The fields of comparative theology and interreligious dialogue have largely presupposed the possibility of interreligious learning, but there have been few attempts to provide a philosophical framework for such learning. Utilizing the philosophical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur, I argue that evaluations of religious truth should be understood holistically and contextually. In interreligious engagements, tensions are created in and questions are raised for one's own worldview. If one proceeds to imaginatively enter into another's worldview and finds resources there that enable one to alleviate those tensions and answer those questions, as well as make sense of one's reality in a broad way, then one may properly deem such beliefs to be true. Interreligious learning is thus construed as the recognition of truth that enables one to productively orient oneself to reality. The result is a provisional philosophical framework for understanding religious truth and interreligious learning.

One of the main problems that Paul Horwich’s Minimalist theory of truth must face is the generalization problem, which shows that Minimalism is too weak to have the fundamental explanatory role Horwich claims it has. In this paper, I defend Horwich’s response to the generalization problem from an objection raised by Bradley Armour-Garb. I also argue that, given my response to Armour-Garb, Horwich’s proposal to cope with the generalization problem can be simplified.

It is often argued that belief is partly constituted by a norm of truth. Most recent discussions have assumed that the norm is deontic concerning what may or ought to be believed. I criticize two proposals, one canvassed by Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi, and the other defended by Daniel Whiting. Instead, I argue in favour of an evaluative norm, according to which we would do well to believe the truth. I show that an evaluative norm fares better than its deontic competitors with respect to the demandingness of truth, the aim of truth, and epistemic blame.

Seventeenth-century Iberian and Italian Scholastics had a concept of a truthmaker (verificativum) similar to that found in contemporary metaphysical debates. I argue that the seventeenth-century notion of a truthmaker can be illuminated by a prevalent seventeenth-century theory of truth according to which the truth of a proposition is the mereological sum of that proposition and its intentional object. I explain this theory of truth and then spell out the account of truthmaking it entails.

This paper provides a qualified defense of Martin Heidegger's controversial assertion that humans and animals differ in kind, not just degree. He has good reasons to defend the human difference, and his thesis is compatible with the evolution of humans from other animals. He argues that the human environment is the world of meaning and truth, an environment that peculiarly makes possible truthful activities, such as biology. But the ability to be open to truth cannot be a feature of human biology without making such pursuits as biology, mathematics, and philosophy a biological function of a certain species, Homo sapiens. To deny the human difference amounts to species relativism, which leaves the normativity of truth unexplained. To reconcile the human evolutionary heritage and the uniquely human openness to meaning and truth, this paper amplifies a distinction occasionally made by Heidegger between condition and cause.

The term aṣ̌a- stands in the centre of ancient Iranian thought. It is a pivotal concept in Zoroastrian religious lore, but is not, in its significance, coeval with Zoroastrianism. As an object of eschatological longing, aṣ̌a- has Indo-Iranian roots. It is, in Old and Middle Persian texts, primarily understood as a synecdoche for the divine sphere where the religiously dutiful expect to lead a blessed mental existence after death. Aṣ̌a- is also a deity of the Old Avestan pantheon, thus a deified concept. Finally, the term is regularly used in the Gāthās as both the authoritative instance of measuring human (religious) conduct, and the normative goal of therapeutic (eschatological) activity. In this latter usage, too, and in agreement with its form and etymology, aṣ̌a- signifies a concrete phenomenon. There are good reasons to think that this phenomenon is the world as it was “put together” by Ahura Mazdā, and only subsequently sickened by the forces of deception. Translations to date, such as “truth” and “order”, are examined, all of which are shown to have serious problems. In conclusion I propose to translate aṣ̌a- as “cosmos”.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in the United States (US) went through a shift because of the introduction of open theism into theological context of conservative evangelicalism. The response by the society to this new theology was swift and decisive. Not only were the memberships of certain evangelicals (i.e. Clark H. Pinnock and John Sanders), who were responsible for bringing open theism into the ETS, in danger of being revoked, but the ETS formally denounced open theism and changed its constitutional by-laws to safeguard itself against anyone bringing significant theological innovation into the society. It is important to re-examine the cultural ethos of the ETS in the US in terms of the underlying beliefs of the society in order to determine whether or not the changes the ETS made had basis in scripture or were simply motivated by the culture at large. To determine this, this article will begin by generally describing some of the main cultural beliefs of the ETS. Next, the discussion focuses on some of the major historical influences of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which impacted the ETS to conform to an ethos more in line with the Enlightenment. Third, the article will critique these Enlightenment-based cultural beliefs linguistically, culturally and theologically. This article will demonstrate that because the ETS conformed more to the standards of the Enlightenment than to scripture, it is generally much more preoccupied with knowing the truth of scripture rather than walking in the way of Jesus Christ. Finally, this article suggests the way forward for the ETS is to become a more inclusive society by aligning itself with a more historical definition of evangelicalism rather than simply being defined by the evangelicalism of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article suggests that by making this move, the ETS will reclaim a much more grace-filled attitude towards its current members and give hope to those committed Christ-followers on the outside of the society, showing them they are welcome to be a part of such a prestigious theological group.

The single type of writing that Luke's Preface resembles most is the Greek decree. Along with other indications, the structure situates Luke in the tradition of Classical historiography. It also creates important links to the narrative, helping to define: the relationships between Roman power and Christianity and between Classical and Lukan historiography; the character of the Christian politeia; the superiority of Lukan historiography both to Classical and to previous Christian historiography; the superiority of Lukan Christian doctrine; and the superiority of the ‘reward’ from Luke's Christian ‘contract’ to the ‘rewards’ of the Classical historians Thucydides, Livy and Augustus and to those of the Roman politeia.

We investigate axiomatizations of Kripke's theory of truth based on the Strong Kleene evaluation scheme for treating sentences lacking a truth value. Feferman's axiomatization KF formulated in classical logic is an indirect approach, because it is not sound with respect to Kripke's semantics in the straightforward sense: only the sentences that can be proved to be true in KF are valid in Kripke's partial models. Reinhardt proposed to focus just on the sentences that can be proved to be true in KF and conjectured that the detour through classical logic in KF is dispensable. We refute Reinhardt's Conjecture, and provide a direct axiomatization PKF of Kripke's theory in partial logic. We argue that any natural axiomatization of Kripke's theory in Strong Kleene logic has the same proof-theoretic strength as PKF. namely the strength of the system ramified analysis or a system of Tarskian ramified truth up to ωω. Thus any such axiomatization is much weaker than Feferman's axiomatization KF in classical logic, which is equivalent to the system of ramified analysis up to ε0.

The uniform reflection principle for the theory of uniform T-sentences is added to PA. The resulting system is justified on the basis of a disquotationalist theory of truth where the provability predicate is conceived as a special kind of analyticity. The system is equivalent to the system ACA of arithmetical comprehension. If the truth predicate is also allowed to occur in the sentences that are inserted in the T-sentences. yet not in the scope of negation, the system with the reflection schema for these T-sentences assumes the strength of the Kripke-Feferman theory KF. and thus of ramified analysis up to ε0.