Old-Fashioned Truth, Telic Truth, and Interreligious Understanding

Abstract

This chapter presents an approach to religious truth and to telic truth while explaining how this strategy functions in interreligious understanding. It then turns to defend the face of three widely held objections to the author's position: the expressionist objection, the nativity objection, and the postmodernist objection. The chapter offers a philosophical analysis of religious truth and own defence of a correspondence-based understanding of truth. It states that the falsity of a core belief of another religion means that to that belief there corresponds no objective, independent state of affairs, hence, a correspondence view of religious truth. The chapter explores the meaning of religious truth within the framework of a broader philosophical discussion that is not particular to Judaism. Judaism provides the specific instance for statements of broader context and appeal. Finally, it elaborates a detailed and careful presentation of Jewish belief in a very rough and schematic way.