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The central text of the pope's argument is John 8:32—"You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." The claim that there is a necessary connection between freedom and truth is hardly new. Aristotle understood that, as did the American founders who signed a Declaration of Independence that begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident … " The apparently new thing about our time is the idea that freedom can get along without truth. In this encyclical, John Paul attempts to explain why that is a very bad idea intellectually unpersuasive, spiritually incoherent, and morally disastrous.

Clear thinking about moral truth has enemies. The enemies are often called relativism and subjectivism. Ours is a radically individualistic culture in which it is hard to make the case that we must discern and obey what is objectively true. Rather, each of us decides what is "true for me." In other words, says John Paul, we arrogate to ourselves the right to create the truth. Biblical believers will recognize that this way of thinking and acting began with the serpent's temptation in the garden and has resulted in herds of so-called independent minds marching toward moral oblivion with Frank Sinatra's witless boast on their lips, "I did it my way."

Many intellectuals today argue that everything, including ideas about morality, is created by culture. We are, they say, "socially constructed all the way down"—truth has no foundation in either reason or revelation. This is called "antifoundationalism," and it is a cherished theory of those who call themselves "postmodernists." According to this theory, freedom may be high among your "values," but that is only because you are the product of a culture that values freedom. Put bluntly, what you call your freedom is a delusion. You are as captive to your culture as somebody else who is the product of a culture that values collectivism, or child sacrifice, or the worship of Baal, or whatever. John Paul knows these arguments inside out. He recognizes that they are very clever, very intriguing, and very false.

The human person, he contends, truly is free—created for freedom and, although wounded by the depravity of sin, capable of freedom. Without a firm understanding of human freedom, talk about morality makes no sense. John Paul appreciates the insights of psychology, anthropology, and the behavioral sciences into the ways we are "conditioned" by culture, genes, and factors yet unknown. But deep within each "acting person" (a key phrase in this pope's thought) is an aspiration toward the good, which is finally an aspiration toward God, that we either follow or defy.

Veritatis Splendor opens with an extended reflection on the rich young man who comes to Jesus and asks, "Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?" (Matt. 19:16). That, says John Paul, is really the question of every man, no matter how tentatively or confusedly it is asked. And the answer of Jesus is the answer to every man: "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." Life is to know the truth and do the truth. Life is ultimately fulfilled in following the One who said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).

Many of our contemporaries will object that all this is very nice; it may even be true in some sense of the word. But, they say, there is no going back to "simpler days" when it was possible to assert that "we hold these truths" as though there are actually truths to hold and to be held by. Nowadays we live in a "pluralistic society," don't you know? There is no agreement on what truths we hold, we must not impose our values on others, and on and on.

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March (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49