Just as it is important that Lutheran theology get clear again upon whether a God exists that is external to human awareness, perception, conception, and language, so is it important for it to assert again that theological language makes truth-claims, that it is language that is in principle either true or false. The notion that language about the world can be either true or false regardless of whether or not we can confirm or disconfirm it experientially is called semantic realism. Michael Dummett talks about this type of realism explicitly in the following quote:
“Realism I characterize as the belief that the statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us. The anti-realist opposes to this the view that statements of the disputed class are to be understood only by reference to the sort of thing which we count as evidence for a statement of that class . . . The dispute thus concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have” (Dummett, “Realism,” p. 146, reprinted in TRUTH AND OTHER ENIGMAS).
It is my contention that most mainstream academic theology has more or less rejected semantic realism, and that, accordingly, mainline Lutheran theology repudiates it as well. But what are the options for theology if it does not claim semantic realism? I see the following:
1) One might claim that language about God is truth-apt but false. Accordingly, theology instantiates an error theory, that is, since there is no God, all theological language referring to God is false. Clearly, this view is not an option for a theist who wishes seriously to engage the theological task?
2) One might claim that language about God is not truth-apt at all, as some post-Enlightenment, post-Kantian theology has supposed. Accordingly, talk about God is merely a projection of human emotion and sentiment upon the world. But while this view may be an improvement over the previous, it is not a very promising way to proceed theologically. After all, if theological language is a human projection, why would we ever want to get others to project God upon the universe?
3) One might claim that language about God is truth-apt and not false, but not about what people had assumed that language was always about. Some post-Enlightenment, post-Kantian theology has attempted this as well. Accordingly, one might claim that talk about God is true or false given that one understands ‘God’ to refer to something determinate within human existence. This view seems to entail anti-realism, but clearly the converse is not true. There are several ways in which one might be a theological anti-realist. For instance, one could claim that the assertion of the existence of divine reality is justified on the basis of an inference to the best explanation or on the basis a theological consensus that somehow determines theological extension itself. But then how would one explain the person and work of the Christ? Does the salvific work of Christ constitute the best explanation of our human experience? But Scripture and tradition have referred to Christ as a “stumbling block” for human reason. This latter point also seems to undercut efforts to base the matter upon theological consensus.
Many have attacked Semantic realism because it presupposes “evidence transcending truth-conditions.” Many philosophers cannot subscribe to semantic realism because of the manifestation and acquisition challenges. Crudely put, the problem is how we could ever acquire and wield language that was not somehow “hooked up” with the world we experience. How could we be talking about things with a language that we do not know how to connect to our experience? It should be noted, however, that Trinitarian theologians don’t really have this problem. It seems that a theological response to this challenge could be worked out where, through the activity of the Holy Spirit, human beings can be regarded to have the relevant perceptual causal connections to the divine states of affairs making theological statements true.
It is my contention that theology, if it is to survive, must make definite truth claims; it must be able to assert propositions in logical space, the satisfaction of which would be the instantiation of particular divine and divine/temporal states of affairs. To declare that that semantic realism is false, is, in effect, to claim that there are not divine and divine/temporal states of affairs. We will have much more to say about this in another context.
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