232 Chapter 7 Christians, are truth-holders is something that happens frequently but creates distance and is also unjustified’. In one’s epistemology, ‘cultural forms and conditions’ also play a role. This led to the question, at least in terms of the discussion with students in a special meeting on how to deal with absolute truth, of whether truth is not always something subjective, as one member of the outgroup proposed. By contrast, for both students and teachers, it can be confusing to have every truth claim contested in the classroom, as other members of the outgroup suggested. The elements put forward during the preparatory conversation led to the formulation of six affirmations that steered the 13th meeting on epistemology and truth. All six affirmations criticise the idea of absolute truth as upheld by the Christian teacher(s) within their own person or their social group. They all mean to test how far Christian students and teacher trainers will yield concerning the topic of absolute truth when the tension between faithfulness and openness is deliberately addressed. The first two affirmations suggest there is simply no such thing as absolute truth and that everything is merely subjective. Affirmations 3 and 4 suggest that truth may exist, although it is only partially known, and that adherents of different (religious) perspectives can always learn from each other. The last two affirmations apply the former ideas to practical classroom pedagogy: Can a Christian teacher somehow impose (for example, just by testifying) his or her Christian perspective in a multi-religious classroom (affirmation 5) and, if this is considered necessary, what should be exuded while doing so (affirmation 6)? The next table shows how 10 students and eight teachers responded to the six affirmations on a scale ranging from one (totally disagree) to five (totally agree). The numbers they could choose in between were two (disagree), three (neutral) and four (agree).
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