Personally, I think the chief thing is the prophetic and apostolic witness as transmitted in the Church as the Holy Scriptures. My “experience” cannot really validate the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the Two Natures in Christ, etc.

Thoughts?

If God reveals himself, she does it one being at a time.
And why would you impose this limitation upon God? What about God makes it necessary that this is the case?

Orthodoxy is agreement between individuals about what God revealed to them individually.
Except that Christ taught the Apostles collectively.

So we are talking about different kinds of truth. Some overarching but indefinite truth (God) and the other kind of truth that is specific and definite.

And I didn’t think Daniel was disagreeing for disagreement’s sake – only that he disagreed with Rod’s proposition (I disagree with both of them, and with you as well).

If God reveals himself, she does it one being at a time. Orthodoxy is agreement between individuals about what God revealed to them individually. Therefore, orthodoxy is as prone to error as any other man-made thing.

Thank you for the link. The description more or less fits def 1 from MW.

It seems to me that Mr. Larison does make a distinction in his post between Truth (= God) and dogmatic statements (which can be taken as the equivalent of religious “truths”). It also seems to me that what he says in the second paragraph is tied to his attempt to go beyond what he sees is an unhelpful distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. Certain Orthodox writers seem to avoid the use of equivocal naming, insisting on limiting the use of a name to only one thing, and it seems that Mr. Larison is doing that with respect to the word truth. I think he is not disagreeing with Mr. Dreher for the sake of disagreeing, but it is tied to two different ways of speaking about God.

As for religious orthodoxy: if God has revealed Himself, it does matter. The notion of orthodox is tied to the authority, and to say that it is always a man-made artifact is to deny that God could ever present Himself as an authority for human beings.

MW on “equivocally”:

equivocally
One entry found.

Main Entry:
equiv·o·cal
Pronunciation:
\i-ˈkwi-və-kəl\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Late Latin aequivocus, from aequi- equi- + voc-, vox voice — more at voice
Date:
1599
1 a: subject to two or more interpretations and usually used to mislead or confuse b: uncertain as an indication or sign
2 a: of uncertain nature or classification b: of uncertain disposition toward a person or thing : undecided c: of doubtful advantage, genuineness, or moral rectitude

Are you saying that Daniel is trying to mislead us, or that Daniel is uncertain of the nature of God (I know I am uncertain)?

If I take you to mean equivalently, then I agree, and you make my argument for me. “God is truth” and “truth is indefinite” become equivalent statements in Daniel’s logic. Either we are talking about different kinds of truth, or truth, whether big or small, is not definite.

I suspect that Daniel is just attempting to disagree with Rod. Rod does say that before now (or whenever post-modernism debuted) progressive religionists and traditional religionists could agree that religious truths are eternal, but not any more. Personally, I think that it is a tempest in a teacup thing. Rod’s discussion was about “Does religious orthodoxy matter?” and how the discussion about whether or not Obama is a Christian. Obama says he is. And no, religious orthodoxy doesn’t matter. Whatever truth lies in any religion, orthodoxy is a man-made artifact and subject to all the failings of anything man-made.

But the word is being used here equivocally of God and of propositions/statements.

As for infinite vs definite, Daniel’s phrase specifically says that truth is not definite. If the truth is not definite, and God is truth and also infinite and ineffable, then by your logic, truth is infinite and ineffable. Somehow I think that truth is more specific than that. If it isn’t more specific, then the word is meaningless.

Know your Latin roots. The infinite cannot be definite. To be defined is to have limits. To define God in the same way one would define one of His creatures is the height of illogical pride.

There is no objective experience of God (of whatever brand of religion). If there were, we wouldn’t be discussing the reality of her existence here or anywhere else.

“Truth is not definite, because ultimately God is the Truth…” If the truth is not definite, and God is the truth, then God is not definite? I’ll buy that for a $. Or a Euro, whichever.

But what goes so wrong on the seventh? If I proposed some welfare or warfare scheme, and held up as evidence of its truth and goodness some “Jn. 15:26″, you’d laugh it out of the building.

Public policy proposals are different from private belief.

In other words: an orthodox Christian assents to all the truths of the faith (inasmuch as he is able to identify them) because he first assents to God as First Truth, God who has spoken through Jesus Christ and his Church: insofar as the believer is aware of what exactly has been revealed (the material content), he always assents because of his formal reason, God who does not deceive nor can be deceived has revealed it. It is faith, traditionally conceived, that identifies the orthodox Christian, which is an intellectual assent moved by the will from love, and so in a way, “objective”.

The theological liberal (heterodox) believes because he thinks it makes sense to him, and only believes (or does not) inasmuch as the doctrines make sense to him. The virtue of faith, at least in the Thomistic sense, is absent, since the formal reason for belief for the liberal is these doctrines making sense to his mind.

And of course, America is a liberal Christian nation, founded by radical Protestants for the most part, re-conceived by even more liberal Protestants under the Second Great Awakening and the Civil War. Contrast this to Pre-Communist Russia, which it times may have been despotic (as we also have been in different ways) but nonetheless made room for and embraced orthodox Christianity in the sense I outlined above.

Not to put words into anyone’s mouth, but this post is about the incomprehensibility of God and not the incomprehensibility of man or his biological existence.

As for the original post, isn’t it odd how many would-be traditionalists sound so much like Allan Bloom? There are only so many ways to rewrite the anti-relativism passages from his The Closing of the American Mind.

It’s fine enough to denounce an incoherent intellectual position, but the problem may rest in the individual will, not in the intellect.

Dreher’s talk about “religious truth claims” is also awkward, as it implies Christianity is about information. Faith is a habit, a virtue, and its expression in the creeds presupposes that virtue.

I think Cardinal Newman makes a similar argument. Great post.