what is true?
by Jonathan
What is the truth-value of our beliefs in God? How do we confirm or decide them? What is the foundation of these beliefs? Is there a foundation for them?
These are the questions that theologians often have to ask, and in this time period the answer determines the credibility of your system – or it at least locates your thinking within a certain “school”. Let’s consider them briefly.
According to Lindbeck (I use his for simplicity, not necessarily because his scheme is the best) there are three main approaches: cognitive-propositional, experiential-expressivist, and his proposal cultural-linguistic. Let’s translate. The first, cognitive-propositional, says that the claims of religion are primarily informative. In Church, worship, the Bible, Sunday School, and higher education people are taught ‘truths’ about God, ie the nature of God’s existence, the works and attributes of God, human nature, etc. Information such as this, it is claimed, is the essence of religion. What is the ‘foundation’ or this knowledge? Most ‘pure’ proponents of this view would say either Scripture (often, though not always, viewed as inerrant/literal) or reason/philosophy/natural theology. The problem in our time is the authority of Scripture is highly contested (for a number of reasons) especially in the inerrancy/literalist sense, and reason/philosophy/natural theology seems to create an anthropomorphic God.
The second, experiential-expressivist, says that religious experiences are the ‘foundation’ or common element to all claims about God. We first experience the need for God or the intimacy of God and then humans create religions to share those experiences. Here, all religions should share core experiences (which has proven difficult to substantiate) but don’t necessarily have the same value. The truth-claims of religion however become very hard to maintain. Private religion becomes very easy – and is really the slippery slope of this emphasis.
The third, Lindbeck’s own cultural-linguistic, says that religion is the ‘grammar’ or ‘rules for living’ within a certain cultural/religious community. The truth-claims have something to do with the Bible, but the interpretation largely lies with the “interpretive-community” and their living out truthfully/coherently the moral/spiritual/religious claims and traditions presented in the Bible.
The positions all tend to be a bit more nuanced than this, and no one really represents any of these positions in a ‘pure’ sense. But analyzing these concepts can get the ball rolling and the wheels turning about what religious truth is. So, I ask, What is true about God and religion? Do we learn and teach information to become Christians? Do we have religious experiences that identify us with a certain religious group? or Do we find ourselves in a community that claims such are the rules for life?
What do you think?
Could it be that we find ourselves in cultural linguistic communities that enlighten/proselytize via cognitive propositional understandings being confident that an experiential expressionist event will eventually prove our cultural linguistic realities?
This is a great possibility.