What is truth? When Jesus stood before Pilate and told him that he had come to testify to the truth, Pilate famously retorted: âWhat is truth?â Interestingly, in the Koine Greek of John 14:6, Jesus refers to himself as áŒÎ»ÎźÎžÎ”Îčα (aletheia, truth).
âI am the way, the truth (aletheia), and the life.â
Aletheia is the opposite of Lethe, the river of oblivion flowing through Hell. The prefix âa-â is a negation. Thus, truth is that which that negates oblivion. Lethe concealsâaletheia reveals. Lethe makes us forgetâaletheia makes us remember. Aletheia un-conceals.
Aletheia is the unconcealment of what is hiddenânot merely a set of propositions. Thatâs what Jesus calls himself: the unconcealment of Being.
Truth is the disclosure of Beingânot sentences or propositions. Incidentally, for Heidegger, aletheia is the moment when beings âcome into the open.â When beings come into the open, they disclose Being. They reveal. Truth is revelation.
âEveryone is the other and no one is himself.â Heidegger
Until we come into the open, we are not ourselves; we are someone else. We live in concealmeant, hiding Being. Yet, our false self is transientâit will be consumed by Lethe. Everything that does not reveal Being will be forgotten. To rise above Lethe, we must embrace aletheiaâthe unconcealment of Being.
This is what Jesus meant when he told Pilate that he had come âto testify to the truth.â He was aletheiaâthe perfect unconcealment of Being. To be true is to participate in something that survives Lethe. Pilate was too steeped in the temporal and transient to recognize Being before his eyes.
âYes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work; for their good deeds follow them!â Rev. 14:13
Whatever we have done within chronological time to transcend chronological time abides forever. It follows us. It has been salvaged from Lethe. It is aletheia. It cannot disappear. As Michelangelo said,
âThe true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.â
In aletheia, we transform shadows into glimpses of divine perfection. These glimpses cannot disappear. We make âin the law in which we were madeââto borrow Tolkienâs phrase. We become sub-creators.
Having glimpsed divine perfection, we reproduce itâwe unconceal itâwithin the confines of our shadow world. The only way to salvage the world of shadows from falling into oblivion is to transcend the shadowsâengage in aletheia.
Whether we bake bread, write articles, share a conversation over a cup of tea, build cathedrals, or repair carsâif we glimpse and reflect the divine spark in what we do, we participate in the unconcealment of Being. In doing so, we transcend the shadowlands.
Everything in the shadowlands is a shadow until we see through it and partake of divine perfection. It is our inheritance by virtue of divine birth. We have that spark in us. We are that spark. We are shadows transcending ourselves by pursuing aletheiaâevery moment of the day.
What is the power of brokenness? According to Dr. John Gottman, extending kisses to six seconds may be a key to improving relationships. He also cites studies showing that people who are kissed regularly can live up to five years longer.
I couldnât resist the urge to look up the etymology of the word âkissâ when I heard that. Especially because in Russian (my native language), the word for kiss is closely related to the word âwholenessâ or âto make wholeâ (ŃĐ”Đ»ĐŸĐČĐ°ŃŃ = ЎДлаŃŃ ŃДлŃĐŒ).
Even though in English there is no obvious connection between âkissâ and âwholeness,â the old English âcossâ meant âembrace,â as in greeting. Maybe thatâs why a âkissâ was often associated with greeting, as in:
âGreet (or salute) each other with a holy kiss.â
Incidentally, the Greek for âgreetâ (aspasasthe) used in this verse also meant embrace. But there is another interesting twist to greeting or saluting which has to do with wishing someone health (or hailing). According to the etymological dictionary, âto saluteâ comes from Latin âsalutare,â which means âwish health to.â
The verb âsalutareâ is derived from the root âsolâ (Sun), which means âwhole, safe, well-kept.â In other words, when we âkiss â salute â embraceâ we make the person whole. Hailing is healing.
Healing is a profound mystery. Health has to do with wholeness, and wholeness has to do with being hailed or embraced. When something is broken, we gather the shards into an embrace and breathe new life into it (symbolically by kissing).
By kissing or saluting we return the person to âSolâ (the Sun in Latin) which symbolizes wholeness and safety. Kissing means returning the person to the Sun-wholeness. The Sun makes us whole. The mystery of healing is deep just as the mystery of brokenness.
Our brokenness is not a problem to be fixed but a mystery to be explored. It is something to watch as Jesus said to his disciples in Gethsemane:
âWatch with me.â
What did he want them to observe? He wanted them to participate with him in the mystery of brokenness being turned to wholeness. He who was broken by a kiss of a friend was made whole by the kiss of the Father.
âRighteousness and peace have kissed each other.â Psalm 85.
Why was Barnabas called Zeus in the Bible? Ever since I read in Acts 14:11-13 how the people of Lystra mistook Paul and Barnabas for Greek gods after seeing a miraculous healing performed by Paul, I have been intrigued. They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes â because Paul was the chief speaker.
I could see why Paul would be called Hermes with his ability to wield words and arguments. But why was Barnabas called Zeus? Zeus is the king of the Olympian gods who hurls bolts of lightning. This doesnât align very well with what we know about Barnabas whose name means âthe son of encouragement.â
Between the two of them, Paul qualified more for the role of Zeus with his thunder-and-lightning statements. Yet, the Lystrans must have seen something in Barnabas that reminded them of Zeus, the king of the gods.
Zeus is a complex mythological figure. His father Kronos was known to eat his own children. When Zeus was born, Hera hid the child from his ever-hungry father and gave him a stone instead of the boy. Kronos swallowed the stone without noticing anything. Kronos ate his children not without a reason â he was chronological time. We are all born in chronological time, and we are consumed by it.
Zeus is a moment in time that was saved from being consumed by time. In the Greek lore, Zeus is someone who is above time. He prevails over his father Kronos and becomes king. In doing so he becomes electrified â a Source of divine electricity. People who are above time, shine with heavenly light and joy.
Thatâs why the Romans associated Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus, with heavenly joy (gaudium caeleste). He was often depicted as a triumphant figure with a ruddy face. Have you ever met people who are above time? They rule, and they radiate heavenly electricity.
You can read it in their eyes. They tread on earth as kings and queens. They rule over circumstances. They rise above the temporal. They live as if they were eternal. When you touch them, they pass their electricity to you, and you lighten up. You meet them and exclaim, âBy Jove, I feel so jovial!â
Maybe thatâs what the Lystrans saw in the eyes of Barnabas, âthe son of encouragement.â Like a lightning bolt, he must have struck them as someone timeless, someone electrified with divine light, someone contagiously jovial. He was a walking encouragement.
The Lystrans wanted to bring sacrifices to both Paul and Barnabas, but the two men redirected their gazes toward the true Source of light. The light was not their own; they shone with a borrowed light. They were images of the Divine, not gods. And yet, the light shone through them to such a degree that people mistook them for gods. Hereâs what C.S. Lewis wrote about this phenomenon:
âIt is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship⊠There are no ordinary people.â The Weight of Glory
