Joseph S. O'Leary, "Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth"
English | 2016 | ISBN: 1498281451 | PDF | pages: 283 | 7.8 mb
This is the second of three essays in fundamental theology-along with Questioning Back (1985) and Conventional and Absolute Truth (2015)-which attempt to reassess the status of Christian doctrinal language within the contemporary "regime of truth." Reflecting on the reality of religious pluralism as the governing horizon of theology today, it proposes that the very notion of religious truth needs to be rethought. In a dialogue with Derrida it argues that the effects of dissemination and différance have indeed unsettled any project of pinning down truth in a definitive, substantial way, while at the same time it defends the objectivity of concretely situated truth-judgments as more than merely an effect of the play of language. The Buddhist conceptions of emptiness, conventional truth, and skillful means-further explored in Philosophie occidentale et concepts bouddhistes (2011)-allow a positive religious significance to be found in this mutation in the status of Christian truth.