Abstract

Questions about meaning are especially persistent in religion, where the relative inaccessibility of truth conditions for discourse render the meanings of assertions problematic. Doctrines represent an especially important class of religious assertions in the western theistic traditions, especially Christianity, insofar as they function as standards of orthodox thought and practice. Working on the thesis that doctrines' regulative function provides an important clue to how they should be construed, this study develops a model of doctrines as embodying rules of meaning and explores the extent to which this model is helpful for elucidating doctrines and religious discourse generally. ;Beginning with an analysis of difficulties encountered in George Lindbeck's recent study of doctrines as rules, I delineate two problem areas. What is the best way to characterize the regulative function of doctrines? What implications does a regulative account have for the analysis of doctrinal truth claims? ;Following a survey of different varieties of rules I develop an account of doctrines in terms of grammatical rules. I argue that doctrines function regulatively by displaying rules for the meanings of terms, rules which are shaped by the needs and concerns of religious practice. Doctrinal statements display these rules by providing paradigms of their application, illustrating the meanings of key terms by showing their use in combination with others. One is shown to be following a rule of doctrine if one's judgments on religious matters agree with those of the relevant community. However, this analysis does not entail a relativist construal of doctrinal truth claims, since a background of shared meanings both within and among religious communities precludes the conclusion that any difference in judgments implies the use of incommensurable conceptual schemes and hence the impossibility of meaningfully criticizing a community's doctrines. Indeed, the chief benefit of the regulative account of doctrines lies precisely in the resources it offers for clarifying doctrines and doctrinal controversies. Finally, the relation between doctrines and practice posited here also opens up for further research a new analysis of religious truth claims, according to which their justification depends on the fittingness of the types of practice that call them forth