ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that based on the church’s doctrine on revelation and its reception, legitimate Catholic religious epistemology is essentially critical realist and not, as implied by the survey findings, naïve realist. The chapter examines the Christian doctrine of ‘sensus fidei’ to show how the historical human reception required by revelation and made possible by this ‘sense of the faithful’, in fact, indicates a subscription to epistemic relativism. Hence, the notion of the ‘sensus fidei’ yields a religious epistemology that entails the exercise of critical thinking. The chapter concludes by claiming that orthodox Catholic religious epistemology subscribes not only to an ontological realism that permits the exercise of critical thinking, but also to an epistemic relativism that mandates it. This claim, while contrary to the usual notion, can be evidenced historically, as demonstrated, for example, in the formation of the canon of Scripture.
