We have presented schemas as embodying a constructed reality that is always open to further adaptation, explaining why there must be a plurality of view-points, yet also offering mechanisms for reflective critique and self-correction that protect us from an uncritical relativism. In the previous chapter, we considered the “Great Schema,” a reading of the Bible that views the God reality of which it is the schema as immutable, whereas the hermeneutic process adapts our understanding of this fixed reality to changing human conditions.

This concluding chapter presents the case for a different view: seeing secular schemas as a reading of the human condition as lying wholly within the spatiotemporal realm, with no appeal to God or to a “voluntarist” free will. Such schemas could be in flux yet maintain their ability to embody a multilevel reality encompassing persons and society as well as things. We show how ethics and human values might evolve without being grounded in a fixed God reality but rather in the critical development of a pluralist world view. First, we stress the extent to which our schema-based epistemology provides a schema that can be adapted by religious and secularist alike and that provides a measure of agreement despite dramatic disagreements about the ultimate constitution of Reality.

A measure of agreement

The last page of the New Testament offers the following stern warning of the sacredness of its text: