Introduction: Theology and Rationality Inside Out

The following six articles are revised versions of papers given at a research workshop, “Theology and Rationality,” at the University of Toronto in November 2012. The workshop came about as part of a larger project bearing the same title, launched and carried out by the Department of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion at Goethe University Frankfurt. Promoting and strengthening the “strategic partnership” between (and supported by) both institutions, a follow-up to the Toronto workshop titled “Rationality Inside Out” will be held at Goethe University in October 2013. Here the nature and inter-religious significance of rationality will be discussed both from an internal (intra-religious: Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and external (extra- or non-religious) perspective.

The six papers presented here cover a fairly wide range of what at first sight might seem rather disparate aspects of the overall theme. However, closer inspection reveals a common focus in guiding interests and in particular topics and methods chosen. As such the papers can be divided into three subgroups. The first two are in large parts, though not exclusively, devoted to the concept of rationality. Heiko Schulz suggests to conceive of the latter as an epistemic virtue-concept, which, other characteristics notwithstanding, is to be placed halfway between virtues that admit being reformulated both as goods and duties (e.g., honesty) and those lacking this capacity (e.g., wisdom). After briefly arguing for a pragmatical, “success”-related standard or measure of rationality, theological statements and/or religious beliefs are shown to be epistemically successful and thus rationally justified, at least in principle, if and to the extent that they are rooted in experiences to be spelled out as “acute spiritual crises.” Some theological implications of this view are briefly discussed at the end of the article. A different approach—yielding epistemically similar conclusions—is chosen by Gesche Linde: drawing on selected examples of religious argument across world religions, she outlines a minimum concept of rationality (person-relatedness, structure-relatedness, communicability, generality, differentiatedness), in order subsequently to connect the latter with a semiotic frame theory. This theory invokes Charles Peirce’s analytical system of semiotic trichotomies, which, among other things, allows and calls for distinguishing between different types of rationality. In light of these findings Linde’s account has at least two important implications: (1) religious beliefs may be considered rational, even if they are not based on arguments, and (2) arguments may be said to be rational, even if not following deductive or inductive patterns.

The second group of papers starts, where the former two left off: Menachem Fisch does not discuss, but rather relies upon a notion of rationality in terms of a prospective, evaluative category of acting—a notion that in effect yields Popper’s identification of rationality with criticism. Fisch then shows that any such criticism is, pace Popper, heavily framework dependent and as such raises the problem of if and how rational framework transitions are possible. The author suggests a positive, neo-Hegelian answer, which as such locates rationality’s defining feature in the essentially intersubjective discourse of reasons, while at the same time preserving the possibility that (here: framework-related) criticism may be endorsed by its addressee as self-criticism. In the final paragraph this idea of “normative otherness” is shown to be present in the rabbinic literature of late antiquity already—and this not only horizontally, but also in relation to God, thus “across the vertical revelatory divide.” By extrapolating Fisch’s argument one might say that Jean Pierre Fortin’s essay is an attempt to show that—from a Christian perspective in the broadest possible sense—there is at least one framework-independent truth: the idea of the divine as mystery, that is, as an unfathomable expression of absolute rationality. Accordingly, Fortin argues that the Christian faith, far from being opposed to rationality, in fact claims itself to be constituted by the existence of an absolutely transcendent form of rationality, upon which the definition, existence, and fulfilment of human reason intrinsically depend. This supra-human form of rationality cannot be fathomed, embraced, or comprehended in full by human reason, for it resides with...