Sacred Documents, Doctrines and Debates

Introduction

It seems to me that all debate transpires, directly or indirectly, around the notion of truth. At the bottom of all worldviews is the proponent’s sense that she/he holds the truth of the matter. This appears to make sense in that few rational people would continue to hold to a position that they believed to be false or untrue. We desire insight into fundamental truths that, when taken together, comprise a worldview that accounts for our personal experience and the tradition of our culture. Presented with a system of truths that are coherent, that account for our experience and our tradition, and that seem to hang together – we conclude that we hold the fact of the matter. This concept of truth is evident in all social debate, but is particularly observable in religion.
I hope to show in the following discussion that sacred, religious, writings contain the truth of each separate doctrine as perceived by the adherents. That, try as we might, we ultimately reach a point where objective assessment of these writings fails us in discerning the truth of the matter. Further, I will attempt to show that we are as equally frustrated in attempting to devise an approach that allows all legitimate sacred writings to exist as different perspectives on the same truth. Central to my thesis is the concept of an existential assessment and a spiritual assessment. The existential assessment is grounded in historical fact – with no further meaning then that an event, by all accounts, is likely to have happened as recorded in these writings. The spiritual assessment, however, lends meaning to the event. By way of illustration, the terrorist attack in New York on September 11th, 2001 happened – it is documented. The meaning of that attack, though, continues to be debated globally, perhaps with a variety of different meanings in conflict with each other. Of necessity I must discuss some preliminary points that provide structure to my thesis.

Truth

If a system of fundamental truth underpins our religious worldview, why are so many disparate religious worldviews expressed by so many different people? Said differently, are there that many truths? The issue is even more problematic than “disparate” represents. In many instances the precepts of one religion, if true, invalidate the precepts of other religions. If Judaism is correct, for example, the Christian doctrine is completely false. As well, if Buddhism has it right, the Abrahamic or other theistic religions are wasting their time. Based on the fact of these conflicts, we might echo the exchange between Pilate and Jesus, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’”[1] It seems to be a logical consequence that not all of these conflicting religions can be true, all at the same time in any event. In other words, somebody’s knowledge of the truth is suspect.
Thomas Paine (of American history acclaim), an unlikely character to turn to for philosophical reference, illustrates the consequences and entailing conflict of proclaiming a religious truth;
"If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more than there was moral virtue in believing it was round like a globe; neither was there any moral ill in believing that the Creator made no other world than this, any more than there was moral virtue in believing he made millions, and that the infinity of space is filled with worlds. But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the criterion, that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself."[2]
Paine holds that religious truths carry an entailing morality, and that the adherents of any particular doctrine hold the values and morality of non-believers suspect. If we indifferently pursue the idea of “truth” far, though, to determine just which doctrine to believe, we quickly get ourselves into an epistemological vortex. As just one example, the Agrippan Trilemma challenges us to justify our belief by continuously asking how it is that we know what we know. We are left with three possible responses, 1) to refer to an infinite chain of justifications, 2) to refer to dogma or authority, or 3) to circle back to a point made previously.[3] In terms of religious knowledge, or belief, we generally avoid or make little use of responses 1 and 3. The infinite regress is unattractive, as we will inevitably have to refer to our authoritative sacred writings for justification. The choice of circling back to a previously made point, again, resides in the sacred writings themselves. So, we find that deference to dogma is the general response of justification, in the case of religious knowledge and for my purposes here, dogma is sacred writings. When we look at the nature of the debates between conflicting religious views, we find precisely that, a reference to sacred and commentary writings as the primary method of justification. A self-referential justification for authority doesn’t assist us in determining truth between conflicting sacred writings.

Objectivity

Is there an approach, though, that allows us to step outside of the self-referential authority and objectively assess this truth by studying, with philosophical rigor, the sacred writings of a religion? Perhaps to the consternation of all “True Believers,” (regardless of persuasion), the answer is no, it is not possible to objectively assess those texts. Shortly I will introduce an excerpt of sacred writing from two socially accepted, long-standing religious traditions. The excerpts will all assert that the truth they contain is ‘the truth,’ and that to believe otherwise is to believe a falsehood. But before I arrive at that point, I think we need to spend some time considering what we mean when we invoke the idea of objectivity. As a preface to reviewing the sacred writings, I want to point out that I will not be attempting to determine the trueness or falseness of any particular assertion within the writings. My goal is to simply demonstrate that what we conclude about each text is contingent upon the mode in which we approach them; hence, this brief digression regarding objectivity.
Objectivity, it seems, requires the complete suspension of all biases for or against something. For example, I have a fear of snakes. I have never been bitten by a snake, I avoid handling snakes when given the opportunity to do so, I have never had a snake crawl into a sleeping bag with me – in short, I have no evidence to offer as to why I fear snakes. My fear is subjective. Said differently, if someone else were to review the events of my life, there would be no empirical evidence that they could seize on to deduce that I fear snakes. I am biased against snakes. For me to objectively consider snakes, lets say in a National Geographic documentary, I have to suspend that bias such that I am not thinking throughout the entire documentary about how much I loath snakes. In fact, it’s more likely that I change channels rather than subject myself to that degree of objectivity. In any situation involving snakes, I am going to bring my bias with me – and either struggle to suspend it, or just not put myself in that situation to begin with. If you were to ask me, “Can you be objective about snakes?” I would have to truthfully respond, “No.”
This is germane to our discussion of sacred writings in two ways. First, to be objective, we must be able to identify our biases. Identifying our biases is not as simple as it sounds for reasons we will consider in a moment. Second, we must be willing, and able, to suspend our identified biases while assessing the merit of an assertion. I want to take up the second issue first. Knowing that I loath snakes I must, if I am to be a man of integrity, admit to you that in all things snaky, I am an unreliable reporter. My beliefs, as unfounded as they are, prevent me from providing you with an objective truth of snakes. I must recuse myself. The difficulty here is that I know of no argument that one could offer to amend my view of snakes – it is beyond the objective, and logical arguments won’t assuage me.
How do we identify our biases though? Here the going gets more difficult. We should consider the genesis of a bias first. I posit we arrive at our biases either as a result of a system of thought or through direct experience that we cast as a universal, or a combination of both. As an illustration, my system of thought generally holds that snakes are scary. I did not arrive at that conclusion by reasoned analysis. I am sure at some point in my childhood I was either scared by a snake, or someone close to me convinced me to be afraid of snakes – I don’t remember. But having had that experience, I’ve developed a system of thought about snakes whereby I don’t have to be in the presence of one to know that they are scary. I cannot imagine any situation in which I won’t recoil from the presence of a snake. This system of thought, or belief, is insidious as, once developed, it plays as a tape in the background of my interaction with the world in a manner that I am generally not conscious of it. I have yet to jettison my system of belief about snakes.
Interestingly, it is not the snakes that necessarily need to be altered for me to overcome this worldview, what is brought into question, though, are my existing thoughts about snakes. I would be much better off (depending on how we were to define “better”) if I approached every new snake situation with an attitude of “I have no reason to be afraid, I don’t know what you’re going to do, so I’ll withhold judgment.” I will suspend my identified biases, remain neutral, and see what happens. This seems to be a reasonable definition for what it means to be objective. The question is whether that is even possible.

Existential and Spiritual Assessment

Not to belabor the snake example, I just want to exploit it one final time. Existentially, there is a snake lying in the grass four feet from me. That’s it, it is just lying there, and that is the fact of the matter. Or, perhaps I saw a snake in my yard a month ago – again, a fact. Spiritually, I am reacting to the snake beyond the existential facts. If we can agree that what is happening in me is beyond the facts, and can’t be explained by the brute facts – then the example illuminates the difference between an historical fact and the imparted meaning, between existential assessment and spiritual assessment. Since we will be dealing with sacred writings, I will use the term “spiritual.” While there may be a psychological explanation for one’s awe or reverence of sacred writing that is territory beyond this paper.

Sacred Writings

The first excerpt (1) is from the Christian New Testament, John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”[4] This passage, perhaps, defines the Christian religion in terms of who to worship – Jesus in the form of the Christ. The second excerpt (2) is from the Jewish Torah, Book of Exodus, Exodus 20:1-3, “Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me.”[5] This passage, the beginning of the Decalogue, establishes the covenant between God and his chosen people, the Jews. Judaism and Christianity exist today as mainstream religious doctrines. Jews, while acknowledging (1) historically, do not accept (1) as the truth, they deny Jesus’ divinity. Christians, while historically acknowledging (2), proclaim a supersessionism from (2), thereby invalidating it. Jews believe Christians are wrong and Christians believe Jews are wrong.
Let us accept that, for the sake of brevity, the existential facts are in order, though archeologists and historians have yet to confirm this; that a Jew named Jesus did live in the first century A.D. and did say the things attributed to him, and that a man named Moses did exist at some distant point previous to Jesus and he held an inspired text. Or, to simplify things further, we could hold that the Book of Exodus and the Gospel of John exist now and have been influential for at least the past two thousand years – regardless of archeological evidence. In any event, the Jews and the Christians are more than willing to grant objective, existential validity to each text. For non-Jews and non-Christians, I think we must grant objective, existential validity to each as well just based on historical influence and longevity. They both exist, that is the case.
But how do we conduct a valid objective spiritual assessment of these two conflicting texts? They both assert the ‘only’ truth, which is correct? The short answer is we cannot and we do not know. The primary difficulty in deciding which is true and which is false is that the spiritual truth cannot be derived from the existential fact. As William James held in “The Varieties of Religious Experience,”
"But if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passions and deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crisis of their fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable. You see that the existential facts by themselves are insufficient for determining the value; and the best adepts of the higher criticism accordingly never confound the existential with the spiritual problem. With the same conclusions of fact before them, some take one view, and some another, of the Bible’s value as revelation, according as their spiritual judgment as to the foundation of values differs."[6]
We are left with three options to resolve this conflict, two require spiritual judgment, and the third requires philosophical rigor – though spiritual judgment and philosophical rigor can, and have been, combined beyond the crucial point of acknowledging God’s existence. In the end, though, we will see that the conflict is not genuinely resolved.
Option one is, if I am a Christian, to reflect on my system of thought and personal experience, identify my biases, suspend them and apply my spiritual judgment as to which text contains the truth. There is no ontology or philosophical argument that conclusively proves the existence of God – hence I am left to my phenomenological reaction as my only barometer. Option two is, if I am Jewish, to apply option one in the same manner. Option three is, if I am a non-theist/deist, to reflect on my system of thought and personal experience, identify my biases, suspend them and apply all applicable philosophical approaches to elicit the truth from either text, or neither. Knowing that the philosophical canon does not include a conclusive argument for the existence of God, I do not have much faith that one so minded would have a phenomenological reaction to either text such that he or she would jettison their current position for the truth of either (1) or (2).
In Louis P. Pojman’s “Philosophy of Religion, an Anthology,” two articles are presented that bear on this dilemma – but not directly. John Hick, arguing for a single divinity, holds, “May it not be that the different concepts of God…are all images of the divine, each expressing some aspect or range of aspects, and yet none by itself fully and exhaustively corresponding to the infinite nature of the ultimate reality?”[7] Hick argues for a single God or Ultimate Reality that humanity has evolved different responses to over time and distance. While that argument may be true, or not, it does not reconcile the Jew with the Christian, nor the philosopher to either. Alvin Plantinga, on the other hand, in “A Defense of Religious Exclusivism,” doesn’t argue for one truth over another necessarily, he just defends religious exclusivism from claims of arrogance or irrationality. His argument is lengthy, but as an example, “The problem for the abstemious pluralist is that he is obliged to think that he possesses a virtue others don’t or acts rightly where others don’t. If, in condition C[8], one is arrogant by way of believing a proposition others don’t, isn’t one equally, under those reflective conditions, arrogant by way of withholding a proposition others don’t?”[9] Plantinga isn’t concerned about eliciting a truth from conflicting texts. He admits to a belief in God within a specific doctrine and argues against the charge of arrogance – asserting that his accusers are guilty of the same crime of arrogance. This does not help us in resolving the dilemma any more than Hick did.
If determining the value of sacred text rests on spiritual, or philosophical, discernment, and I believe it does – then it is left to the individual and his or her system of thought, personal experience and phenomenological reaction to judge what is true. It is little wonder that long-standing liberal democracies tend toward the secular in public policy institutions, recognizing that religious thought is best left to the individual within his or her own community. Friction occurs when religious doctrine is thrust into the public sphere as authority – and then communities, nations and ultimately all of humanity can repeatedly work through the epistemic exercises of proving just which doctrine contains the truth – arriving, I believe, at this last paragraph, just as we have. Snakes still frighten me.

Works cited

Hick, J. Religious Pluralism and Ultimate Reality, (1973), Ed. Pojman, L. Philosophy of

Religion, an Anthology, (2003), Wadsworth/Thomson Learning / Belmont, CA

James, W. “The Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature.” (1901-1902)

Modern Library (2002), Random House / New York

Paine, T. Common Sense and Other Writings, Age of Reason (Ed. Wood, G.) Modern

Library 2003, Random House / New York

Plantinga, A. A Defense of Religious Exclusivism. Ed. Pojman, L. Philosophy of Religion, an

Anthology, (2003), Wadsworth/Thomson Learning / Belmont, CA

The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (1989) Oxford University Press

Williams, M. “Problems of Knowledge, a Critical Introduction to Epistemology.”(2001),

Oxford University Press / Oxford, New York

[1] The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (1989) Oxford University Press, John 18:37
[2] Paine, T. Common Sense and Other Writings, Age of Reason (pg 275) (Ed. Wood, G.) Modern Library 2003, Random House / New York

[3] Williams, M. “Problems of Knowledge, a Critical Introduction to Epistemology.”(2001), pg 62, Oxford University Press / Oxford, New York
[4] The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (1989) Oxford University Press, John 14:6

[5] Ibid, Exodus 20:1-3
[6] James, W. “The Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature.” (1901-1902) Modern Library (2002) pg 7, Random House / New York
[7] Hick, J. Religious Pluralism and Ultimate Reality, (1973), Ed. Pojman, L. Philosophy of Religion, an Anthology, (2003), pg 503. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning / Belmont, CA
[8] “Believing that you know of no arguments that would necessarily convince all or most honest and intelligent dissenters.”
[9] Plantinga, A. A Defense of Religious Exclusivism. Ed. Pojman, L. Philosophy of Religion, an Anthology, (2003), pg 512. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning / Belmont, CA