The Integrity of the Religious Person as a Criterion for the Truth of Religion

Abstract

This article addresses the problem of the truth of religion from a personalist perspective, moving beyond classical propositional conceptions of truth. The starting point is the claim that, in Christianity, truth has a personal character and is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, which leads to a shift from truth understood as the correspondence of judgment and reality to truthfulness as the existential integrity of the human person. Methodologically, the study is located at the intersection of fundamental and systematic theology. It employs conceptual analysis, theological hermeneutics, and systematic argumentation in order to reconstruct, from within Christian personalism, a criterion of religious truthfulness. It is argued that the truth of religion cannot be reduced to doctrinal coherence, but is manifested in the degree to which religion fosters personal integration, relational capacity, and participation in communion. Particular attention is given to the role of the liturgy, especially the Eucharist, understood as a space of personal integration and transformation, in which the human person is drawn into relationship with God and the ecclesial community. The analysis further suggests that this criterion may have heuristic value in comparative theology, provided that the distinction between Christian claims to fullness and analogical participation in truthfulness is carefully maintained. In conclusion, a religion is true insofar as it makes the human person true, that is, integrated, relational, and capable of participation in communion. Such truthfulness has an ontological and personalist character, rather than being merely functional or pragmatic.