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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Judging by the proliferation of a new body of theological works that have encouraged a deliberate rethinking of the intellectual premises of Christian theology, scholarly discussion appears to have come to the juncture of an exciting though unpredictable stage in theology. Perhaps this is nowhere clearer than in the realm of the ongoing dialogue on the theological relevance of communication theory associated with the German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas. Contrary to what has become an article of faith in recent theological forays into social theory, I contend: (a) that Habermasian theory has little to contribute to theological thought and is more valuable as an indirect aid in critiquing various deficient theological discourses; (b) that the current Habermas-sympathetic attempts at a communicative theology are, by and large, open to criticism for the same shortcomings and problems found in Habermas's own works; and (c) that the need to address these problems necessarily points us toward an alternative postcommunication theology.
1 See, for example, Taylor, Mark C., Deconstructing Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1982)Google Scholar; Johnson, Elizabeth A., She Who Is (New York: Crossroad, 1993)Google Scholar; Ingraffia, Brian D., Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1992)Google Scholar; Moltmann, Jürgen, The Coming of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996)Google Scholar; Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).Google Scholar Milbank's claim that “theology is social science” and his exclusivist Christianity as a “metanarrative realism” leave a great deal to be desired. He collapses the distinction between idealism and realism by adopting a perverse notion of (meta-) narrative that obviates any and all standards of evaluation external to it.
2 See, for example, Browning, Don S. and Fiorenza, Francis Schüssler, eds., Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1992)Google Scholar; Badillo, Robert P., The Emancipatory Theory of Habermas (Washington, D.C.: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1991)Google Scholar; Peukert, Helmut, Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of Communicative Action (Bohman, James trans.; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Siebert, Rudolph J., From Critical Theory to Communicative Political Theology (Darmstadt: Lang, 1989)Google Scholar.
3 A decent explication of Habermas's thought appears in White, Stephen K., The Recent Work of Jiirgen Habermas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar;
4 Döbert, Rainer, Systemtheorie und die Entwicklung religiöser Deutungssysteme (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973)Google Scholar.
5 A hermeneutic concept found in Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas, and others denoting the totality of the moral, cultural sphere. In Habermas, “lifeworld” is counterposed to “system,” that is, economic and bureaucratic systems, and deals with their interpenetration, reification of lifeworld by system, etc.
6 See Fiorenza, Francis Schüssler, “Critical Social Theory and Christology,” Proceedings of the CTSA 30 (1975), 63–110Google Scholar.
7 For more on this, see Dallymer, Fred, “Critical Theory and Reconciliation,” in Browning, and Fiorenza, , Habermas, Modernity and Public Theology, 95–121.Google Scholar Unfortunately, Dallymer misses the irreconcilable gaps between Habermas and theology discussed in this writing.
8 Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Transcendence from Within, Transcendence in This World,” in Browning, and Fiorenza, , Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology, 226–51Google Scholar.
9 This is particularly true of Derridaian “negative theology.” For more on this, see Lowe, Walter, Theology and Difference: The Wound of Reason (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Rutledge, David, Reading Marginality: Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Bible (New York: Brill, 1996).Google Scholar For an apt discussion of postmoderaity and its resignation to bottomless fragmentation and ephemerality, see Harvey, David, Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)Google Scholar.
10 Habermas, Jürgen, Postmetaphysical Thinking (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992) 119Google Scholar.
11 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Coming of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 318Google Scholar.
12 Kaufman, Gordon, In the Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993) 415Google Scholar.
13 Habermas, , Postmetaphysical Thinking, 134.Google Scholar The example of Habermas recalls Emil Brunner's insight that “even philosophical thought cannot get away from God” (The Christian Doctrine of God [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1949] 156)Google Scholar.
14 See, for example, Minocher Sethna, “Zoroastrianism and the Protection of Nature,” in idem, ed., Religion, Nature, and Survival (New Dehli: Parcham, 1992)Google Scholar; see also, Afrasiabi, K. L., “Toward an Islamic Ecotheology,” Hamadard Islamicus (1995) 33–5Google Scholar; and idem, “Islamic Populism,” Telos 105 (1995) 99–127Google Scholar.
15 For more on this see, McCarthy, Thomas, The Critical Theory ofJurgen Habermas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979) 272–358Google Scholar.
16 Habermas, Jürgen, The Theory of Communicative Action, (2 vols.; Boston: Beacon, 1987) 2. 89Google Scholar.
17 Peukert, , Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology, 272–74Google Scholar
18 Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1978).Google Scholar For more elaboration on this issue see, Haught, John, What Is God? How to Think about the Divine (New York: Paulist, 1986)Google Scholar.
19 “Humanity implicitly bears within itself the divine idea, not bearing within itself like something from somewhere else but as its own substantive nature.” Hegel, Friedrich, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (3 vols.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) 3. 109Google Scholar.
20 “The relation to God is then possible only in the turning to the other in solidarity.” Peukert, , Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology, 218.Google Scholar This statement is ultimately based, on the one hand, on an anthropocentric view of religion and, on the other, on an oversight of the theological insight concerning the priority of individuals’ relationship with God.
21 See Metz, John B., “Unglaube als theologisches Problem,” Concilium 6-7 (1965) 484–92.Google Scholar In a key footnote in another writing, Metz has stated, “My reflections about a political theology began therefore with a criticism of transcendental theology based on intersubjectivity” (Faith in History and Society [New York: Crossroad, 1980] 238).Google Scholar The same criticism applies, mutatis mutandis, to Mark C. Taylor, whose Derridaian “carnivalization” of Scriptures represents a long detour to intersubjectivity; note, for example, his claim: “With the realization of the total reciprocity of subjects, the entire foundation of economy of domination crumbles.” (Erring: A Postmodern A/theology [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984] 134).Google Scholar In addition, Taylor's “a/theology,” with its call for the overcoming of unhappy consciousness, represents a closet Hegelianism that contradicts its pretensions of wandering erring; a/theology's claim to be irreducibly marginal is ill-matched with its self-privileging as a “decisive” moment in modern thought. Taylor's attempt to anchor a/theology in a range of philosophical terms and maneuvers is, from the outset, greatly at odds with itself; at bottom, the errors of Erring are that it is not deconstructive enough and proceeds by setting up pseudoenemies in theology and logic, embracing a “radical christology” that does not belong to the theological syndrome precisely because it lacks any notion of divine transcendence.
22 Habermas, , Theory of Communicative Action, 1. 72Google Scholar.
23 Ibid., 2. 189.
24 Plantinga, Alvin, “On Taking Belief in God as Basic,” in Runzo, Joseph and Ihara, Craig K., eds., Religious Experience and Religious Belief (New York: University Press of America, 1986) 1–19Google Scholar.
25 Plantinga, Alvin, “Is Belief in God Rational?” in Delaney, C. F., ed., Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979) 7Google Scholar.
26 For example, Simpson, Gary M., “Theologia Crucis and the Forensically Fraught World: Engaging Helmut Peukert and JUrgen Habermas,” in Browning, and Fiorenza, , Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology, 173–206.Google Scholar See also, Siebert, Rudolf, The Critical Theory of Religion (Berlin: Mouton, 1985)Google Scholar and Hewitt, Marsha A., Critical Theory of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).Google Scholar Hewitt's uncritical endorsement of Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza's brand of feminism constitutes its major shortcoming; Hewitt overlooks the noncritical, consensus motivation of Schiissler Fiorenza's thoughts and concepts (for example, “wo/men"), which undercuts the oppositional strand. Like Taylor, Schiissler Fiorenza wants to be both a marginal outsider, that is, “resident alien,” and yet occupy the center at the same time. See Discipleship of Equals: A Feminist Ekklesialogy of Liberation (New York: Crossroad, 1993)Google Scholar.
27 Thus my fundamental objection to the term “God-talk,” which has a built-in tendency to give primacy to the intersubjective, communicative dimension of God-consciousness. According to Habermas, a key fault of this kind of consciousness is its fetishization of ontological oneness that breaks down in the face of a “disenfranchised plurality” (Postmetaphysical Thinking, 120-21). This overlooks a basic insight concerning a Triune God, that is, if theology has to do with the Trinitarian presence of eternity in the moment, then the problem of absolutism collapses of its own accord. This criticism is applicable to Fiorenza, who writes: “Universality… presupposes an underlying common human nature and practice. It undercuts diversity and plurality, which are reduced to a fundamental oneness.” Fiorenza, Francis Schüssler, “Christian Redemption between Colonialism and Pluralism,” in Chopp, Rebecca S. and Taylor, Mark L., eds., Reconstructing Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 298.Google Scholar Fiorenza's attempt to find a third alternative between universalism and historical particularism with respect to human nature remains an unfulfilled agenda, not the least because of his inability to see the implicit universalist claims concerning human nature in Habermas's communicative rationality, which he endorses.
25 Of course, the question of what constitutes “truth” has always been a controversial one. In his discussion of the sense of numinous in the “faith state,” Charles Hardwick has maintained that “God-talk could well be objectively, solidly true even when ‘God’ refers to nothing” (Events of Grace, Naturalism, Existentialism, and Theology [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996] 69).Google Scholar Although this statement makes sense from within a philosophy of language, it does not remain accurate when invoked theologically, from the prism of its system of concepts, which presupposes the existence of the referrent, God.
29 As part of his recent, slow reconciliation with religion, Habermas has penned: “we are exposed to the moment of a transcendence from within.” Yet he holds back this rudimentary insight with his resilient philosophical scepticism: “But this does not enable us to ascertain the countermovement of a compensating transcendence from beyond” ( “Transcendence from Within,” in Browning, and Fiorenza, , Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology, 238).Google Scholar Bernstein has noted that Habermas has an action-oriented notion of “avowal.” See Bernstein, Jay M., Recovering Ethical Life: JUrgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory (London: Routledge, 1995) 74.Google Scholar Interestingly, there is no hint of a suggestion in Bernstein about the turn to theology by Habermasian theory discussed here. This (one step forward, two steps backward) turn has brought Habermas closer to Peter Berger, who has similarly written about the “signals of transcendence” (The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion [Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1967]).Google Scholar Unfortunately, Berger fails to draw the full implication of his insight, namely, that these “signals of transcendence,” above all a primordial desire for God, are inborn in human beings, whose struggle for deciphering and recognizing them provides the moral force that is ultimately responsible for the development of the “sacred canopy.”
30 In a footnote in one of his recent publications, Habermas states rather obliquely: “A corresponding hypothesis concerning the construction of an inner world and how it is delimited from the objective and social worlds need not concern us here except in so far as the subjective world and its thematizable experiences represent a further basic attitude and perspective, rounding out the system of world perspectives” (Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990] 190)Google Scholar.
31 The same criticism applies, mutatis mutandis, to Seyla Benhabib's more elaborate philosophy of the subject in her work, Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).Google Scholar In spite of her insights, Benhabib's work is interlaced with the same theoretical shortcomings in Habermas discussed here; thus, for example, Benhabib gives only cursory attention to the role of religious experience in the constitution of “inner identity” and, relatedly, fails to explain the way in which truth and authenticity are interconnected within a transcen-dental subjectivity.
32 Calvin Institutes, 1.5.15.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 1; 3.2.7.
35 “Once the inner eye opens, the exterior eye ought to be closed. Lips must be sealed and the interior senses should begin to function so the person, if he attains anything, does so with inner being, and if he sees, he sees with the inner eye, and if he hears, he hears with the inner ear.… Therefore, when asked what would one see, [the answer of the inner self is] it sees what it sees and what it ought to see.… The beginning of illumination is detachment from the world; the middle way is observation of divine light; and the end is limitless.” (Quoted from Thackston, Wheeler M., Mystical and Visionary Treatise of Suhrwardi [London: Octogon, 1982] 181)Google Scholar.
36 Moltmann, , Coming of God, 318Google Scholar.
37 Schweitzer, Albert, Out of My Life and Thought (New York: Holt, 1944) 235Google Scholar.
38 The phrase, “Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben” came to Schweitzer while observing nature on a riverboat trip in Africa. Ibid., 156.
39 Indeed, far from an exception, Schweitzer's illuminist discovery is shared by a number of other theologians throughout history. For example, Anselm's famous ontological argument is related to a sudden moment of illumination. See Barnes, Jonathan, The Ontological Argument (London: Macmillan, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Another example belongs to Nicholas of Cusa and his sudden discovery recorded in De Visione Dei.
40 Relevant works are Pike, Nelson, Mystic Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Beardsworth, Timothy, A Sense of Presence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Alston, William, Perceiving God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Annas, Julia, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar My argument runs contrary to both Peukert and Taylor who, each in his own way, espouses a theology of despair by associating God-knowledge with death. My view is closer to that of Tracy, who focuses on the ambiguities of existence. See Tracy, David, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, and Hope (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987)Google Scholar.
41 Following this line of reasoning, everyone has a generative, deep competence to think theologically. This does not mean jumping to the conclusion that we are all theologians, which is reserved for those who have advanced to a postgenerative level blessed with a coherent, full-fledged theology. In a certain sense, both Luther and Calvin are guilty of overlooking the internal differentiation of the (stages of) theological competence and the external (that is, church-related) requirements of cultivating and surfacing this competency. My approach builds on the “stages of spiritual knowledge” in medieval mysticism. See, for example, Bonaventure, St., The Journey of the Mind to God (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1956)Google Scholar; and Thierry, William of St., The Golden Epistle (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1980)Google Scholar.
42 So far, an overall discussion of feminist contributions to theological thought is lacking. As far as this author is aware, in terms of doing “hard” theology, feminist theologies have not really made any contribution, save the notion of mother-father God, which deals only with the metaphorical aspect of theological language. This is clearly discernible in Elizabeth Johnson's trinitarian feminist theology which adopts a roundabout way of endorsing Rahner's theology of God. (See She Who Is, 116). A relevant work in this connection is Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merril B., eds., Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983)Google Scholar.
43 Schweitzer, Albert, The Philosophy of Civilization (Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1981) 22, 80.Google Scholar In his critical assessment of Schweitzer, Moltmann completely glosses over the theological contribution of Schweitzer's philosophy of civilization and confines him-self to a debunking of Schweitzer's lopsided view of theology-as-eschatology, without bothering with the significance of Schweitzer's philosophy for Christian eschatology ( Moltmann, , Coming of God, 7–10Google Scholar). The same criticism applies to Rockefeller, Steven C. in his “The Wisdom of Reverence for Life,” in Carroll, John E., Brockman, Paul, and Westfall, Mary, eds., The Greening of Faith: God, the Environment, and the Good Life (Hanover, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 1997) 30–44Google Scholar.
44 At the practical level, one may conceptualize the reign of Soviet communism as a systematic distortion of theological competence that finally dissolved under the contradictions of its own system as well as the (theologically-informed) resistances of the lifeworld in Eastern Europe.
45 By “ecoeschatology” I mean, first and foremost, a theology of suspicion with respect to the Enlightment notion of progress and its “instrumental rationality.” Unfortunately, the ecological dimension is missing in recent literature on escatology. See for example, Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Systematic Theology (3 vols.; Bromley, Geoffrey W., trans.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 1998) 3. 527–645.Google Scholar Also Hayes, Zachary, Visions of a Future: A Study of Christian Eschatology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990).Google Scholar For a recent work that misses the eschatological argument in ethics/nature discussion and presents a purely social theory of action, see Kaufman, , In the Face of Mystery, 194–210Google Scholar.
46 For more on this see, Afrasiabi, K. L., “Critical Theory, Feminism, and Theology,” Telos (special issue on religion, forthcoming 1998)Google Scholar.
