Thomas John Hastings - The Grace of Being Fallible in Philosophy, Theology, and Religion

A man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all the doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false.

Benjamin Franklin, A Defense of Religious Tolerance

In knowing good and evil he knows what only the origin, God Himself, can know and ought to know.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

Why is fallibilism , an epistemological position with consequences for moral action, a viable topic for Christian thought and cultural engagement today?

Though this collection was written before we were aware of the existence of COVID-19, it appears in the midst of a global pandemic that has laid bare severe inequalities and weaknesses in the medical, economic, and political systems that have been considered foundational or even sacrosanct in modern societies. The pandemic also has imposed unique challenges on the more intimate institutions of family, school, religious community, and nonprofit organization. If modern life is an equation with several variables, which under normal circumstances seem manageable even if not always solvable, this global pandemic has introduced many new and, as yet, unsolvable variables to that equation. In the interim, the pandemic has demanded crisis management, and, in the longer run, made the entire human family dependent on a deliverance to come in some uncertain eschatonthat is, when effective treatments and vaccines are discovered, manufactured, and available to be safely and justly distributed worldwide. Engendering apocalyptic levels of anxiety and uncertainty, the COVID-19 pandemic has led many into a time of lament, doubt, and yearning. In such a troubled moment, when the modern systems and institutions we have taken for granted have been stretched to the breaking point, the perspective of fallibilism and its attendant intellectual and moral dispositions may be worthy of consideration.

For the sake of clarification, our volume is not an exhaustive examination of fallibilism as an epistemological position, but it does explore how a fallibilist orientation to truth claims might help to fund more spacious approaches in philosophy , theology , and religion in our increasingly pluralistic world and, hence, the title, The Grace of Being Fallible in Philosophy, Theology, and Religion.