Christian Thinking
Discovered and Uncovered Truth

You cannot construct truth from a mass of dissonant and disparate material. You cannot construct truth at all: you can only discover it. And the more noisily opinionated people intervene with their contributions, the less likely you are to find it…Yet, within the Church as well as outside it, this perverted notion persists. Truth is conceived on a quantitative basis—no doubt under the influence of statistical reasoning and public opinion [polls. It is being assumed that the more people there are with different opinions to contribute, the greater “truth” will emerge from the mixing of these opinions in the melting pot. Truth is regarded as a kind of pudding or brew, which you concoct from human opinions…But truth is more like a rock than a pudding—a rock which you lay bare by scraping away the soil. And that soil is largely compounded of human prejudice and passion.

Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, How Should a Christian Think? (Ann Arbor, Mi: Servant Books, 1963), p. 112-13.