The religious truth claims that have most interested me convey The Beatles sentiment: "She says she loves you|And you know that can't be bad.|Yes, she loves you|And you know you should be glad." And, for each of us, it takes some courage to act as if that were true! Hence, Walker Percy drew a distinction between news and information, the performative (Good News) and the merely informative? I am not even familiar with so many of the truth claims of our traditions so don't offer the following set of distinctions as exhaustive. And I further resonate with an approach that offers and receives such musings as questions (?), so, in that vein: I find it helpful to distinguish, first, between a theory of truth (correspondence & congruence) and a test of truth (coherence, consilience & consonance), and next between nomological (descriptive/interpretive) & axiological (normative/evaluative) truth claims and then further distinguish between prudential (moral/practical) norms and relational norms (unitary/unitive), which foster realizations of absolute unitary being and/or intersubjective unitive intimacy, distinct realizations, to be sure, but both from which solidarity and compassion seem to inevitably ensue? and which have profound existential import? I find the relational norms (ceremonial, liturgical, ascetical & mystical) the most interesting when they lead to phenomenal experiences that do not so much lend themselves to phenomenological descriptions (much less metaphysical/ontological hyptheses?) as they will otherwise bring about a practitioner's affective attunement with reality vis a vis how friendly and safe it is notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary (ridding folks of angst, perfect love driving out all fear)? There is a "Taste and See" approach to such truth claims that engages our participatory imaginations more than our conceptual mapmaking? This is not to say that empirical, logical, moral and practical propositions are unimportant, only to realize that 'marital propositions' are far more 'engaging' and meaninggiving, inviting what I like to call an existentialdisjunctive: "I am going to live as if She loves me." And when so many efficacies ensue from thus living AS IF ... perhaps truth will come flying in on the wings of beauty & goodness? She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
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