ABSTRACT
According to the Acts of the Apostles, ‘it was in Antioch that [Jesus’] disciples were first called “Christians” ’ (Acts 11:26). From its original function of identifying the religious movement that was to evolve into mainstream orthodox Christianity, the label ‘Christian’ has expanded to become an umbrella term designating a wide range of spiritual experiences, communal traditions and incommensurable accounts of the ultimate order-of-things. Consequently, any exploration of what it means to be epistemically relative about Christianity must define its terms of reference carefully if it is not to slip into abstract generalisations. In the previous chapter we examined three different readings of Christianity: an idealist reading, that claimed unmediated experiential access to the transcendent realm; a nominalist reading, that limited itself to surface descriptions of the immanent socio-cultural phenomenon of Christianity; and an orthodox reading, that told the story of the transcendent Trinitarian God’s immanent providential presence within the historical process. We elected to focus primarily on the latter orthodox reading, and its advocacy of a Trinitarian theology. We did so partly for practical reasons of space, partly because the idealist and nominalist traditions constitute, in the main, post-Enlightenment revisionary readings of Christian orthodoxy, and partly because the three major Christian traditions – Eastern Orthodoxy, Western Catholicism and Western Protestantism – all subscribe to Trinitarian doctrine. Having identified orthodox Trinitarian Christianity as the focus of our investigation, we can now move forward to explore the relationship between Trinitarianism and epistemic relativism. There is no questioning the fact that the truth claims of Trinitarian Christianity, like all truth claims, however puerile or refined, are open to investigation within the framework of epistemic relativism. What is at issue in this chapter is the extent to which adherents of Trinitarian Christianity recognise and acknowledge the epistemically relative nature of their truth claims. Failure to do so will serve to enhance the modernist notion that theological beliefs lack rational warrant and evidential support; conversely, the acceptance of epistemic relativism on the part of Trinitarian Christians will serve to enhance the critical realist claim that theological statements are, both in principle and practice, open to critical evaluation.
