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dent born into an approved family; Advaita may seem, after all, to keep its Text securely, hopelessly at a distance. The promise of access to the truth of Advaita through its Text may be prematurely offered, for thus far we have taken for granted that accessibility is either easily granted, or limited only by the demands of literacy. We have not yet examined the interior and exterior limitations imposed by Advaita on those who would seek access. The remaining question, after those of the Text and its truth, pertains to the reader of the Text, the realizer of the truth. This is the subject matter of Chapter 4. |
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VI. A Concluding Note On Advaita And Intertextual Truth |
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Advaita's truth as presented in the preceding pages needs to be considered carefully, in a way that does not reduce its truth to a "mere"' understanding of texts. Earlier references to Riffaterre's "fictitional truth" have already indicated a way to think about a truth that is constitutively a truth of and in texts. Before concluding this chapter I offer a complementary indication of how religious truth, as a community's doctrine, can be understood consonantly with the exegetical and practical emphases enunciated here. |
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To do this, I appeal to the work of a modern Christian theologian. In his The Nature of Doctrine,
76 George Lindbeck identifies three types of theories of religion and doctrine: an "experiential-expressive model," which holds that religions have a common core experience which is expressed differently by different religions,77 a "cognitive-propositional model," which "emphasizes the cognitive aspects of religion and stresses the ways in which church doctrines function as informative propositions or truth claims about objective realities,"78 a ''cultural-linguistic model," the topic of the book, according to which "a religion can be viewed as a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought . . . it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings and sentiments. Like a culture or language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivity of indi- |
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