The Parable

1. The Story

Once, while visiting a seminary, I asked the students a question:

“There is a well-known parable that non-believers like to use.

Three blind sages were feeling an elephant. One touched the tail and said: the elephant is something like a snake or a rope. Another touched the ear and said: the elephant is a sail. The third touched its side and replied: no, the elephant is like a great wall.

In the same way, different religions have their own versions of God, but the truth remains unknowable.

As future priests, what would you respond to an agnostic who throws this parable at you?”

The seminarians couldn’t come up with any meaningful answer. That disappointed me and once again showed how much the Church, or at least some of its circles, is enclosed within its own narrative and is unprepared for mission in the modern world.

Now the question: how should a Christian properly respond to this parable?

2. Rational Analysis

Let’s begin by noting that even for these blind men the elephant – that is, the truth – was not entirely incomprehensible. Each of them made a limited, flawed, yet essentially correct observation.

If, instead of arguing, they had combined their insights, they would soon reach a shared conclusion such as “an elephant is a great wall with a rope on one end a sail on the other.”

That would already be much closer to the reality. Empirical knowledge would not have failed them even under such restricted conditions.

In this sense, the parable works against itself. It is used to illustrate relativism, yet it demonstrates that objective truth does exist. The elephant is real, the question is how to obtain the full picture.

3. Answer of Faith

In the parable the elephant remains silent; it says nothing about itself. But the very essence, the novelty, and the importance of Christian faith is that the elephant has spoken. He Himself said to the sages: “This is what I am: I am the way, and the truth, and the life”.

This is not arrogance, but the testimony of the One who knows Himself.

That is why the Church always speaks of the Gospel, the Good News. It proclaims that God has revealed Himself to us: first through prophets, and then by descending into the world and living a human life in flesh and blood.

Here lies the great distinction. Human-made religions can indeed grasp and perceive certain facets of the divine. The Catholic faith does not deny other traditions the right to possess sparks of truth.

Nostra Aetate §2: “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions.”

Yet she offers not merely one more version, but the very Word of God about Himself.

Thus, the simplest and most proper answer a Christian can give to this parable is:

“Our faith is about how this Elephant spoke”.

Or:

“Our faith is not about how we feel this Elephant – but about how the Elephant embraced us.”

Or even further:

The elephant did not merely speak. It suddenly stomped on the tiger that was creeping toward the sages to devour them. At first they didn’t even realize what happened. But later, as they pieced the events together, they understood: whatever the elephant is, it is kind; it saved them.

This is knowledge that can be gained only by witnessing a concrete event and reflecting on it. Abstract “feeling of the elephant” is unable to provide it.

Christian faith tells precisely of such an event: the Cross and the Resurrection. Revelation is God’s action in history. We have seen what the Elephant has done, and learned not merely His shape, but His heart.

4. Our Limits

Yet the parable is not entirely wrong. Even though the elephant has spoken, it in many ways remains concealed to this day.

Moses, who saw God “face to face”, in truth only saw His back. St. Paul writes that now “we see in a mirror, dimly.” Even the Apostles who walked beside Jesus Christ did not fully grasp Who He was, and thus “seeing, did not see.” Only later He “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”

During mortal life no one has met God face to face, except in the person of Christ. The beatific vision of God’s essence awaits only in Paradise. For now, the spiritual world is invisible to us, and we lack the senses to perceive it directly.

In this sense, indeed, none of us knows the elephant – neither atheists, nor Hindus, nor Christians.

That’s how it is. On our earthly pilgrimage, faith is not yet about joyfully roaming the green plains together with the Elephant. It is rather about struggling out of the mire, clinging to the Elephant desperately.

However, we Christians have one decisive advantage. We can say with clear conscience:

“Yes, we do not know the elephant fully. But we know everything that we need to know about the elephant, according to the will of the Elephant Himself. And He knows best.”

May Almighty God grant us one day to see Him face to face in blessed eternity. Amen.