Truth is the essential value — honesty is the essential virtue

Truth is the essential value, the value which can never be sacrificed or compromised for any other. Therefore loyalty to truth—that is, honesty—is the essential virtue, the first prerequisite for all other virtues and all human life. Without honesty, all fails.

Truth is simply Reality / What Is / The Way Things Are. Aristotle defined true and false in this way: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true” (Metaphysics, IV.7.1011b25). Aquinas said Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus: “truth is the equation of thing and intellect” (De Veritate, Q.1, A.1).

One way to define sin is turning aside from the truth. Chesterton said in his poem Ecclesiastes:

There is one sin: to call a green leaf grey,

Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth.

In the book of Genesis ch. 3, Eve turned aside from the truth that God, who never lies, had forbidden the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden ‘lest ye die,’ and instead acted on the serpent’s lie that ‘ye shall not surely die... and ye shall be as gods.’ This was disobedience to God, which is another way of saying betrayal of the truth.

Satan is said to have fallen through pride; that is, through pretending that he is greater than God and refusing to give to God His due. In Paradise Lost book 5, Satan begins his rebellion by denying that God created him:

That we were formed then say’st thou? And the work

Of secondary hands, by task transferred

From Father to his Son? Strange point and new! ...

We know no time when we were not as now;

Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised...

And when Satan confronts the loyal armies of God in book 6, Abdiel defies him thus:

Apostate, still thou err’st, nor end wilt find

Of erring, from the path of truth remote.

Indeed, Satan’s fall is shown as a progressive descent into nonsense and self-deception.

If truth is just What Is, then any turning aside from truth must bring failure. This is why sin is not just wicked, but fruitless. And why it is false love to tolerate sin in the name of love. That is based on an idea that the definition of sin is arbitrary, that it corresponds to nothing about reality.

Likewise, virtue can be defined as loyalty to the truth. The great philosophical and religious traditions have done exactly this. C.S. Lewis illustrates this in The Abolition of Man ch. 1: “St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, “the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it... In early Hinduism that conduct in men which can be called good consists in conformity to, or almost participation in, the Rta—that great ritual or pattern of nature and supernature which is revealed alike in the cosmic order, the moral virtues, and the ceremonial of the temple. Righteousness, correctness, order, the Rta, is constantly identified with satya or truth, correspondence to reality... The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao... It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way in wihch every man should tread in mitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar. ‘In ritual,’ says the Analects, ‘it is harmony with Nature that is prized.’ The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being ‘true’.”

The Western tradition of natural law likewise bases ethics not in arbitrary Divine command, but in the nature of reality itself.

Thus virtue is the practice of conforming oneself to Reality. It is a participation in truth.

C.S. Lewis said if you put second things first, you won’t get first things or second things. If you put first things first and second things second, you will get first things and second things, too. Truth is the ultimate First Thing.