Draft Do not cite or distribute

The Significance of Heterodoxy

Kelli D PotterUtah Valley University

potterde@uvu.edu10/15/22

Abstract Philosophers of religion have focused on

interreligious disagreement and have largely ignored the

significance of intra-religious disagreement. This paper

begins to fill this lacuna in religious epistemology by

focusing on the epistemological and semantic implications of

the existence of intra-religious disagreement or, in other

words, heterodoxy. I argue that the existence of a certain

type of heterodoxy leads to the collective indeterminacy of

religious belief. And this indeterminacy has radical

implications for how we understand the nature of religious

belief.

Introduction

What cannot be emphasized enough is that there is

nothing to be said for presenting 'the Islamic

view' . . . as though there exists one view which is

shared by all Muslims. All religions contain a variety

of interpretations of that religion, and trying to work

out what the right view is should not detain us.

1

Working out the orthodox position in each religion is

in itself a minefield, and even if we skirt that

minefield without coming to harm, it is not at all

clear that an unorthodox belief is not nonetheless a

belief which can be classified as falling under the

religion. We not only have problems in knowing what is

involved in referring to God, we also have problems in

knowing what is involved in referring to a Jew, a

Christian, a Muslim, and so on. When philosophers talk

about religion they tend to simplify to an extent which

would make a theologian weep. Oliver Leaman (2000,

pp.5–6).

When philosophers discuss religious disagreement they

usually focus on interreligious disagreement (i.e., between

different traditions). There is no doubt that the existence

of interreligious disagreement raises important

epistemological issues. However, due to the fact that

interreligious disagreement depends on how we interpret the

various traditions, we cannot properly deal with the

implications of such disagreement until we have considered

the implications of intra-religious disagreement (i.e.,

disagreement within a religious tradition).

In this paper, I want to continue to explore the

significance of the existence of intra-religious

2

disagreement, or what I call the problem of heterodoxy. I believe

that the problem of heterodoxy has important implications

not only for religious epistemology but for the semantics of

religious belief as well. I will argue for a modest claim

and a bold claim. The modest claim is that, in some cases,

the existence of heterodoxy leads to skepticism regarding

the actual content of religious belief. The bold claim is

that, taken collectively, religious belief is semantically

indeterminate. That is, although there might be a fact of

the matter as to what a particular Christian believes, there

is no fact of the matter as to what Christians as a group

believe.

This view, which I will call internal pluralism, has other

radical implications for the nature of religious belief that

I will discuss below. Importantly, internal pluralism

suggests a pluralist strategy for handling interreligious

disagreement.

Framing the issue

Christians disagree with each other in various ways.

First, Christians disagree about what the doctrines of

Christianity are. For example, some Christians (Catholics)

affirm the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and others

(protestants) do not accept such a doctrine. Call these

doctrinal disagreements. Second, Christians disagree about how

3

to interpret those doctrines. For example, Latin Trinitarians

and Social Trinitarians both affirm the doctrine of the

Trinity, but they interpret it in such different ways that

it would seem that they don't really mean the same thing.

Call these interpretative disagreements.

Interpretative disagreements are about meaning. So, we

need to draw a distinction between what is said and the

belief that it is used to express. A doxastic expression is a

type of verbalization or inscription that is employed to

express a religious doctrine. The doxastic content of a

cognitively determinate doxastic expression is the

proposition that is expressed by it. An example is the

Mormon doxastic expression G: 'God the Father has a body'.

Virtually every Latter-day Saint will affirm G but they

won't all express the same doxastic content with G. Some of

them mean that God the Father is embodied (Paulsen and

Potter 1997, p.238, fn 35) and others of them mean that

although God the Father has a body, He is not embodied.1 So,

they don't express the same proposition. It is important to

note that this definition of doxastic content is relativized

to a believer and in the case of an interpretative

disagreement the disputants express different doxastic

contents with the same doxastic expression. 1 "Latter-day Saints affirm only that the Father has a body,not that his body has him. . . . if a spirit can be omnipresent without being physically present, then so can a God that possesses a body and a spirit" (Blomberg and Robinson pp.88–9).

4

In the case of an interpretative disagreement, one

might think that there is no correct doxastic content.

Perhaps the believers in question just use the language

differently. Of course, a typical Christian is likely to

reject this approach. Many, if not most Christians believe

that there is such a thing as the orthodox interpretation of

Christianity. They believe that there is a fact of the

matter about what it is that they must believe to be

Christians. As evidence, I offer the fact that Christians

often claim that other self-proclaimed "Christians" are not

actual Christians. It is not enough to be a self-proclaimed

Christian; one must believe the right propositions as well.

It is worth the time to dwell on this point for a

moment. The point is not that Christians must make sure to

believe the right proposition where 'right' means true. The

point is that Christians must make sure to believe what

Christians should believe. The concept of correctness in question

is normative and not alethic––hence, the term 'orthodoxy'

(i.e., right belief). The question of what counts as

orthodoxy is, in principle, separate from the question of

what is actually true.

Given this, we can draw another distinction. In the

introduction above, I used the phrases 'taken collectively'

and 'taken individually' to modify the noun 'belief'. This

talk of belief taken collectively is just short hand for talk

about what is normative for the believer qua believer. It

5

should be clear what I mean when I assert that there is no

such thing as Christian belief taken collectively. It is a

claim about what is normative for Christians; it is the

claim that there is no orthodoxy.

Now, of course, in some interpretative disagreements

one or other of the disputants might not have a very good

understanding of the religious tradition. So, for example,

a Catholic child might disagree with the Catechist about

whether God the Father has a beard. Clearly, these

disagreements are not interesting from an epistemological

point of view since it can be objectively shown that one of

the disputants is wrong. The type of interpretative

disagreement that interests me is between two adherents of a

faith that are both competent in the tradition. Someone

exhibits competence in a religion only if she is familiar with

the scriptural texts, history and traditions of that

religion, and she is otherwise reasonable and well

informed.2

Now, let S and T be X-ians who have incompatible

interpretations––E & F respectively––of the X-ian doctrine

D, where both S and T are competent, and neither of them is 2 I don't think that very much turns on a definition of 'competence' here and that's why I give only necessary conditions for competence. I suspect that most religious believers would agree that some people have a good understanding of their own tradition and others do not. We might disagree about what is precisely entailed in such competence, but we won't disagree that there is such a distinction.

6

suffering from a lapse in judgment. Suppose further that

both S and T can provide reasonable defenses of their

respective interpretations. It seems quite plausible to me

that such a disagreement would be epistemically ambiguous,3 i.e.,

it would be rational for both S and T to hold to their

interpretations. Call this an ambiguous competent interpretative

disagreement ('ACID' for short).

Now I can state the question of this paper. In the

case of an ACID, is there a fact of the matter as to which

interpretation is orthodox? And, if so, can we know what

that orthodoxy is? I will argue that a potential convert

cannot know which is the orthodox interpretation, if there

is one. But I will more boldly argue that there can be no

fact of the matter about orthodoxy in such a case and,

hence, the religious belief would be indeterminate with

respect to the doxastic expression in question.

One might wonder whether ACIDs exist. Perhaps every

apparent ACID is such that at least one of the disputants is

having a lapse of judgment, memory, etc. I can only argue

for the existence of ACIDs on the basis of examples. One

example would be the disagreement between Latin Trinitarians

and Social Trinitarians over the interpretation of the

doctrine of the Trinity. Another example would be arguments

about whether the resurrection is physical or spiritual.

Yet another example would be between Mormons over whether

3 Cf. McKim (2001, p.21ff).

7

the doctrine that God has a body entails that God is

embodied or not. But this is not the place to catalogue

examples of ACIDs. Personally, I think that it is fair to

say that there are many of them in any given religious

tradition; but I am not sure that everyone would agree with

my intuition in this regard.

Philosophy or Theology?

In his book on the nature of "oppositions" between

religious doctrines, William Christian argues that the issue

concerning internal disagreements is not philosophical, but

rather, theological. He says,

Disagreements within a religious tradition have to be

settled, in as far as they can be settled, in accord

with principles which are inherent in the tradition

itself, by appeal to sacred scriptures, to the practice

of revered teachers and to the generally approved

habits of life and thought within the community.

(Christian, p.4)

And then a bit later, he continues to discuss internal

disagreements:

8

Very often there are differences of judgement within a

community about what its doctrines are. Different

formulations of doctrines are put forward. This takes

us back to the internal oppositions of doctrines that

we noticed earlier. Then the issue is: which of these

formulations are more faithful to the tradition and the

spirit of the religion? This is the issue which must be

settled from within the community if it can be settled

at all. . . . The point I would like to stress is the

kind of issue which is involved in these cases and the

kind of claim that is being made in assertions of the

form 'p is a doctrine of R'.

One might say that these are theological issues

rather than philosophical ones, except that

'theological' suggests theism and hence does not

clearly apply to all of the religious traditions. My

object is to confine my own argument to philosophical

issues as far as I can. (Christian, p.7)

So, I take it that Christian argues as follows. When an

internal disagreement occurs, the orthodox position must be

determined (if it can be determined at all) by resources

within the tradition---i.e., theologically---rather than by

resources without---i.e., philosophically. So, the issue

concerning internal disagreement is a theological one and

not a philosophical one. And this is quite right, if the

9

issue concerns what counts as orthodoxy in the case of a

particular internal disagreement.

However, this paper is not intended to deal with

specific cases of ACIDs. The main issue at hand is whether

there is a fact of the matter about orthodoxy in the case of

an ACID. In the above quotation, Christian seems to focus

on first-order questions, so to speak, while the question of

this paper is second-order. It concerns the epistemic and

semantic significance of the fact that the first-order

question exists. This second-order question is clearly a

philosophical one and not a theological one. In other

words, theologians argue about what the right theology is,

while philosophers consider the implications of the fact

that theologians have such arguments.

The Heterodoxy Argument

To explain the significance of the problem of

heterodoxy for the nature of religious belief, I want to

return to W.V.O. Quine's radical translation scenario

(1960). I suggest that the process of religious conversion is

very similar to radical translation. Let's refer to someone

that is studying a religion in order to decide whether to

convert an investigator. There is a lot involved in converting

to a religious tradition and I want to ignore most of it.

Instead, I'll focus only on the nature of belief

10

acquisition. It seems clear that many philosophers of

religion believe that the belief-acquisition component of

conversion involves coming to believe certain propositions.

In order to do this, an investigator must first understand what

the doxastic expressions really mean. For example, before

coming to believe in the existence of God, an investigator

must understand the content of the word 'God'. And as any

non-believer knows, religious language can seem quite

foreign. Even when familiar words are used, they are often

used differently than in everyday discourse. So, an

investigator is in a situation that is analogous to the one

faced by the field linguist in Quine's radical translation

scenario.

Let us recall what happens in radical translation. A

field linguist writes a translation manual for a hitherto

untranslated language. She accomplishes this task using the

evidence of the utterances of the foreign speakers, their

behavior and sensory stimuli. With the concept of sensory

stimuli, Quine defines the notion of stimulus meaning for a

sentence, P, and a speaker, S, which is an ordered pair of

(i) the set of stimuli that would prompt S to assent to P

and (ii) the set of stimuli that would prompt dissent. This

is the only evidence that the field linguist has concerning

how to translate the language. Now, Quine argues that there

will be mutually exclusive translation manuals of the

foreign tongue that are equally supported by the

11

aforementioned evidence. Importantly, these translation

manuals are incompatible with each other. For example, in

one translation manual the word 'gavagai' might be

translated as 'rabbit' while in another equally good

translation manual it is translated as 'undetached rabbit

part'.

Given this, Quine doesn't merely conclude that we

cannot know precisely what the natives mean (or refer to)

when they utter 'Gavagai'. He goes much further. He

argues that there is no fact of the matter about which translation

is correct, since the field linguist has access to all the

same information that the foreign speakers themselves had

when they learned the language.

Of course, if Quine's argument works, it works for

religious language as well and it implies that religious

belief is indeterminate, but no more so than the beliefs of

ordinary observation language. And it might be rather

uninteresting to show that religious belief is indeterminate

only because all belief is indeterminate. However, I argue

that the indeterminacy in religious belief is more

problematic than Quine's indeterminacy and the argument for

it is relies on less contentious assumptions.

To see why, consider a possible objection to Quine. One

might point out that, although the field linguist could

translate 'gavagai' as 'rabbit stage' instead of 'rabbit',

she won't actually do so. There will, in fact, only be one

12

translation manual. Of course, Quine can respond that this

misses the point because he only needs to show the

possibility of an alternative translation manual to prove

that there is indeterminacy in meaning. For Quine, if all

we have to go on are stimulus meanings and linguistic

behavior then the correct translation will be

underdetermined. It is the paucity of evidence that leads to

the indeterminacy.

Now, analogously, if we think of theology as the

translation of basic doxastic expressions into other bits of

our language that we grasp independently of the theological

language, then the investigator is actually presented with

mutually exclusive "translation manuals" (i.e. theologies)

of the basic doxastic expressions. Imagine that we revise

Quine's scenario as follows. Instead of having to translate

the foreign language, the field linguist learns the foreign

language from speakers who also speak English. Suppose

further that these equally competent speakers sometimes

disagree about the best translation of a phrase into

English. It seems that the field linguist would be forced

to conclude that those foreign expressions that are

incompatibly translated by the foreign speakers themselves

are semantically indeterminate. This, I submit, is

analogous to the situation encountered by an investigator of

a religious tradition that exhibits ACIDs. And if so, then

the potential convert cannot determine exactly what is meant

13

by certain doxastic expressions and, thus, cannot know

whether to accept the beliefs of the tradition or not.

Content skepticism is the appropriate response. This is the

modest claim.

But even if the investigator cannot know which

interpretation is orthodox, one might maintain that there

is, in fact, an orthodox interpretation. I want to argue

that this is not so. But I need a further assumption in

order to make such an argument. My assumption is that if

competent speakers of a language cannot agree about the meaning or use of a

certain expression, then the expression is ambiguous in the language, i.e.,

there is no fact of the matter as to which is the correct

meaning. Call this the ambiguity assumption. Clearly, it

follows from the ambiguity assumption that in the case of

ACIDs, we cannot know the right interpretation since there

is no fact of the matter. ACIDs corrode collective doxastic

content.

There are important differences between my argument and

Quine's original argument. Quine's original argument was

very controversial and (perhaps rightly) rejected by many

philosophers of language. The problematic assumption, the

objectors say, is the assumption that all we have to go on

in radical translation is stimulus meaning and behavior. As

I indicated above, this evidence is meager and it is no

wonder that indeterminacy ensues. So, someone could object

that we have similar biological constitutions that serve to

14

fix how we perceive objects and, hence, how we will

understand the relation between language and stimulus

meanings.

By contrast, my argument doesn't assume Quine's

behaviorism. In the case that I imagine, the problem is not

a paucity of evidence but rather an overabundance of it. Some

believers say one thing, others say another. As mentioned

above, the evidence here is epistemically ambiguous.4 And I

submit that this epistemic ambiguity implies semantic

ambiguity.

Objections

Now let's consider some possible objections to this

argument. The most obvious objection to my argument is that

the ambiguity assumption is verificationist. I admit that

the ambiguity assumption has a verificationist flavor; but

it is not full-blown verificationism. Indeed, full-blown

verificationism claims that a sentence has cognitive

significance only if it can be verified, in principle. The

ambiguity assumption doesn't go this far. First, it doesn't

tell us that the expression in question lacks cognitive

significance. It only tells us that it is semantically

indeterminate. Second, it doesn't apply to assertions

4 Since there is an overabundance of evidence in these cases, the ambiguity is similar to what McKim calls 'rich ambiguity' (2012, pp.137ff).

15

generally speaking, but only to claims about the

interpretation of an expression. That is, it is a kind of

second-order semantic verificationism. And it seems quite

plausible to me. How could there be a fact of the matter

about the right interpretation of an expression if the

competent speakers of the language have no way of settling a

dispute about its meaning?

The next objection is that by insisting that there be

an intersubjectively agreeable way to settle an interpretative

disagreement in order for there to be a fact of the matter

about the right interpretation, I have unduly narrowed the

available evidence. Even if one cannot rely on an

intersubjectively determinable resolution of an ACID,

perhaps a subjective resolution is good enough to determine

the orthodox side. One subjective method for resolving an

ACID that comes to mind would be to use religious experience

to determine the right answer. Given Reformed

epistemology's reliance on religious experience, this is how

I imagine philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga or William

Alston criticizing the heterodoxy argument. However, the

appeal to religious experience in this context seems to be

to jump from the frying pan into the fire. If religious

experience can resolve an ACID on one side of the dispute,

then it can do it on the other side as well. Appealing to

religious experience doesn't help with the problem of

internal religious disagreement; it exacerbates it.

16

It is worth pointing out that the use of religious

experience as an attempt to resolve ACIDs is less plausible

than using them to resolve external religious disagreements.

In the latter case, the Reformed epistemologist can insist

that as long as her doxastic practice is based on an

external reality that makes it reliable, then it confers

warrant or justification on its users.5 But when the

disagreement is internal, as in the case of ACIDs, then it

would seem that the same doxastic practice gets different

results. If a single doxastic practice gives some adherents

one result and other adherents a different result, then we

should question its reliability. Internal religious

disagreements are particularly threatening to the whole

project of Reformed epistemology. And so, an appeal to

Reformed epistemology and/or religious experience will not

help to resolve the issue.

Another objection is based on the idea that consensus

determines orthodoxy. Even if there are ACIDs, one can

figure out what counts as orthodoxy by a majority vote.

Here the idea is not that what the majority believes is a

good guide to orthodoxy but that what the majority believes

is definitive of orthodoxy. One problem with this objection

arises when we consider cases in which there is no clear

majority. In such a case, there would be no orthodoxy, by

definition. But more importantly, the consensus objection

5 See Plantinga (2000).

17

presupposes that the minority viewpoint is incorrect by

definition. And given that many religious traditions began as

minority interpretations of other religious traditions (this

is true of Christianity, Islam and Mormonism for example)

this would seem to be an unwelcome consequence.

A variation on the consensus objection would be the

claim that orthodoxy is determined by an institutional

authority. In Mormonism, for example, orthodoxy might be

determined by official pronouncements from the General

Authorities of the LDS Church. But, of course, there can be

competing groups of authorities. The leaders of the

Community of Christ will disagree with the LDS General

Authorities. We can't just stipulate that one set of

authorities are the right ones because this begs the

question. Of course, there is a concept of institutional

orthodoxy that is quite unproblematic. This is a concept of

orthodoxy that is relativized to the institution. But this

is not the orthodoxy that we are after, since the question

remains whether the institutional orthodoxy actually is

orthodoxy (i.e., the right interpretation of the tradition).6

Finally, one might again object to the claim that ACIDs

exist. So, a Christian might claim that although it appears

that the conflict between Latin and Social Trinitarians is

an ACID, it is not actually an ACID. But let's be clear about

what this means. If the conflict between Latin and Social 6 Thanks to C. Thi Nguyen and Terrance Tilley for raising this objection.

18

Trinitarians is not an ACID, it is either not epistemically

ambiguous, not between competents, not interpretative or not

a disagreement. It seems clear that it is an

interpretative disagreement since both Latin and Social

Trinitarians would accept the same doxastic expression

(e.g., 'there are 3 divine persons, but one God').

Moreover, it also seems clear to me that there are equally

competent people on both sides of this particular

disagreement.7

So, given that some of the interlocutors in most

internal disagreements are competent, it is most likely that

this objection will focus on the existence of epistemic

ambiguity in the disagreement. And certainly many would

argue that such an epistemic ambiguity cannot exist. One

such argument is famously given by Richard Feldman. Feldman

defends the uniqueness thesis, which claims that given a body

of evidence there is at most one correct conclusion to draw

from it (2007). But the kind of evidentialism that supports

this type of view is not very friendly to believers, and

many of them reject it. Indeed, someone that argues for the

uniqueness thesis is very likely to end up being an agnostic

about religious belief since the uniqueness thesis would

seem to imply that in cases of epistemic ambiguity, there is

no reasonable conclusion to draw. Moreover, there are very

7 For example, see Brian Leftow (1999) for a defense of Latin Trinitarianism and Stephen Davis (2004) for a defense of the Social Trinitarian view.

19

good arguments given by theists for the existence of

epistemic ambiguity in external religious disagreements

(McKim 2001 & 2012). It seems clear that similar arguments

would apply to internal religious disagreements.

Implications and Internal Pluralism

The heterodoxy argument undermines realism about

orthodoxy––i.e., the view that there is a fact of the matter

about what X-ians should believe qua X-ians. As I have said,

the view that follows from the existence of ACIDs is internal

pluralism. This is the view that while individual religious

belief can be determinate and construed realistically,

collective religious belief is indeterminate (in the case of

ACIDs). That is, there is no fact of the matter about what

a Christian must believe to be a Christian. Obviously, this

has a number of radical implications for the nature of

religious belief.

First, the heterodoxy argument seems to imply that

conversion is not conversion to a set of propositions, but

rather to a certain language and a practice that accompanies

it. And so, it would be perfectly rational to judge whether

to join a religious movement on pragmatic grounds rather

than alethic grounds. Indeed, there are no specific truths

to consider, when considering whether to convert to a

certain faith.

20

Second, similarity of belief among those in the same

religious tradition is an illusion. Religious agreement is

often just pseudo-agreement. If someone tells you that she

is a Christian, this doesn't really say as much about her

beliefs or values as do her demographics.

Third, there is no fact of the matter about external

religious disagreements (i.e., in cases where there are

ACIDs). If internal pluralism is correct, then we have a

way to negotiate external religious disagreements. We can

reinterpret our own tradition so as to make it compatible

with the beliefs of another faith. And there is no reason

that we shouldn't do this since we cannot fall back on the

assumption that there is only one correct interpretation of

our own faith. Given that it is good to resolve

disagreements whenever those disagreements lead to societal

conflict, we now have a way to do it in the case that those

disagreements are religious.

Fourth, religious belief and metaphysics are

independent of one another in a certain sense. Two people

could have the "same" religious belief and different

metaphysical beliefs. This is possible due to the

indeterminacy of religious belief. This also means that

people with different religious beliefs might have the same

metaphysics. This independence of metaphysics from

religious belief is a sense in which religious belief is not

metaphysical, collectively speaking. But individual

21

religious beliefs might be metaphysical in nature, although

it is not clear why they would always have to be.

Fifth, there is no fact of the matter about which

religion is the true religion, at least not if 'true' is

construed propositionally. The reason is that there is no

fact of the matter as to what the actual assertions of a

religion are, at least in the case where we have ACIDs.

Also, it could turn out that some adherents of a certain

tradition have true religious beliefs while other adherents

have false ones.

Sixth, if internal pluralism is correct, liberal

approaches to theology are more reasonable than conservative

approaches. Liberal approaches are more open to flexibility

in interpretation of the faith. On liberal approaches,

theological language is often interpreted metaphorically

rather than literally. And the internal pluralist approach

implies that doxastic expressions are similar to metaphors

in that they are polysemic. By contrast, conservatives tend

to interpret religious beliefs more literally, dismissing

metaphorical interpretations as being atheism in disguise.

Conclusion

In this paper, my bold claim has been that the

existence of heterodoxy in a religious tradition undermines

the determinacy of that tradition's beliefs. This goes

22

counter to the typical realist approach to religious belief.

I have rejected realism at the collective level while

allowing for it at the individual level. I have shown that

this approach has radical implications for the nature of

religious belief, the upshot of which could be summarized in

the following claim: what divides us most deeply cuts across religious

traditions rather than between them. If one disagrees with the

ambiguity assumption, one might avoid my bold conclusion.

But even if one avoids the bold conclusion, one is still

faced with skepticism about the content of belief. Either

way, it seems that the Logical Empiricists were correct to

propose that the problem with religious belief is not that

it is false, but that it is not clear what it is in the

first place.8

8 "We can hardly have faith in God if we do not in at least some reasonable way have some understanding of what we are to have faith in. Faith requires . . . understanding" (Nielsen 1982, p.x).

23

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