Reflection on Theological Thought
This book is concerned with reflection on (the act) content and implications of theological thought. Any activity of reflection upon thought, despite attempts to define it or at least deliberate its limits, is never undertaken in isolation but always in the company of its varied and challenging contemplative contexts. Any act of contemplation then, including theological, willingly or not, necessarily and ontologically, traverses the erected boundaries of its neighbours but also encounters its own. As ‘thought takes on flesh’ in each new environment, theological thought challenges that environment but also brings forth its own cultivation, enabling a deeper or further grasping of (previously considered) theological concepts. Rather than envisaging or understanding this process as a contestation and necessary correction of thought, it is to be viewed as an incarnation or deeper revelation of theological truth (in full flesh). It is thus in the new context, that a fuller understanding of theological thought emerges—a realisation of the magnitude or potential of theological concepts and how their revelation stretches our contextually conditioned understandings of them and the limits that we have erected. This often unsettling but also liberating experience of the development of theological thought challenges our understanding thereof—our presuppositions of what it is to think theologically and our methods for carrying that out.
This book attempts to do just that—tease out the assumptions of theological thought and their implications in engagement with its contemplative context. It will show how holding on to these presuppositions is problematic—they predetermine the outcome of reflection. Indeed, any such reflection upon thought, whatever the context in which it takes place, results only in their affirmation. As such, it does not allow for a truly critical engagement with its reflective context and is restricted to pitting of views against each other. Is it possible to think—engage in reflection upon theological thought—without presuppositions? I will argue it is.
Critical Theology
Reflection upon and engagement with the context of theological thought is the focus or onus of the inquiry of (recent) critical theology, the touchstone of which can perhaps be located in Rudolf Bultmann’s call for a theology of subjective existence taking into account the post-war reality and its implications and theology’s critical responsibility.1 This is presented in Jones’ seminal Critical Theology (1995) which appropriated the term in pursuit of a theology reflective of its late twentieth-century context of modernity and addressing its concerns; A theology of an encounter, ‘not only with God in Christ, but also with God in the everyday events of human life’ (Ibid., p. 208). This encounter is also the onus of numerous contemporary theological thinkers, who have undertaken invaluable reflections upon theology’s distinctly postmodern philosophical context. Of course, they do not carry out this reflection in a unified or uniform way, drawing the same conclusions (just as indeed the responses of theology of crisis varied). Thus, for example, Mark C. Taylor’s ‘a/theology’, as a study of theology from a post-structuralist perspective,2 is in stark contrast to Graham Ward’s 3 appropriation of Derrida in Barth’s doctrine of analogy or Jean-Luc Marion’s (1991) appropriation of Heidegger in discussion of the nature of God. In the work Marion proposes a phenomenological approach that preserves the divine in opposition to the ‘death of God’ of metaphysics; attempting to think of the concept of God ‘outside of the doctrine of Being’ (Ibid., p. xxiv).4 Despite their arrival at different conclusions with regards to the understanding of theology in its postmodern philosophical context,5 their common denominator is this critical reflection upon and engagement with their changing cultural context.
Critical Theory
The reflective position of critical theology not only transfigures and remodels but also challenges the understanding of theological thought, whatever its (disciplinary) neighbours. One particular contemporary challenge is in its engagement with critical theory. This interdisciplinary field or approach is distinguished from theory by going further than merely applying theoretical tools to the study of phenomena in order to increase our understanding of them.6 Instead, it fosters debate between all the major social sciences, the arts and the humanities, examining the construction of knowledge in its social and historical context and demonstrating its assumptions and limitations, hoping to arrive at alternative accounts, interpretations and readings of phenomena which will produce tension within existing narratives. Critical theory’s critique of knowledge construction and its assumptions is not merely external but first and foremost involves reflection upon the assumptions of its own inquiry, producing new perspectives in various contexts. This is also its challenge in engagement with theology.
Critical theory has since its beginning engaged or appropriated theological thought in its cultural criticism. In 1940 the German Marxist social critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, in his Theses on the Concept of History (1968, p. 253), related the insight that theology itself is crucial in the development of the critical approach of historical materialism through the story of the Turk.7 More recently, there has been a proliferation of Marxist-inspired thinkers, who explore theological resources, free of the preconceptions of orthodox Marxist thought, which refuses to countenance any tinkering with its basic philosophical categories. The list includes the work of Alain Badiou (2003), Giorgio Agamben (2005), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000, 2005), Terry Eagleton (2004, 2005, 2009) and indeed Slavoj Žižek who, in an attempt to demonstrate and critique the claims and failures of the current political system of liberal democracy, refer to classical theological sources, such as the letters of Saint Paul. In their work, theology acts as a conceptual pool facilitating and grounding critique, drawing attention to the assumptions and exclusions of social theories and ways to subvert them, while also charting ways towards organisation, maintenance or enhancement of social living. The Swedish theologian Ola Sigurdson argues that Marxism and theology have always shared an interest in what he calls hope—‘a mutual expectation, beyond mere wishful thinking that something new is possible, a better society than the current alienated and social existence of humankind’ (Sigurdson 2012, p. 5). In this philosophical sense, common to Sigurdson as a theologian and these thinkers, theology and critical theory could be understood as revealing the construction of knowledge and thereby enabling a glimpse into the socio-political reality with its faults and ways to overcome them. On one hand, then, critical theory’s appropriation of theology has again drawn attention to the sociological potential of theological thought—in highlighting and challenging the ‘existing’ social theories.
Emergent Critical Theology
Turning to how the understanding of critical theology is being developed or challenged in response to the specific context of critical theory, Graham Ward, in his formative Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory (2000), examined critical theory’s employment of theological resources in the critique of modernity but also considered the implication of that for theology as a discipline and called for a twofold response. Alongside a theological assessment of critical theoretical thought, he advocated a discerning of its resources in the service of theology as a theoretical resource through which theological themes can find a contemporary expression. Yet while the first represents a pitting of views against each other and the second is an opportunity for theology to speak into the current socio-political context, neither of them allows for a challenging of theology’s own understanding—its assumptions—or transfiguration of its thought. While there have been nu...