Robert E. Cushman - "What Is Truth?" (October 22, 1961)

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	(piano music)	0:03
-	Jesus said to this end am I come into the world?	0:36
	I should bear witness onto the truth.	0:45
	Every one that is of the truth here is my voice	0:50
	Pilate said onto him.	0:56
	What is true	0:59
	In the Harper is magazine of October.	1:06
	There is an interesting supplement on education	1:09
	and among the articles,	1:14
	there is one entitled God in the colleges	1:16
	and the author is Michael Novack.	1:21
	It's Novack is right that	1:27
	in the contemporary American university,	1:31
	the life of personal conviction is separated	1:35
	from the life of academic intelligence.	1:40
	Then it may be that the academic man	1:44
	is an unhappily divided personality and pilate	1:47
	The procurator may well be placed among modern academicians	1:51
	certainly John's gospel means to say	1:58
	that pilate confronted by the embodied truth	2:02
	as it was in Jesus was drawn two ways at once	2:05
	and declined to commit himself.	2:10
	There were others in those days, the days of his flesh,	2:14
	who looked upon Jesus and testified	2:19
	in the words of John's prologue,	2:22
	that they had beheld a glory glory as of the only begotten	2:26
	of the father full of grace and truth.	2:31
	Somehow these had eyes to see and ears to hear,	2:38
	and we may well ask,	2:43
	was it because they were of the truth that they could detect	2:45
	the voice of truth in their time	2:52
	In any case with pilot, it was not so	2:58
	somehow he was able to side step,	3:02
	both his official responsibility to render judgment	3:05
	and to elude the challenge of personal decision	3:10
	with reference either to Jesus' real identity	3:15
	or moral significance, pilate would risk no judgment,	3:19
	certainly no personal conviction.	3:25
	If Jesus asserted, he came to bear witness to the truth.	3:29
	If his personal existence matched the claim of his ministry,	3:33
	that truth embodied in him would cause men to divide	3:39
	themselves around him as around true.	3:45
	Then pilate would have none of it	3:50
	in point of fact, pilate called for time	3:54
	and using the familiar stratagem of motivation.	3:58
	He propounded a waiting prior question.	4:02
	He took refuge in an abstraction by which he abstracted	4:06
	himself from the imperative need of decision.	4:12
	If Jesus confronted him as a witness to the truth,	4:17
	then pilate would press the antecedent consideration.	4:22
	What is true for John and the gospel writer?	4:28
	Pilate is surely man under constraint	4:35
	under obligation to decide for	4:42
	or against truth as he encounters it in Jesus.	4:45
	But also pilate is man, any man,	4:51
	we evades the thrust of proof by clamoring	4:56
	for its redefinition.	5:01
	And it can be the same with good or evil	5:04
	with right or wrong honor or dishonor.	5:07
	Pilate is man Harried or embarrassed by urgent needs	5:12
	of decision who insists on careful definitions first	5:18
	for a long while now it has been understood that a good dose	5:26
	of semantic analysis can postpone decision	5:30
	for a quiet dispel, maybe a lifetime.	5:34
	Indeed it can dissolve the crisis of decision by making	5:39
	the moment of moral earnestness appear irrelevant.	5:44
	Or as we say, merely academic,	5:49
	there are many ways to tomorrow in indifferentism,	5:54
	but one well-worn one is the way of redefinition followed	6:01
	on till the only surviving object of interest	6:07
	is the question mark that dissolves every moment	6:12
	of decisive existence into a moment	6:17
	of further inquiry, but pilate,	6:20
	the procurator did something else.	6:23
	he not only took refuge in an abstract.	6:29
	He passed the buck following one school	6:32
	of administrative practice.	6:37
	He referred the matter to committee to the multitude	6:40
	He turned and called with palpable sarcasm.	6:45
	Shall I release to you the king of the Jews	6:50
	and the solid citizen they already decided	6:54
	with no judicious hesitancy	6:58
	in their commitment, both civil rights, not this man,	7:01
	but Barabbas.	7:06
	And the scripture says very simply, but with devastating,	7:08
	if tragic irony now Barabbas was a robber	7:12
	that is in those days, a Brigham then the cutthroat.	7:19
	So it is that the ultimate in what Herman Melville one's	7:26
	called a fine original grain of native privity is attained.	7:30
	When a Socrates says in the Republic, man, contrived	7:37
	to call evil good and good evil and choose accordingly.	7:42
	No, just sum up so far throughout the gospel of John,	7:50
	especially at the trial of Jesus.	7:55
	John is saying that there are really three options open	7:58
	to man with reference to the truth as it is in Christ.	8:02
	The first is commitment through acknowledgement of the truth	8:08
	that Jesus embodies in his own purse.	8:13
	The second is indecision through recourse to prior questions	8:19
	and redefinition, possibly the academic standpoint,	8:26
	the third is rejection and repudiation through blindness	8:32
	and progressive the of mind that overthrows the order	8:38
	of values calling good, evil and evil good.	8:41
	This is the lie and the soul	8:45
	and St. John identifies it with the world.	8:47
	Whereas Plato identified it with the darkness of the cave	8:51
	in our time. It might be the Tropic of cancer	8:56
	where it in every who is honest.	9:01
	And the only honest man are bile, but in all this,	9:04
	what jolts me and gives me pause is the possibility	9:10
	that academic 10th activity offers a kind of vacuum	9:15
	into which the world and the darkness of the cave tends	9:20
	to crowd in the absence of enlightened commitment	9:24
	while pilot propounded. The question, what is proof?	9:29
	He let the question be settled by the world of ignorance	9:35
	and perversity, perhaps like myself,	9:38
	you'll have wondered sometimes whether the role of pilate	9:42
	is not a parable of the role of the university	9:47
	in the modern world.	9:50
	Certainly the most prestigious faculties of Europe,	9:53
	those of the Jewish German universities contributed	9:58
	no appreciable obstacle to the amoralism of the rise	10:02
	of the third Reich.	10:07
	Most were silent or rationalizing the hit Hitlerian skirt.	10:09
	Perhaps then there is more than a touch of irony	10:17
	in the reported word of Rock field de Moss.	10:22
	The Harvard philosopher,	10:26
	when he declared very taught truth,	10:28
	this means we are committed to nothing	10:35
	experienced testifies.	10:39
	I think that where a man are committed to nothing,	10:42
	they can be counted upon nevertheless,	10:46
	to be sufficiently committed to themselves,	10:48
	to connive with the pressure's most commanding	10:52
	in the surrounding culture.	10:55
	The Lord of prestige,	10:58
	the siren voice of personal advantage	11:00
	and professional advancement will regularly secure	11:03
	the compliance of such men	11:07
	to the inducements of the highest bidder.	11:10
	In the contemporary situation,	11:14
	there is an enlarging number of bidders school	11:17
	for one reason or another. Find the university,	11:21
	its faculty and administration,	11:25
	even its search for proofs of instrumental value	11:28
	to non-academic ends	11:34
	the university today is in greater danger than ever	11:37
	of becoming prisoner to the dominant political	11:41
	and financial powers of contemporary culture.	11:45
	I think so, so true is this that Alma mater	11:49
	is increasingly becoming a kept woman	11:54
	in 20th century America.	11:58
	She is to recall Shakespeare and danger of being a woman	12:02
	killed with kindness as her professor benefactors	12:06
	are, beneficently guiding the direction of her development	12:11
	that she may attain her largest fulfillment.	12:15
	Hence it comes about that one question before the university	12:21
	in today's world is whether she shall have a soul	12:26
	of her own.	12:29
	The answer to that question depends upon whether	12:31
	the university community uses pilate question	12:34
	as a device for indecision and tend to activity very task,	12:38
	meaning we are committed to nothing or faces the question,	12:42
	what is true with renewed vigor and something fresher than	12:47
	19th century insight.	12:51
	And this leads to the second principle points	12:54
	in this sermon.	12:59
	If Michael Novack is right in his article,	13:01
	that the life of personal conviction is separated from	13:06
	the life of academic intelligence in the university,	13:12
	then I think a basic reason for this schizophrenia condition	13:16
	is this,	13:21
	that there is a pervasive confusion in the university	13:23
	and want of even token agreement about the answer	13:27
	to the question, what is true Pilates question	13:30
	which for him was flight into abstraction	13:35
	and evasion of responsibility is	13:39
	for the modern university, a concrete necessity,	13:42
	and they pressing responsibility without attention	13:46
	to this prior question,	13:51
	no long range planning worthy of the name can take place	13:53
	at duke or in any other university.	13:57
	And then the long range planning, curricular or otherwise,	14:00
	which does take place will be little else	14:03
	than shifting about of existing counters or balancing	14:07
	of contesting claims of competitive interests within	14:12
	or without the university.	14:16
	The question what is true is truly a prior question	14:19
	and many would prefer to let it slumber	14:26
	yet. It is the pursuit and conservation approved	14:29
	to which the university of the Western world	14:33
	has by common consent, been for centuries committed.	14:36
	But what is the truth that the university pursue	14:42
	and pretends to concern?	14:47
	There was a time as I pointed out last January in a sermon	14:51
	on the idea of a university when only varsity toss signified	14:55
	a whole, a whole universe of study,	15:00
	the university was thus the known world within	15:05
	the given actual world.	15:09
	That is a sort of microcosm within the macrocosm	15:12
	and intelligible world within the given world	15:17
	this conception of the university together with	15:22
	the synoptic view of reality articulated by it	15:25
	was shattered long ago to be replaced by	15:30
	what no less than Oxonians.	15:34
	Then William temple once described as a place	15:36
	where a multitude of studies are conducted	15:42
	with no relationship between them, except	15:45
	those of simultaneity and juxtaposition.	15:48
	this estimate comports well with a judgment	15:55
	of Arnold mash that in theory,	15:58
	the modern university rejects the attempt to teach a unified	16:02
	conception of the word it comports also	16:08
	with Michael Novack assertion	16:12
	that in the modern American university,	16:15
	it is a standing assumption that ultimate questions	16:19
	are in principle on answerable and hence	16:21
	not worth asking serious	16:27
	with what fan does the university deal in such a situation?	16:32
	What is the truth with which we commerce here?	16:40
	The answer seems to be that since the 17th century truth	16:46
	has become an endless galaxy of truth spawned by	16:52
	the several sciences natural or so	16:57
	in general, disarray and devoid of coherent pattern	17:01
	or comprehensive rationale no longer the sanctuary	17:04
	of an intelligible world,	17:09
	the modern university has become a storehouse	17:11
	of endlessly multiplying data,	17:15
	a kind of department store of a Sargent proves	17:19
	with a progressively weakened in grass on truth.	17:23
	The fact is that the university knows or acknowledges	17:29
	no comprehensive unifying order of proof if knows	17:33
	only a may knowledge up throughs and the principle of	17:39
	their association is nothing so benign as simultaneity	17:43
	and juxtaposition in all the realism.	17:47
	It is something more akin	17:50
	to unrestricted laissez Faire competition.	17:53
	Moreover,	17:58
	those departmental trolls that received	17:59
	the sustained patronage of the surrounding culture	18:02
	are encouraged to account themselves preeminent in virtue	18:06
	of their public utility.	18:10
	And this happened while the wisdom of the ages	18:13
	of which the liberal arts, our principal, trustees	18:17
	and custodians are allowed to languish	18:21
	in the university for sake and maidens on parsimonious fair	18:25
	but further consider the assertion of Michael Novack.	18:33
	That it is a standing assumption in the university	18:38
	that since Ultimate's questions are in principle	18:42
	answerable, they are not worth asking serious.	18:45
	It is worthwhile undertaking to explain,	18:51
	this is something but to explain it.	18:54
	One must have reference to the ascendancy since	18:58
	the 17th century of the experimental method using	19:03
	the resources of mathematical measurement	19:08
	since the time of Francis bacon,	19:11
	the experimental method has claimed the primary,	19:14
	if not the exclusive prerogative of determining truth	19:19
	and falsity in human judgment with it,	19:23
	nothing is assuredly true,	19:28
	not verified by this privileged method,	19:30
	but nothing is verifiable by the method except particular	19:33
	throughs or configurations of fact about	19:37
	the objective so-called physical world.	19:41
	The knowledge that heals that is power and has been dictated	19:46
	by its utility for the better management	19:51
	of man's environment from this program,	19:54
	well-conceived by bacon three centuries ago	19:59
	from this program tool results follow	20:04
	that should be observed	20:08
	first, since truth is inseparable from the way in which	20:10
	it is verified, nothing qualifies as knowledge,	20:15
	nothing qualifies as knowledge or is true,	20:20
	except what is confirmed by the method.	20:24
	And the method is competent	20:27
	to handle only measurable events.	20:29
	Secondly,	20:33
	since the operational method is applicable only	20:34
	to objective phenomenon,	20:37
	the whole inner world of human experience fails	20:40
	of verification and disqualified to compete with	20:44
	the assured trues of the sciences is relegated	20:48
	to the sphere of unintelligible	20:52
	and unverifiable subjectivity	20:54
	In it the poets, the Sears, the artists,	20:59
	the religionists and the fanatics are privileged	21:04
	to wander with will,	21:08
	but are not to be taken seriously by people	21:11
	who are mastering their world through the scientific method.	21:13
	Now it is this problem in great park,	21:19
	which has contrived to pluralize and fragment and split	21:23
	the realm of proof in the 20th century,	21:29
	here is a principal source of the chasm	21:34
	between publicly verifiable question	21:38
	and ultimate questions so-called,	21:41
	which are in principle on answerable because	21:45
	the method cannot answer them.	21:48
	Hands here is also the source of the chasm	21:51
	between academic intelligence and personal conviction	21:55
	that Novack talks about academic intelligence strives	22:00
	for measurable objectivity,	22:06
	but personal conviction cannot be objectify and pertains to	22:09
	the realm of immeasurable subjectivity.	22:14
	While the custom to the objective icing of proof,	22:20
	the academic intelligence is rested.	22:24
	It is habitually wary of in measurable subjectivity,	22:27
	which is to say, and market well,	22:32
	which is to say in plain fact that it is wary of man	22:36
	and all things human	22:41
	for the measurable subjectivity is just exactly	22:47
	the realm of man,	22:52
	the realm of his sensitivity and the responsibility to the	22:55
	whole order of proof to goodness, and to beauty	23:00
	in it, rather than in the external world	23:05
	of countable entities, do the distinctions	23:09
	between right and wrong, good and evil come alive, appear	23:13
	and call for decision and commitment	23:19
	here truth shows a different face than it shows	23:22
	in the form of the truth of the sciences.	23:27
	It is even more commanding, however,	23:30
	and in escapable for the man who is sensitive to it	23:33
	yet it cannot be known unless men like pilate	23:38
	take their own subjectivity seriously and decide	23:43
	to acknowledge the call of a higher truth.	23:49
	That sounds it's summons within them.	23:53
	This is what Jesus meant I think	23:57
	by declaring that those who are of the truth	24:00
	will hear his voice.	24:06
	If they will head their own immeasurable subjectivity,	24:08
	they will describe and abiding truth above	24:14
	all particular trues and countable and manipulable facts.	24:18
	If this could happen, if it could happen in the university,	24:25
	if men could take their own nature as men seriously,	24:30
	as they strive as seriously as they strive to grasp	24:36
	and manipulate the world through technological knowledge,	24:41
	then the realm of proof,	24:46
	which is now sundered and fragmented and split apart might	24:48
	become whole again.	24:54
	And the university would once more,	24:56
	when brace within its profession,	24:58
	a testimony to the whole continuum of truth,	25:01
	it might in fact, again,	25:06
	in our time become the custodian of the intelligible world	25:09
	in such an event, it might happen,	25:16
	but even the academic intelligence could consider	25:19
	without disquiet or revulsion.	25:24
	The likelihood that ultimate truth	25:28
	is most fully revealed through personal existence,	25:31
	through the measurable subjectivity of man,	25:37
	rather than the measurable objectivity of things	25:41
	and Supremely revealed in the personal life	25:46
	and word of Jesus Christ.	25:50
	Amen.	25:56
	Let us pray.	25:57
	All mighty God in this hour of maximum hazard	26:08
	and spiritual need enable us	26:16
	to believe ourselves amen and not.	26:21

Item Info

Title:

Robert E. Cushman - "What Is Truth?" (October 22, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r40p11s02

Date:

October 22, 1961

Speaker:

Cushman, Robert E.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0160
ref5526_73p
uachapelsermaud
duke:628095
dcrau002176
ark:/87924/r40p11s02
5c3810c0-9629-4e9c-874b-938b6e140180

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings

Language:

English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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