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A Grammar of Religious “Truth”: Pragmatic Considerations on the Nature of Religious Truth

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A Grammar of Religious “Truth”: Pragmatic Considerations on the Nature of Religious Truth METHOD Method and Theory in the Study & THEORY in the STUDY OF of Religion 30 (�0�8) 338-356 RELIGION brill.com/mtsr A Grammar of Religious “Truth”: Pragmatic Considerations on the Nature of Religious Truth Lars Albinus School of Culture and Society, University of Aarhus Jens Chr. Skous Vej 3, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark [email protected] Abstract This article explores various ways in which the concept of truth is actually used across discursive boundaries separating common sense, science, mathematics, and religion. Although my overall approach is pragmatic, I argue that we also need to take some semantic restrictions into consideration. The main objective of the article is the issue of translating concepts of truth in various linguistic and cultural contexts without los- ing sight of the particular network of connotations. I come to the conclusion that with regard to a religious discourse, a translatable concept of truth typically enters the grammatical place of the subject rather than the predicate. From this position the dis- cursive constraints of authority, authenticity and expressivity are held in check by an internal predetermination of the implied possibility of falsehood. Most of all, however, the article focuses on non-propositional aspects of a religious expression of truth, in which case the very distinction between true and false becomes patently irrelevant. Keywords truth – pragmatics – Wittgenstein – religious expression – grammar 1 The Opening Question For the sake of brevity, I shall open this article by simply claiming, somewhat against the Davidsonian stance that informs several of the articles in this vol- ume (as explained in Gardiner’s introductory article to this volume), that the general possibility of understanding sentential meaning does not imply © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi:�0.��63/�570068�-��34Downloaded�4�4 from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:35:23AM via free access A Grammar of Religious “Truth” 339 a concept of truth (whether explicitly employed or tacitly implied), but that it takes a competent use of language to understand “truth” as a concept. From a premise of shared interests in the relation between truth and religion, I shall try to bring out what it is, from a pragmatic point of view, that makes a proposition true, and then proceed to provide examples from a specifically religious context. What is true is not a thing in itself, neither a sensation nor a state of af- fairs, but a proposition about something.1 “Is true” is not a predicate of real- ity, but a predicate of statements. Proceeding from “is true” to “truth” tends to complicate matters. “Truth” may refer to a cluster of true propositions, but it may also refer to a simple matter, a single proposition even, such as the well- known statement: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14: 6). It goes without saying that the apparent simplicity of this utterance conceals the utmost complexity from a philosophical point of view. Some may in this re- spect be inclined to dismiss it as merely metaphorical, implying that it makes an unconventional use of “truth” (otherwise determined by external criteria of justification). That is not how I see it. So much is certain, though: In order to understand the range of meanings pertaining to “truth” we will, among other things, have to specify the underlying criteria of using the concept correctly, that is, according to a given consensus. From a pragmatic point of view that stands in opposition to a metaphysical notion of truth (whether it may be of a physicalist or a religious kind), it only makes sense to speak of truth as the manifestation of “truth,” and not as some imaginable, transcendent referent.2 Even if the manifestation is a proposition that claims something to be true by way of ostension, there would be no truth without that manifestation. If I claim that it is snowing, the truth of the matter does not depend on the iso- lated fact that it is snowing, but on the convention that links this fact with the verbal means by which I state it as a fact. To claim something to be true thus presupposes a competent use of language. “Truth” is not a primary given but a function of communication. I am therefore inclined to think that Michael 1 There is, however, an intimate relationship between the conceptions of “truth” and “sense” as apparent in German language, for instance, according to the verbal implication of Wahrnehmen (perception) in Wahrheit (truth). 2 As against the materialistic view promoted in Philosophisches Wörterbuch (Klaus and Buhr 1971), namely that the definition of truth has to be strictly distinguished from a criterion of truth (Kriterium der Wahrheit), I therefore side with the pragmatic view of truth, famously deployed by William James, who holds, for instance, that “[t]he knower is an actor, and coef- ficient of the truth on one side, whilst on the other he registers the truth which he helps to create” (James 1978: 21). See also Dummett (1959 (1978)). Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 30 (2018)Downloaded 338-356 from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:35:23AM via free access 340 Albinus Dummet, following Donald Davidson in this respect, turns the matter upside- down by claiming that “[t]he sense of a statement is determined by knowing in what circumstances it is true and in what false” (1959 (1978): 8). As I have argued elsewhere,3 such a truth-conditional understanding of meaning has its limitations, especially when it comes to religious manifestations of meaning. One may also refer to mathematical sentences as, for instance, Goldbach’s con- jecture that every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes. This sentence is obviously understandable, yet still remains to be proven. One might say that it is mathematically meaningful, although no man- ifestation of its actual truth is in sight. In fact, Dummett himself reaches the conclusion that the meaning of a statement only depends on truth-conditions when it comes to “effectively decidable statements” (1959 (1978): 16). He there- fore admits, contrary to Davidson, that “[m]ore generally, we must abandon the idea which we naturally have that the notions of truth and falsity play an essential role in any account either of the meaning of statements in general or of the meaning of a particular statement” (1959 (1978): 16). Unlike Dummett, however, I would furthermore argue for a meaning of “true” independent of decidability. A mythical worldview would be a case in point. Likewise, if I refer to a novel for brilliantly expressing the truth about human life, responsibility, love, shortcomings, etc., this truth is obviously also part of the way in which it has been communicated without any criteria of decidability entering the pic- ture. My general point is that we will have to take notice of the linguistic and communicative rules (i.e., grammatical rules in Wittgenstein’s use of the term) underlying the concrete use of the word “truth.” 2 Outlining a Pragmatic Concept of Truth It seems that no single attempt to specify the communicative rules of using the concept of truth has found a unanimous following among philosophers. In philosophy of religion, from which position I am speaking in this context, the question about truth has most often been posed as questions about religious truth claims.4 The concern in this respect has been to offer possible reasons for holding a religious statement (of faith) to be true, not so much because one would wish to deny non-rational inclinations among believers (as among 3 See, for instance, Albinus (2015), where I try to show the limitations of Davidson’s truth- conditional semantics as developed in various articles, for instance Davidson (1984). 4 E.g. Plantinga and Wolterstorff (1983), Trigg (1998), Murray and Rea (2008: xii), and the list could be extended interminably. Method and Theory in the Study of ReligionDownloaded 30from (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 338-356 06:35:23AM via free access A Grammar of Religious “Truth” 341 human beings in general), but because it has been considered a constitutive task for a philosophy of religion to investigate whether, and in what way, a religious belief can claim to be rational. As far as I can see, this conception seems to hold from the traditional understanding of the discipline (e.g. from Wainwright (1999)) to the new tides of a comparative philosophy of religion (e.g. Knepper (2013: 22)). If, for the sake of argument, we concede that propositional truth is of central concern to a philosophy of religion,5 the investigation can take two directions: 1) either we can ask how that which counts as a religious truth is dependent on, or at least can be related to, a rational structure of concepts,6 or 2) we can proceed in a negative manner asking whether it is possible for people to uphold a religious belief which is not, directly or indirectly, dependent on a propositional concept of truth.7 As much as I appreciate the development in Davidson’s thinking that leads still further away from a correspondence the- ory of truth, I remain puzzled about the implications of conceiving truth as a semantic “primitive” that nevertheless remains “intrinsically veridical” (see Levy’s article in this volume, p. 427). I would want to adopt Davidson’s point about our beliefs having to be largely true in order to be understandable (or in- terpretable), but I see it as a pragmatic point rather than a semantic one. Thus, when he holds that the truth-content of beliefs can be verified only by seeing how they link up with actions and interactions (i.e., people-to-people and peo- ple-to-world relations), I would appreciate it along the lines of Wittgenstein’s view, namely that: “[s]hared human behavior is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language” (1953 (1972): § 206).8 5 Another string of philosophers (e.g., Vattimo, Derrida, Lévinas, Nancy, Marion), who also can be said to engage in a philosophy of religion, largely abstain from speaking about truth in order to avoid the metaphysical implications of the traditional philosophy of rational auton- omy.
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