T&T Clark Handbook of Public Theology

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• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780567692153
• eBook ISBN: 9780567692177
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

T&T Clark Handbook of Public Theology introduces the various philosophical and theological positions and approaches in the emerging discourse of public theology. Distinguishing public theology from political theology, as well as from liberation theology, this book clarifies central terms like 'public sphere', 'the secular', and 'post-secularity' in order to highlight the specific characteristics of public theology. Its particular focus lies on the ways in which much of public theology has established itself as a contextual theology in politically secular societies, aiming to continue the apologetical tradition in this specific context. Depending on what is regarded as the most pressing challenge for the reasonable defence of the Christian hope in liberal democracies, public theologians have focused on (social) ethics, ecclesiology, or Soteriology, with the aim to strengthen the virtues needed for democratic citizenship. Here, attention is being paid to Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox perspectives. The volume further illustrates the characteristics of the discourse by introducing the ways in which public theologians have responded to concrete challenges arising in the spheres of politics, economics, ecology, sports, culture, and religion. To highlight the international scope of the public theological discourse, the volume concludes with a summarizing overview of public theological debates in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and Latin America.

PART I

Conditions and self-positioning

CHAPTER 1
The public sphere

Maureen Junker-Kenny

As a much used and perhaps ‘ubiquitous’¹ concept, the ‘public sphere’ is determined quite differently in individual human sciences such as political theory, sociology and media studies. In order to mark the outlines of a consistent meaning, its philosophical foundations need to be established. It is useful for public theology to become aware of the different conceptions that have been elaborated since they show distinct ethical accentuations and put forward expectations to the fellow citizens participating in this informal political forum. Some are also aware that religions can bring unique contributions to it.

The origins of a modern understanding of ‘public’ in Kant’s theory of reason and his deontological, cosmopolitan ethics will be examined first (1.1). In analyses of the ‘public sphere’ (Öffentlichkeit), Jürgen Habermas has investigated its normative character in relation to a deliberative theory of democracy (1.2). It will be compared to John Rawls’s conceptions of ‘public reason’, located in state institutions, and of pluralist society as consisting of parallel ‘comprehensive doctrines’ (1.3). A further framework will be explored with Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical approach to traditions as ‘co-founders’ of the public sphere, offering an alternative foundation to contract theory (1.4). Finally, approaches to theology will be viewed from the civic and the internal public sphere within Christianity (1.5).

1.1 Kant’s conceptions of the ‘public use of reason’, morality and law, and the need for an ‘ethical commonwealth’

An inherent link of theoretical reason to a public framework for clarifying perceptions of issues is expounded by Kant (1.1.1). In practical reason, the inner freedom of each person is decisive and her conscience is insurmountable; yet the task of deepening one’s moral sensitivity requires active listening to others as well as contributing to improving conditions for all to fulfil both strict and wide obligations. The categorical imperative to respect the other even when this recognition is not reciprocal contains two levels, one prohibiting instrumentalization, the other requiring active, imaginative support for the other’s happiness (1.1.2).² His differentiated outline of law also in its anticipatory, enabling function for the external, civic role of humans in their morality includes the aim of a peaceful word order (1.1.3). Since this presupposes an internal orientation in the moral subject for working towards such an ambitious goal, he outlines the need for an ‘ethical commonwealth’ of communities which supports them in their task of promoting the ends of others. Thus, a philosophical concept of ‘church’ is founded alongside the civic demands to everyone as a member of a polity capable and in need of improvement (1.1.4).

1.1.1 The public signature of reason and the ‘world concept’ of philosophy

Already the effort needed to clarify intersubjectively the epistemological starting points and perspectives at work in rationality or purposive reason as an enterprise directed at reaching justifiable results in the sphere of objective knowledge gives it a necessarily public character. Just how fundamentally the ‘public’ dimension belongs to reason can be seen in Kant’s distinction between philosophy as an expert domain and as a universally accessible ‘world concept’. This understanding arises from the leading premise of human freedom that is marked both by the unconditionality of everyone’s reason (Vernunft) and its outreach towards an ultimate purpose of its activity. François Marty explains this final orientation that characterizes the ‘world concept’ of philosophy: ‘As a “freely acting” being, the human person enters the realm of the unconditioned (Unbedingten)’ in which ‘a “canon”, that is, a legitimate use of pure reason as practical reason exists. . . . As the final purpose (Endzweck) of the whole activity of human reason it characterises all of philosophy in its world concept, its “conceptus cosmicus”’.³

The idea that everyone is a co-owner of reason with its ultimately practical destination is also reflected in two types of use: the ‘private’ use in a person’s role as an employee and the ‘public’ use as a fellow citizen:

the private use of reason may quite often be very narrowly restricted, however, without undue hindrance to the progress of enlightenment. But by the public use of one’s reason I mean that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning (als Gelehrter) addressing the entire reading public (ganzen Publikum der Leserwelt). What I term the private use of reason is that which a person may make of it in a particular civil post or office with which he is entrusted. . . . Thus the use which someone employed as a teacher makes of his reason in the presence of his congregation is purely private. . . . Conversely as a scholar addressing the real public (eigentlichen Publikum) (i.e. the world at large) through his writings, the clergyman making public use of his reason enjoys unlimited freedom to use his own reason and to speak in his own person.⁴

Engaging in the latter use creates a public domain of interaction, which is the basis for growth in object-related and moral insight:

There is more chance of an entire public enlightening itself. This is indeed almost inevitable, if only the public concerned is left in freedom.

For enlightenment of this kind, all that is needed is freedom. And the freedom in question is the most innocuous (unschädlichste) form of all – freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters. . . . The public use of man’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment (cf. unter Menschen).⁵

1.1.2 Law developed from a moral foundation

Second, it is noteworthy that Kant accesses law from the perspective of morality also by assigning an ‘anticipatory’ dimension to the establishment of legal structures.⁶ In opposition to Hobbes, the ‘state of nature’ is conceived as allowing for the anticipation of public law since individuals are envisaged as having an equal claim to the surface of the earth which carries and nourishes them. This prior recognition only has to be institutionalized in law but is not inaugurated by the state with its monopoly of violence, a political principle which is justified also for Kant. A further act of anticipation is that of a constitutional republic from within a state marked by authoritarian governance (Obrigkeitsstaat). The medium of the process of reform is the public use of reason by the citizens.

1.1.3 The cosmopolitan horizon of a peaceful world order

The widest sphere of anticipation established by legal structures is to be found in the external relations between such free republics, oriented towards a league of individual states which is designed to avert war.⁷ This is not regarded as a ‘utopian ideal’ but as already possessing a legally obliging character. While a unitary world state is feared as amounting to ‘soulless despotism’, the ‘Right of Nations (Völkerrecht) shall be based on a Federation of Free States’.⁸

Based on the equal, common ownership of the earth, colonialism is rejected and the right of each human to be received as a guest, not an enemy, established, giving a right to visit, though the right to stay needs the agreement of the host.⁹ Thus, a cosmopolitan framework of intercultural recognition and justice is outlined as a consequence of citizens advancing their states through the public use of reason. They direct it towards a constitution in which their freedom and equality are respected, and an international setting of cooperation that limits the unleashing of unrestricted violence in war.¹⁰ Yet while the ‘highest political good consists in attaining perpetual peace’, its ‘realisation remains problematic since the development of law inevitably reaches a cul de sac’.¹¹ This is where a change of attitude is required that calls for a different medium.

1.1.4 Religions as communities constituting an ‘ethical commonwealth’

Within the universal scope of the moral and the legal frameworks, religions are assigned a non-substitutable function as communities capable of renewing virtue and marked by a hope in the ultimate fulfilment of human endeavours. As public communities they are seen as fostering an ‘ethical commonwealth’ alongside the realm of state and society:

As Kant explains, such an ‘ethico-civil state’ is clearly distinguished from a ‘juridico-civil (political) state,’ since it unites people ‘under laws of virtue alone’ (RR, 106). This implies that the task of establishing an ‘ethical community’ cannot be performed by means of politics. . . . In Kant’s view, our duty to engage in developing an ‘ethico-civil state’ is tantamount to the obligation of ‘founding a kingdom of God on earth,’ which needs to be expounded in terms of a philosophy of religion.¹²

The key term of this philosophy of religion that is an integral part of Kant’s philosophy of autonomy is ‘hope’. Here a dimension that was already identified in Section I comes to play its part. The outreach of reason towards the unconditioned poses an irrefutable question: ‘With an internal necessity, the essence of morality raises the question of meaning . . . the problem what the ultimate purpose of all moral action is. . . . The practical interest of reason not only announces itself in the question of obligation (Sollen) but at least as urgently in the question of hope.’¹³

While each of the four aspects would need to be developed further, they provide enough of a basis for comparing the new departures taken by philosophers in the second half of the twentieth century. How do Habermas, Rawls and Ricoeur take on board the dimensions within which Kant locates the ‘public use of reason’: its link to law, its global scope, and the question of meaning in the face of the antinomy of practical reason between the purity of moral motivation and the experience of their frequent failure that leads to the postulate of God?

1.2 Jürgen Habermas’s conception of the public sphere

The significance of this concept established as the centre of a theory of democracy by Jürgen Habermas has been compared to that of a ‘discovery in the natural sciences’.¹⁴ First, its place in his developed social theory (1.2.1), then its distinction from the functions of the state and from aspects of ‘the private’ will be outlined (1.2.2), before the issue of its universal standing, relevant for global and intercultural settings, is examined (1.2.3). After treating the final aspect, religion (1.2.4), I will take stock of key critiques of what is assumed as the counterpart to ‘public’, the ‘private’: as the home space, as individual morality, as cultural conventions and as religion (1.2.5).

1.2.1 Key features

Habermas’s analysis of the public sphere and of the structural changes it has undergone since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries predates his turn to researching the capabilities of communicative rationality that human beings are endowed with.¹⁵ While his subsequent move to communicative reason implies a shift in method, there is a connection between the two in the underlying human ability, which also the 1961 monograph draws on. The capability to ‘reason publicly’ called on by Kant in its constitutive significance for mutual enlightenment is operative when engaging in a civic discussion: in it, existing social and political arrangements are questioned, validity claims are raised in terms of criteri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• Introduction
• Part I Conditions and self-positioning
• Part II The ecumenical scope of public theology
• Part III Theological tenets in public theology
• Part IV Challenges for public theology
• Part V The international scope of public theology
• INDEX
• Copyright