OCKHAM, William of *

(English scholastic philosopher, father of nominalism, 1285-1348)

There are no necessary truths in the realm of created existence

        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

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OGDEN Schubert *

(American Methodist theologian)

The truth of Christian salvation does not a priori exclude the
possibility of the truth of other religions: the “fourth” option.

        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

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ORIGEN of Alexandria *

(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

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ORTEGA Y GASSET *

(Spanish philosopher, 1883-1955)

Truth can be seen only from individual points of view

        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

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OTTO Rudolph * *

( 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

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