This one from me.
In his book On Religion for the Thinking in Action series, philosopher of deconstruction John D. Caputo expresses his wish to keep us unhinged and away from fundamentalism, his passion to keep the question of what I love when I love my God open as a question, and his close association of religion with the love of God. All very well so far.
He stresses that the best way to think of truth (in religion or otherwise) is to think of it as the best interpretation anyone has come up with yet, while acknowledging that no one knows what is coming next. He wants us to live the love of God without mistaking our religion or ourselves with God. He declares that religion is our doing, and not God's doing.
Caputo has been said to have a passion for the impossible, and he passionately wants to keep undecidability in man's doings of religion. He doesn't want the love of God to be sacrificed on the altar of someone's philosophical system, somebody's theology, or some bishop's proclamation of what qualifies as right teaching or right religion. There can be many true religions, says Caputo.
However, does Caputo's undecidability of religious truth or true religion deny the possibility of there being one true religion? Does it overlook the possibility that there is a God who has revealed himself to us, who has instructed certain people in right teaching about himself and his creation, and who has commanded those to whom the revelation has been given to spread the good news and given them power to teach on fundamental matters free from error? I don't see that it eliminates such possibilities; it does raise the very serious question of how we can know what the right religion is, if there is just one.
Contrary to what Caputo says, I believe religion is our doing, but it is also God's doing. Religion is our response to a God who reveals. From this standpoint, right religion means that our response corresponds to the revelation of God. If there is no way of our really knowing that God has revealed and what specifically he has revealed, if there is no way to discern what is the right response to the God who reveals, what would be the point of revelation in the first place? Revealing one true faith to people who have no hope of knowing that they have been given the one true faith would render revelation silent and invisible. If revelation is real, then there would seem to be a way through the darkness of undecidability.
As a Catholic, I believe that God does exists, created the universe, and has throughout history revealed himself to us, especially and ultimately in the Person of his Son, Jesus Christ. I believe that Jesus founded the Catholic Church. I believe that God guides his Church in teaching what God wants us to know about himself and about his creation, what we need to know to give birth to Christ in the world and become members of Christ's body. What the Catholic Church does not proclaim and what I do not believe is that there is any perfect human language that all truth can be reduced to and expressed entirely with no meaning remaining outside its signification. Human language is limited, historically and culturally, and by its power to create meaning. Human language is not purely objective, so any "objective truth" that we know and understand we do so objectively and subjectively. That includes God's revelation.
As I've argued before, we don't understand things as they are in themselves; we understand them in so far as they are expressed and even creatively shaped by our language. So I would say we can understand things, we can have true knowledge, but our understanding is always imperfect, historically and culturally conditioned. We understand by means of imperfect constructs, hence the need for deconstruction. I know that I do not know, said Socrates.
That said, I have not answered the question: How do I know that my understanding of reality (and God's revelation) actually corresponds to anything beyond what I seem to experience, perceive, and interpret through language? How, within the darkness of undecidability, do I know that mine is the true faith? I have indicated there may be an answer, but an answer I have not yet given.
Any ideas?
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