Abstract
Background
After Kant’s ground-breaking attempt to readjust the tense relationships between the lower and the higher faculties, theology found itself in an uncomfortable position. From then on, defining the standards and the content of a meaningful communication about theoretical and practical truth was no longer regarded as the task of theology. In the aftermath of Kant, whatever claimed to be valid had to prove itself before the forum of secular reason. Secular reason, on its own terms, was characterised by its strict autonomy and by its accessibility to everyone—believers and non-believers alike. But there was even more to it. For one of the genuine objects of theological reflection, namely the substance of religious faith, was now supposed to be dealt with ‘within the boundaries of mere reason’ and so turned out to be a purely philosophical topic. If, on the one hand, established religions were unwilling to submit to constraints of mere reason, then, of course, they still would be tolerated out of respect for individual freedom, but they would no longer belong to the range of topics that could be discussed in the public sphere. Consequently, theology that committed itself to such a ‘non-reasonable’ form of faith eventually ceased to be an academic discipline at all. If, on the other hand, theology was willing to submit to such constraints, and thus solely concern itself with ‘rational faith’ (Vernunftglaube), that is, with a faith that can be defended publicly by means of pure reason, then theology would no longer need to be distinguished from philosophy. In this way, theology risked losing its ancestral home in the university.
What Kant had so masterfully staged as a ‘conflict of the faculties’ becomes a metaphor for the enormous pressure to comply with the standards of universal reason, which theology has permanently been exposed to ever since. Kant, of course, was not the first to exert this pressure upon theology but rather reinforced a development that had already been set in motion by the voluntarist and nominalist upheaval in the late Middle Ages, and later through the confessional separation of Europe and the bloodshed of the religious wars. The religious division brought about a situation in which the society’s self-reflection on its normative orientation—that is, its own understanding of the evaluative standards indispensable for establishing and maintaining societal cohesion—could no longer be based on confessional grounds. As time went on, it became clearer that only the outcome of a public and discursive use of reason could provide the grounds for such an orientation. For only when all actual points of view were taken into account and considered equally, there was at least a theoretical warranty that confessional differences would no longer cause violent conflicts.
But since Kant’s era, the idea of universal reason itself has come under pressure. Modern and postmodern philosophers have put forward logical, epistemological, and even moral doubts about reason’s capacity to validate ethical claims and to settle social conflicts conclusively. Largely unfazed by this critique, however, advocates of political liberalism, which still dominates Western political thinking, rightly assert that a society’s self-reflection about its normative orientation should be carried out by means of a public and discursive use of reason. Yet the modern and postmodern critique of reason also left its marks on political liberalism, and some of its proponents are now prepared to completely exclude religious issues from the body of questions that can be discussed sensibly in public. In this view, every kind of public theology would seem to be impossible. And so, it is not an exaggeration to qualify this strand of political liberalism as excluding theology and perhaps even as philosophically reductionist. For exclusionary traits manifest themselves, for instance, in political liberalism’s presumption to accept only those theological contributions to a society’s normative orientation that can be translated into a generally accessible language. Philosophical reductionism seems to be at stake when liberals—contrary to Kant’s firm conviction—tend to hold that reason is not at all concerned with a religious quest, wherefore religious issues prove to be irrelevant for a polity’s reasonable self-orientation.
On the part of theology, this construal of political liberalism has been rightly condemned. Some theologians, while building on postmodernist thinking, have even denounced the liberal model of a normative public self-reflection on the whole. In their view, the liberal model is just one particularistic, quasi-religious myth amongst others. However, this suspicion goes much too far. In fact, it is not able to provide a feasible alternative to the discursive model of societal self-reflection which alone can do justice to the pluralism of worldviews. Even worse, such theological denouncement bears witness to religious anxiety, doubt, and disbelief, for it assumes that it is not even possible to speak about religious matters in public by means of discursive reason. In this way, it only confirms the premises for the exclusion of theology in political liberalism.
Description
The theological alternative to be explored in this special issue of Studies in Christian Ethics is based on the assumption that the central medium of theological speech employs precisely the kind of public reason that the liberal tradition holds to be the medium of societal self-reflection, but which it falsely construes when excluding religious matters from public discourse. Obviously, this assumption entails, firstly, an objection against exclusivist and reductionist strands of political liberalism. Secondly, it is also an objection against versions of post-liberal theology which denounce society’s discursive self-reflection as a particularist myth, only because they doubt that religious beliefs can still be articulated plausibly by means of secular reason. And thirdly, the assumption is also an objection against those versions of a public theology which—in an almost paradoxical way—seeks to adapt theological speech to exactly those standards of reason which a particular kind of political liberalism employs to exclude theology from the public discourse.
That theology needs to deploy a kind of public reason which is generally accessible to others can first be observed when looking at its academic setting. On account of this, Gijsbert van den Brink provides a brief historical overview of the epistemic status of theological reflection from antiquity to our present time and shows that, particularly in the medieval and early modern university, the discipline was held to represent the paramount faculty of human intellect. Later on, however, Kant dared to claim this faculty for philosophy and so initiated the modern breakdown of theology. Though the discipline, due to Schleiermacher’s intervention, succeeded in maintaining its place at the Humboldtian type of university, its role remained contested and scarcely anyone dared to still label it with the title ‘queen of sciences’. Not so van den Brink. According to him, the postmodern dissolution of reason’s unity has altered the situation again as, by now, philosophy no longer is supposed to provide answers to fundamental existential questions. Religions still do, but their contributions are rather varied and sometimes even competing. Theology should thus understand itself as a primarily practical discipline which discursively seeks to assess the plausibility of such answers. In doing so, it critically articulates the deepest aspirations and hopes of people and might therefore still be seen as the ‘queen of sciences’.
By not only focusing on theology’s academic setting but by considering its role within the whole of the secular realm, Christoph Hübenthal expands the scope of the investigation. Referring to Duns Scotus’s thoughts about human nature, he demonstrates that the secular as such is willed by God whereby it possesses a profound theological justification. Postliberal approaches which pursue theology as a primarily anti-modern project and advocate a return to analogical thinking apparently do not do justice to the secular’s theological significance. In contrast to exclusivist and reductionist strands of political liberalism, Hübenthal moreover shows that heeding the very logic of the secular eventually necessitates the idea of God which, then, provokes secular thinking to freely take a stance towards this idea and makes the faith option at least plausible. It is this reflection on the secular’s rationale that, according to him, should be promoted by theological reasoning in the public sphere. Public theology thus has to enlighten the secular about its very essence.In a similar fashion, Christopher Insole suggests that liberal approaches which expel religious issues from the public discourse cannot legitimately rely on Kant in order to support their viewpoint. Especially, the Kantian concept of autonomy does not lend itself to an exclusivist and reductionist interpretation. Placing Kant within the Platonic heritage and the tradition of the philosophia perennis, Insole points out that autonomy rather should be conceived of as the willing of a proper self which participates in the rational willing of the divine; and divine willing on its part aims at the fulfilment of all rational beings. If, therefore, the concept of autonomy can hardly be understood without considering its embeddedness in the divinity, then this provides an alternative understanding of the enlightenment. For now the dividing line runs not so much between a Christian and a secular vision of autonomy, but rather between a concept of autonomy that takes its directedness towards absolute fulfilment seriously and one that does not. Consequently, the main task of a public theology is to lay bare the dangerous distortions of a restricted understanding of autonomy.
Though Maureen Junker-Kenny would not locate Kant within the Platonic tradition, she nonetheless makes a similar point. According to her, proponents of political liberalism like Rawls and Habermas have insufficiently considered Kant’s resolution of the antinomy of practical reason. After all, with this piece, Kant has shown that practical reason necessarily reaches out for the unconditioned which serves as the indispensable horizon of human willing. Likewise, it indicates a space of final meaning which humans cannot achieve by their own efforts but only hope for. Hence, any concept of public reason which undervalues its ultimate orientation and, as a consequence, either excludes religious arguments from public debates or designates them as alien to reason falls short of a comprehensive understanding of the highest human faculty. The result of such a devaluation is an impoverishment of intellectual discourses as well as a weakening of the practical self-understanding of agents. Theological reasoning in the public sphere needs thus to safeguard a comprehensive understanding of reason.
Thomas Wabel, then, makes a move from the overall concept of reason to the wide range of tangible reasons provided in public debates. He observes that such reasons unavoidably mirror the cultural background they stem from as well as the biographical, psychological or corporal experiences of those who employ them. Accordingly, he distinguishes ‘embedded’ and ‘embodied reasons’. If thus religious people contribute to public debates, their reasons will always echo the particular belief systems and personal commitments from which they originate. This, however, does not necessarily entail that there are no commonly accessible reasons which, as Wabel concedes, are indispensable for the conceptualisation of universal moral standards as human rights or global justice. For him, such generalised or ‘free-standing reasons’ can be conceived as the outcome of a ‘generalisation of values’.
To a certain extent, Amy Daughton’s contribution can be seen as a continuation and extension of Wabel’s considerations. For she shows that even embedded and embodied reasons do not emanate in isolation but always result from an encounter with individual or collective others. Accordingly, these reasons give expression to an underlying public social bond. Pope Leo’s XIII social encyclical Rerum Novarum, for instance, might be taken as a parochial body of confessional reasons. But, in fact, it proves to be the outcome of an internally pluralist and discursive tradition and likewise fosters a pluralist public discourse on the common good. Despite the limited audience it is addressed to, this papal document nonetheless offers a concept of the human person according to which each person has to deliberate about individual and communal ends. Since such deliberation is not, as the Hobbesian tradition would suggest, a merely individual undertaking but rather the expression of an underlying social bond, Rerum Novarum indeed provides a theologically founded blueprint for public reasoning.
The last position presented in this special issue decisively contradicts the assumption that public reasoning is the central medium for theology. For Joshua Furnal, public theology in its current versions—be they apologetic or accommodationist—seeks to communicate the Christian message by means of a secular public discourse about a society’s normative orientation. But, according to him, this is a futile endeavour, since any attempt to evoke a free response towards the divine revelation has to reckon with the particularities of the addressee’s situation. By referring to Kierkegaard’s distinction between the genius and the apostle, Furnal points out that the task of public theology is primarily an apostolic one, because it has to articulate God’s call in such a way that an existential decision can be made. This task must sharply be distinguished from providing reasonable and thus universally accessible contributions to the common good. If public theology wishes to make such a contribution at all, then, according to Furnal, the envisioned community cannot be conceived of in secular terms but must be based on revelation.
As this last contribution illustrates, the assumption that secular reason should serve as the medium of theological reasoning in the public sphere remains contested. Nevertheless, this special issue convincingly shows why and in what way the central thesis of this issue is worthy of further exploration.