Prepared by Dr.

Peter
Vardy, Vice-Principal,
Heythrop College,
University of London

THE PROBLEM OF
TRUTH IN WORLD
RELIGIONS

The Problem
There are so many religions. All claim
truth.
Some claim that only they have the truth
whilst almost all claim that they have more
truth than any other group.
So much violence has been done in the
name of religion and there is often little
understanding of other religions by
adherence to any one form of religious
belief.
It is easy to see why some dismiss all
religious truth claims..

This Powerpoint presentation seeks to

chart the main ways of understanding
truth claims in different world
religions.
It does so from a rational, philosophic
basis and without seeking to make
particular truth claims for any religion.
Rather, it seeks to explain what it
might mean to claim that a particular
set of religious beliefs are true.

APPROACHES TO TRUTH
(1) REALISM

REALISM uses a Correspondence theory of

truth. This maintains that a statement is true if
it corresponds to the state of affairs to which
it refers.
Thus There is a cat on the mat is true iff (this
means if and only if) there is a cat and the cat
sits on the mat.
Realists maintain BIVALENCE this means that
a statement is EITHER true OR false depending
on whether or not it corresponds to the state of
affairs to which it refers.
NOTE that truth does not depend on evidence or
proof but rather on the state of affairs to
which correspondence is claimed

MOST RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE

REALISTS!

They maintain that religious claims are true

because they correspond.
Thus Muslims claim that it is true that the Holy
Quran was dictated to the Prophet by the
Archangel.
Jews claim that it is true that Moses led the
people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt
Christians claim that it is true that Jesus rose
from the dead after being crucified.
Buddhists claim that it is true that the Buddha
found enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.
..and they claim that these are true because
they correspond to the events they describe.

THE PROBLEM
The problem is that many religious claims
conflict:
Thus Christians claim Jesus is the son of God
and the second person of the Trinity; that he
died on the cross and rose again.
Muslims claim that God is one, that Jesus was an
ordinary human being, albeit a prophet and that
he did not die on the cross.
It is impossible to hold that both these claims
are true in a realist sense.
This leads to the view that one religion is true
and another is false as they both cannot be
literally true.

UNDERPINNING OF TRUTH CLAIMS

REALIST CLAIMS are supported by
two approaches which seek to justify
or underpin the claim that religious
truth is based on reference:
NATURAL THEOLOGY (which uses
reason to justify the truth claims
of religion)
REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY (which
relies on revelation to justify truth
claims)

Underpinning of truth claims (1):

NATURAL AND REVEALED THEOLOGY
Natural Theology claims that it is possible to establish
that God exists is true using human reason alone (e.g.
the Cosmological, Moral and Design arguments for the
existence of God).
Revealed Theology is the counterpart of Natural
Theology and goes further, but nothing in Revealed
Theology contradicts Natural Theology.
The Problem is that most philosophers consider that
many of the assumptions underlying the arguments for
the existence of God (Natural Theology) are highly
debatable. They tend to be accepted by believers and
not be non-believers so they cannot establish Gods
existence unless one already believes.
Reason, therefore does not seem able to underwrite
religious truth claims.

Underpinning of truth claims (2):

REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY
This rejects the use of human reason as a basis
for faith as, since the Fall, human reason is
considered to be fallen
It therefore relies on appeal to revelation.
God is held to speak to believers through the
pages of the Bible and directly in prayer.
Belief in God requires no justification believers
have a properly ordered noetic structure and
they see the world correctly as they have been
given the Grace to do so.
The problem is in deciding which revelation
should be accepted.

THE PROBLEM FOR THE REALIST

Those who wish to maintain a realist claim
to truth in religion are faced by the
problem that both reason and revelation
are problematic in determining the truth
of religious claims.
Reason does not seem to succeed and
there is no way of deciding which of the
many revelations to accept.
This difficulty has given rise to an
alternative way of understanding religious
truth claims

AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO TRUTH

NON-REALISM

Non-realists point out that there is no way of

establishing reference and that realists claims to truth
therefore fail.
They, therefore, reject claims to reference and
instead use a COHERENCE theory of truth.

This maintains that statements are true

because they cohere or fit in with other true
statements within a particular form of life.

In non-realist terms, each major religion can be

regarded as a form of life, although form of life can
be more narrowly defined as well for instance Hasidic
Judaism can be a distinct form of life.
One form of life can overlap others

Some forms of life closely overlap

- for instance

The differences between these are minor and

there is very substantial overlap.

ORTHODOX JUDAISM
HASIDIC
JUDAISMJUDAISM
REFORMED
JUDAISM
CONSERVATIVE

OTHER FORMS OF LIFE ARE FURTHER APART

e.g. the three monotheistic religions

These share
belief in one
God but
JUDAISM CHRISTIANITY differ on
significant
details. The
area of
overlap is
considerable
ISLAM
but so are
the
differences.

NON-REALISM IN RELIGION

Non-realists claim that truth depends on the

Form of Life of the believers. Thus within
Islam, it is true that the Holy Quran is the
word of God. Within Christianity this is false.
Within Islam it is true that a man may have four
wives. Within Christianity and Judaism it is true
that a man may only have one wife.

Such truth claims ARE NOT HELD TO

CONFLICT as what is true in one form of
life may be false in another. There is no
absolute truth on the non-realist view.
Truth entirely depends on the Form of
Life.

NON-REALISM
Maintains that religious truths are internal to
the language game and form of life of the
religious believer.
Thus Islamic truths are contained within the
Islamic form of life and, within this form of
life, no justification is required.
Theology is the grammar of belief and the
theologian is the guardian of grammar.
Education is vital, as each religious group wishes
to inculcate children into the truth of their own
story and resist any attempts to give equal
access to other stories.

The Priest as the Guardian of Grammar

Thus Gareth Moore OP says People do not
discover religious truths, they make them. He
says that the priest and the Catholic
Magisterium are the guardian of grammar in
that they ensure that their flock only uses
language correctly according to the rules of the
group.
The function of Systematic Theology is to guard
what may and may not be said this is what
orthodoxy is. It is saying what is acceptable to
the community.
Truth is not what is arrived at by independent
enquiry, it is what is accepted within the form
of life of the believing community.

EXTRACTS FROM GARETH MOORE O.P.

...in religion there is a distinction between
grounds and evidence.... That the pope says
contraception is wrong is not EVIDENCE that it
is wrong; but for a Catholic or mainstream
Christian it is certainly grounds for believing it
is wrong."
"... in all fields a large importance is given to
AUTHORITY... In religion, what is said and
done is not to be in conformity with what is
established by impartial enquiry, by going and
looking at how things are, by experimenting.
Rather is it to be conformable to what is
AUTHORITATIVELY SAID."

EXTRACTS FROM GARETH MOORE O.P. 2

"...it is a feature of religion that people CORRECT each
other in religious matters, or at least try to. Those
people with a more authoritative voice, the leaders,
correct the followers.. "
Now he has a wrong
opinion. He has to be corrected, not in the sense of
having his mistake pointed out to him... but in the
sense of being persuaded to orthodoxy, won from his
error. He has to be taught what is the right thing to
say. ....
"In the end the argument of the orthodox may have to
come down to saying, 'This just is what the Christian
faith is. This is what is believed and is to be believed.
Believe this, not that'. It is not that no other position
is reasonably tenable, but that no other opinion IS TO
BE HELD." (Gareth Moore Believing in God p. 32).

DON CUPITT

Don Cupitt is a leading Non-Realist he is an Anglican

priest from Cambridge University and his book Taking
Leave of God and the Sea of Faith movement he
founded as attracted many priests and teachers.
Don Cupitt sees Christianity as a constructed story a
means of giving meaning to ones life in a meaningless
universe.
We huddle round the fire of language and create
meaning for ourselves and he says that he is a
Christian priest because he sees his task as helping
people to find a meaning in their lives.
He accepts that the meaning is a construct, but we live
by the truth of fictitious stories stories that do not
refer to the events they describe but have come to
have a particular status within certain communities
Thus in Islam, the Ouran was not actually dictated by
the Archangel but it has come to have a particular
place within the form of life of Islam..

NON-REALISTS AND STORY

Non-realists see religious truths as being
constructed. Religions, they claim, are based on
stories by which people live and which have been
built up over the centuries. Through these
stories, communities are able to make sense of
their lives.

Religious truths, they claim, are not

discovered, they are made. (This is the final
sentence in the book by Fr. Gareth Moore OP)

Within each community, certain claims are true

and these same claims are false in other
communities. Truth depends on the story each
community lives.

Non-Realisms strengths & weaknesses

Non-realism enables each religion to claim truth and yet
not to contradict other religions which have their own
truths.
Non-realism explains how a religious story is built up
over the centuries and the development of doctrine. For
instance, in the early centuries of Christianity the
Church, through a series of Councils, refined the Creeds
and decided what was and was not correct belief.
Non-realism explains the importance of education as
each community seeks to educate its young into its own
traditions.
BUT it is not faithful to what most people actually
believe about their religion!! Most people are realists and
maintain that if other religious groups contradict their
own truth claims, these other groups are wrong.

THE ALTERNATIVES
The alternatives include:

Non-realism: To claim that each religion is true

within its own community and to deny that there
is any absolute truth.
Realism 1: to claim that there is one religion
that has absolutely truth and that others are
false if they disagree.
Realism 2: to main that behind all religions is a
single truth which is filtered by the different
perspectives of each religion.
The last is a popular view, but the content of
such a background truth might be very limited
if it is to bring together Islam, Buddhism,
Judaism, Christianity, etc..

NO EASY ANSWERS

There are no easy answers but the issue of

truth underlies all religious claims
Each community emphasises education and seeks
to form its young people in its own traditions.
If one is born in Iran one will probably be a
Muslim, if in Italy a Catholic, if in parts of
India a Hindu, if in Burma a Buddhist
Each religion will claim truth and each community
will seek to live by the truths of its own story
but the question of the meaning of the claim to
truth will possibly be the most important
religious question in the new millennium.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Realists will still claim that EITHER it is true
OR it is false that there is a God.
EITHER it is true OR it is false that Jesus
rose from the dead.
In other words, many will continue to insist on
a realist claim, even though they may accept
that there is no way of establishing the truth
of such a claim.
HUMILITY, may, therefore, be required by
those who insist on the truth of their own
religious claims as the possibility of being
wrong always exists (at least if one is a realist!!).