Outside Reading 4- Buddy Powers

In exploring the idea of the Holy, I found William James’ pragmatic approach to truth extremely stimulating. From the pragmatic perspective truth is not essentially an ‘inert static relation’ as James says. This literally means that truth, not just man’s perception of it, is always changing. An example of this could be the current state of the Earth’s O-zone layer. It is currently true that it is depleted, but that was not true 30 years ago and it may become untrue again in the future if it somehow replenishes. This is not a perfect example but it illustrates the point. Holiness is directly related to truth because the validity of an entity attributes to the reverence of such from a critical mind. That is to say if something was fictitious and fallacious, than what other qualities could redeem a lie to the realm of the Holy? James says that “the universe is unfinished and growing, especially in thinking beings.” This is to say the truth is not complete but still coming together. It is because of this perspective that James can legitimately ask what is true of anything from rationalism to empiricism (two topics he loves to consider). I think James and his pragmatic approach to explaining what is true shed a lot of light on the human perspective, but not necessarily on the Holy. I think of God as omniscient, omnipresent, and of time as having a distinct beginning and end that the creator Being, God, has made. While James’ perspective on truth as a growing changing entity was initially challenging to my perception of the Holy, I eventually realized that he is simply describing man’s temporal perception of truth, which he does quite accurately.