What is truth when truth's denied?

A teacher once taught me that I should not be trusting at all. I shouldn't trust anyone. Trust, so he said, does not come forth out of the mind, not out of the "vernunft" as it is taught by the great German philosophers, and trust will be broken. I believed him, though I did not understand him. And I couldn't give it a place inside me. I shouldn't trust, he said, but the only one I really trusted was him. I still remember. The teacher, for now I will call him Aristofanus, though it is not his real name, taught me from the books about the thoughts of the four philosophers. I read with him from Kant and Hegel, and from Plato and Augustine. "But," he said, "Augustine isn't a real philosopher, as he is a believer. Augustine spoke to me about truth. Plato and Kant and also Hegel did the same. And I asked my teacher why Augustine couldn't be a philosopher. His writings seemed more right to me than any of the others. Aristofanus answered me: "The opinion of Augustine is subjective and not scientific." What I learned from this dialogue with my teacher is that truth is merely the result of a subjective judgement.

Kant and Augustine

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Neither Plato, nor Kant or Hegel are scientific. All are subjective. But they are not considered christian. Kant, though, was a professing christian. Philosophers greater than Hegel where christian too. Kierkegaard of course, but Pascal for example too. Kant en Hegel only build fundaments for enlightment. A writing from Kant, answering the question: "Was ist Aufklärung?" (what is enlightment?), is considered as one of the fundamental writings on enlightment. Because of this achievements Kant is rather seen as a modern philosopher than a christian philosopher. Well, he was both. Augustine was clearly a christian philosopher. All his writings where drenched in christianity. That was Philosophy for him. Alike Justin the Martyr his opinion is that christian philosophy is the only true philosophy. That's why he spoke of truth so much. If christianity is true philosophy it needs to have a foundation of truth. That foundation of truth was found in the writings of the early christians and the Jewish Tanakh, which is later called Old Testament by the christians.

According to these philosophers there was a right philosophy in the early beginnings. But people who did not understand the philosophy well started to follow the philosopher instead of the one right philosophy. In this way the philosophy became perverted. With christianity the right philosophy was restored. Though the truth of christianity can still be doubted, their analysis in general human concepts appears right to me. When I try to convince someone of a certain thing I appear to be misunderstood, my words are changed slightly, and things I say are taken personally. That has to do with my inability to choose my words well, and to debate with only the right arguments, but it also has to do with the general human inability to follow that one right philosophy. It just seems to be too hard to fully understand once words without their own, not fully right interpretation. So, Augustine did believe that only through revelation through the bible one could come back to that one true philosophy. Kant was different. He split up truth in two ways. Philosophical truth could only be derived from the pure philosophers mind. Without ever leaving Königsberg, he thought (and taught) he could come to a general concept of truth. But also did he believe that trough science, and therefore experience, one could get evidence for the truth that is measurable through science. By only the mind one could find out truth, trough evidence it could be proved. That isn't a very scientific viewpoint.

Am I trying to prove that Augustine is a true scientist? No. He wasn't. But unlike Plato and alike he has written quite some about experience. And obviously, his writings have grown old, but are not less relevant for the liberal today. His judgements on the present state of society are the same as those of 1700 years ago. They society is nonetheless still the same. He might eventually be right. But they say: he can not really be a philosopher, because he is a christian. I believe that his christian ideas are not welcome in an enlightened world. But the world really didn't change. His christianity does not make his judgements weaker, but only stronger.