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RESPONSE TO BRUCE MARSHALL GEORGE LINDBECK There is an abundance of il'iches in Bruce Marshalrs essay. He makes me understand hoth myse1f and Aquinas hetter than I biaid done hefore; and, interestingly, it is chiefly hy his exegesis of St. Thomas that he does :bhis. If I had referred more to the Thomistic ideas he elucidates when I wirus writing Natrure of Dootrine1 it would have !been a better hook. What he calls the " somewhat notorious " example of the crusadeT"s Christus est Dominus is a good oase in point. It would ihave helped if I had made dear that I was thinking in medieval [ashion of a an individual rutterance, the product of a pa•riticular :second 1aJct of the intellect, the ·acl of composing and dividing, of judging ·such and such rto ibe rthe ca,se. In Aquinas' intellectual setting, judgments, not sentences in ·abstraiction from 1 acls of affirmation, were propositions capruble of being true or f.a1se. Many of my ·reruders had a more modern or "Platonic " understanding of rpropositions, and therefore missed the force of the e:xJam:ple ·as Marshall so carefully and rightly explains it. Among his contributions, the major one, however, is system- •a1tically to introduce into the disCUJssion the distinction between the " truth " and " justification " of beliefs or pI'oposi- "'" tionS.- Once the point is made, it is evident that " alethiology" and " epistemology " (to mention a cognate, though not ~den­ tical distinction) ·are, 1 at least in some contexts, partially independent variables. There is no one-to-one relation between different meanings or theories of truth and the v:arious views as to how we know such ·and such is true. It was my failure to make this point explicit which confosed Fr. Colman O'Neill, of blessed memory, ias well as a good many other readers (1as Bruce Marshall quite rightly notes, though, with excessive 408 404 GEORGEl LINDBECK kindness to me, he !blames the ,readers rather than the 'author for the misunderstanding) . Once iclarfiied, as it has lbeen done hy Mr. Marshall, the issue turns on ·whether ,a classical " correspondence " theory of truth can be ioombined ,with, to empfoy O'Neill's terminology, the use of "coherentist" and " pragmatist " epistemological criteria in justifying rbelieis. I ·am not sure ·that this is possible for those who e:xdude any reference to an idea.I observer or knower (whether real or hypothetical) when defining truth, hut for any theist r.for whom God is prima veritas, as he was for Aquinas, the answer is dearly in the affirmative. In God, and only in God, are knowledge and reality, not only in correspondence , hut directly known to correspond. Only in him do truth·and knowledge of truth, 1 aleth:iofogy and epistemology, ooindde . In 1human knowledge in via, in contrast, there is always a gap. Our ibe1ieTs may correspond to reality, hut we are justified in holding that they do so, not by directly seeing the correspondence, 1but by some other means. That those other means might in part or w:hole be coherentist or pragmatist cannot :be e:xduded a priori. It is true that in the caise of an Aristotelian 1such 1as Aquinas, coherence •and rpmctise 1are not explicitly accorded major roles in the epistemological justification of natural kno·wledge or scientia, yet even here they are not e:xduded. Nothing can quali[y ais 1an item of knowledge unless it coheres with all other scientia, and right pra.ctice (i.e., training in virtue) is indispensible :llor ethical kno,wledge. Nor need one cease fo be an Aris,totelian, 1as far ·as I can see, if one accepts the contempOO 'ary oommonpJaice that sense experience itself is heavily dependent on linguistic and non-linguistic pmctices which are in part ·acquired rthrough variaible forim:s of aicculturation and not simply through the actualization of 1genetically encoded propensities . One could still, despite this increased emphasis on prwctiice .and on coherence 1 with webs of 1belief, ibe 'able to affum in good Aristotelian ,fashion tha;t the knowledge naturally accessible to ra:t]onal animals such ,as we a.re is primarily justified RESPONCE TO BRUCE MARSHALL 405 iby reference to...

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