1. The religious truth claims that have most interested me convey
The Beatles sentiment: "She says she loves you|And you know
that can't be bad.|Yes, she loves you|And you know you should
be glad." And, for each of us, it takes some courage to act as
if that were true! Hence, Walker Percy drew a distinction
between news and information, the performative (Good News) and
the merely informative?
I am not even familiar with so many of the truth claims of our
traditions so don't offer the following set of distinctions as
exhaustive. And I further resonate with an approach that
offers and receives such musings as questions (?), so, in that
vein: I find it helpful to distinguish,
first, between a theory of truth (correspondence & congruence)
and a test of truth (coherence, consilience & consonance), and
next between nomological (descriptive/interpretive) &
axiological (normative/evaluative) truth claims and then
further distinguish between prudential (moral/practical) norms
and relational norms (unitary/unitive), which foster
realizations of absolute unitary being and/or intersubjective
unitive intimacy, distinct realizations, to be sure, but both
from which solidarity and compassion seem to inevitably ensue?
and which have profound existential import?
I find the relational norms (ceremonial, liturgical, ascetical
& mystical) the most interesting when they lead to phenomenal
experiences that do not so much lend themselves to
phenomenological descriptions (much less
metaphysical/ontological hyptheses?) as they will otherwise
bring about a practitioner's
affective attunement with reality vis a vis how friendly and
safe it is notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary
(ridding folks of angst, perfect love driving out all fear)?
There is a "Taste and See" approach to such truth claims that
engages our participatory imaginations more than our
conceptual mapmaking?
This is not to say that empirical, logical, moral and
practical propositions are unimportant, only to realize that
'marital propositions' are far more 'engaging' and meaninggiving, inviting what I like to call an existentialdisjunctive: "I am going to live as if She loves me." And when
so many efficacies ensue from thus living AS IF ... perhaps
truth will come flying in on the wings of beauty & goodness?
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
1