(English scholastic philosopher, father of nominalism, 1285-1348)
1. For Ockham reality is radically individual, and in no sense common and universal. The universality of concepts consists solely in the fact that they are signs and names for many things (hence “nominalism”). Therefore scientific knowledge cannot be concerned with necessities inherent to the natural world for there are none. God alone is the necessary being. Necessity can be found only in the logical connections between terms and words of propositions.
Ockham’s nominalism destroys the Aristotelian conception of truth as the conformity of thing and intellect. For it makes sense to talk of conformity only if individual things do have a (universal) nature from which the intellect can abstract intelligible 'species'. But for Ockham there are no universal natures. His nominalist reduction of universals to nothing more than a way of speaking in propositions undermines the view of truth as conformity.
2. According to medieval scholasticism, God makes things in conformity with universal forms pre-existing in Him. Ockham rejects this model of creation. God can know creatures and create them without the mediation of any ideas. There are no universal forms or ideas pre-existing in God (“Ockham’s razor”). Ultimate priority is placed by Ockham upon the divine Will and its absolute omnipotence. It is the divine will that plays the largest part in creation and not the actualising of divine Ideas.
This means that for Ockham God does not follow or ‘obey’ a truth that pre-exists him. Just as he creates everything, he creates the truth. Truth issues from his Will. There are no necessary truths except himself. All created realities are contingent. One cannot know the link between realities according to an order of necessary relation. For instance the cause-effect relationship is never necessary. No entity A implies the necessary existence of entity B. The only thing one can know is that B regularly follows A. Ockham anticipates Hume’s radical empiricism. All truths about the real world are a posteriori, never a priori. There can be no rational knowledge of reality but only an empirical knowledge, no necessary truths but only contingent truths, no truth before, but only truth after. However one can speak of necessary truths, not in the real world, but in propositions and the link between the terms of propositions.
3. Ockham destroys the synthesis of faith and reason won by the scholastics. He precludes reason from achieving truth and certainty and only faith remains. A supremely omnipotent God undermines any necessity in the world and also any real intelligibility, leaving the human only faith.
Ockham's intention was to safeguard the dignity of God from limits placed on the divine freedom as a result of the interjection of Greek philosophy into Christianity. Consequently, he rejects notions such as the inherent rationality of the cosmos, the rational limits of God's power, and the positive role of reason in discovering and relating to this rational order are shunted aside.
Ockham’s God is omnipotent but perhaps arbitrary, he is free but perhaps nonsensical, he is independent but perhaps unknowable. God has become hyper-transcendent, or virtually meaningless to the human truth-seeker and faith alone provides any certainty.
* See Campbell, Richard, Truth and Historicity, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p.153-169
(Contemporary American Methodist theologian)
In the theological debate about the truth-value of religions – whether exclusivism, inclusivism or pluralism – Ogden maps out his own option, which he calls the “fourth option”. The two first versions of exclusivism and inclusivism, which Ogden designates “Christian monism” (Christianity alone is the true religion) are long ceased to be credible by the standards of common reason and experience. As for the arguments so far deployed by pluralists they do not stand up to scrutiny. For several religions to be true, they must show substantial similarities, but that is far from being the case. Besides the great difficulty with pluralism is to avoid a descent into mere religious relativism. Dissatisfied with the three ‘classical’ views, Ogden proposes a fourth option. First, Ogden breaks with Christian monism and to do so he does not hesitate to make a crucial christological shift. Instead of supposing that the possibility of salvation is constituted by the event of Jesus Christ (a constitutive christology) one must acknowledge that it is grounded rather in the unbounded love of God for humanity. The possibility of salvation – and hence religious truth - is not constituted, but is rather represented by Christ (a representative christology). On this ground we may legitimately grant that both Christianity and other religions as they represent the primordial love of God can be formally and materially true. But the problem whether any religion validly represents God’s primordial love cannot be determined a priori. Ogden’s argument is not and is not meant to be an argument for the truth of other religions but only for the possibility that other religions be true. In this way he distinguishes his own view from the pluralists’ claim that other religions are in fact true. He only says that they can be true. At the same time he distances himself from Christian monism: the Christian way of making the case is not the privilege of Christians. Hindus or Buddhists can rightly make a similar case for themselves. Ogden has thus marked out a genuinely distinct option – the fourth option – in the contemporary discussion of the “theology of religions”. His argument can be stated as follows: if the Christian claim to truth is valid, there is at least one true religion, but there could be many as well. The logical basis for Ogden’s fourth option is his view on a representative, rather than constitutive christology. Whereas constitutive christology leads to Christian monism (in its exclusivist or inclusivist form), representative christology does not close the door to the possibility for other religions than Christianity to be true. At the same time his fourth view avoids the relativistic – and dogmatic - viewpoint of the pluralist position which declares a priori that all religions are true. Thus his position stands between the extreme contrary positions of exclusivism and pluralism. It is close to pluralism just as inclusivism, in its way, is closest to exclusivism. But it is also close to inclusivism, still instead of “monistic inclusivism”, one could appropriately speak of the fourth option as “pluralistic inclusivism”. One should say neither that only one religion is true nor that all religions are true. One should say that if one religion is proved to be true, other religions could be true as well – because God’s ways of salvation are unfathomable. The truth of the Christian way of salvation does not a priori exclude the truth of other ways.
* Ogden, Schubert, Is there Only One True Religion or are There Many? Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1992
(Contemporary Swedish philosopher)
Coherence cannot possibly be a truth-conducive property
It is tempting to think that, if a person's beliefs are coherent, they are also likely to be true. Indeed, this truth-conduciveness claim is the cornerstone of the popular coherence theory of knowledge and justification. But Erik Olsson argues that the value of coherence has been generally overestimated; it is severely problematic to maintain that coherence has a role to play in the process whereby beliefs are acquired or justified. He proposes that the opposite of coherence, i.e. incoherence, can still be the driving force in the process whereby beliefs are retracted, so that the role of coherence in our enquiries is negative rather than positive.
Olson argues that coherence cannot be truth conducive unless the information sources providing the cohering information are individually credible and collectively independent. He focuses on attempts to show that coherence is "truth-conducive", meaning that the coherence of a belief system contributes to its probability of being accurate. Ultimately, he finds that a high degree of coherence cannot secure a high probability of truth, nor does greater coherence in general imply a greater likelihood of truth.
Olson rejects the attempts to justify external-world beliefs solely on the basis of coherence, without the need for individual credibility. And once we grant individual credibility to some external world beliefs, we have abandoned a central motivation for coherentism.
Taking truth-conduciveness as essential to the concept of coherence, Olson concludes that coherence does not exist. One might say that while coherence exists, it cannot satisfy the epistemological hopes that made us interested in it.
* Erik Olsson, Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification, Oxford University Press, 2005, 248pp,
(Indian Hindu monk, ,1929-2000)
Intuition as the only method of discerning the Truth
Intuition is the only method of an approach to, and the experience of, the divine Reality. The ultimate source of all proofs is direct apprehension. Neither the scriptures, nor the spiritual souls, can externally offer us the intimate knowledge and experience of the Reality, which must come only through an act of the inner Self in us, that sees Itself when the mind is undisturbed, unprejudiced, silenced, made calm and pure.
Intuition is the only way by which the Absolute can be realized and experienced in all its totality and integrity. The mortal, finite, limited senses and the intellect, cannot comprehend the Reality which is immortal and all-pervading.
The realization of God is possible only through intuition. It is in intuition that everything becomes clear, all doubts vanish in toto. In contrast to mediate knowledge, intuition is immediate knowledge, direct and integral. Through intuition, the aspirant perceives the truth of things without the aid of reasoning or analysis.
The Kathopanishad declares, "This knowledge is not to be obtained by argument, but it is easy to understand it when taught by a teacher who beholds no difference"; "The sages, with their body, senses and mind tranquil, realise that Truth; but when it is overwhelmed with dry reasoning, it vanishes".
The age of ancient philosophy was an age of intuitional perception, an age in which intuitional experience was the guarantee of Truth. The modern period is an age of the questioning, critical and analytical spirit, an age in which the guarantee of truth is the test of sense-perception. Anything which one can perceive through one's sense-organs is accepted as the reality, and everything which the senses cannot perceive is rejected as unreliable. Thus, many a precious factor of the ancient world cultural heritage has been rejected, and set aside as superstition.
Modern mind must come to realize that, in fact, intuition and intuitive discernment form the only true touchstone of philosophy. Ultimately, the method of intuition is the only method of discerning the Truth. Without developing intuition, the intellectual remains imperfect and blind to the Truth behind the appearances. In the light of the developed intuition, all other philosophies seem to be nothing more than so many systems built on interesting table-talks, funny essays, humorous attempts in the game called "blindman's buff"!
* See Internet Swami Omkarananda
(Australian philosopher, b. 1960)
To be true theistic beliefs must be successful, that is, able to convince all reasonable non-theists
Oppy affirms the rationality of theistic belief, as well as non-theistic beliefs. He thinks that theists can and do have reasons which make it rational for them to believe that God exists. Those reasons may take the form of the various theistic arguments. But while those arguments may render the theist's belief in God rational, still they are not successful arguments because they are not to be considered convincing by all reasonable non-theists. An analogous claim can, in Oppy's view, be made about anti-theistic arguments as well. As his emphasis of the world "successful" signals, Oppy espouses an account of argumentation that includes a specific criterion for determining what counts as a successful argument. When should we say that an argument for a given conclusion is a successful argument?
Oppy defends the view that, in circumstances in which it is well known that there has been perennial controversy about a given claim, a successful argument on behalf of that claim has to be one that ought to persuade all of those who have hitherto failed to accept that claim to change their minds. Since theism is undeniably a claim about which there has been perennial controversy, it follows that a successful theistic argument will be one that ought to persuade all atheists, agnostics, and innocents to change their minds. So, according to Oppy's account, a successful argument in general, and a theistic argument in particular, is one which ought to persuade all reasonable people who have reasonable views about the matter. So if we find that certain persons have not been persuaded by our argument, we have two options: we can conclude either that the people in question are not rational or else that our argument is a failure. This understanding of what constitutes a successful argument colors Oppy's treatment of theistic arguments. Since he wants to show that all such arguments are failures, he repeatedly responds to the arguments by claiming that this or that premise in the argument can be denied by a rational person. Oppy thinks that an argument is a failure unless it would or ought to persuade all reasonable persons to accept its conclusion.
* Oppy Graham, Arguing about Gods, 2006. ISBN 0521863864.
(American TV actress and philantropist, b.1954)
Truth lies deep within each of us as our highest self
Oprah has evolved as one of the leading spokesperson regarding New Age philosophy and an effective evangelist for Postmodernism, a world view that allows the individual to accept truth on his own terms as it relates to his experience. Regarding the source of truth, she makes this comment in defense of her newly discovered path to enlightenment, “Funny thing about truth: It’s something that lives deep within us, as surely as if it were written into the genetic code . . . when we pursue truth, we are searching for the universal. A Hindu principle teaches us, ‘Truth is one, paths are many.’ Which way is yours?”. This concept of truth lying deep within each of us as if it were our genetic code is likened to the idea that “God” resides within each of us as an inner guide to show us the way to all truth. There is one truth, but many ways to discover it. You may choose the Christian path; another may choose the Buddhist path, or the Hindu path. It makes little or no difference which path one chooses.” According to Oprah they all lead the inquirer to the same truth. God lies within you as your highest self.
In one of her TV show in 1992 she made this observation, “If you go deeply enough into your mind, and deeply enough into mine, we have the same mind. The concept of a divine, or ‘Christ’ mind, is the idea that, at our core, we are not just identical, but actually the same being. ‘There is only one begotten Son’ doesn’t mean that someone else was it, and we’re not. It means we’re all it. There’s only one of us here.”
See Internet, Oprah Winfrey
(Alexandrian biblical scholar, 185-254)
The Bible is mostly allegorical and need not be taken as literal, historic truth.
1. Truth is natural, and the search for truth is a natural function of the Mind. God has planted in the heart a desire for Truth. As the eyes naturally seek the light and vision, and bodies naturally desire food and drink, so the human mind is possessed with a natural desire to become acquainted with the Truth of God and the causes of things. Origen knew that God would never have given us this passion for Truth if our desire could not be satisfied.
2. In Origen’s hometown, Alexandria, the philosophy of Plato was highly respected. Plato's teaching was that earthly realities are manifestations of eternal realities known as Ideas or Forms. Origen applied this concept to biblical stories and teachings, developing a "key" to interpret the deeper meanings of any biblical passage. This allegorical method requires a lot of study and reflection. Origen felt that although any passage can be interpreted literally, a mature Christian can go beyond that simple approach to the highest levels of truth, through allegory.
Drawing upon his understanding of Platonism which taught that beyond the visible world lay the spiritual world--of which all things here are an image and a reflection, Origen maintained that the primary purpose of Scripture was to convey spiritual truth. For Origen everything in the Bible reflected the spiritual order beyond the ordinary material world. Thus, for instance, Jerusalem, Zion, Carmel, and a host of other places, ceased to be geographical locations and expressions and became mirrors of heavenly truth.
Thus Origen adopted the view that the Bible was mostly allegorical and need not be taken as literal, historic truth. In due time this view of the Bible as allegory was rejected as heresy. St Augustine headed the Church back towards a straightforward reading of Scripture--except for the book of the Revelation, which he considered allegorical.
* Origen, On First Principles, tr. G.W. Butterworth, New York: Harper and Row, 1966
(Spanish philosopher, 1883-1955)
The kernel of Ortega's views is his metaphysics of 'vital reason' and his perspectival epistemology. He identifies reality with "my life": something is real only insofar as it appears in "my life". "My life" is a synthesis between "myself" and "my circumstances": there is a dynamic interaction and interdependence of self and world. In adopting this view, Ortega wants to reduce the antinomy between idealism and realism. Pure reason must give way to what he calls "vital reason". The life of something is its being; life is concrete, unique, spontaneous, in constant becoming. Art, culture, ethics are all at the service of life.
Because every life is the result of an interaction between self and circumstances, every self has a unique perspective. Truth, then, is perspectival, depending on the unique point of view from which it is determined, and no perspective is false, except the one that claims exclusivity. Ortega's epistemology is "perspectivist" in so far as it emphasizes the relative point of view in which reality is revealed to each individual. Every life has a certain vision of the universe. We all look at the same reality with different eyes. Our different perspectives are all true because based on reality. At the same time it is meaningless to declare "false" other views than one's own. The only false perspective is the one that claims to be unique. It is only in juxtaposing all the partial visions of every individual that one could reach a synthetic, universal and complete understanding of truth.
Ortega is not a relativist: for him truth is trans-subjective because transcendent reality exists. But man can perceive only parts of it; he is condemned to blindness of others. Each person, and each age, dips a mesh of perception through the running current of transcendent reality. The pieces of reality this mesh catches build a perspective. Far from disturbing reality, perspective is its organizing element.
"Every individual-- person, people, epoch-- is an organ without substitute for the conquest of truth... the individual point of view seems to me the only point of view from which the world can be seen in truth."
* Ortega y Gasset, Idées et Croyances, trd. J.Babelon, Paris, 1945
( German philosopher and theologian,1869-1936)
The experience of “numinous” feelings gives the immediate certainty that this is a realization of the deepest truth.
Rudolph Otto, in ‘The Idea of the Holy’ claimed that every individual possesses the capacity to experience one and the same Object, the "Holy". For him, this experience is caused by the "sensus numinis", an innate sense of the divine implanted within the "pure reason" of each mind. This "sense" then operates independently of all sense perception. This is to say that within the psyche of each individual exists a unique faculty which intuits a wholly other Being which is both terrible yet alluring, an Object "mysterium tremendum et fascinans". Otto claimed that all religions and faith mediate an authentic experience of salvation, since all religions of the world are equally the result of this innate sensus numinis.
Rudolph Otto understands the sacred as the "Wholly Other," as a non-rational reality that is ‘numinous’ and beyond the self. For him the sacred is a mysterium tremendum et fascinans , an awful and dreadful, yet fascinating and attractive mystery. This sacred reality is not seen as a part of some thing else or reducible to some non-sacral quantity, but as being sui generis and not comprehensible in rational or ethical terms alone. For him the sacred has ontological reality, not just psychological impact, it is seen as transcendent and over against the profane.
The numinous cannot be known through ratiocination; awareness of it comes only through the feelings it evokes. Otto contends that these feelings are the only media through which the numinous, or reality, can be known. Words, concepts, reasoning, and rational thought are incapable of producing true experience of the wholly other, which can only be “firmly grasped, thoroughly understood, and profoundly appreciated, purely in, with, and from the feeling itself.”
His ‘Idea of the Holy’ is not intended as a philosophical treatise proving the existence of the numinous; rather it is an apology for the intuitive element of religious experience. Otto does not intend to persuade the unconvinced with his arguments. His words are offered only to kindred spirits, those whose innate capacity for the numinous has been awakened, for whom he eloquently verbalizes the experience of the holy, “the feeling which remains where the concept fails.” Otto invites the reader “to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no further.” It is his purpose then, to “suggest this unnamed Something to the reader as far as we may, so that he may himself feel it.”
The numinous is “something which the ‘natural’ man cannot, as such, know or even imagine, “ and no “intellectual, dialectical dissection or justification of such intuition is possible, nor indeed should any be attempted, for the essence most peculiar to it would be destroyed thereby.” Rather, the numinous must be directly experienced to be understood. Once experienced, there need not be doubt concerning the validity of these numinous feelings for they are a priori by which Otto means that “as soon as an assertion has been clearly expressed and understood, knowledge of its truth comes into the mind with the certitude of first-hand insight.”
In short, religious experience is autonomous, self-validating, and infallible. When the numinous feelings that Otto describes are experienced, there is immediate certainty that this is a realization of the deepest truth; religious experience “represents a perception which provides its own evidence.”
*Otto Rudolph, The Idea of the Holy, Oxford University Press, 1923
(English non-conformist theologian, 1616-1683)
The Holy Spirit leads people into all truth concerning the mysteries of God’s kingdom
Owen explains Jesus’ saying, ‘When he, the Spirit of truth. has come, he will guide you into all truth’ (John 16:13). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. He is truth essentially in himself, and he is the one who leads the church into all truth. But what does Jesus mean by ‘all truth’? He does not mean ‘all truth’ absolutely. The Holy Spirit’s work is not to lead us into all historical, geographical, astronomical and mathematical truth. The Holy Spirit is to lead us into all truth concerning the mysteries of the kingdom of God, of the gospel, of the counsel of God about the salvation of the church by Christ.
It is not an external guidance into all truth by the objective revelation of truth that is meant, for this kind of revelation is not granted to all believers, nor are believers to look for such revelations. And the revelation of truth by the preaching of the gospel is not what is meant, since this is common to all the world and not subject to any special promise.
So it is the internal teaching of the Holy Spirit, giving an understanding of the mind of God and of all revealed sacred truths, which is intended. The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth by giving us that understanding of it which we ourselves are not able to arrive at. All spiritual, divine, supernatural truth is revealed in Scripture. To come to know and to rightly understand this truth in Scripture is the duty of all, according to the means which each enjoys and the duties which are required from them. To make this possible the Holy Spirit is promised to them. Of ourselves, without his special assistance and guidance we cannot arrive at a true knowledge or a right understanding of the truth revealed in Scripture.
Believers may be ignorant of the doctrine of some truths, and may have little knowledge of anything, yet they shall know the mind and will of God as revealed in Scripture, in order that they may believe to righteousness and make confession to salvation. Believers ‘do not need that anyone should teach them’. This refers only to the essential truths of salvation, of being ingrafted in Christ and abiding in Christ. Believers need not depend on the light and authority of the teachings of men. None can be lords of our faith.
The great promise of the New Testament is that all believers shall be ‘taught by God’. No man is self-taught in sacred things. Who will the Holy Spirit teach? He will teach those who are meek and humble, those who give themselves to continual prayer, meditation and study in God’s Word day and night, and those who strive to conform their lives to the truths he instructs them in.
* See John Owen: The Man and His Theology. ISBN 0-87552-674-8. Robert W. Oliver, ed. (2002).