First Among Equals: Christian Theology and Modern Philosophy

Introduction and Background

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the evangelical Protestant church has seen huge growth and increasing influence around the world. Although there have been the difficult times in what might be traditionally called Christendom, and especially in Western Europe, elsewhere in the world the Church is flourishing.

Andrew Walls (1996, 2002) has shown that theology is created at the boundaries, as the Christian faith expands into new territory and encounters new situations, philosophies, and worldviews. However, it is arguably the case that within ‘Christendom’, where the Church is struggling to reinvent itself and make sense of a combination of creeping secularisation and increasingly obvious non-Christian religions, theological innovation is also happening and needs to expand. This article attempts to make a modest case for constructive engagement between global evangelical Christian theology and some of the broader philosophical trends in the West. For reasons of space, the article does not concern itself with non-western religions and philosophies, although the general argument applies to them also.

As guiding principle and deliverable of the Church, theology has always been moving forward, preserving an essentially inviolate set of core truths (there is some discussion about what constitutes this core, but most would agree on the nature of God, human beings, the uniqueness of Christ, and salvation by grace through faith) at the same time as it has interacted with its broader cultural and intellectual environment. The last two thousand years of the Church have produced a general locus of orthodoxy across time and space and it is to that tradition that evangelicals bind themselves in the broadest sense.

That said, there are quite different attitudes to the interaction between theology (believed to be) derived from the Bible and broader social trends. At one end we have seen a separatism which regards the world as evil and rejects any form of ‘secular’ wisdom. For example, the Creationist movement does not accept any input from evolutionary biology or biblical studies informed by the study of ANE creation myths and cosmology. Similarly, the biblical counselling movement associated with Jay Adams (1986) explicitly refuses insights from secular psychology. All the answers are in the Bible. Concerning other faiths, purists would maintain an exclusivist view of the Christian gospel and distance themselves from the inclusivism and pluralism of Rahner (1996) and Hick (1973) respectively.

At the other pole is liberal theology, through which the goal of the Church defaults to a programme of societal improvement and social justice. Sociological and political ideas, usually from the political left, are taken as normative and the resulting theology then resembles a Christianised version of the Zeitgeist. Such is the case with more politicised interpretation of liberation theology.

In an age marked by interconnectedness, access to information, and increasing empowerment of the majority world, the Church faces the challenge of competing worldviews and localised issues around the planet. Christian uniqueness is often more strongly questioned in the West than in the majority world. Yet most of the theology taught in evangelical bible colleges and seminaries around the world is still traditionally western and often conservative American, and alternative worldviews and philosophies are ignored or criticised. The traditional western theological monolith stands in the midst of a boiling and foaming religious, philosophical, and ideological sea, unaffected by and unaffecting of the waves of diversity around it.

The Struggle for Relevance and the Tale of Two Stories

The divide between theology and the ‘real world’ is discussed by Sheldrake (2000: 43), who traces the role of scholasticism in the clear separation of spiritual and material. This division persisted into the Reformation, Luther believing that church and state were separate, affirming distinct spiritual and temporal realms. Indeed, Amos (2007: 219) claims that for Luther the kingdom of God and the world were in ‘profound and fundamental antithesis.’

The second-generation reformer John Calvin advocated a close relationship between the Church and the surrounding society, as state and the Church were both ordained of God and were to function together to bring order and flourishing in human life (Amos, 2007: 233). Later, in a rather different theological camp, John Wesley’s famous quadrilateral included reason as well as revelation (Outler, 1964).

These two different conceptions of the Church’s relation with the world have persisted until the present day, summarised by Lyons (2009) as ‘the half story and the full story’. The half-story refers to a simple fall–redemption paradigm, probably familiar to most evangelicals. Because of the Fall the individual needs salvation, and the new Christian receives the commission to convert people and bring them into the Church. The emphasis on salvation is often associated with a negative, get-me-out-of-here theology, a church against the world position (powerfully and accessibly critiqued by Guinness, 1994). This narrow agenda contrasts with the full story of creation–fall–redemption–restoration, relevant to both individuals and the world. This combination of optimism and realism is ably presented by Chris Wright (2010) in a chapter entitled ‘People who live and work in the public square’. Something similar is found in Moltmann (1967: 327), who argues that though the Church is ‘for the world’ this does not entail a secular or man-made agenda. Rather, the Church seeks to bring transformation and renewal, at once affirming God’s love for the world and recognising the destructiveness of sin and the need for change. Clearly, while the half-story remains relatively safe in its reductionism and isolationism, the full story could risk moving to a classic liberal conflation of the aims of the Church and secular social reformers (Niebuhr, 1951).

The Kingdom Theme and the Elevation of the Mind

It is helpful to explore the idea of the kingdom of God in the present age and reflect on some of its implications. Firstly, the kingdom of God includes but is bigger than the Church; God acts beyond the Church, in human society. The kingdom seeks to control all areas of life and ‘represents the dominion of God in every sphere of human endeavor’ (Berkhof, 1993: 570). At the same time the effect of human finiteness and sin and the existence of imperfection within the kingdom are acknowledged, preventing slides towards idealist postmillennialism or dangerous reconstructionism (Wainwright, 1993: 185). One stated aim of the latter is a Christian takeover of the seven mountains of influence in human culture (associated with Bill Bright and Loren Cunningham) this side of the second coming as part of a human-led theocracy.

Moltmann insists that the coming of the kingdom is transformational, linking present and future. Eschatological promises are valid not only for after the second coming, but must be lived out now. The same creative tension is evident in Hendriksen’s (1985: 202) discussion of Revelation 21. The Church is to be part of the process of realising OT ideals of ‘blessing, peace, righteousness, and fullness of life’ (Moltmann, 1967: 329). Indeed, Wainwright (1993: 187) devotes a whole chapter to the connection between social and socialist movements committed to renewal of society and social justice, reminding us that even Engels approved of Christianity as a movement for societal reform.

As the Church critiques and renews society in the here and now, the scope of its work must include the life of the mind as well as the body. Guinness (1994) spends one third of his short book arguing this point and Noll (1994) treats this in much more depth. Caird (1966: 279) is more explicit, denying that human ‘achievements of civilisation and culture’ will be consigned to some eschatological scrapheap; the very best of humanity, having value in God’s eyes, will be brought into the kingdom (Rev 21:26–27). Here Gunton (1997: 23) commends Coleridge to his readers. The latter engaged with streams of thought coming out of the Enlightenment, but did so critically, discarding what he considered unacceptable according to his understanding of theology.

This penetration of human endeavour by God and his church can be viewed from a Trinitarian perspective. For Gunton (1997: 51), God’s love is Trinitarian, mediated to us through the incarnation, other-focused and marked by ‘outgoingness’. This complements Moltmann’s position that the persons of the Trinity also constitute spaces into which humanity is welcomed. As God Himself goes out we are invited in, and elements of human endeavour and thought must be brought into the Trinitarian interstices. This is echoed by Hudson (2007: 184–185) in her discussion of theosis of the mind in Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa. Torrance’s (1965: 248) elevation of the human mind by the Holy Spirit is not limited to individual minds, while Moltmann’s (1992) fellowship of the Spirit includes communities of churches, generations, genders, and creation itself. It would be a strange redemption indeed which sought to renew all aspects of creation except the intellectual and emotional faculties which emphasise our unique relationship with God.

The mind is also a focus for Tom Wright (2005: 172) in his characterisation of the task of the Church as an act of a play. In its current form the kingdom of God is an ‘unscripted period’ and we are to improvise based on what we know of the beginning and end of the Christian story. Wright (2005: 172) acknowledges that our world is very different from the Apostle Paul’s, and is affected by ‘modernity, postmodernity, post-colonialism, neo-imperialism … [and the influence of] Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche.’ He asks the Church to embrace the critique of modernity that postmodernity brings, but not postmodernity itself. We are to go further and make something new, fresh, and distinctly Christian.

As Wright (2007: 40) critiques modernism and its fragmented, amorphous descendant, he urges the Church to be part of God’s kingdom coming and His will being done on earth as in heaven, which entails a polemical engagement of the Church with society. Rejecting the dualism of sacred and secular, he comments that God ‘has not left himself without witness in the world’ (Wright, 2007: 280) and fleshes this out by reference to Phil 4:8; things true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable, on which we are to reflect, can be found in the world as well as in the scripture. The redeemed and enlightened mind is to create and develop in accordance with the trajectory that God has laid out for us and in critical interaction with all of human endeavour.

Two Worlds Separated by Time and Space

The production of something Christian, which takes account of but goes beyond modernism and postmodernism, and draws on the noble and admirable in any and all spheres of human endeavour, requires a particularly skilful form of improvisation. At our current point in the unscripted section of the play between the NT epistles and Parousia our improvisation will need to be more complicated and nuanced than in the first century. Firstly, our world is more complex than that of the first-century church, more democratic, more divided, and far more multicultural. In addition, the last two thousand years have seen huge amounts of ink spilt in the writing of theology and philosophy and an explosion in all areas of thought. Further, the Christian gospel now finds itself in dialogue or at least coexistence with western philosophies and schools of thought which may not acknowledge the Creator God and his word explicitly, but are nonetheless its bastard children in some sense. Contemporary western philosophies may have tried to extract themselves from the Christian tradition, but it is most unlikely that they have been able to extract the Christian tradition completely from themselves. Much of western thought sits uneasily on the dual stools of Greek thought and Christian theology in their various forms. As Christian theology interacts with the secular academy it often sees a distorted version of itself; our improvisation of Wright’s fifth act takes place inside a hall of mirrors!

Apart from competing western ideologies with differing degrees of Christian heritage and non-western religions with radically different theological cores, the Church exists in societies marked by hugely complex economic, political, and social issues. Modern societies, particularly but not only in the West, treasure political and ideological openness and demand empowerment and democracy. With apologies to Wittgenstein (1986, section 83), it is not only a matter of games being played with balls of different shapes and sizes. There is all manner of different sticks, racquets, and bats; opposing teams have different numbers of players, and part of the game is played in a swimming pool!

In the light of all of this, it seems that we are faced with two separate but related questions, one more fundamental than the other. The first is: Does western-dominated theology have all the answers for modern life in different locations and cultures around the world, including the West? The second, and more controversial, is: Does the Bible contain all the answers? The assumption connecting these two questions is that theology is derivative, second order, while the Bible is a given and primary. Furthermore, if theology is a derived human edifice, then it is inherently limited and will show evidence of human bias or partiality. It is probably better to talk about theologies plural; even theology from the West has shown considerable variety since the Reformation. Christians self-identify as Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, and within the Protestant tradition there are liberals, charismatics, Reformed, dispensationalists, and so on. One is reminded of the story of the blind men and the elephant.

Theologies should feed on and into the broader cultural milieu in which they exist. Their development is affected by the worldview, historical circumstances, and culture of the context in which that happens. Given that much of western theology in the evangelical camp has roots in the sixteenth reformation, the enlightenment, and even mid-nineteenth century Europe and North America, we should not be surprised to see theological reflexes of concerns or issues of the time. For example, the Reformers emphasised justification by faith in opposition to the position of the Roman Catholic Church at the time. Some see fundamentalist focus on the so-called ‘end-times’ as a consequence of the destruction of the South during the American civil war. Contemporary evangelical theology often displays a greater concern for the imagined conflict between science and faith than environmental issues. In an age in which meta-narratives and authority are viewed with suspicion, some Christians see doctrinal truth as more important than consensus. Others feel that western theologies neglect community and are too focused on the individual.

Thus, in his plea for contextualised discipleship Song (2005) laments that theology from the West does not provide East Asian Christians with resources to deal with corruption or real fear of the spirit world; these do not form core parts of the western theological edifice. In his advocacy of self-theologising he urges theologians and pastors to spend time looking at issues in the society and helping to construct responses to them. In other words, he is asking for an extension of traditional western theology into areas which it has not previously addressed. The irony is of course that some of the issues that he raises are to be found in the Bible, but alas did not make it through the theological filtration and processing machine into the body of theological knowledge informed by western thinking. Of course it is the position of this article that Song’s concerns are as relevant to the West as to East Asia!

If theologies represent snapshots in time, frozen instantiations of theological method coming from a particular space and time, then we must concede that they are limited and always need updating. If Walls is right in saying that theology is created at the edge of the Church, during missionary endeavour, then as we go about Wright’s improvisation, we need to know what lies at the interface between accepted theology and socio-cultural milieu. The fifth act of the play does not happen in a vacuum. We do improvise based on our knowledge of what God has done in the past and will do in the future, but in this intermediate, unscripted period we have to interact with and respond to the philosophical, social, and cultural influences around us. If God’s redemptive activity works beyond the Church and applies to the (communal) thought life, and the gospel elevates the mind, could philosophies and ideologies in the cultural context function as part of that activity as well as objects of it? Whether a society has not been strongly affected by the gospel or has chosen to walk away from it, its secular and non-Christian philosophies are the result of generations of reflection, discussion, and argument, precious repositories of wisdom and experience.

Critical Engagement: Christian Theology First Among Equals?

The required extension of traditional western theologies into new and unfamiliar contexts can be facilitated and enhanced by critically embracing these non-Christian viewpoints and schools of thought. I use the word ‘critically’ because a Christian position unashamedly holds that theology derived from the scripture is normative in essence and at its core. Where alternative philosophies address areas not treated by western theologies, and can provide approaches and conclusions that facilitate general well-being and the development of biblical shalom, even though they are not Christian themselves, then they can and should serve the gospel.

Having raised this possibility, it is now time to turn to the question of the Bible itself, before returning to the matter of how Christian perspectives might benefit from dialoguing with non-Christian modes of thought.

The discussion of western theologies has made reference to the limitations of theology as a human product, created from the scripture in a specific time and place. In a sense, something similar obtains for the scripture itself. Regardless of our position on the nature of revelation, from verbal plenary inspiration to the looser God–human partnership of Enns (2005), the text of scripture is finite, given in specific times and places. The scripture was complete by roughly the end of the first century, and written primarily in and for communities of faith in Yahweh living in settings culturally ANE-Hebrew and Hellenistic, primarily agricultural, largely rural, and technologically far inferior to our own. Since the completion of the canon there have been two thousand years of human thought, endeavour, conflict, and tragedy. The world has moved on, while the scripture remains the same.

Such a statement could be seen as a criticism of the Bible or an attempt to expose its inadequacy, although it is simply a statement of fact. What is crucial is how we view the scripture and theology derived from it. Here I propose that as well as specific details such as moral prohibitions or good Christian practice, which some might feel is of a piece with atomistic proof-texting, the Bible contains generative principles.

Within and behind the text of the Bible, in its various genres, are ageless principles for how to live. They trace out trajectories for the Christian life or describe loci of shalom-inducing practice. The OT provides detailed guidance for society and codes of civil and criminal justice, as well as religious cult, and although these are sometimes termed thou shalts and thou shalt nots, the Hebrew Scriptures also contain broad principles which followers of Yahweh were to implement in their own context. Of particular value in this sense is the wisdom literature. Ecclesiastes and Job do not tell us precisely what to do, but do give us hints at how to do. The Psalms are shocking in their gritty realism and the authors’ frankness before God. At the same time, Psalms 1 and 119 are fascinating and almost puzzling in that they stress the importance of God’s law and reflection on it, but do not lay out what the specific results look like. In addition, Ps 119 provocatively links rumination on divine precepts with joy in a remarkable marriage of cognitive and affective (vv.14–16, for example). Proverbs is known for its apparent contradictions and paradox, and although we usually consider these as alternative, context-dependent choices, or bookends defining spaces of moral action, perhaps we can embrace them as non-western stimuli taking us beyond logic and reason in ways reminiscent of Zen Buddhist koans. The whole of the Bible ‘is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work’ (2 Tim 3:16, NIV), and so although we do not see ourselves in the Pentateuch, with its tents and camels, or in the historical books, with their military battles, alliances, and political and personal treachery, there are important principles there for Christian living as individuals and community before God. Perhaps the training in righteousness and equipping for good works is as much about reshaping the mind and passing on generative principles as it is about specific commands and injunctions. If we use this two-fold apprehension of what the scripture is about to read Paul’s classic comment on transforming rather than conforming in order to understand the mind of God (Rom 12:2) we may find the scripture and theology derived from it flexible, liberating, and relevant.

In the NT, Jesus builds on shared principles from the OT yet often develops them in ways that seem odd and frustrating to us. Why does he leave so many parables unexplained? The so-called church-planting manual of Acts does not give us a huge amount of detail to follow. What is perhaps most surprising and provocative is that as Paul deals with various doctrinal and practical controversies he does not provide his audience with point-by-point instructions on how to live the Christian life. Most of what he says in the epistles is rather skeletal and the impression gained is that the emerging Church, composed of Gentiles and Jews, has to work out for itself how to live as Christians in a complex and often hostile environment. The expectation is that brain-work and reflection will be done, and the people of God will interact and function as salt and light where they are. Withdrawal was not seen as an option in the first century and neither should it be today.

Going broader, these principles or trajectories empower us to interact critically with other schools of thought from outside of the Bible. If the infinite God has revealed himself through finite scriptures, certain implications follow for the relationship between theology and human civilisation. First, God knew that human society would move on beyond the scope of ancient Israel or the eastern Mediterranean region. We should thus expect the scripture to contain generative principles which can apply to any situation by means of a suitable hermeneutic, in addition to atomistic statements of fact or moral instruction. Second, the community of faith in Yahweh has always been aware of and in dialogue with other schools of thought. This has often been constructively polemical, as shown by complex relationships between Gen 1–3 and other ANE creation stories, biblical and non-biblical flood narratives, similarities between biblical ethical standards and the Code of Hammurabi (for example), and forms of suzerain-vassal covenant established between God and Israel. In the NT we discover Christ’s sublime teaching through stories from everyday – ‘secular’ – life in ancient Palestine, Paul’s rich use of worldly metaphors, and John’s daring baptism of the Greek logos. Thirdly, humankind would develop its own schools of philosophy which are distinct from the Bible and often do not acknowledge it, and the Church should not ignore the challenge of the evil and the contribution of the wise. Fourthly, in some parts of the world the Christian gospel would rise to great ascendancy and influence, but then lose considerable ground and fall victim to other religions and the forces of secularism. This trend is simply not found anywhere in the scripture; the great missionary adventure of Acts says nothing at all about Buddhism, Islam, the collapse of Christendom, and secular humanism. As Christians, however, we believe than an omnipotent and omniscient God has not been caught off guard and that his word contains the tools for on-going redemptive engagement and kingdom-building.

The scripture itself and theologies derived from it are limited and bound in time and space, yet as Christians draw on generative principles they can relate to new situations and cultural settings in two ways. First, taking the Bible into new cultures allows us to discover new ideas and attach new significance to concepts within it that our own (western) cultural lenses previously prevented us from seeing. Consider mission stories about the importance of biblical genealogies to Africans. Or the significance of Paul’s teaching on idols in Corinthians for people groups in Southeast Asia. African theologians talk of Jesus as the ancestor. Also, majority world cultures have helped western theologians grasp the centrality of community in the Bible.

Second, the crossing of cultural boundaries allows us to discern resonances between indigenous non-Christian philosophies and the general spirit of the scripture. An issue or viewpoint may not be found specifically in the scripture, but as we come across a matter needing a response from the Church at a given point in time and space, non-Christian philosophies and worldviews may speak explicitly and helpfully in ways that are positive and shalom-inducing, and also consistent with the spirit of the scripture if not the letter. A creative approach to the scripture and a trust in its divine author allow Christians to draw on extra-biblical wisdom; it is as if we are finding connections that God has already established, links between divine revelation and human wisdom waiting to be used.

However, whether we are talking about the human project of theology or the divine-human project of scripture, as these interact with and draw on extra-biblical wisdom and philosophy the Judaeo-Christian revelation remains normative. This is critical engagement and contextualisation rather than syncretism or forcing the Bible to serve secular or non-Christian agendas. Whether we appeal to explicit scriptural command or more implicit biblical principle (and in the latter case the hermeneutical task is clearly more difficult and demanding), these take priority and other philosophies inform and assist the Christian worldview on its terms rather than their own. They function as consultants rather than leaders according to the principle of first among equals.

Modern Philosophy and its Turns

In thinking how philosophy can extend and contribute to Christian theology, it may be helpful first to consider two of the philosophical ‘turns’ of the last century, general trends influencing the direction of philosophy and theology. The ‘linguistic turn’ refers to the importance attached to language in western philosophy in the early twentieth century (Dummett, 1999: 2). Although Mellor (1999: 103) complains that the turn has given language too great an influence on philosophy, the fact remains that language is vitally important for theology, in its use of exegesis, hermeneutics, and metaphor. It is also worth noting Rorty’s (1992) early enthusiasm for the linguistic turn and his more critical view 25 years later. Rather than take any particular school of philosophy or ‘turn’ in intellectual trends as the key to philosophical or theological endeavour, we can draw on all or any of these as we see fit, with the Christian worldview as defining and normative. After all, complex thought is mediated through language, and when we try to develop contextual theologies in order to apply the gospel to issues in modern societies or interact with non-western cultures, language becomes even more significant.

Already affecting Christian theology is the so-called ‘relational turn’, recently associated with the American theologian F LeRon Shults. In the last 15 years or so he has developed theology informed by relationality – his Reforming Theological Anthropology: After the Philosophical Turn to Relationality (Shults, 2003) is representative – although he has pointed out that relationality is nothing new. Another evangelical scholar who embraced relationality is the late Stanley Grenz (2007), with the work The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei. The relationality within the Trinity forms the centre of their theological projects, and their work accords with the new-found emphasis on the Trinity in evangelical circles. Both men explicitly address the task of theologising for a postmodern world by engaging with relational thinking, and although they both address the nature of God and of the Church, relationality has broader applications for Christian theology interacting with modern, secular society. It is noteworthy that Blocher offers a balanced critique of relational theology analogous to Rorty’s own self-critique mentioned earlier. Blocher (2009: 1) confesses his suspicion of ‘magic words’, and explores the West’s current – renewed – interest in relationality. It has developed from our sense of alienation in a modern consumer society, a crisis of confidence in western culture compared to those of the majority world, and a turn away from ontology. Blocher expands each of these claims in a balanced fashion and unsurprisingly concludes that relationality is insufficient as the lens through which to do theology. One benefit of postmodernity is that we no longer need to look for ‘magic words’ or theological and philosophical silver bullets; we are free to bring an array of approaches and tools under the Christian meta-narrative as we see fit.

From these general trends we can now look briefly at some specific areas in philosophy. A short paper does not permit a length exploration of exactly how these might serve the gospel. However, the following could benefit from and contribute to the gospel along the lines already mentioned: otherness or alterity (Buber, Levinas, Ricoeur), critical realism (Bhaskar), Foucault on knowledge and power, subaltern studies, post-colonialism. This is nowhere near an exhaustive list and illustrative only.

One salient aspect of our globalising and interconnected world is the increased visibility of and communication with the ‘Other’. The Christian scriptures do speak about how to receive and show mercy to the other, yet do not develop this as a fully-fledged discipline or philosophical position in its own right. However, the writings of Buber and Levinas (both informed to some extent by Judaism) provide us with helpful reflections on otherness and the moral implications for us of coming face-to-face with the other. Buber (1996) writes eloquently about ‘I and thou’ in his classic volume, while Levinas (1974) muses at great length about the ethical demands of the other as expressed by ‘the face’. I drew on both of these non-Christian scholars in my own study of migration in East Asia (Woods, 2015).

Related to this are Ricoeur’s (1992) two notions of self, the ipse and the idem. The first concerns primarily who we are, the self as it changes through time due to various outside influences. The latter refers more to what we are, the permanent nature of our selfhood through time which allows us to recognise ourselves in pictures taken at various times. Ricoeur (1992: 114) describes a series of dialectic relationships between ipse and idem, which allow him to hold in tension the fundamental nature of a person’s identity and the changes in him or her in what he calls a ‘narrative identity’. These concepts may be of benefit in theologising how we relate to the other in our midst and the possible tensions that result in our own and the other’s sense of identity. They may also provide resources for reflection on the process of sanctification and belonging to a Christian community. Shults (2009: 429) refers to a ‘philosophical “turn to alterity” in late modernity’ as theologians of the emergent church movement drawn on the work of ‘Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, and Ricoeur’.

Staying with the French philosophers, Foucault’s reflections on knowledge and power could also serve Christian theology; indeed, McSweeney (2005: 117) discusses ‘theological appropriations of Foucault’. Foucault (1997: 53) talks of a ‘nexus of knowledge-power’ and discusses various kinds of power relationships. He even provides a neat summary of how the power of Christian pastors is different from worldly power in that it is self-sacrificing and acts to benefit individuals as well as the broader community (Foucault, 2000: 333). He also examines the relationship between knowledge and power. Christianity is a religion of a book, supported by two thousand years of reflection and theorising and propagated by professionals trained in the academy, and thus knowledge is power. Foucault’s (1980: 98) analysis is helpful, especially his point about power operating in chains and through organisations.

Another broad philosophical resource is critical realism, a more functional approach which could be of particular value to theology as it dialogues with the social sciences. In fact, theologian Tom Wright describes his interpretation and use of it in his 1992 book, The New Testament and the People of God. As theologians and lay Christians alike seek to bring their faith to bear on contemporary issues, critical realism could be powerful as it prioritises ontology over epistemology and recognises the autonomy of human and other actors, ‘out there’ and distinct from ourselves and the Church, yet living and acting in particular sets of circumstances, which the researcher needs to understand in order to understand fully what is happening. Critical realism’s threefold scheme of the real, the actual, and the empirical (Bhaskar, 1975) requires us to understand specific, observable events against the background of the broader movements of which they are part, in turn shaped by complex factors not immediately obvious. People and systems of thought and influence interact with each other, and this reminds theologians and practitioners alike of the complexity and ‘provisionality’ (Wright, 1992: 35) of theologising in the real world. The task and the results of this kind of theologising are messy; there are unanswered questions and links to various theologies and external disciplines. But this is what we should expect as a creative God works within a chaotic and fragmented world.

Some may see weak resonances with the ‘radical orthodoxy’ project of Milbank and others; I have come from a different starting place and do not depend on their agenda in the development of the ideas presented in this article. However, two comments from the introduction to radical orthodoxy are appropriate here. Milbank et al. believe that ‘all real knowledge involves some revelation of the infinite in the finite’, and go on to summarise Montag (in the same volume) thus: ‘revelation should not be set over against reason, but is…an intensification of human understanding’ (1999: 5). If God is the source of all truth and has given us the commission to bring all human endeavour under his rule for the extension of his kingdom and the flourishing of humankind, then the finite efforts of men and women must contain some revelation of God and his purposes, and can inform and be informed by the narrative of God’s interaction with his people in past, present, and future. With Montag (1999), we should also expect a seamless integration of revelation and reason in an echo of Kuyper’s famous claim that every inch of the world belongs to Christ, particularly as the quote in full reads as follows:

Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine! (Bratt, 1998: 488)

It is, after all, no insult to the omniscient and omnipresent God to acknowledge the finiteness of his special revelation of scripture alongside the infinite possibilities of the generative truths within it.

Conclusion

Christians have been given the word of God in a finite form, located in space and time. However, the nature of that word and the on-going kingdom commission of God mean that Christian theology is generative, capable of producing answers to new questions in new situations not addressed in the Bible. In his sovereignty and omniscience God has ordained that the Church should interact with and benefit from the wisdom of the human academy, but in a critical sense, with the Bible playing a central and determining role as ‘first among equals’. This is merely a human reflection of the Triune God’s combination of going out with welcoming in, as human endeavour is drawn into the divine interstices.

Rather than dividing Christianity from other schools of thought along some kind of simplistic fault line, or allowing philosophical trends to define the gospel, our role in a complex world with myriad issues and a rainbow of schools of thought is to identify and interrogate potential dialogue partners. In fact, the idea of ‘dialogue’ is already somewhat passé. In our pluralist, postmodern environment, perhaps we should already be thinking in terms of many on-going dialogues, or even move towards multilogue or pluralogue, as we work for shalom and human flourishing.