² Maclntyre, Alasdair, ‘How Can We Learn What Verilatis Splendor Has To Teach?,’ The Thomist 58, no. 2 (1994), p. 187Google Scholar.

³ Maclntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 356Google Scholar.

⁴ Niebuhr, H. Richard, The Meaning of Revelation (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1960), 32, 38Google Scholar. See Schleiermacher, Friedrich, On Religion, with an Introduction by Otto, Rudolph, trans. from the third German edition by Oman, John (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1958)Google Scholar.

⁵ Berkhof, Hendrikus, Two Hundred Years of Theology, trans. Vriend, John (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁶ Hick, John, An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

⁷ Solomon, Robert C., Continental Philosophy Since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 40Google Scholar.

⁸ Yoder, John Howard, ‘What Would You Do If?,’ J Rel Ethics 2/1, no. Fall (1974), 101Google Scholar.

⁹ Yoder, , ‘What Would You Do If?,’ p. 101Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Murphy, Nancey and McClendon, James Wm. Jr., ‘Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies’, Modern Theology 5, no. 3 (1989), pp. 191–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Rorty, Richard, Introduction to Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

¹² By ‘realist’ I mean someone who holds to a representational theory of language (and hence to some version of the correspondence theory of truth) and who believes that reality divides neatly into subjects and objects (or into language and world; or ideas and things).

¹³ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. von Wright, G. H., Rhees, Rush, and Anscombe, G. E. M., trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press, 1978), III, §74Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Cp. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (New York: Macmillan, 1958), §242Google Scholar: ‘If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments.’

¹⁵ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics. Cambridge, 1939: From the Notes of R. G. Bosanquet, Norman Malcolm, Rush Rhees, and Yorick Smythies, Chicago Series, ed. Diamond, Cora (University of Chicago Press: 1975), 183–184Google Scholar. See also PI, §§241–2.

¹⁶ For a discussion of the correspondence theory of truth see, e.g. Strawson, P. F., ‘Truth’, in Logico-Linguistic Papers (London: Methuen, 1977), pp. 190–213Google Scholar. For a critique of the ‘candidacy’ of the law of noncontradiction and the reality of perceptual objects as indubitable see Barnes, and Bloor, , ‘Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge,’ in Hollis, Martin and Lukes, Steven (eds), Rationality and Relativism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), pp. 21–47Google Scholar. On the one hand, what we commonly identify as the set of ‘the laws of logic’ turns out to be a learned body of knowledge which not only has changed over time, but is susceptible to replacement, in certain contexts, by other coherent axiomatic logical systems. On the other hand, information about our perceptual ability to navigate successfully through an environment cluttered with middle-sized dry goods may be indeed universal but fails to provide the transcendental criteria necessary for answering discrepancies which arise not at the individualistic level of animal navigation, but at the social level of, say, cartography.

¹⁷ Bloor, David, Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Bloor, , Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge, p. 130Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid. Cf. Wittgenstein, RFM, I, §116. Wittgenstein, says as much in On Certainty, ed. Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H., trans. Paul, Denis and Anscombe, G. E. M. (New York, NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1969, 1972)Google Scholar, §82: ‘What counts as an adequate test of a statement belongs to logic. It belongs to the description.’ Here ‘logic’ is used in apposition to ‘description,’ the latter being used in Wittgenstein to distinguish explanation and justification from what we are left with when justification comes to an end—descriptions of social convention. Cf. §189.

²⁰ Wittgenstein defuses this threat by observing that the possibility of private language cannot be expressed except in terms of public language—a criticism which damages the autonomy of the private language. There is an enormous body of literature revolving around Wittgenstein's comments in PI, §§241–93 (etc.). While this topic is clearly outside the bounds of this paper, that his comments have stirred such a vigorous response at least shows that the possibility of private language is not intuitively obvious. For an alternate account, one which takes J. L. Austin, rather than Wittgenstein, as its starting point see Wm. McClendon, James Jr. and Smith, James M., Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism, new, revised ed. (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994Google Scholar; reprint, Originally published as Understanding Religious Convictions. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), pp. 149–180Google Scholar.

²¹ Rorty paraphrases Davidson as saying to the skeptic ‘you are only a skeptic because you have these intentionalistic notions floating around in your head, inserting imaginary barriers between you and the world. Once you purify yourself of the “idea” idea in all its various forms, skepticism will never cross your enlightened mind.’ Rorty, Richard, ‘Pragmatism, Davidson, and Truth,’ in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 126–150. Citation from p. 138Google Scholar.

²² Fish, Stanley, Is There a Text in This Class? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 320Google Scholar.

²³ Rorty, Richard, ‘Inquiry as Recontextualization: An Anti-dualist Account of Interpretation’, in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 101Google Scholar.

²⁴ Even the early Wittgenstein, recognized that ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.’ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Traclalus Logico-Philosophicus (London and New York: Routledge, [1921] 1992), 5. 6Google Scholar.

²⁵ Quine, W. V. O., ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism,’ The Philosophical Review 60, no. 1 (1951), pp. 20–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Davidson, Donald, ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 183–198Google Scholar.

²⁷ Davidson, , ‘On the Very Idea’, p. 185Google Scholar.

²⁸ By ‘metalanguage’ Tarski means those sentences containing words like ‘true’ or ‘corresponds to’ are descriptions of the relationship between ordinary sentences and the world. Tarski, Alfred, ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth,’ in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, ed. Feigl, Herbert and Sellars, Wilfrid (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), pp. 52–84Google Scholar. For a holist interpretation of Tarski's Convention T see Davidson, Donald, ‘Reality Without Reference,’ in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 227–241Google Scholar.

²⁹ Davidson, , ‘On the Very Idea,’ pp. 193–194Google Scholar

³⁰ Davidson, , ‘On the Very Idea,’ p. 194Google Scholar.

³¹ Davidson, , ‘On the Very Idea,’ p. 192Google Scholar.

³² Here the word ‘true’ is not linked to concepts of justification or representationalism but to coherence within the web of belief. See Rorty's, Richard analysis in ‘Representation, Social Practise, Truth,’ in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 154Google Scholar; also pp. 159–60.

³³ Here ‘world’ signifies a Goodmanian world. See Goodman, Nelson, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1978)Google Scholar. Williams, Bernard builds a similar case against the language-world distinction in his essay, ‘Wittgenstein and Idealism,’ in Understanding Wittgenstein, ed. Vesey, Godfrey (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 76–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of course, it is unfair to use this essay to defend Davidson given the latter's intention to construct a nonreferential, yet still empirical, theory of language in contrast to William's idealist thesis. See Davidson, Donald, ‘Reality Without Reference,’ in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 215–226Google Scholar.

³⁴ Davidson, , ‘Reality Without Reference,’ p. 215Google Scholar.

³⁵ Rorty, Richard, ‘The World Well Lost,’ The Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972), pp. 649–665CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Citation from p. 663.

³⁶ Davidson, ‘Reality Without Reference.’

³⁷ Rorty, Richard, ‘Pragmatism, Davidson, and Truth,’ in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 145–146Google Scholar.

³⁸ Rorty, Richard, ‘Hesse and Davidson on Metaphor’, in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 166 fn. 17Google Scholar.

³⁹ Thiselton, Anthony C., The Two Horizons (Carlisle, UK and Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster Press and Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ What can be thought to enable the hermeneutic circle (or better, the hermeneutic spiral) in its initial engagement is first, in Davidsonian terms, a version of the principle of chanty which assures us of some experiential overlap between contemporary and New Testament believers, and second, the concept of historical trajectory which I will discuss in the next section. For a parallel argument on the centrality of the interpretive community for biblical exegesis, one which takes reader response theory as a starting point rather than Davidson, see Brenneman, James E., Canons in Conflict: Negotiating Texts in True and False Prophecy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar. See also, Murphy, Nancey, ‘Textual Relativism, Philosophy of Language, and the baptist Vision,’ in the festschrift for Wm. McClendon, James Jr., entitled Theology Without Foundations. Religious Practice and the Future of Theological Truth, eds Hauerwas, Stanley, Murphy, Nancey, and Nation, Mark (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994), pp. 245–270Google Scholar. While I have argued for philosophical reasons (i.e. Davidson, Wittgenstein, etc.) that something about the readers (rather than the text) must be made to conform to preconditions for understanding, McClendon makes the same sort of point for theological reasons. The Church's hermeneutic depends upon the continuity (what McClendon calls the ‘baptist vision’) it sees between the narrative of its own identity and the biblical story. Cf. Wm. McClendon, James Jr., Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1986), pp. 17–46Google Scholar and Doctrine: Systematic Theology, Vol. 2 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994), pp. 44–46Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Is global skepticism thereby a worry? Rorty thinks that such a claim is unintelligible in light of previous discussion on the causal connection we have with our environment. Cf. Rorty, ‘Pragmatism, Davidson, and Truth,’ p. 134.

⁴² This point was made clear to me by chapter one of Murphy's, Nancey dissertation which is published as Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca, NVCornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

⁴³ Rorty, ‘Inquiry as Recontextualization,’ p. 107, emphasis added.

⁴⁴ Rorty, ‘Inquiry as Recontextualization,’ p. 104.

⁴⁵ Davidson appears to follow Quine in taking the object of the transitive verb ‘believe’ to be sentences, rather than nonlinguistic objects (i.e. states of affairs, etc.). Cf. Quine, W. V. O. and Ullian, J. S., The Web of Belief, 2nd edn (New York: Random House, 1978), pp. 10–13Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ This illustration is, of course, from Wittgenstein. For other accounts of tacit knowledge see Kuhn, pp. 191–8; Feyerabend, Paul, Famuell to Reason (London, UK and New York, NY: Verso, 1987), pp. 106–111Google Scholar; Polanyi, M., The Tacit Dimension (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1983Google Scholar; originally published: Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).

⁴⁷ Maclntyre, , Whose Justice?, p. 379Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Discussed in Murphy, Nancey, ‘Theology in the Age of Probable Reasoning’ (Th.D. Dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, 1986), pp. 27–35Google Scholar. For the archaic Greek world, ‘Reality consists in a paratactic aggregate of parts, not a system with some underlying source of order and unity that subordinates some features, parts, or actions to others,’ pp. 32–3. In such a world, knowledge was measured in terms of quantity rather than depth: ‘Quantity of knowledge comes simply from exposure to the many parts of the world; there is no essence to be grasped behind appearances. In fact, there are no appearances of things in this world. There are simply the things in themselves,’ p. 33. See Feyerabend, Paul, Against Method (London, UK: New Left Books, 1975)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ An example of translation changing the language is in the way Christianity tiansformed the Greek language by equating , with in order to intelligibly express its trinitarian convictions. Zizioulas, J., Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), pp. 27–65Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Feyerabend, , Farewell to Reason, p. 266Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, ‘Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough’, in Philosophical Occasions, 1912–1952, eds Klagge, James C. and Normann, Alfred (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1993), p. 131Google Scholar.

⁵² Maclntyre, , Whose Justice?, p. 384Google Scholar.

⁵³ Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Horton, John and Mendus, Susan, ‘Alasdair Maclntyre: After Virtue and After’, in After Maclntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair Maclntyre, eds Horton, John and Mendus, Susan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 11Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ MacIntyre, , After Virtue, 222Google Scholar. Cf. Maclntyre, , Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 12, 354–5Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ MacIntyre, , Whose Justice?, p. 350Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ MacIntyre, , Wlwse Justice?, p. 12Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ MacIntyre, , Whose Justice?, pp. 370–388Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ My exegesis of Kierkegaard at this point is indebted to Maclntyre, , After Virtue, pp. 39–50Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ MacIntyre, , Three Rival Versions, p. 118Google Scholar. MacIntyre may have overstated the case here. Persuasion need not be deceptive though it is ‘rhetorical’ in the sense that it is broader than the mere simple syllogism which characterizes some ‘rational argument.’

⁶¹ MacIntyre, , Three Rival Versions, p. 120Google Scholar.

⁶² For a helpful discussion of the seven ways MacIntyre uses the concept of narrative see Jones, L. Gregory, ‘Alasdair MacIntyre on Narrative, Community, and the Moral Life,’ Modern Theology 4 (1987), pp. 53–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ MacIntyre, , Three Rival Versions, p. 81Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ It is important to note that for MacIntyre the condemnation of Dante's literature as heretical by the Roman Church represents the kind of in-house discussion that occurs in traditions defined as historically extended, socially embodied arguments (After Virtue, p. 222). As a result, MacIntyre is probably comfortable with conceiving Dante's literature as a source of justification from within, rather than from without, the Christian tradition.

⁶⁵ MacIntyre, , Three Rival Versions, p. 64Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ MacIntyre, , Three Rival Versions, p. 146Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Williams, Bernard, Morality, Canto edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1972; reprint, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 23 (pages referred to are from the 1993 edition)Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Williams, , Morality, p. 25Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Williams, , Morality, p. 72Google Scholar: ‘If God existed, there might well be special, and acceptable, reasons for subscribing to morality. The trouble is that the attempt to formulate those reasons in better than the crudest outline runs into the impossibility of thinking correctly about God. The trouble with religious morality comes not from morality's being inescapably pure, but from religion's being incurably unintelligible.’

⁷⁰ MacIntyre, , Three Rival Versions, pp. 105–126Google Scholar.

⁷¹ For a contemporary account of justification, one that transcends the stalemate between epistemological foundationalism and skepticism by showing the significance of cases where an isomorphism exists between a conceptual system (e.g. the history of philosophy of science) and a mode of behavior (e.g. the history of the practice of science), see Murphy, Nancey, ‘Philosophical Fractals: Or, History as Metaphilosophy,’ Studies in the History of Philosophy of Science 24, no. 3 (1993), pp. 501–508CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷² Athenagoras, , ‘A Plea for Christians,’ in Classical Readings in Christian Apologetics A.D. 100–1800, ed. Bush, L. Russ (Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, Zondervan Publishing House, 1983), p. 44Google Scholar.

⁷³ Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘The Church in a Divided World. The Interpretive Power of the Christian Story,’ in A Community of Character (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 105Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ 1 Timothy 2:4 (NRSV).

⁷⁵ Kallenberg, Brad J., ‘Conversion Converted: A Postmodern Formulation of the Doctrine of Conversion,’ The Evangelical Quarterly 67, no. 4 (1995), pp. 335–364Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Hauerwas, , ‘The Church in a Divided World,’ p. 103Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ For a helpful analysis of Augustine's conversion see, Hauerwas, Stanley and Burrell, David, ‘From System to Story: An Alternative Pattern for Rationality in Ethics,’ in Truthfulness and Tragedy, ed. Hauerwas, Stanley, with Bondi, Richard and Burrell, David B. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), pp. 15–39Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ 1 Corinthians 9:22.

⁷⁹ Hauerwas, , ‘The Church in a Divided World,’ p. 105Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ I am indebted to John H. Yoder's analysis of the gospel as news. See Yoder, John Howard, ‘On Not Being Ashamed of the Gospel: Particularity, Pluralism, and Validation,’ Faith Phil 9, no. 3 (1992), pp. 285–300CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. For an explication of four criteria for deciding if news is good news (i.e. newsworthy) on the basis of an awareness of personal predicament see Gregory R. Beabout's unpublished paper, ‘What's Good News?’ (paper presented at The Society of Christian Philosophers, Concordia Theological Seminary, St Louis, MO, 1994).

⁸¹ Yoder, , ‘On Not Being Ashamed,’ p. 293Google Scholar.

⁸² These have been made explicit to me by Murphy's, Nancey recently published ‘Philosophical Resources for Postmodern Conservative Theology’ in a collection of her essays entitled Anglo–American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 113–130Google Scholar.

⁸³ A host of literature has arisen in the wake of Wittgenstein's constipated remark, ‘Theology as grammar’ (PI, §373). Cf. Holmer, Paul, The Grammar of Faith (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1978)Google Scholar; Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Barrett, Lee C., ‘Theology as Grammar: Regulative Principles or Paradigms and Practices,’ Modern Theology 4, no. 2 (1988), pp. 155–172CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kerr, Fergus, Theology After Wittgenstein (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ In other words, the possibility of successful communication for all adherents to a rival scheme rests on the possibility of a felicitous speech act in the case of one such adherent. If, for whatever reason, persuasion is necessarily unattainable for even one, then the practice of communicating the good news fails to be validated in Yoder's second sense; those with good news to communicate could not consistently claim that the possibility of successful communication was one of universal scope.

On the universality of Wm. McClendon, James Jr., ‘How is Christian Morality Universalizable?,’ in The Weight of Glory: A Vision and Practice for Christian Faith: The Future of Liberal Theology: Essays for Peter Baelz, eds Hardy, D. W. and Sedgwick, P. H. (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1991), pp. 101–115Google Scholar. McClendon borrows the suspiciously Kantian term ‘universalizable’ in order to show that post-Kantian ethicists who propound a ‘universalizable’ theory of ethics, have succeeded only in denning the term ‘universalizable’ in ways particular to their respective communities! McClendon follows suit, explaining a Christian understanding of universalizability that can render Christian ethics ‘universal’, namely, that the Christian community blesses all the nations and makes a universal offer of salvation. McClendon does not offer a universalizable theory of ethics but describes a practice that is universal in scope.

⁸⁵ Revelation 5:9–10. Note how fitting it is for my argument that the writer describes followers of the Lamb in social categories.

⁸⁶ For us to apply the term ‘true’ to the gospel is not simply tautologous since what counts as ‘truth’ is internal to the conceptual framework definitively shaped by the gospel. Instead, to claim that the gospel is true, is to claim that our web of beliefs—though never complete (which is to say that some beliefs in their present form may eventually be discarded and the web rewoven)—is on a trajectory which converges toward truth and is unsurpassable by any synchronous rivals. This use of ‘truth’ as the terminus of the historical process of dialectical justification has precedent in Aquinas. MacIntyre observes that (in contrast to post-Enlightenment thinkers) Thomists do not conceive of arguing from first principles but toward them. Cf. Three Rival Versions, p. 205. Though MacIntyre sides with Aristotle against the notion of a tradition ever attaining the telos (cf. Nicomachean Ethics, 1096b 32f.), Christians hold that the eschaton will be, indeed, realized and thereafter we will no longer be constrained to see in a glass darkly.

⁸⁷ See McClendon, and Smith, , Convictions: Defusing Religious Pluralism, pp. 81–180Google Scholar.