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A Model for a Public Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Linell E. Cady
Linell E. Cady
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Extract

A small but growing number of theologians have begun to call for the development of a “public theology.” Although the proposals vary, they are fueled by a common desire to counteract the cultural marginalization of contemporary theology. Having lost its former power to influence public debate about our beliefs and actions, theology has increasingly become a privatized form of reflection. Too often theologians have become comfortable with this state of affairs, abandoning all presumptions to speak to or for those outside their narrow communities. Theological arguments have degenerated into dogmatic assertions or confessional accounts of personal beliefs which lack the power or intent to persuade others. As David Tracy so aptly puts it, we have fled to local “reservations of the spirit” where we need not confront the wider indifference to and impotence of our work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 193 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1987

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References

1 Tracy, David, The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981) 13.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 51.

3 Tracy's understanding of fundamental theology is developed most fully in Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury, 1975)Google Scholar and of systematic theology in The Analogical Imagination. He has indicated that a study of practical theology will be forthcoming.

4 Tracy, David, “Defending the Public Character of Theology,” The Christian Century (1 April 1981) 352.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 353.

6 Tracy, Analogical Imagination, 132.

7 Ibid., 63.

8 This would include figures such as Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Gadamer. For more recent philosophical arguments against the Enlightenment model of reason, see, e.g., Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Bernstein, Richard J., Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Putnam, Hilary, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

9 For a strong argument against the possibility of a common religious experience, see Proudfoot, Wayne, Religious Experience (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar

10 For similar criticisms of the conservative implications of this theological model, see Cobb, John's review of The Analogical Imagination in Religious Studies Review 7 (1981) 283Google Scholar; Kaufman, Gordon, “Conceptualizing Diversity Theologically.” JR 62 (1982) 397Google Scholar; Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, Bread Not Stone (Boston: Beacon, 1984) XVI; 9–10.Google Scholar

11 Marty, Martin, “Reinhold Niebuhr: Public Theology and the American Experience,” JR 54 (1974) 333.Google Scholar

12 See Bellah, Robert, The Broken Covenant (New York: Seabury, 1975)Google Scholar; idem and Hammond, Phillip, Varieties of Civil Religion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980)Google Scholar; idem et al., Habits of the Heart (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar Public theology, for Bellah, is that form of religious reflection in American society which has lacked a legal status but which has gone beyond the formal, institutionalized civil religion. See Bellah, Varieties of Civil Religion, 14.

13 Stackhouse, Max, “An Ecumenist's Plea for a Public Theology,” This World 8 (1984).Google Scholar See also the short essays responding to Stackhouse's argument which immediately follow his article.

14 Ibid., 51.

15 There is strong historical influence operative here insofar as Niebuhr borrowed much from Royce's writings and, in turn, had a significant impact upon Kaufman, who was his student.

16 Royce, Josiah, The Problem of Christianity (1913; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968) 59.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 61.

18 For Royce's discussion of the philosophical problems in appealing to revelation to justify a religious position, see The Sources of Religious Insight (New York: Scribner's, 1912) 19–25.Google Scholar

19 See, e.g., the well-known arguments by two philosophers of science: Feyerabend, Paul, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: NLB, 1975)Google Scholar and Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).Google Scholar

20 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method (trans, and ed. Barden, Garrett and Cumming, John; New York: Seabury, 1975) 245–50.Google Scholar

21 The model of extending a tradition assumes, of course, that some complex of symbols and beliefs within the tradition can be appropriated to provide a meaningful and truthful vision of reality. A theologian unable to grant this minimal consent to the adequacy of a tradition would be forced to construct a theology which eclectically drew from a multiplicity of resources. Such theological eclecticism risks becoming merely a private religious vision which fails to address, illuminate, or critique the religious visions that continue to empower individuals.

22 Royce, Problem of Christianity, 63.

23 Ibid., 64.

24 Royce, Josiah, “On Certain Limitations of the Thoughtful Public in America,” in McDermott, John J., ed., The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce (2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969) 2. 1115.Google Scholar

25 Royce, Problem of Christianity, 61.

26 Ibid., 40. For similar statements about his intentions in his other theological writings see “What is Vital in Christianity,” in William James and Other Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1911) 99Google Scholar; Sources of Religious Insight, 4.

27 Royce, Sources of Religious Insight, 3.

28 See Royce, Problem of Christianity, 39 and idem, “What is Vital in Christianity?” 99.

29 For a fuller discussion of the conventions governing contemporary writing in the field of religious studies, see Wentz, Richard, The Contemplation of Otherness: The Critical Vision of Religion (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

30 Royce, Problem of Christianity, 39.

31 Loewenberg, J., “Josiah Royce: Interpreter of American Problems,” University of California Chronicle 19 (1917) 39–47.Google Scholar

32 Royce, Problem ofChristianity, 110–14, 128–30.

33 Royce, “Provincialism,” in Basic Writings, 2. 1067.

34 Ibid., 1072–76. Recognizing the political realities which impede the emergence of the universal community, Royce even goes so far as to propose an international insurance system to safeguard world peace in his work War and Insurance (New York: Macmillan, 1914).Google ScholarPubMed

35 For an excellent discussion of classical theology's reliance upon citation, see Farley, Edward, Ecclesial Reflection: An Anatomy of Theological Method (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) esp. 107–27.Google Scholar

36 Niebuhr, H. Richard, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1960) 13.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., 16.

38 Ibid., 13.

39 Ibid., 14.

40 Ibid., 11.

41 Kaufman, Gordon, Theology for a Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985) 18.Google Scholar

42 Although all three theologians seek to extend the tradition in light of contemporary insight, their substantive judgments over the nature and extent of what is retrievable clearly differ. Thus this model produces theologies with varying degrees of continuity with a tradition depending upon the theologian's judgment about its adequacy. I do not think that it is possible to articulate abstractly and in advance the criteria which should guide this reconstruction. Attempts to provide specific criteria tend to be overly dogmatic or exceedingly general. As Jeffrey Stout has persuasively argued, it is only in the historical conversation with our traditions and each other that we can hope to arrive at more truthful and moral religious visions. See Stout, , “The Voice of Theology in Contemporary Culture,” in Douglas, Mary and Tipton, Steven, eds., Religion and America (Boston: Beacon, 1982) 250–52.Google Scholar

43 Only in the last century have the conditions emerged which would make possible the form of public theology I am delineating. Aquinas, for instance, could not have aspired to this form of theology given the general illiteracy of his time. In light of the sociological constraints of his audience, he inevitably wrote for an elite group of the educated and theologically sophisticated. The increase in literacy and the availability of the printing press allowed Luther and Calvin to write for the public and not for a theological elite. However, by antedating the age of historicism they were able to conceive of their task as one of retrieval rather than extension. Certainly there are other contemporary theologies which could be cited as illustrations of this theological model. Perhaps the closest would be the genre of liberation theology which explicitly addresses the political and social situation and seeks to write for the people rather than the academy. Although there are certainly exceptions (e.g., Ruether's Sexism and God-Talk), liberation theologies have tended to operate within the authoritarian mode, substituting an orthopraxis for the traditional orthodoxy. Consequently they would typically meet only two of my three specifications for a public theology.

44 Neil Gillman has explored issues concerning authority and tradition as they relate to Jewish theology in his article “The Jewish Philosopher in Search of a Role,” Judaism 34 (1985) 474–84Google Scholar and “Authority and Authenticity in Jewish Philosophy,” Judaism 35 (1986).Google Scholar He also is seeking to defend a form of theology which neither takes tradition as authoritative nor denies the importance and legitimacy of engaging tradition. Gillman likens theology to midrash in order to identify this nonauthoritarian engagement with the Jewish tradition. If combined with the stylistic and substantive specifications noted above, Gillman's midrashic model would constitute a form of public Jewish theology, analogous to the Christian public theology I have been delineating.