Authority and Theological Method: A Review Discussion

AUTHORITY AND THEOLOGICAL METHOD A Review Discussion * IN ECCLESIAL REFLECTION and in its predecessor Ecclesial Man (Fortress Press, 1975) Edward Farley, professor of theology at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University, intends to offer a prolegomenon to theology. In Ecclesial Man the author addressed what he called " the problem beneath the problem of theological method," that is, the question whether faith in Jesus Christ involves reality-references and reality-apprehensions. Using social phenomenology to probe the linguistic, social, and psychological strata of the faith-world, he showed how faith apprehends directly or indirectly realities of this intersubjective faith-world, the ecclesia, the disrupted but redeemed existence. Ecclesial Reflection, building upon this foundation, discusses the problem of theological method or criteriology proper. It is written with elegance and great didactic skill. The ideas are carefully argued, often clearly enumerated; the main theses are highlighted by italics; each chapter or sub-division recapitulates the previous one and concludes with helpful summaries. It does not, however, mean that the book makes for easy reading , and this partly because it presupposes acquaintance with Husserlian philosophy and social phenomenology with their attendant unfamiliar concepts and vocabularies (e.g. livedspace , social self, cointentions, depth sociality, etc.), partly because Farley is forced at times by his-perspective to use old words with new connotations (e.g. ecclesia, Kerygma, ecclesial *Edward Farley: Ecclesial Reflection: An Anatomy of Theological Method (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982). 4~1 PETER C. PHAN universal, generic universal, etc.) , and partly because any discussion of methodology cannot help but be abstract. Apart from its appendix on the general structure of social duration (its conditions, its elements, its process), the book is divided into two almost equal parts, the one critical, the other constructive. Convinced that most contemporary theological work, both Catholic and Protestant, is methodologically incoherent , Farley devotes the first part (pp. 3-168) to a radical critique of the classical criteriology which he calls the " House of Authority." His method is to unearth the various strata from the lowest to the highest that have been inserted into the structure of this House of Authority. He starts out therefore in chapter one with an analysis of the religious matrix that originates the methodology of classical Christian theology: the faith of Israel (Yahwism, covenanted people, land, Torah, tradition); Judaism (synagogue, sacred scriptures, apocalypticism , universalization); and early Christianity which retained and modified these elements of the faith of Israel and of Judaism. Of the faith of Israel, early Christianity preserved the Adamic myth, the heilsgeschichtlich framework, but rejected the motif of the land in the sense of a definitive territory given to the elect people as a nationally defined entity. Of Judaism, it took over the apocalyptic worldview, the Scripture principle, the missionary enterprise, and the synagogal organization, but modified them substantially. Instead of synagogue, we find local congregation; instead of rabbis, missionary preachers, and instead of the Torah piety, the Jesus kerygma and Jesus piety. In the next three chapters Farley traces the route that leads from this religious matrix to the three loci of the classical methodology, namely, Scripture, dogma, and Church. Obviously these three loci are not strictly speaking criteria but norms within the framework of authority. Supporting them are two foundational principles and their middle axioms. The first principle is the interpretative scheme of salvation history with its three elements: the people, their history teleologically interpreted , and the kingly deity who governs through causal AUTHORITY AND THEOLOGICAL METHOD 4~3 interventions (the" royal metaphor"). This salvation history scheme entails that history can be periodized (e.g. in apocalyptic literature); that the time of revelation can be fixed (e.g. the view that Christian revelation ended with the death of the last apostles); and that in the eschatological age the Church is the definitive institution of doctrinalization and locus of truth. The second principle, that of identity, affirms an identity between what God wills to communicate and what is brought to language in the interpretative act of a human individual or community. Thus the creaturely entity is the ersatz presence of the divine, the divine intention is identified with the human interpretation, divine qualities (e.g. infallibility and inerrancy) are predicated of the human...