The Evangelical Universalist Forum

A paper on Positive Mysterianism

A downloadable pdf file from Dale Tuggy; a paper to be included in a prestigious religion/philosophy journal soon - but it is readable and understandable if you stick with it.
Link at end of this post.

From the paper:
Abstract :Religious believers react in one of four ways to apparent contradictions among
their beliefs: Redirection, Resistance, Restraint, or Resolution. This paper evaluates positive
mysterian Resistance, the view that believers may rationally believe and know apparently
contradictory religious doctrines. After locating this theory by comparing and contrasting it withothers, I explore the best developed version of it, that of James Anderson’s Paradox in ChristianTheology. I argue that it faces steep epistemic problems, and is at best a temporarily reasonablebut ultimately unsustainable stance.

Just this acronym makes it worthwhile to read :slight_smile:
MACRUE

Merely Apparent Contradiction as a
Result of Unarticulated Equivocation.

Wunnerful!

Well, Dave, you have outdone yourself this time, forcing me to actually use my brain and think seriously about what I believe and why I believe it. Not easy for a guy well beyond his allotted threescore and ten!

There were quite a few MACRAEs living in and around my hometown Inverness but I don’t remember there being any MACRUEs. I promise not to react with Resistance to the idea that there may well have been some by that name (MacRue). Rather, I will try to Resolve the question via Rational Reinterpretation so that I might end up with an appropriate Reformed Revision I can live with. (My use of the word “Reformed” does not necessarily imply that I hope to find the correct answer within Calvin’s Institutes). I realise this process may require more than one Revision.

The author’s use of capital letters, A, B, C, L etc. is a tad confusing. I always used to think that ‘M’ was a mysterious character who appeared in a James Bond novel.

I’ll get back to you after I sleep on it…

Somebody READ it???
I’m so glad!! These more technical things can sometimes ‘stretch’ us in good ways. That was my hope when posting it.
Sleep well. And…wake up! :wink: