Who Killed Truth?

Rabbi Ezra Bick:

In my view, we should explain the midrash’s conclusion based on the verse it cites at the end of this passage: “Truth shall grow from the earth.” God does not retract His previous casting of Truth to the earth; Truth remains cast down. God responds to the angels that casting Truth to the earth does not disgrace it, because “Truth shall grow from the earth.” The ministering angels thought that Truth must be complete and absolute, existing in the heavens in all its purity without any contact with a deficient, decadent world. God answers that there is another kind of truth, a truth that grows from the earth, from out of falsehood. Indeed, such truth not only does not prevent man’s creation, but constitutes the very purpose and goal of man’s creation. The angels, in accordance with the role they so often play in the midrash, express the simple and logical view: falsehood and truth are inherently contradictory. In the mathematics of the angels, something deficient is always worth less than something perfect. God recognizes a much more complex reality, wherein there is a kind of truth that originates from falsehood, or at least from imperfection. In other words, the Almighty seeks the value of process. God created the world in order to achieve the value of progress toward perfection, in addition to the value in that which is perfect and absolute. There is value in the fact that the human being, in his state of imperfection, progressively draws closer to absolute truth. This value has no place in the world of the angels; the realm of objective truth exists there at the highest level, but is static and frozen. The creation of man, who is “completely deceitful,” does not run in opposition to the truth that grows from the earth. To the contrary, the deficient, flawed foundation is necessary for the achievement of this kind of truth. Only the imperfect can form the basis of growth.

In His Mercy: Understanding the Thirteen Midot (Kindle Locations 1731-1746).