Evidence and Transcendence: Religious Epistemology and the God-World Relationship

The Anti-foundationalism of Thiemann

Chapter 3 The Anti-foundationalism of Thiemann 49 The first challenge to Christian faith with which this book is concerned arose from the Enlightenment and is, in that sense, a modern challenge. The second challenge, which forces the Christian apologist to recognize the mediation of all knowledge, is of more recent origin. It is part of the postmodern enterprise, which maintains a critical stance toward the thinking of the modern period. Postliberal theologians such as George Lindbeck and Ronald Thiemann, who take seriously the mediation of all knowing, offer powerful analyses of the problems that have arisen when theologians try to meet the Enlightenment demand for evidence. This chapter initially examines the analyses put forward by Ronald Thiemann, in order to come to grips more fully with the epistemological problems of the modern period as seen through the eyes of postmodern theology, as well as to to shed further light on postliberal approaches. This examination will also provide an introduction to Thiemann’s own constructive endeavor. In Defense of Revelation Swinburne, as we have seen, interprets the challenges that are posed to Christian faith in modern times as challenges to defend the rationality of belief in the existence of God. Thiemann, on the other 04 inman chap03:Layout 1 2/20/08 10:22 AM Page 49 hand, assumes that God exists but takes as his task a defense of what he terms God’s prevenience, that is, “faith’s knowledge of God is a gift bestowed through God’s free grace.” The stress is on the priority of God: “thought and speech about God are not simply the free creations of human imagination but are developed in obedient response to God’s prior initiative.”1 Thus, while Swinburne is concerned with the existence of God, Thiemann is concerned with the existence of God—the utterly other, who alone takes the initiative in the divine/human relationship. Thiemann interprets the challenges that are posed to Christian faith in modern times as challenges to defend the doctrine of revelation. At this level, therefore, he engages with the first challenge: the need to supply some sort of evidence for what is proposed for belief. Compared with Lindbeck, Thiemann engages more fully with various positions that he criticizes and therefore has more to say about their underlying epistemologies. While Lindbeck is concerned with the function of doctrines generally, rather than the veracity of any single doctrine or set of doctrines, Thiemann offers a defense of the doctrine of revelation— indeed, he believes such a defense is vital for the survival of Christian faith. Thus Thiemann, unlike Lindbeck, is explicitly working out his theology from within the context of faith. Lindbeck’s work may provide a useful tool for critical analysis, but for the purposes of inter-theological dialogue, Thiemann, not Lindbeck, acts as a conversation-partner. Thiemann—a Lutheran and a Barthian—apparently sees no conflict between the distaste for apologetics characteristic of the tradition of Karl Barth, and his own view that the doctrine of revelation must be defended and backed up by some sort of evidence. For Thiemann, the very existence of Christianity, dependent as it is on God’s self-revelation, is threatened by a concerted attack from within the Lutheran tradition on the notion of revelation. In his Revelation and Theology, Thiemann states that two “very early attacks on the notion of revelation come from European Lutherans who were reacting against the Calvinist categories which predominate in the modern theological discussion” and for illustration quotes from Werner Elert: “Nowhere [in the New Testament] is it said that God has revealed, reveals or will reveal himself.”2 Thiemann finds a “growing consensus among contemporary theologians,” nicely captured by Stanley Hauerwas’s remark that the “very idea that the Bible is revealed . . . is a 50 evidence and transcendence 04 inman chap03:Layout 1 2/20/08 10:22 AM Page 50 claim that creates more trouble than it is worth.”3 Gustaf Wingren, he notes, offers a sustained polemic against Barth’s “unbiblical” employment of the notion of revelation. For Thiemann, in short, the doctrine of revelation is under serious attack, and a defense of this doctrine is a necessary defense of the Barthian tradition, which would suffer complete collapse without the notion of revelation. Thiemann thus equates a defense of religious belief with a defense of the doctrine of revelation. But as a Lutheran...