Rémi Chéno
After a short foray into the Jain logic and its model for the status of enunciation in a debate, Rémi Chéno pursues his research on the possibility of a pluralistic approach to religions.
In his famous book, The Nature of Doctrine, 1984, George Lindbeck opposed the cultural-linguistic model, now called post-liberal model, to the propositional cognitive model of classical metaphysics, and to the expressive experiential model of liberal theology. On preliminary examination, these three models refer respectively to three different theories of truth: the pragmatic theory, the realist theory of correspondence and the idealistic theory of coherence. But these associations operate only approximately.
In his noteworthy introduction to the theology of religions, Introducing theologies of religions, 2002, Paul Knitter listed four distinct models (rather than three) for a theology of religions: the replacement model (which refers to the classic exclusivist approach), the fulfillment model (the inclusivist approach), the mutuality model (the pluralistic approach) and the acceptance model, which refers to a new, post-liberal pluralistic approach. This approach is pluralistic in the sense that it seeks to validate the various truth claims of each major religions, but it is post-liberal, because, unlike the pluralism of John Hick and Paul Knitter, who seek unity among religions (in an inaccessible noumenon, the ultimate Real, according to Hick, or in a commitment to justice and peace according to Knitter), it values their differences and refuses to reduce them to a false joint, on behalf of the incommensurability of their worldviews.
In this way, the post-liberal pluralism registers two breaks: the abandonment of a realist theory of truth (the adaequatio ad rem) and the emphasis on incommensurability of religions, separated from each other by their respective language games, their different worldviews.
This research builds on the works of post-liberal pluralist theologians like John A. DiNoia, S. Mark Heim, S. Ogden, James L. Fredericks, or Paul J. Griffiths. The challenge is to answer the objections that are usually addressed about their relativism (related to the abandonment of a realist theory of truth) and the risk of solipsism (linked to the emphasis on incommensurability). The Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic metaphor and the suggestions of J.A. DiNoia for an ever wider contextualisation of religious discourse invite us to think the coexistence of religions by analogy with the famous question of translation: what makes it possible? what are its limits?
Basic bibliography
- DiNoia, John Augustine, The diversity of religions : a Christian perspective, Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1992.
- Fredericks, James L., Faith among faiths: Christian theology and non-Christian religions, New York, Paulist Press, 1999.
- Griffiths, Paul J., An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue, Eugene, Or., Wipf and Stock, 2007.
- Heim, S. Mark, Salvations: truth and difference in religion. Faith meets faith, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books, 1995.
- Knitter, Paul F., Introducing theologies of religions, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books, 2002.
- Lindbeck, George A., The nature of doctrine: Religion and theology in a post-liberal age, Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press (WJK), 2009.
- Walker, Ralph C. S., « Theories of truth », in Hale, Bob & Wright, Crispin (Ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, coll. « Blackwell companions to philosophy », Malden, Oxford, Victoria, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 1997, p. 309–330.