally adequate. And this, not only concerning religions, which one might think are imperfect. Let us take as an example the dogmatic definitions of the Church. Although believers may accept them as unquestionable truths in the sense of conformity, does this mean that a dogmatic definition is perfectly adequate, and does not admit degrees of adequation? That would be completely false. And this is not theory, it is a mere corroboration. For example, the basic truth of the New Testament revelation is that Jesus Christ is God. The divinity of Christ is clearly a religious truth. Still, how are we to think this divinity from the point of view of adequation? One might conceive that Christ is God in the sense that in this man, son of Mary, the divinity resides in a special, and exclusive way. He might be God, therefore, in the sense of temple of God, a moral oneness between God, {156} and Christ the man. Against this —correcting Nestorius— the Council of Ephesus reacted: the reality of Christ, is a physically divine reality, not just morally divine. It is a step in the adequation. But the problem did not end there. Because one might then ask, what does physical mean? Does this express adequately what the reality of Christ is? Not really, because physical may mean that He has the same nature; but it may mean —something quite different— that He is a divine person. The Church needed to convene the Council of Chalcedon after the Council of Ephesus in order to precisely express this distinction, which is one more step in the adequation: to be physically divine does not mean having the same nature, or a kind of emulsion of two natures, divine and human —that indeed was the Monophysite error and schism—, but is purely divine by reason of the person. It might have appeared that adequation had been achieved. Did the history end there? It appears that Christological problems have surfaced massively around this concept of the personality of Christ. No dogmatic formula, while all are in conformity, is adequate; none drains exhaustively that, which it wishes to express. In the “towards” of the mystery there is purely and simply a parceled out adequation, despite having a conformity.
Hence, one asks, what is the conformity upon which religious truth consists? First of all, it is not the conformity of something I have in front of me. No one has in front of his own eyes the divinity as such. Therefore, it is necessarily a conformity established purely and simply in a “towards”, in a something towards which man finds himself impelled by the mystery he has in front, the mystery of the divinity inherent in things. The conformity means purely and simply that if we were to prolong the {157} “towards” right to the very point where the divinity is, and were capable to contemplate it, we would find in this divine reality that which precisely justifies our attitude of affirmation in conformity. But then, how would I justify it? That is precisely what we do not know adequately, that is the point. So far, therefore, this type of truth, which we call religious truth, is purely and simply the rectitude of the way of conformity in the mystery of the deity towards the divinity, not the perfect adequation.
Evidently, one may then ask, are all religions true? This question must be answered gradually, because it has two different aspects. The simplest questions sometimes are, in the end, quite complex. For the moment let us take one of the aspects of the question. The types of answers, actually, are multiple in their details; but essentially they are three: the answer through transcendence, the answer through immanence or immersion, and the answer through dispersion. Then, the question whether all religions are true consists in asking whether we actually reach the divinity with these answers in such wise that there is conformity. However, it needs to be said —and I will explain it in what follows— that in any of the three answers man really and actually accedes to the divinity.
Let us take, for example, the truly paradoxical case at first sight of the Lunar divinity: the polytheist who admits the cult of the Moon, and believes he has reached the divinity there, in the sense of conformity. This is undeniable. Someone might say that he is doing nothing but believing. But what the polytheist who admits the cult of the Lunar divinity believes is a thing which oscillates among three dimensions, indiscernible sometimes, but always existing at the bottom of these naturist conceptions. {158} The Lunar divinity can mean god in the Moon, the god of the Moon, or the god Moon. Three dimensions which are always present in one form or another —at least in any mind somewhat enlightened— in the cult of the Moon. With this in mind, let us consider the case of any monotheist religion, the religion of Israel, the Christian religion or Islam. Can it be said that it may reach God in the Moon? Clearly, God is in the Moon, He is everywhere, and consequently He is also in the Moon. The pantheist finds himself with an easier situation. How can it be denied that the Moon is a moment of the cosmos? And if the entire regulation of the cosmos is an intrinsic divine characteristic, how can we avoid saying that, actually, the divinity of the Law that constitutes the order of the cosmos is in the Moon? In any of the three answers, man really accesses the divinity.
It might be remarked that he believes he accesses. But believing is not all there is because, evidently, the divinity has to be in some place, and therefore, the power of the deity is in the Moon. Since there are only three possible answers, by any of the three —that is, by the three at one and the same time— man really and actually accesses to the divinity in the Moon. [Of course, there is no need to access the deity. Man is constitutively turned to the deity by religation. But the deity is precisely something mysteriously present in each thing. And through that mystery, man continues accessing the divinity by many different avenues, because the power of the deity is not outside of things. Which of them may be the divine things will be a problem. But there are some, since the power of deity is in things. From this follows that man is not only open to the deity, but constitutively reaches the divinity.]4
{159} Let us shift our attention to the other extreme, to the one that has no religion, and only has that form of religation or personal religion provided by the voice of his conscience. How could we possibly say that he does not reach the divinity? How can the monotheist deny that in the voice of conscience the divinity is present? Saint Paul, referring to the pagans, said that they have the Law of God inscribed in their hearts (cf. Rm 2:15). If we consider a Brahmin or any pantheist, how is he going to deny that the conscience actually reflects the cosmic order? From every point of view we may take, man, in any of the three answers, with or without religion, really and actually accesses the divinity.
What happens is that this, which constitutes the conformity of the religious truth does not guarantee the adequation at all; adequation is excluded from any religious conception. But then, is it the case that in the end all religions are the same, since they all have “conformity”, and none is “adequate”? Not quite, because the error of the polytheist, who admits the Lunar cult, is not in saying that God is in the Moon, but in saying that God is nowhere but in the Moon. This is the second question. As long as conformity remains an assertive conformity, man actually reaches the divinity. But then, inasmuch as it is exclusive, in whatever it denies lies the essential difference between religions.
Since these two dimensions are actually inseparable, and constitute a single unique texture in the answer through which man accesses the divinity, these three answers are essentially different without affecting the fact that in the three, man may really and positively reach the divinity. And for this reason the truth of any religion, religious truth qua religious, is purely and simply the truth that {160} through the mystery, man, hurled mysteriously towards the divinity, reaches it in a constitutively inadequate manner. Starts from the deity, to which there is no arrival, because it is patent in the constitutive religation of the human being, and proceeds towards the divinity, to which he arrives inexorably. Between these two polarities are precisely inscribed the different answers by which man accesses from deity towards the divinity. The truth of religion, the religious truth qua religious, is purely and simply the access to the divinity through the mystery of deity. Religious truth is constitutively an itinerant truth: the inadequate conformity in the sheer “towards” of the mystery.
B) The occurrence of this truth. Having established the above, we may now ask in what does it consist, or rather, in which act of the human spirit does this truth occur. This act is —we all recognize it— the faith. Thus, we are necessarily led to think for a moment about faith.
From the point of view we are going to take here4, faith does not rest directly on the divinity. We must reach the divinity, but man has reached, and reaches it through any of the ways he may take. Faith, therefore, rests upon the types of ways, which are going to lead man from deity to divinity. I will soon justify why I call “ways” to the types of answers to the mystery of deity. Faith is the actuality of a way towards the divinity. Of course, at this point I am not going to consider faith from the aspect of act of faith; that would be a different matter, a problem of religious psychology. I am going to consider faith purely and {161} simply insofar as it is present, i.e., as a state of the subject in which the religious truth occurs. And it is from this point of view that we shall ask what faith is.
We have all been taught that faith is believing what we do not see. But this is not, properly speaking, a definition, a definition of faith. First, because it is a negative definition: it does not say what it is, but what it is not. And, in second place, even in this is not we again begin to experience the tyranny of presentation and representation: “what we do not see”. Yes, we do not see because we do not have it in front of us. But, do we totally lack intellection? Is faith something “blind”? No, we have an intellection “towards”. We will not understand it in adequation, but we have an intellection “towards”. Faith is not purely and simply to believe what we do not see: it is necessary to give a positive conception of the act of faith. However, the fact of the matter is that the act of faith —which is not pure intellection in the sense that it is not rational— is an act that for the subject who is in the state of faith, moves in the ambit of the reasonable6. Reasonable does not mean that we can give congruous posthumous reasons for the faith one has. It means something more integral, which affects the entire reality of man in his personal, intellectual, affective, moral, and communitarian (of religious community, and therefore social) dimension. It is the reasonable in the sense that it is reasonable that a man placed in these particular circumstances, internal and external, may have faith in the way he has embarked. Then we ask, what is faith positively?
Obviously, since faith ascribes itself to different ways, one might think that faith is the opinion that one has about {162} a way or about the other ways. Yet, faith is not an opinion at all. Faith is not an opinion because pure opinion, precisely because it is pure opinion, lacks an essential dimension of faith, assurance. The one that has faith is sure of that in which he believes. One might then say that faith is not opinion, but at least it is a conviction. In this case faith would be a certainty. It is undeniably true that faith is a certainty. However, this is not sufficient. Because the one who has faith in any religion is not only certain, but precisely by his state of faith, that about which he is certain, and retroverts into the character of his own certainty, is the unbreakable reality of that in which he believes. For the one who has faith, that in which he believes is a reality that has to be taken into account, and is as firmly set on itself as the Guadarrama sierra near Madrid might be. It is different from certainty. It is more than a certainty: faith is a radical option of man. An option of the whole of man, not just intellectually considered. It is an option by the whole man for the way by which he is going to accede to the divinity.
Nevertheless, this needs some clarification, because when one thinks about option, it is always presumed that the one making a choice is always choosing from a variety of differing ways. This is false. In the first place, because few know about the three ways. Actually, before the VI century B.C., what man on Earth thought about the third way, the way of immanence? In the second place, even with the existence in history of two or three ways, how many men are believers because they have chosen among three ways? This is a minuscule minority in the history of religious humanity. Option is not choosing. Option is not necessarily the result of a search. The one that believes in a religion is not necessarily a searcher {163} for truth; it is formally someone who is unbreakably opting for a way. Therefore, the option is not an option among ways, but the option for a way: for the one through which man actually accedes to the divinity. For this reason, normally, faith is not an option as result of a search which leads to a belief, but rather faith, ordinarily and normally, rests directly and without search upon what “is” believed (Sp. “se” cree), and in addition upon that which “has to be” believed. And this is and this has to be are not given to me as a list of possibilities among which man chooses, but rather man finds himself embarked in one of these ways, through an option that velis nolis man accepts. Not by an intrinsic force —let this be quite understood—, but because it is reasonable and normal that man may proceed through that way, which he has precisely in front of his eyes, the one on which he travels, and the one, which must be traveled.
This option, therefore, is the option for a way, not an option among ways. And this option for a way means, in the first place, submissive abandon. Man really submits himself to the way, which is believed, and has to be believed. Not only abandons himself, but in second place, surrenders himself personally to that way, perhaps the only one he has in front of his eyes. But, in third place, in this option of the faith an unbreakable moment still beats: faith is not only submissive abandon, and surrender, but is also unbreakable. Indeed, this unbreakable moment comes to it precisely from what is not part of the question about religious truth, but which is really in every religious truth: the divinity accessed in every religion. Really and actually, the act of faith, more than an act one performs —of course one performs it, that goes without saying it—, is an act in which the one who performs it is taken up by the divinity towards which {164} he is opting, through a way he has in front of his eyes. In other words, we are taken up by the divinity. Faith, strictly speaking, for any believer, stems more from the divinity than from oneself. This is true for every religion. And this being taken up, which is the option for a way —not necessarily the option among several ways— is what precisely constitutes the act or state in which religious truth lives unhindered. Faith is the truth of a way. And that way is given in this option of abandon, and unbreakable surrender which constitutively faith is.
We have seen that those things in which religious truth consists, is the truth of a stepping march in the mystery by which we access, in one form or another, to the divinity. And the act in which this truth occurs in man, is not purely and simply the constitutive religation to the deity, but to the option to which religation leads us, under certain historical conditions. It leads us through a way in which man, abandoned and unbreakably surrendered to the divinity, finds himself taken up and dragged by it. Now we ask, in what does the intrinsic historicity of every religion consist?
________________
1 This appendix comes from the 1965 Madrid seminar.
2 While in the seminar of 1965 in Madrid Zubiri still referred to “mystery”, from the seminar of Barcelona in the same year onwards he preferred to use the term “enigma”, just as it appeared in our first chapter.
3 Of course, these considerations have to be read taking into account what Zubiri presents in his study on intelligence, cf. Inteligencia Sentiente. Inteligencia y Realidad, op. cit., pp. 229-246; Inteligencia y logos, op. cit., pp. 213-336; Inteligencia y razón, Madrid, 1983, pp. 258-320. [“Sentient Intelligence”, tr. Dr. Thomas B. Fowler, Jr., 1997]
4 The text inside the square brackets is taken from another place of the same 1965 Madrid seminar, and has been inserted here to complete the explanation.
5 Differing from the point of view under which faith has been considered in the previous pages.
6 Cf. the considerations of Zubiri in El hombre y Dios (“Man and God”), op. cit., pp. 263-264.