In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY: REFLECTIONS ON THE ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION* A Review Discussion IN A tour de force on theological method, David Tracy's Analogical Imagination presents theology as a de-privatized form of discourse, addressed to the three interrelated publics of society, academy and church. Christian systematics as reflection on the classic religious event of Jesus Christ is played out in the interpretative perichoresis of three mutually self-correcting theological orientations: manifestation, proclamation and prophetic/apocalyptic. As the book unfolds, Tracy not only describes but illustrates the process by which theologians arrive at interpretations of religious classics which are relatively adequate to both originating experience and contemporary situation. One can only stand in awe before this achievement in which Tracy's creative powers of organization and synthesis - his own analogical imagination - manifest themselves on every page. The prose, though often tortured, is always clear. I noted with approval the moves in the direction of more rage and less order, i.e. the fuller integration of "negativity," which this work makes in contrast to Tracy's previous Blessed Rage for Order (New York, 1976). The following remarks are not a review. Rather they are addressed to a specific and hence limited question about the tensions in the relationship of the Christian systematic theologian to the two publics of church and academy. If I understand Tracy's intricate sociological and theolOgical portrait of the theologian correctly, theology, even Christian systematics, *David Tracy: The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Plurali8m (New York, Crossroad, f981). Cf. Book Review Section. 598 594 WILLIAM L. PORTIER does not require the theologian's personal belief (belief understood in a confessional sense as contrasted with basic faith) in order to be theology. As henneneutical reflection on publicly available classics (texts, people, art, etc.) and their correlation to the human situation, it can be done by anyone who can read and think and who is even mildly sensitive to the universal ambiguities of the human condition. If carried on with intelligence and integrity in the academy and presuming the ecumenical interplay of orientations mentioned above, theology so conceived will eventually correct itself and arrive at relatively adequate interpretation. (See, for example, p. 4~8.) Conspicuously absent from this account, therefore, is the need for any corrective to this dialectic as applied from without by some fonn of church authority however the latter may be conceived . Although such an understanding of theology may appear as a radical departure from fides quaerens intellectum, it is a faithful portrait of the new understanding of their task which many Catholic theologians-Hans Kiing and Edward Schillebeeckx are only the most prominent among them-have worked out with varying degrees of explicitness over the past ten years.1 This portrait both reflects and attracts that portion of my divided self which is defined in relation to the academy. At the same time, that area of my own concrete subjectivity which sees itself in relation to the Church, the Roman Catholic Church in my particular case, sends out monita which cause me to balk at the wholehearted embrace of Tracy's position which my academic self would prefer. One of the purposes of these l}eflections, therefore, is to help me discern whether these warnings from my ecclesiastical self signal a mild personal pathology or a genuine theological difficulty. Although I have raised the issue of the relationship of church authority to the free inquiring theologian from my own Catholic context, I do not thereby intend to limit these reflections to church authority 1 For a development and further nuancing of this position, see William M. Shea, "The Subjectivity of the Theologian," Tlwmist, 45 (April, 1981), pp. 194-218. THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY 595 as it presently functions in the Roman Catholic Church. Rather, I wish to pose to Tracy's project a much broader ecumenical -theological question. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's recent investigations of Kiing and Schillebeeckx , and the subsequent revocation of the former's canonical teaching mission, have highlighted this issue for Catholic theologians. Nevertheless the recent past also yields up several examples of the correction of theological opinion by church authority in other communions. In St...

pdf

Share