The central problem of religious epistemology

 reconciling faith with intellectual honesty.

 Knowledge is justified true belief
o Condition of Correspondence
o Condition of Verification
Must they be E
a priori /a YES
posteriori
Can reasons
Is the YES
be given? and/or
cognitive
dimension Is support inductive/ NO
of religious necessary? YES deductive? D
belief NO
essential? YES C
NO
B
NO
A

Position A: faith is expressive or emotive (e.g. R. B. Braithwaite)

Position B: faith is fideistic (e.g. S. Kierkegaard)
Position C: faith is bipolar, evidential grounds are necessary but lacking (e.g. W. Pannenberg)
Position E: traditional reading of faith (e.g. natural theology)
1. syllogistic, vertical argumentation (mode of premises and conclusions)
2. truth is propositional
a. correspondence theory = adequation of truth and reality
b. coherence theory = proposition logically consistent with other propositions
within a belief system
c. pragmatic theory = truth is what works
Position D: rethinking religious epistemology
1. The character of the truth of faith is excessivity (cf. I.T. Ramsey’s disclosure
model theory).
2. This character of excessivity contravenes the traditional laws of thought
a. Law of Identity (A is A, but something more)
b. Law of Non-contradiction (tradition of negative theology, A and –A)
c. Law of the Excluded Middle (faith is eschatological, already-but-not-yet,
hence the instantiation of a middle term, a metaxu).

Faith and Event Metaphysics

From Being to Becoming

From Substance to Process
From Object to Event

Luminaries include: Alfred North Whitehead, Isabelle Stengers, Gilles Deleuze, Alain
Badiou, Claude Romano, etc.
A. Modes of Event
 Ad-venire
o A coming into, an arrival, a landing of the other
o Transcendence
 E-venire
o Unfolding
o Immanence

B. Metaphysics of Event
 Recuperating the category of relationality
 Transformation understood as origamic (ontology of the folds)
 Affirmation of the “already-but-not-yet”
 Epistemology of the Promise

C. Basic Human Activity for Aristotle:

 Theoria = contemplation of the truth
 Praxis = action which is an end in itself
 Poiesis = action that produces something

D. Corresponding Domain of Rationality

 Theoria = speculative reason (sophia)
 Praxis = practical reason (phronesis)
 Poiesis = creative reason (?)

E. Phantasia
 Pejorative understanding:
o Daydream
o Illusory appearance
o Whimsical notion
 Phantasia as a possible intellectual virtue:
o To picture to oneself
o To imagine
o To show or to bring to light (phainein), related to phos (light)
o To make visible or to make it appear (n.b. truth as unveiling)

F. Imagination as Proposition
 Condition of Correspondence (cf. Deleuze)

Possible Real

Virtual Actual

 Condition of Verification
o Fidelity (to the event)
G. Contours of a Becoming-Subject
 The cause of the subject is an event. There is no subject prior to event
 An evental subject is a divided subject. An event constituted subject is
origamic
 Defining character of a subject is fidelity. Thinking “according to--”

H. Essential Characteristics of Truth in Religion (cf. Alain Badiou)

 ‘theory of equality before truth’ = since no Christian subject pre-exists the
Christ-event, all are constituted as “sons-subjects” or co-workers in the
declaration and fidelity to the event and its implications.
 Truth is subjective = it belongs to the Christian discourse of declaration arising
from the conviction that one has relative to the Christ-event
 Truth is a process = it is de-substantialized, a truth procedure.
 Truth is “indifferent to the state of the situation” = the subtraction essential in
the emergence of truth postulates a distance from the state of the situation.
This is the basis of the truth’s universality.

I. Truth indicators of faith

 Epistemic fit within a religious doxastic network.

 Empirical fit = faith needs to do justice to the religious experience of the
person(individual pole) and the longstanding religious tradition from where
that religious belief emerged and is sustained (community pole).
 Poietic fit = witnessing of a believer productive of elements germinal of
corporate identity.