CHAPTER 2

Religious Diversity and Truth

2.1 Religious Claims: Doctrines and Teachings

A religious claim, according to the definition already given, is a claim about the way things are, acceptance of or assent to which is required or strongly suggested by the fact of belonging to a particular form of religious life. I'll now say more about what is meant by this, provide some instances of religious claims, and make some suggestions about the importance that assent to or acceptance of them might have for being religious. These preliminaries are important because this chapter is concerned with the question of truth in the light of religious diversity, and (it will be argued) it is precisely religious claims that are potentially possessors of the interesting property being true. Some further understanding of what a religious claim is will therefore be useful.

What, then, is a claim about the way things are? Following (in part) the work of the philosopher William Christian,1 I divide these into three kinds: claims about the setting of human life; claims about the nature of persons; and claims about the proper conduct of human life. This (perhaps like all categorizations) is a division made for convenience; it is not the only possible or single best division, but it will serve the purposes of this book well.

A claim about the setting of human life is, most typically, a descriptive claim about the environment in which we find ourselves and live our lives. Such a claim might be of very broad scope (the world is the theater of God's glory), or it might be very particular (here is the Buddha's tooth), but in all cases such claims will pick out some feature of the setting of human life (or perhaps the entirety of that setting) and will say that it is of a certain sort. It seems obvious on the face of things that if you belong to a religious form of life doing so will suggest to you (or require of you) assent to or acceptance of some claims of this sort. Suppose you are a religious Marxist. You are then likely to accept or assent to some version of the claim epistemological opinions are always epiphenomena of economic arrangements. If you're an Orthodox Jew you will be likely to accept or assent to some version of the claim the Torah is of unparalleled significance as a revelation of what God intends for humans - and so on.

A claim about the nature of humans is also typically a descriptive one, only this time one whose topic is not the setting of human life, but rather the nature of one of its kinds of inhabitants, or at least of some among those inhabitants. Again, it is obvious on the face of things that religions require (or strongly suggest) the making of some such claims on the part of their inhabitants. Instances might be: a particular group of people has been given special duties by God; a particular group of people has been set aside as a field of great merit; all human hearts are restless until they find their rest in God; and people in a capitalist economic order are motivated principally by fear and greed. I won't say more about what these claims might mean, nor about which religions might suggest them (though that ought to be fairly obvious). The only use of these claims here is as examples of claims about the nature of humans - the second kind of claim that religions will typically suggest to those who belong to them.

A claim about the proper conduct of human life (the third kind of claim) is typically put in the subjunctive or imperative mood, and requires, recommends, or suggests some pattern of action. And again, it is obvious at first blush that religions typically make some such claims upon those who belong to them. Instances might be: Muslims ought to make pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lives; everyone ought to become a Christian; regular reading of the Bible is incumbent upon all Christians; all ought to bow the knee to Jesus. The religious location of these four examples is explicit. Further examples might be taken from the moral codes contained in virtually all religions: the ten commandments, theoretically incumbent upon all Jews and Christians; the five precepts, theoretically incumbent upon all Buddhists - and so forth.

It is beyond doubt that many religions (recall that religion here is being understood to mean a form of life that seems to those who belong to it to be comprehensive, incapable of abandonment, and of central importance) are such that they have, over time, codified and ordered the claims (of all three mentioned kinds) that seemed to them to be required or suggested by belonging to that religion. In coming to belong to a religion of this sort you will typically make use of some such ready-to-hand codifications (Christians have their creeds, Buddhists their formulae, and so on), and will as a result easily be able to be explicit about the claims your religion requires of you. If you ask Catholic Christians what they believe about the setting of human life they may respond with parts of the Nicene Creed or the Baltimore Catechism (depending on their generation); and if you ask a Buddhist monk what he believes about the same matter, he may respond with the Four Truths or the twelvefold formulation of the chain of dependent co-origination.

But not all religions have found it necessary to produce such codifications; and even those that have do not codify in explicit form all the claims required of or suggested to those who belong to them. It is perfectly possible, therefore, for a religious person not to be able explicitly to state many of the claims to which her religion implicitly commits her. This is a familiar but important feature of human cognitive life. There are many claims, for example, about my wife to which I would assent were they propounded to me or were I to think of them, but which have never in fact been so propounded or which I have never in fact thought of, and to which therefore I have never given explicit assent. For instance, it was not until I was casting about for an instance of such a claim that I thought of the following: my wife was not born in India. Having thought of it I (involuntarily) assented to it. Just now, as I think of it, it is one of the explicit claims to which my assent is constrained by my being married to the woman to whom I am married. A few minutes ago it was one among the much larger sets of implicit claims to which my assent was constrained in the same way (and because of its deeply uninteresting nature I hope and expect that it will soon regain that status).

Particular religious people - even those who seem to themselves to share a religion - will vary enormously in the proportions of explicit to implicit claims to which they give their assent or acceptance. Such variations may be produced by temperament or accident. And, as already indicated, religions may vary among themselves in the extent to which they give explicit formulation to the claims of importance to them. But whatever the proportion of explicit to implicit claims, it will always be true that assent to or acceptance of more claims than those that are or (in practice) could be explicitly stated will be implied by belonging to a religious form of life. It is a legitimate and important part of the philosophy of religion to make explicit some of what is usually left implicit.

Questions remain, however. Are there, or could there be, religions that suggest to or require of those who belong to them no acts of assent? Are there, that is, forms of religious life that make no claims, explicitly or implicitly? It is fairly clear that there are not and cannot be. Imagine a religion that prescribes just one action for its adherents: if they sneeze when putting their shoes on in the morning they must at once go back to bed.2 For this to qualify as a religion in the sense in play in this book, it will also be necessary to imagine (though it will be difficult to manage this) that those who belong to it find this prescription to constitute a form of life that is comprehensive, incapable of abandonment, and utterly central to their lives. Those who did so understand the prescription would, perhaps, scarcely be human; they would certainly be profoundly idiosyncratic. But even in the case of such an attenuated religion there is at least one explicit claim required (the prescription mentioned), together with a broad penumbra of claims implied, presupposed, and suggested by that one. And this is clearly true to a much greater extent of any decently well developed religion: those who live in the house of Judaism or Islam, for example, have an enormous number of claims, explicit and implicit, required of and/or suggested to them. All religions, therefore, require of and/or suggest to those who belong to them many acts of assent and acceptance. This will be assumed in what follows.

None of this is to say that claims are of equal importance to all religions (some may minimize the claims they require of or suggest to those who belong to them), or that all the claims of a particular religion are of equal importance to it. On this latter point: I've been saying that religions typically both suggest claims to those who belong to them and require claims of them. This distinction is meant to point to a difference in the degree of significance a claim may have for a religion. If assent to or acceptance of a claim is required by belonging to a religion, then the claim in question is central to that religion; this is to say that you can't belong to the religion without assenting to it. Such claims form the core, the heart, the umbra of that religion's claims.

More technically, when claims of this sort become...