Practicing to Aim at Truth

Theological Engagements in Honor of Nancey Murphy

Newson, Kallenberg

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498280099
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Beginning with her award-winning book Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (1990), Nancey Murphy has used philosophy of science as a way into, and catalyst for, fresh thinking in cosmology, divine action, epistemology, cognitive neuroscience, theological anthropology, philosophy of mind, and Christian virtue ethics. The essays in this book, written by her students and colleagues, creatively honor Murphy by extending a number of her core insights within their respective disciplines. An introduction provides both an account of Murphy's unique location (an Anabaptist teaching at an evangelical graduate institution) and a summary of her contributions to theology as a philosopher of science whose corpus more than any other epitomizes the paradigm shift in philosophy sometimes called "Anglo-American postmodernity." Subsequently, fourteen essays provide unique engagements with Murphy on subjects including divine action, the interaction between science and theology, epistemology, the nature of humanity, and political theology. In its entirety, Practicing to Aim at Truth provides the first in-depth interaction with and extension of Nancey Murphy's unique school of thought, providing a resource both for those wishing to extend her research program as well as those wishing to understand it charitably in order to critique it.

section iv

Politics and Ethics

10

Radical Kenosis as Radical Politics

Murphy’s Political Vision With and Beyond Radical Democracy

—Andrew C. Wright

Nancey Murphy has not traditionally been read as a radical political philosopher. Certainly she has been received as a radical in other ways, particularly in her description of a shift from modern to postmodern forms of thought—what she terms “Anglo-American postmodernity.”387 As a philosophical theologian, Murphy has significantly reshaped questions of epistemology, philosophy of language, and more recently has been able to stake her claim at the borderline between philosophy of mind, ethics, and the neurosciences. In each of these contexts, Murphy’s work has had a revolutionary character, one that has been able to “go on” from the epistemological crises of modern philosophy and theology.

But Murphy as a political radical? This understanding of her work is at least underdeveloped, and more commonly has gone unperceived. In this essay, I will make the case for a latent political radicalism that is internal to Murphy’s work in developing an Anglo-American postmodernity, and that when read in this way, she provides a precipice from which to envision a renewed Anabaptist political theology that makes a devastating critique of the modes of power that form contemporary political discourse.

This is not to say that this is the language Murphy herself uses in her contribution to an Anabaptist political theology; rather, her most direct work of radical political theology comes from an unlikely place: from the resources born of her involvement in theology and science discussions put into conversation with Anabaptist theology and ethics, a vision most directly articulated in her work with South African cosmologist George F. R. Ellis in On the Moral Nature of the Universe.388 In this text, Murphy and Ellis seek to answer the question of how (if at all) resources from the natural sciences, and cosmology in particular, make a difference for understanding the struggles for power and justice in their respective contexts—for Ellis, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and for Murphy, the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War.389 Together, they argue that kenosis (self-limitation in service to the other) is not only confirmed in Anabaptist theology and ethics, but is also confirmed in the cosmological “fine-tuning” argument from the natural sciences, resulting in a coherent view of the nature of reality structured by kenosis. Murphy and Ellis suggest this work requires “new research programs . . . exploring the possibilities for human sociality in the light of a vision modeled on God’s own self-sacrificing love,” while also recognizing the need for a paradigm shift in human understanding across the hierarchy of the sciences.390

Along these lines, this essay seeks to extend Murphy’s radical political vision by putting her work into conversation with Romand Coles and Sheldon Wolin, proponents of the “radical democracy” movement who provide a set of resources that confirm Murphy’s kenotic ethic in a specific kind of politics. While radical democratic practice confirms Murphy’s political radicalism, it also highlights how Murphy provides a framework for nonviolent social transformation that grounds kenotic political practices in a teleology that extends beyond the resources of radical democracy alone. The tension of this dialogue will reveal a deeper sense of Murphy’s contribution to Anabaptist political theology in the context of a wider discourse with cosmology, political theory, and radical-democratic practices.

Murphy’s Radical Political Vision

Murphy’s work in Anglo-American postmodernity traces a gestalt shift in Western philosophy and theology that constitutes a change in the basic thought forms of the last half-century. Murphy argues that language used to describe these shifts has “taken on new uses . . . [that entail] radical consequences for all areas of academia and presumably the living of life as well.”391 In this section, I will argue that one of “the living of life” consequences internal to this shift from modern to postmodern is a revision of certain conceptual assumptions that structure political theory in the modern period—namely, anthropological and causal reductionism—that has significant implications for politics and Christian political witness in the postmodern period. While perhaps underdeveloped in the reception of Murphy’s work as a whole, careful attention to the contours of her work will demonstrate the depth and scope of Murphy’s radicalism not only in epistemology or philosophy of language, but also in reframing the central questions of Christian ethics, political theology, and the political witness of contemporary Christian communities.

The Political Radicalism of Murphy’s Anglo-American Postmodernity

One year before the publication of her award-winning Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning,392 Murphy co-authored an article with James Wm. McClendon Jr. entitled “Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies” that would become a “vista” for understanding recent shifts happening in contemporary theology and philosophy, and would set the course for her early work.393 In that article, Murphy and McClendon sought to articulate what they saw as an emerging Anglo-American postmodernity that was distinct from other “postmodernisms” exemplified in Continental thinkers, and that was characterized by specific shifts away from “modern” forms of thought along three distinct axes: epistemological foundationalism, referential theories of language, and metaphysical reductionism—specifically, an atomistic reductionism applied to people and communities (which Murphy later described as generic modern individualism).394 Modern thinkers, Murphy and McClendon suggested, could be located by means of “Cartesian coordinates” in a “three-dimensional conceptual space,” while postmodern thinkers “succeed in breaking free from this space altogether” by rejecting foundationalist, referentialist, and atomistic reductionist assumptions. Together, such thinkers constitute what Murphy and McClendon call an “an emerging unity” and are among those who advocate for “holist” epistemologies (e.g., W. V. O. Quine), “ordinary language” philosophies (e.g., J. L. Austin, the later Ludwig Wittgenstein), and more complex social theories of community (e.g., Alasdair MacIntyre...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Section One: Orienting Engagements
• Section Two: Theological Anthropology
• Section Three: Metaphysics
• Section Four: Politics and Ethics