The truth about pursuit of Truth

Today, I was given the Divine gift of silence (originally scheduled to give a sermon, I was asked if I’d rotate out to allow scheduling of a visitor). What a wonderful gift to be given, because to speak is to err.

In Islamic terminology, the word for Truth, as Platonic form, is “Al-Haqq,” which is one of the Divine names, and which, in addition to “Truth,” also means “Reality,” and “Justice.”

When we go all the way in this pursuit, we end up with St. Thomas Aquinas’s silence, because, as Wittgenstein put it at the end of his Tractatus, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.”

This is what in Muslim tradition would be dictated by observing proper manners, Adab, with Truth/Reality/Justice. Of course, speaking about Justice gets one in trouble at the social level. But speaking about other aspects of the Divine is also troublesome. However, when permission is given, and we have no ability to stop the overflowing of words, we speak... and then we err.