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METHOD Method and Theory in the Study & THEORY in the STUDY OF of 30 (2018) 338-356 RELIGION brill.com/mtsr

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

Lars 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 of truth is actually used across discursive boundaries separating , 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 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 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 does not imply

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi:10.1163/15700682-1234Downloaded1424 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 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 , but it may also refer to a simple , 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 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 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 () 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 , 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)).

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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 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 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 , 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 ) 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 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 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 ), 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. Instead, their interest in re-thinking religion turns primarily on the concept of “faith.” 6 This approach is often taken in the Anglo-Saxon—mainly British—tradition; see, for instance, Soskice (1985), Hebblethwaite (1988), Swinburne (1996), and Wolterstorff (1999). 7 This view is characteristic of the comparative, transatlantic tradition; see, for instance, Godlove (1989), Frankenberry and Penner (1999), Davis (2007), and Engler and Gardiner (2010). What they share is a profound foothold in the of Davidson (as explained in Gardiner’s introduction to this volume), which is also brought out in the other entries to this volume. However, in Gardiner’s entry to this volume), this “ground-rule” is developed in a new and more nuanced way. 8 If I am not mistaken, Davis comes close to making the same point (this volume p. 395), but nevertheless doesn’t seem to draw the pragmatic consequence that, in my view, follows from it.

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I’m not sure that Terry Godlove, who nevertheless takes pains to balance the “verificationist” and “pragmatic” stance in Davidson’s account of meaning (this volume), would draw a similar conclusion, for if Wittgenstein’s point about be- havior as a “system of reference” is all that is meant by truth “intrinsically veridical,” I am inclined to think that the abstracting level of a semantic theory obscures rather than clarifies its actual implications in social life. Another possibility of understanding what truth means in a religious context (bypassing for now the question of translation) is to regard its con- ceptual implications as something different from—or at least not reducible to—claims. A certain utterance may seem to imply a claim or may, at least, be accompanied by a supporting claim when challenged by opposing claims, but it may also, in ordinary uses, have other functions, such as expressing a feeling, repeating the sound of holy words, or simply being used as the proper words in some context. Examples, taken from prayers, could be: “Allahu akbar” (Allah is the greatest) or “Hail Mary, full of grace”. My point is that the expression of belief may have many other functions than stating something to be true. The focus on truth-claims, pervading many if not most philosophical and theoreti- cal studies of religion, has to be pragmatically qualified according to the con- crete situational context. I think that philosopher of religion Jessica Frazier makes a very good point in this respect worth quoting in full:

In part, the problem is that the phenomenon we want to speak of when we talk about belief is subtle and can only be obliquely observed, making a very poor of study. It is difficult to identify the vast but elusive differences between a linguist analyzing the semantic content of the sen- tence ‘Christ is the immortal son of , begotten not created,’ an agnos- tic repeating it with mystified incredulity, Don Cupitt reciting it in church as an edifying (but actually false) ethical rhetoric, Rudolph Bultmann cit- ing it as the formula for an irreducible existential truth about the human condition, a biblical exegete mining it for symbolic meanings, a negative theologian who states it with firm faith, affirming he knows not what, and a believer for whom it is no less a historical and transhistorical truth than London is in England, and that one plus one is two. Frazier 2009: 5-6

Thus, she logically concludes: “Questions are begged about the nature of our truth assertions in different discursive contexts, about their foundations, weak or strong, and about the nature of the state of ‘untruth’ against which they are defined” (Frazier 2009: 6). The foreseeable reaction from those who subscribe to a theoretical semantics of truth might be that these examples are nothing

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” 343 but so many instances of propositional attitudes. However, in my opinion, that would be an unfortunate attempt to explain away, or at least subordinate, a pragmatic level to a semantic one. It buys into the (implicit) claim that the concrete situation only has methodological significance (I refer the reader to Gardiner’s emphasis on concrete performances, e.g. this volume p. 416), where- as I am inclined to think it rather lies at the very heart of the matter. The key word in this approach to truth is, of course, “use,” constituting the pragmatic point of view in light of which I suggest a religious notion of truth should be appreciated. It goes without saying, however, that it conflicts with a religious self-understanding. In religion, truth is out there. In pragmatics truth is perspectival, simply a matter of how “truth” can be used. The accusation of an implicit often raised against such a view may not be easily refuted, but rather dismissed as being beside the point. Pragmatism should not be appreciated as an but rather as a form of investigation. Thus, claim- ing that truth is not a predicate of but of a proposition should be seen as simply pertaining to the function of “truth” as a term. A pragmatic view may, in this respect, mean at least two things: 1) taking a relaxed attitude to the seman- tic content of “truth” (or “true”) by looking, first of all, at its concrete usefulness in communication as well as at its practical ramifications, or 2) taking some semantic restrictions of the use of “truth” (and “true”) into account while at same detecting the concrete ways in which actual propositions are quali- fied as being true. Whereas the first approach may be criticized for being rela- tivistic, the second may be criticized for wanting to have it both ways. Inasmuch as I still find the latter of the two options to be the more promising, the first question that needs to be answered is whether or not it is possible to have a concept of truth that takes semantic as well as pragmatic aspects into account. I will initially tackle this challenge by simply claiming that both imply our ac- tual understanding of concepts. Even if I turn the meaning of a concept on its head, for instance—as in irony—or stretch it almost beyond recognition—say in a poem—these uses of the concept wouldn’t communicate anything if it didn’t have a semantic anchorage of normal use. The question is, of course, what normal use implies. One way of answering this question would be to look at the conditions of translatability. Words are always translated in context, that is, by way of propositions, whether implied or not. If a sufficient familiarity with another language (as, for instance, by way of ongoing dialogue) calls us to translate a certain concept from another natural language by our own concept (and term) of truth, it means that both languages share an anchorage of normal use. It does not mean, however, that the range of semantic implications remains identical from one discursive context to the other. We may, for instance, be

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 30 (2018)Downloaded 338-356 from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:35:23AM via free access 344 Albinus more or less accustomed to a certain range of uses in our own culture accord- ing to which “is true” is either:

1. the predicate of a proposition which can be objectively justified, 2. the predicate of a sentence which is self-evident according to its own implicit premises (as, for instance, [it is true that] 2 + 2 = 4), 3. the evaluative predicate of a proposition which is not externally confirm- able, either because a. it is uncontroversial (as, for instance, “[it is true that] it is nice weather today” or “[It is true that] I don’t like hurricanes”), or because b. it expresses an existential attitude or personal standing (as, for instance, this is the truth of my life, or, this seems true to me) and, finally, 4. the predicate of propositions expressing faith (such as “[truly] we will atone for our sins”).

In the last case, calling this statement true will be understood unanimously as being an article of faith. Nevertheless, it is likely to be grasped differently depending on the context and, even more so, on the addressees. For some, it might mere imply something that is true for the speaker (and others of the same faith) while for others (of this faith) it might imply something that is true on its own. I don’t think it helps the matter very much to speak about a metaphorical use of “true” in this case. Actually, the various uses of “true” may slide inconspicuously from the one to the other. We may agree, for instance, that it is a confirmed truth—a known fact, as we might say—that people occasionally dream about deceased persons (and, by extrapolation, that any- one may happen to dream about a deceased person). However, it is confirmed in a rather special way, evading any form of ostension and having only indi- vidual memories as (a kind of) empirical data. It therefore leans towards the category of an uncontentious proposition. These may, however, be interpreted differently, and a controversial article of faith may suddenly appear from their mold (as in: “I take this nice weather to be a gift from God” or “I thank my creator that I am alive,” though such exclamations need not be controversial).9

9 As Wittgenstein allegedly said in class: “Suppose that some believed in the Last Judgment, and I don’t, does this mean that I believe the opposite to him, just that there won’t be such a thing? I would say: ‘not at all, or not always’ ” (1970: 53). From quite another point of view, the Swedish philosopher of religion Anders Jeffner makes a distinction between the problematic and the unproblematic use of religious performatives, the latter ones being those that merely express an attitude (or agreement about a purely institutional status), and therefore doesn’t violate empirical correctness-conditions (1972: 90-104).

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Thus, the concept of truth obviously applies differently to statements such as: 1) “[it is true that] some people have reported dreams about dead people,” 2) “[it is true that] I remember dreaming about my deceased grandfather,” 3) “[it is true that] sleeping people may happen to dream about dead people,” or 4) “[it is true that] dead people which appear in dreams are, in fact, ghosts of the deceased.” Taken as an article of faith, the last proposition appears to disclose an entirely different implication of “is true” than the others, but how different is it after all? In the first three propositions, nothing seems to violate the ontology implicating an empirical justification of claiming something to be true: “Dead people” (including a “deceased grandfather”) need not refer to anything but living people’s memory images, revoked by the mental process of dreaming, whereas in the last proposition this uncontroversial possibility is ruled out. A rupture is felt, therefore, between the first three truth-implica- tions and the last one, whereas in fact no objective observability was implied in the second and third proposition. Even so, I venture to say that the actual rupture between the first and the three latter sentences may seem less salient to us in our culture. It seems that the use of concepts is implicated with un- derlying conceptions that may or may not be spelled out. In , there- fore, a translation may get a given concept right, but still miss the underlying conception.10 Even the best translation, reaching beyond mere literacy, may as a matter of fact evoke associations in the reader that belong to another range of meanings (a semantic stretch as Mary Hesse would say) than the one implied by, or underlying, the text itself. It would not be hard to imagine that “truth” could be used as qualifying a statement such as “he is asleep right now” or “the chief is dead” in a culture, where it could also be used to qualify the reality of ghosts. The question is, however, whether the semantic string of is the same as it would be in a cultural conception of truth that has abandoned the belief in ghosts on account of the lack of empirical evidence?

3 Truth Without Error?

As Wittgenstein has pointed out in his remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, we normally associate a truth-predicate with a procedure that prevents us from

10 As for the distinction between concept and conception, see Herbert Kögler (1999, 165-6), who, in line with (1981: 177), points out that although successful interpreta- tion and communication require basic concepts that both parts have in common, they do not necessarily entail shared conceptions.

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 30 (2018)Downloaded 338-356 from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:35:23AM via free access 346 Albinus being in error (1993: 119).11 For the same reason, Frazer is wrong to regard magic as being an instance of pseudo-science, implying that it expresses a mistake. Inasmuch as myth and magic don’t “set forth a theory” (119), they are not, strict- ly speaking, fallible. The criteria of distinguishing true from false are absent. If truth was simply a matter of propositional claims to truth in both cul- tures, it would imply that the ghost-believing culture could be wrong accord- ing to their own standards. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. One might say that the belief in ghosts is regarded as true in an identifying sense similar to the claim that 2+2=4. But in fact, to state that 2+2=4 is not a claim at all. It is a mathematical rule that may be used in some claim (as, for instance, if a shopkeeper counts the apples in my shopping bag and claims that there are 9, whereas I I took 8 at a discount price). Fundamental beliefs in ghosts, witchcraft, communicating ancestors, and the like seem to have a similar ground-rule character. To hold that the belief in ghosts or in witchcraft is a truth-claim of a certain kind is, by implication, to hold that there are other, and more fundamental, standards according to which this claim could be revealed as false. But such a perspective may be guilty of importing those standards from a more or less scientific perspective pertaining to external truth-conditions which are, in fact, irrelevant to the beliefs in ques- tion (Winch 1999: 352-356). Does this not imply, then, that we should abstain from speaking about truth in a semantic context that precludes extra-linguistic means of rectification? No, not necessarily (though perhaps sometimes, bear- ing Wittgenstein’s point in ). If, by analogy (bearing the limitations of any such comparison in mind), we find it meaningful to confer the predicate “is true” on a mathematical statement such as “2+2=4” (or any other a priori statement), we are, in fact, already ac- customed to use the concept in a way that doesn’t involve a claim (let alone a theory). In other words, we should be open to the possibility of locating words translatable as “truth” (in a broad conceptual sense) in an alien language with- out necessarily finding criteria for verification; that is, without finding a method for distinguishing between “true” and “false.” What we do find is a principle of accordance buried in the self- of divine truth. I shall return to this below. However, it is not as if we don’t come across methods of verification in reli- gion. In fact, we can point to plenty of instances, although we may easily agree that they belong to the internal logic of a symbolic system. In Medieval Europe, it was customary, as is well known, to throw women accused of witchcraft into

11 The point seems to be borrowed specifically from , Nichomachean Ethics, 1154a22- 26, but is generally accepted as a pragmatic principle. It is made, for instance, by James (1909: 202-203) as well as Davidson (according to Davis (this volume, p. 382)).

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” 347 the water with their hands and feet tied. Accordingly, their innocence was es- tablished in their drowning. What appears to be an empirical reference is, of course, nothing but a symbolic one. As for another example, one might refer to The Book of Job, where Job’s opposition to the authority of Yahweh is met with a divine rebuke: “Who is this that darkeneth [my] counsel by words without ?” (38:2). Job is, in other words, accused by Yahweh of being ignorant of the truth, but as Peter Winch points out:

[T]his does not, of course, mean that Job has made any sort of theoretical mistake, which could be put right, perhaps, by means of an experiment. God’s reality is certainly independent of what any man may care to think, but what that reality amounts to can only be seen from religious tradition in which the concept of God is used, and this use is very unlike the use of scientific concepts, say of theoretical entities. 1999: 346

We even find the method of true-false distinction in modern , as when Jon Polkinghorne compares theology with natural science inasmuch as the former is likewise inclined to correct its claims on foundational evidence, only that the ground of this evidence is not physical nature, but Scripture (2007: 2). To offer yet another example: A slide towards a psychological entitlement to believe in the voice of God is found in Nicholas Wolterstorff, who adopts the questionable power of an argument via negativa by referring to a personal acquaintance, Virginia, who allegedly had no empirically supported reason to believe that she was delusional when she was addressed by an otherwordly voice (1999: 277-80). Or one may refer to the Indian scholar S. Radhakrishnan, who leans towards the argument of empirical verification, yet on an entirely religious frame of interpretation:

The authority of scripture, the traditions of the Church, or the casuistries of schoolmen who proclaim but do not prove, may not carry conviction to many of us who are the children of science and reason, but we must submit to the fact of spiritual , which is primary and positive. 1974: 23

What we are dealing with here are instances of religious truth-claims which appear to toe the line of an empirically testifiable concept of truth, although they follow other grammatical rules (in Wittgenstein’s sense) than—let’s say most—scientific statements. For this reason, we may be inclined to regard

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 30 (2018)Downloaded 338-356 from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:35:23AM via free access 348 Albinus them as invalid according to our accustomed, and even pre-theoretical, stan- dards of verification. However, it would be a severe mistake to regard all reli- gious propositions, utterances, expressions, or ritual acts (whether repetitive or interventional), as being reducible to, or explainable from, such procedures. When Rappaport, for instance, refers to the Dance Rituals of the Andaman Islanders (1999: 220-226), they may relate to certain beliefs held among them, but not necessarily to any method of justification. The propositional content of beliefs, which may or may not be concealed somewhere in the motivation for engaging in the dance ritual, is of no obvious importance in the actual com- muning of the participants. The communing, which forms an essential part of the religious cult, is effected by song and dance, not by any immediate truth- content. In fact, this is an old view in the Study of Religion and voiced, for instance, in 1909 by R.R. Marett to whom “savage religion is something not so much thought out as danced out” (1909: xxxi). But why engage in the ritual at all, one might ask, if there is no underlying commitment to something that is held to be true? Inasmuch as a religious prac- tice is carried out by rational beings, we are entitled to expect that some obli- gating beliefs be attributed to it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even begin to know how to translate, let alone interpret, it. If I am not mistaken, this is the premise that informs the semantic analytics of Gardiner’s entry (this volume). I would agree that it might be possible to tease out such underlying commitments of a rational nature, but I would very much doubt that these would make us any the wiser about the ritual inclinations as such. “The characteristic feature of ritualistic action,” Wittgenstein avers, “is not at all a view, an opinion, whether true or false, although an opinion—a belief—can itself be ritualistic or part of a rite” (1993: 129). In fact, provocatively as it may sound, we should not rule out the affinity of our ritual performances with that of animal behavior. Although we are reflective beings, we are still instinctually predisposed in many of our doings. We may certainly not draw this impression from some repetitive ritu- als alone, but just as well from, say, instances of rivalry or mutual praise among university professors. “One could almost say that man is a ceremonial animal,” Wittgenstein’s finds himself musing while trying to fathom the depth of a mag- ical practice (129). To put matters differently: I consider it a trivial fact that every human lan- guage harbors a propositional language; otherwise, there would be no commu- nication about physical or social reality. It is also beyond doubt, however, that references are made all the time to entities for which there is no evidence but a symbolic one. In some , this symbolization amounts to a dogmatic and confessional commitment to truth; in others, the concept of truth seems to play an entirely different role as, for instance, among the Aztecs for whom

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“[t]he truth of divine orders as well as divine beings is established in ritual” (Rappaport 1999: 345; my emphasis). The question is whether it is, per definition, an explicit or implied concept of truth that is believed to explain rituals and symbolization, or whether it could also be the other way around?12 Would it be impossible to imagine that ritual acts interrelate with mythical notions in a way that make them true, not because of any external criteria, but rather because of the interaction between instinctual behavior, group dynamics, and symbolic systems? If this is con- ceivable inasmuch as nothing, for instance, seems to speak against it in Davis’ Dogon-example (this volume pp. 382-390), the ensuing notion of reality would create rather than reflect the order of things. That this symbolic order has to be in overall accordance with the undertakings of daily life doesn’t imply that its meaning is inferred from these activities, but only that it is referable to them. As Roy Rappaport points out, what is true in a mythical and ritual context does not apply to contingent matters or rectifiable statements, but rather to the and divine nature of things. “Ultimate Sacred Postulates,” he says, rather “designate the ‘Truth of Things’, the absolute truth of that which simply is, than it does the ‘truth of thought’ or of expressions” (1999: 294). However, this distinction between verity, on the one hand, and veracity as a of utterances, on the other, which Rappaport brings to bear on the difference between religious and empirical truth, is only one side of the matter. More precisely, a concept of truth that implies acceptance “beyond question” (295) pertains to the form as well as to the content of an utterance communicated on the premise of this principle.13 My point is that this is exactly what makes the utterance part of a religious discourse. Contrary to the external criteria that make people agree on the truth of facts, the kind of truth that is associ- ated with the divine is built into a symbolic system without alternative (296). Hence, Rappaport refers to the meaning of “divine truth” in relation to a ritual practice, where “error” or “falsity” is clearly irrelevant (297-312; 344-6), and he translates the Nahuatl concept of nelli as “the absolute and eternal truth of things” (301).14 This allegedly makes a given implication of falsehood, imposed by our concept of truth, non-existent or at least insignificant. The same goes for the Sanscrit satya (usually translated as “truth”) typically in the sense of

12 This also seems to be Schilbrack’s point (2014: 36). 13 This is also the point of Walter Benjamin’s aesthetic concept of truth as that which is con- tained in the form of its own “representation” (Darstellung) (Benjamin 1978: 12), though he also distinguishes truth from semblance in the context of modern art (Benjamin 1996: 350). 14 See also León Portilla (1963: 73).

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 30 (2018)Downloaded 338-356 from Brill.com09/30/2021 06:35:23AM via free access 350 Albinus a benevolence that pervades the universe. Thus, satya reflects or expresses “being”—sat—as such, the constancy behind and beyond all distinctions and changes.15 Although an alternative is conceptually implied (i.e., as antonym), it is not and cannot be realized in any way, since, as Śaṅkara is quoted for saying: “Reality is never destroyed and unreality is never born” (2002: #103). More surprisingly perhaps, we find a comparable concept of truth as an- other word for the self-expression of Being in the philosophy of . His concept of truth as undisguised Being or “unconcealment” (Unverborgenheit, (1993: §44.b)), which he wrings, etymologically, from the Greek alētheia allegedly has an esoteric, or religious, ring to it (Albinus 2016: 98-113; 169-175). Thus, he finds the conventional understanding of truth as a qualification of judgments to be secondary, and the “ of Being” (das Wesen des Seins) to be the primary sense of truth (for instance, Heidegger 2004: 190; 2014: 51-55). Without going into this matter here, I am inclined to think that it reveals something quite significant (not only philosophically, but also politi- cally) about Heidegger’s thinking that instead of appealing to a propositional, and rectifiable, concept of truth, it rather claims it by listening obediently to the “voice of Being” (1958: 89). There is no room left for error in any ordinary sense. The accordance between Truth and Being is tautological. Something similar may be at work in a mythical or religious world-view, inasmuch as the , for instance, are not referred to in light of the world, but the world is referred to in light of the gods. Truth and divine being are one and the same.

4 Truth as Subject Rather than Predicate

When the religious, or mythical, concept of truth stands as synonymous with divine reality, it makes rather for the subject than the predicate of a sentence. Concepts such as nelli or satya (as well as alētheia in Heidegger’s rendering) are believed to constitute the source behind various statements rather than being a property of their actual proposition.16 Indeed, they are manifested in various

15 As in the Upaniṣad: “The existent, the real, the true (satyan) was this in the beginning” (Müller 1962: xvii). 16 Davis’ hypothetical example of the exclamation “I see God’s handiwork in that” (this vol- ume, p. 393) does indeed work as a predication of natural beauty according to belief. In a symbolic system, however, where “God’s handiwork” is a given, or has a grounding, centripetal semantic force, so to speak, it would no longer make sense to say “I see God’s handiwork in that” other than by meaning: “Now I personally see what everyone already knows, namely that everything is God’s handiwork.” The same goes for Godlove’s Kantian

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” 351 forms of expressions, but not necessarily with propositions being the primary ones. Even when truth, speaking as subject, does take a propositional form, its predication is often expressed and posited by this very subject alone. One might, for example, think of Jesus, represented as saying “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6), and Shiva represented (in the Linga Purana) as saying “I am the Truth itself” (Ananda 2013: 16).17 In other words: The truth speaks rather than is spoken about. This may seem a strained “claim”—a far- fetched truth, as it were—to a scientifically inclined mind, but it is perhaps not as unfamiliar to our own accustomed ways of using the concept as it might seem at a first glance. One may say, for instance, that logical truth works in a comparable fashion in the formal science of mathematics. To say, redundantly, that “it is true that 4 4 equals 16” apparently makes “true” a predicate to “it,” but “it” is nothing but “4 times 4 equals 16,” which, in turn, is nothing but that which is “true.” Yet, wherever the premises for meaningful sentences are given—maybe even exhausted—by a system of symbols, any one of these sen- tences is true according to the systematic, i.e. internal, frames of meaning. If this does not surprise us in mathematics, why should it surprise us in religion? Both systems of meaning are supposed (at least for some parts) to relate to the world, yet none of them are dependent on external rectification (though, of course, anyone who might still hold John Stuart Mill’s positivistic notion of mathematics would disagree). Thus, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz expressed his philosophy of mathematics by defining logical truth, as against empirical truth, to be the inferential coincidence of subject and predicate.18 Structurally, if not existentially, I venture to claim that there is a non-trivial resemblance between believing in the truth of mathematics and believing in the truth of a mythical world-view.19

example, “the idea of a being which includes in itself all reality,” (Godlove 2014: 158-159) since, as Davis rightly notes along with Godlove himself, such an idea cannot “pick out a feature of the world” (Godlove 2014: 159, Davis this volume p. 393) inasmuch as it already is the world. 17 As a counterpart to the Christian dogma, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are furthermore con- ceived as a trinity (trimūrti, “three forms”) in Hinduism. 18 In Leibniz’ own words: “Praedicatum inest subjecto; otherwise I do not know what truth is” (1969, 337). This principle is known in philosophy as the PIN principle. 19 ’s Timaeus (35B; 53A) could be held forth as an example where the two actually come together. I am not arguing that we need to regard mathematical sentences as true in any other sense than making up a system of inferential premises put to use in various calcula- tions, but Timaeus, the protagonist of Plato’s dialogue, refers to numbers as the elements of the world and mathematical relations as the very backbone of reality. He admit to be speaking about the genesis of the world, not by way of true insight (logos), but in merely

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Having said that, I would not want to settle with a dualism between external and internal criteria for speaking about truth, although the distinction undeni- ably suggests itself when we juxtapose scientific and mythical discourse. The point is rather that our notion of reality is located flexibly in the interval be- tween different uses of “truth.” The correspondence theory of truth, adopted for instance by logical empiri- cism, is typically traced back to Plato (Cratylus 385b2; The Sophist 263b) and, perhaps more famously, to Aristotle whose logical rule of non-contradiction constitutes the pillar of his concept of truth.20 In short, a proposition is true if it is in accordance with reality (Categories 14b14-15). For Aristotle, this further im- plies accordance (homoiosis) between and things (De Interpretatione 16a7-8). This definition is repeated, as is well-known, by for whom truth is a result of the mind being in proportion with the things: veri- tas est adaequatio intellectus et rei. It is noteworthy that the correspondence between knowledge and things grammatically implies a symmetrical relation. However, things do not necessarily correspond with human knowledge, which may be in error, but with the intellect of God. Thus, the things of the world are a measure of truth only insofar as they are in accordance with the thoughts of God. A religious interpretation of veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei, for which Thomas is an influential representative, therefore implies that “true” is not merely a freestanding predicate used to qualify human cognition; rather, “true” is the order of things as they “speak” to us through God.21

5 Conclusion

In this article, I have opted for viewing the concept of truth from a pragmatic point of view. Adopting such a view may teach us not to bring all truth-con- ceptions, or uses of the truth-concept, on the common denominator of claims

the form of a likely story (eikos muthos, 29D), which, of course, places him at some dis- tance to traditional story telling. 20 Thus, in his he states that “[t]o 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” (1011b25). Likewise, in Categories (12b11, 14b14), he defines a statement as true if it paral- lels the logical structure of the things to which it refers, a definition that also informs Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). 21 A most direct expression of this is found in various schools of Vedānta philosophy where the inner nature of all things is revealed through The Lord, Vishnu (Doniger 2015).

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” 353 implying the alternative of error (or fallibility). Rather, we may recognize over- lapping stretches of meaning that allows us to translate different underlying conceptions of truth by the same overall concept. I stick to the pragmatic no- tion that in order to understand the concept of truth one must see how it is used, what language users do with it. But usefulness alone does not explain the semantic implications of truth. The conception of something being true is a conception of something being either formally consistent or, more inter- estingly, a semantic manifestation of reality. To reduce both to a mere “habit of action,” as , for instance, is inclined to do (1997: 84), is a trivialization.22 The varieties of truth seem to have a semantic core in reflect- ing the entrenchments of the real, or as we might say: realizations of the real. In a deeper sense, the meaning of truth as a process of realization—in the double sense of grasping and making-real—is ever present insofar as seman- tics and pragmatics are inextricably linked. Only an inadequate understanding of truth sees it as a stamp of proposi- tional representation. The meaning potentials of “truth” belong to a way of life, reflected in our use of language: In science “truth” predicates the ideal of knowledge, the goal of investigative efforts. In religion, broadly speaking, we rather find the concept of truth to be implying the frame of things, all things, which means that it cannot be found—or confirmed—by external means. Rather one is already caught in the web of truth, as it were. In science, the world speaks through the ideal order of facts; in religion truth speaks through the ideal order of the divine. “True,” as well as “truth,” is generally regarded as predicative of propositions, but this implies a split between language and reality that, at least in certain respects, runs counter to the self-understanding of a mythical or religious world-view, where truth is simply the inner nature of everything. I may, from my point of view, form a (verifiable and falsifiable) proposition claiming that in this case the concept of truth attains the character and position of the gram- matical subject, but in the religious world-view that would be redundant. It is already implied in the actual use of the concept. And when all is said and done, it becomes clear that “truth” is always circular, that it has no independent mea- sure, but comes with a force that expresses our manifestations of the real.

22 See also Davis (this volume, p. 394). I agree with Davis’ point.

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