DavidHawthorne wrote:You wrote that we can "objectively know" the truth of the Trinity because of the "breadth of consensus" (how many people believe in it); yet, we can say one religion (Christianity) is true because the truths of religion do not depend on how many believe in it. Do you mean that truths within Christianity are decided "democratically" but unbelievers do not get a vote because they are not citizens? Or have I missed your point?
While the statement that "the truths of religion do not depend on how many believe" is true, in practice it is simply an invitation to hold to eccentric positions without the bother of having to defend them. And I would never use the notion of voting to describe the process of intellectual consensus.
The issue with unbelievers is with working the intellectual machinery. A crucial part of being convinced is being able to put yourself in someone else's argument. Where presuppositions are shared, this is easier; when they are not, one is faced with either arguing the presuppositions, or "as I were" arguments. In practice the latter-- "if I were a Christian, this is how I would think about the Trinity" -- is extremely difficult. Failure to integrate these people to the consensus isn't that much of a blow.
When I say "the breadth of consensus" on the Trinity, what mean isn't numbers, but rather that across the spectrum of theological positions and systems, the doctrine is accepted by nearly everyone.
Also, do you believe it is "hubris" for an Orthodox Christian to say Orthodoxy is the True Church but that is not when he says Christianity is the True Religion? Would this not also be hubris to the Hindu?
Trying to actually pin down Hinduism is a lot harder than it appears you believe it to be. And I'm really not that interested in Hinduism because I personally don't feel any impulse to accept its "authorities".
This is about to dive into real theology, so I'm probably going to stop short pretty soon. But I think the best test of this is historical. Empirically, faith in Jesus and participation in the sacramental life of the church isn't enough to produce consistent agreement. Therefore, one must conclude that the One True Religion is not something that (thus far) has been rationally expressed in human theology-- or it is, its essential expression is a lot smaller than the theology of most if not all churches. By "rationally" I specifically mean statements which withstand the test of objective rational consideration. Now, I think a big part of the problem is objectivity, which is generally not really possible. In general people come to the issue of ecclesiology with the presupposition that they are already in The Church, so ecclesiology always has the scent of rationalization. And I suspect that most people convert from one church to another for reasons other than ecclesiology.
(The issue being, who proclaims the Faith unchanged in essence since the time it was established- one can still choose to disagree with that and say the Holy Fathers were wrong but there is plenty of material to know what they taught and draw the logical inferences from those facts)
Well, part of the issue, "what is change?" The bible thumping Protestant approach can degenerate into rejecting the doctrines of the Fathers as change. And while I think there are basic intellectual reasons for rejecting this approach (as for instance its practitioners tend to recapitulate basic historical heresies which the larger consensus rejects without having to rely on the authority of the fathers), it is grounded in the realization that there is a trend towards elaboration of theology, and that elaboration is vulnerable to leaving the source material behind. And there simply is a tradition of controversialism arising out of the sinful urge to differentiate one's church from that of the heretics. In the big picture, ecumenists tend to gloss over differences; but traditionalists tend to fantasize about differences that aren't really there. The truth can (and I believe does) lie in the middle.
