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Verification in Theology: A Tension in Revisionist Method
- The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Volume 43, Number 3, July 1979
- pp. 357-384
- 10.1353/tho.1979.0029
- Article
- Additional Information
VERIFICATION IN THEOLOGY: A TENSION IN REVISIONIST METHOD AHARACTERISTIC FEATURE of revisionist theology 1 is a stress on public criteria of theological discourse . Whatever differences may exist among revisionist theologians in the specific understanding of theological method, there is a shared emphasis on the necessary recasting of theology in an apologetical mode. The theologian cannot rely on arguments which presuppose an audience of Christian believers. The pressures of a secular culture no longer shaped by a Christian or, for that matter, a religious cast of mind, doubts within the Christian community itself, and the universal claim to truth of the Christian message compel the theologian to look beyond the circle of faith. As Langdon Gilkey has put it: For its symbols so to have meaning, theological reflection must somehow extend beyond the narrow religious range of the experience of faith and of the positive doctrinal statements relative to hearing the Word in church. It must be able to deal systematically and effectively with the character of ordinary life and develop a set of symbols which refer both to these felt meanings in secular experience and to the positive content of tradition and revelation.2 A philosophical argument, in one form or other, to produce such a correlation of Christian tradition and common human experi1 The term revisionist is used by David Tracy to describe a group of contemporary theologians " committed to what seems clearly to be the central task of contemporary Christian theology: the dramatic confrontation, the mutual illuminations and corrections, the possible basic reconciliation between the principal values, cognitive claims, and existential faiths of both a reinterpreted post-modern consciousness and a reinterpreted Christianity." He includes in this group along with himself figures like Leslie Dewart, Gregory Baum, Michael Novak, Langdon Gilkey, Van Harvey, and Gordon Kaufman. Blessed Rage for Order (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), p. 32. "Langdon Gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind: The Renewal of God-Language (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), p. 201. 357 358 THOMAS B. OMMEN ence is a defining characteristic of revisionist method. The revisionist theologian tries to demonstrate that there is even in secular culture an experience of ultimacy or unconditionedness which can only be adequately thematized with some form of religious symbol. Raising this experience of ultimacy to reflective or explicit awareness shows that, contrary to secularistic assumptions, religious discourse in general and Christian discourse in particular are experientially meaningful. While there is general agreement on the need £or and possibility of rational theological argumentation to show that religious symbols are meaningfUl, there is disagreement in revisionist method on the possibility of a public demonstration of the validity or truth of such symbols. The central issue is the extent to which a theological argument can motivate an individual to accept the truth of a religious claim. The purpose .of this paper is to highlight the dispute over theological verification between Langdon Gilkey and David Tracy. Both authors affirm the need :£or rational argumentation to discover a " common ground with secular experience either in the form of a natural theology or of a prolegomenon of some sort." 3 Both authors rely on a philosophical analysis in the form of a phenomenology of human experience to show that the ultimate horizon of human experience is religious and appropriately thematized with some form of religious symbolization. Both go on to argue for the adequacy of certain Christian symbols to common human experience. But while they agree on the possibility of a demonstration of the meaningfulness of religious symbols, they disagree on the verifying force of such argumentation . It is this disagreement which I ii1tend to examine. Theological Verification: The Position of David Tracy I. Metaiphysical Verification In what Tracy admits will probably be the most controversial aspect of the program of foundational theology presented in •Ibid., p. 18~. VERIFICATION IN THEOLOGY 359 Blessed Rage for Order, he links the task 0£ theological verification to metaphysical reasoning. Like Gilkey, Tracy affirms the distinction of the questions of validity and meaning. To show the existential meaningfulness of religious language by correlating it with .secular experience is not as yet to settle the question of its validity. To point out the importance of the God-question in human...