Abstract
John Macquarrie did his work on the boundary between theology and philosophy, modernism and postmodernism, church and world. Adopting a theological method predicated on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Macquarrie constructed an ontological-existentialist approach that embraced phenomenological method as a means of communicating with the world. Observing mid-twentieth-century cultural shifts, Macquarrie saw a need to rethink theology for this new world with language that was secular and holy, a theology of the age, for the age but also connected to previous ages. Thus, it is meet and right that a new monograph should make his work a focal point, bringing a forgotten voice back into conversation.
Stephen Foster, Presidential Research Professor Emeritus of History at Northern Illinois, gives us Theology as Repetition, a work intended to be a resurgence of conversation with Macquarrie’s thought. The work is not an apologetic for Macquarrie or an exposition of a single important concept, but a broad overview of the context in which his thought emerges, its stages of development, a comparative analysis to other theological positions, and his novel contributions to theology. Impressively spanning the corpus of Macquarrie’s work, Foster presents a text divided into two parts, providing readers with both a linear history of idea development and a thematic encounter with postmodernism.
Part 1, “Situating Macquarrie’s Theology,” introduces the reader to the context that shaped Macquarrie’s thought, particularly the cultural forces pressing upon him and theological trends he found problematic. The chapters provide a sweeping narration of his own novel theological evolution, particularly the way Martin Heidegger, existentialism, and evolving postmodern ideas influenced him. Of special emphasis is the “theology in a new style” developed by Macquarrie and its relationship to postmodernism.
Part 2, “Onto-Theology: Dialectical Theism and Postmodernism,” explores the relationship of Macquarrie’s own natural theology to other postmodern thinkers. Foster compares Macquarrie with Barth, Derrida, Levinas, Marion, Husserl, Hegel, Kant, and Kierkegaard, noting shared concerns and notable differences. This second half illustrates the creative ways in which Macquarrie developed his philosophical theology in conversation with the church and twentieth-century tradition of thought. Macquarrie is not willing to separate Athens from Jerusalem. The text concludes with a focus on reason and revelation, drawing the many woven threads into conversation with the church and a shared future in pursuit of the truth.
Compellingly, Foster frames the story of Macquarrie within the then-emergent Death of God Theology, rising secularity, neo-orthodoxy, and waning liberal theology. Macquarrie was a theologian of his day speaking to a culture not unlike the current day. Long before describing the current cultural milieu as a “secular age” (p. 60) was in vogue, John Macquarrie was rethinking categories of faith and theology as the world stood solemnly beside Nietzsche’s freshly dug divine grave. The site of this theistic funeral acts as a liberating beginning for Macquarrie’s work. It is a new beginning at the end of a theo-logical era, a departure from what was once thought to think anew what can be re-thought and re-claimed from tradition.
Foster does an admirable job of unifying Macquarrie’s ideas into a singular whole, presenting a theological genealogy in which each conviction and idea flows seamlessly to the next. The author introduces the reader to an array of theological influences and ideas as they emerge within Macquarrie’s attempt to answer the most pressing question of his day: How do we talk about God in this context?
As is if eavesdropping on conversations between Foster and Macquarrie, the text unpacks difficult concepts with ease. Existentialism, ontology, phenomenology, dialectical materialism, and postmodernism are presented contextually, not as static ideas from Philosophy 101 but as parts to a unified whole that Macquarrie crafted into a theological and pastoral method to speak God in this context. Along the way, one is left with many more “aha” moments than head-scratching ones.
Noteworthy is that Macquarrie begins with experience, lived and thrown. Foster reminds readers that Macquarrie does so to overcome the extremes between traditional empiricism and speculative reason via phenomenology. As a method, phenomenology relies less upon proof and more upon description, a way of thinking that allows encounter/experience to be seen as given, developing tacit forms of knowledge in juxtaposition to hardened rationalism. For Macquarrie, theology moves from description, to interpretation, and then application.
Foster presents Macquarrie’s thought in sympathy with postmodern deconstructionist concerns, even describing him as one who could be described as a postmodern thinker. Yet he is quick to note the reliance and embrace Macquarrie has for Christian tradition, as one that seeks a radical conservatism in the spirit of repetition, hearing again, but hearing anew: repetitions of scriptural revelation in new language, repetition of Heidegger into new adaptations for theology, and repetition of theologians of previous eras to provide insight into the current one. Repetition functions as a thinking with, sharing a common end but always mindful of the beginning. Prior to speaking must come a repeating, Theology as/is Repetition. Deconstruction need not lead to nihilism, but neither should theology speak to itself.
Why Macquarrie, why now? Why renew interest in an obscure Scottish Anglican priest whose apparent embrace of Heidegger has led to his theological exile? The urgency to engage Macquarrie anew is because his world is not unlike the current one. If the world was secular then, it is more so now. Reliance upon theological concepts for framing life in a world dominated by rationalism and empiricism has largely disappeared. Smartphones are closer to us than our prayers. There is no longer a shared metanarrative, only distant haunts of stories we used to know. Yet people’s spirits are unsettled, and the world is filled with searching selves. At best, attempts to respond to this shifting cultural sand are typically marked by the anti-cultural sentiment of post-liberalism and neo-orthodoxy. At worst, well-meaning conservatism reinforces the current dismissiveness toward religion in Western culture. Both attempts embrace language and concepts foreign to their intended audience.
Foster presents Macquarrie, a forgotten way, a way to expound the resources for theology and speak with the world and to the world, not against it. He reminds readers that reality, God, and human experience are dialectical and remain so on the ambiguous border between transcendence and immanence. Theology must communicate paradox to a secular culture; “therefore, it must make possible in language that which is impossible to conceive.” Pastors and theologians are tasked with this work: communicating to a culture, from inside a culture, the impossibility of faith and the God that gifts it to humanity. Macquarrie offers another way with a method forgotten and not tried.
The work Foster has done here is to be commended, for its simultaneous density and brevity. He has re-presented the thought of one who has been ignored far too long but whose balance and dialectical approach can inspire newer modes of thinking, embracing the world as a repository of revelation and tradition as in indispensable resource. If only more theologians would write so much so well.