Dr. Strangtruth: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Limits
The second doctrinal lens that I believe will be helpful in interpreting Paul’s Philippian encouragement is that of the “extra-propositional” nature of truth. Paul’s list after all begins with “whatever is true.” I believe truth here doesn’t hold any primacy over the other virtues in his list; however the other virtues aren’t virtues if they aren’t true; that is if they don’t accurately correspond to the physical/spiritual reality in which they’re rooted. This lens is important because in my experience, and this is entirely anecdotal, if there is an erring, it’s often an erring in the direction of confining the idea of truth to the propositional which results in a definition of the virtues listed by Paul which is limited to the denotative and closed to the connotative, particularly when discussing purity and loveliness. As a result when considering purity and loveliness their definitions are often idealized and abstracted instead of incarnated (which as I proposed previously is essential to understanding the Old and New Testaments). Thus loveliness is regularly reduced to prettiness, and purity is commonly reduced and limited to the sphere of sexuality. Of these two, the concept of purity presents the more significant roadblock to understanding the passage, not that the potential for ugliness in beauty isn’t a topic in need of tackling, but I’ve tackled it briefly previously in other blogs, and may come back to it later, so let’s take a look at the concept of purity and how it plays here.
Now I am in no way a Greek or Hebrew scholar, but I’m going to attempt to play an armchair scholar in my blog for the sake of fleshing this out. If you are an authority in Greek or Hebrew, I welcome any input or correction you have to offer. The Greek word Paul uses here in Philippians which we translate “pure” is hagnos. According to Strong’s Concordance it carries several denotative valences. It’s rooted in the ancient Greek word hagios, which we translate as holiness, the concept of being set apart, I would suggest for a purpose. The reason I suggest this is because something that is holy or sacred isn’t set apart for the sake of being separate, but is set apart for a reason or to accomplish some function. Hagnos then plays off this concept of holiness and encompasses the idea of being free from ceremonial defilement and set apart, thus in a condition and prepared for Hebrew Temple worship, all concepts rooted in the Hebrew law of the Old Testament which would require ceremonial cleansing before people could participate in Temple rituals including worship, offerings and animal sacrifices. The idea here is of a freedom from contamination. Envision the feeling of stepping out of the shower after hours of yard work in August (in the Northern Hemisphere anyway). All the sweat and dirt and grass have been washed away, and you feel clean and refreshed. This is how the Hebrews were instructed to enter worship, metaphorically. The ceremonies and rituals were a recognition of God’s work in the cleansing, and were done ideally in recognition that these practices were momentary expressions of the worshiper’s on-going set apart-ness for God’s purposes in their heart and daily actions. This idea of being undefiled by the grime of sin then was conveyed into the area of sexuality at some point so that hagnos also came to take on the concept of chastity and virginality. The connection is easy enough to see. Someone who sets themselves apart for the purpose of their vows to their spouse will remain committed, unadultered and sexually faithful to that spouse, and thus be uncontaminated by the act of adultery.
The purity that Paul speaks of here then, I would suggest isn’t primarily sexual spotlessness but incorporates this idea of something being set aside to accomplish God’s purposes. In that case you could read the translation “Whatever is pure” as, “Whatever is set apart to accomplish God’s purposes” as well. Now you may ask, “What does this rabbit trail have to do with the nature of truth?” I’m glad you asked. If we approach the propositional concept of purity strictly through the denotative door of sexual spotlessness or sinlessness, we miss the rich philological connotations encased in hagnos, and thus limit our understanding of Paul’s encouragement to simply sexual morality when the net of truth thrown by Paul covers a far wider area. Truth then isn’t the proposition itself, but is the reality the proposition is trying to articulate, and thus truth is “extra-propositional”. If we perceive articulation’s limitation we often also perceive it as something regrettable, because this means the articulation of truth is curbed by the ambiguities of language. Thankfully, because the fullness of truth is far greater than can be articulated through language, the truth isn’t limited by our limitations, only its communication and understanding through propositional language is limited. So how does this relate then to the arena of the arts and pop culture?
This notion of the “extra-propositional” nature of truth relates to the arts in many ways, but this is turning into a novel, so I’ll only write of one, which is this: The notion that any proposition is the truth is not true, and thus is not among the thoughts we should be thinking of or meditating on. I acknowledge this is sounding very anti-propositional, but I want to suggest it’s not. If you’ve noticed I am using propositions to try to attempt to make my case for the weakness of propositions. Propositions are necessary in trying to articulate truth; however my point is that they are not the truth themselves. They participate in the truth, they do not embody or encapsulate it. Even when the Bible speaks propositionally it points to a truth larger than author’s language can contain. Thus, the trump card of a strictly denotative understanding of truth, which by its nature limits the arts with their tendency to tread the waters of connotation, should not be taken at face value.
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