Christian Theology and the Secular University 9781472484895, 9781315571904

Citation preview

Christian Theology and the Secular University

If the secular university by definition is non-sectarian or non-denominational, then how can it accommodate a discipline like Christian theology? Doesn’t the traditional goal of theological study, which is to attain knowledge of the divine, fundamentally conflict with the main goal of secular academic study, which is to attain knowledge about ourselves and the world in which we live? So why should theology be admitted, or even care about being admitted, into secular academic life? And even if theology were admitted, what contribution to secular academic life could it make? Working from a Christian philosophical and theological perspective but also engaging a wide range of theologians, philosophers, and religious studies scholars, Christian Theology and the Secular University takes on these questions, arguing that Christian theology does belong in the secular university because it provides distinct resources that the secular university needs if it is going to fulfill what should be its main epistemic and educative ends. This book offers a fresh and unique perspective to scholars working in the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and religious studies, and to those in other academic disciplines who are interested in thinking critically and creatively about the place and nature of theological study within the secular university. Paul A. Macdonald, Jr. holds an endowed chair in the Department of Philosophy at the United States Air Force Academy.

This page intentionally left blank

Christian Theology and the Secular University

YORK YORK

Paul A. Macdonald, Jr.

~~o~;J~n~~~up

LONDON LONDON LONDON

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Paul A. Macdonald, Jr. The right of Paul A. Macdonald, Jr. to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Macdonald, Paul A., author. Title: Christian theology and the secular university / by Paul A. Macdonald Jr. Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016035788 | ISBN 9781472484895 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315571904 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Universities and colleges--Religion. | Theology--Study and teaching (Higher) Classification: LCC BV1610 .M23 2017 | DDC 230.071/1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035788 ISBN: 978-1-4724-8489-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-57190-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

For my wife, Jennifer Winslow Macdonald

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Preface Introduction 1

Whose theology? Which university? Theology and skepticism, or theology without a subject matter 11 Theology as a realist intellectual discipline, or theology as knowledge 20 Secularism, secularity, and the secular university 28 The non-secularist, inclusively secular university 37

2

Theology in the secular university: a critical analysis of the current debate The secularist study of religion and the “secular perspective” 54 Inclusivism, part one: theology as a secular academic discipline 63 Inclusivism, part two: theological inclusivists 68 Theology as an exclusively sectarian academic discipline 75 Theology in the secular university as “faith” seeking understanding 81

3

An epistemology of truly liberal learning Knowing the truth is its own end 99 Critical thinking and the truth as telos 108 The intellectually virtuous pursuit of knowledge and truth 113 Understanding as an epistemic and educative end 120 Wisdom: the ultimate epistemic and educative end 124

4

Theology and truly liberal learning in the secular university Reasoning and critical thinking in theology 141 Theological study as growth in intellectual virtue 150

ix 1 10

53

98

139

viii

Contents Contemplative reasoning, theology, and the pursuit of understanding and wisdom 159 Theological study as oriented towards theological knowledge and truth 167

5

Theology and moral education in the secular university Moral education and the secular university 184 Wisdom and moral education in the secular university 190 Theology, wisdom, and moral education in the secular university 198 Theology, the secular university, and the common good 209

Conclusion Index

183

223 227

Preface

For a long time, I took it for granted that Christian theology belonged in the secular university. I did graduate work in Christian philosophy and theology (and philosophy of religion, more broadly) at two major, secular universities (Yale University and the University of Virginia) and never once called into question whether the theological study that I engaged in, under the direction of some premier philosophers and theologians (Christian and otherwise), was somehow out of place or inappropriate, let alone deficient or unworthy of broader university study. Although I certainly realized that not all of my fellow secular-university citizens were Christian, or even religious, I also realized that Christian theology was as intellectually rigorous as any other course of study, was characterized by the highest level of rational argument, and consequently could make reasonable claims about its ability to furnish the knowledge or understanding of divine matters which, as a person of Christian faith, I earnestly sought then and continue to seek out. After leaving graduate school and completing two postdoctoral fellowships (one at Princeton University, the other at Villanova University), I began teaching and doing Christian theology within a secular religious studies department at Bucknell University, a nationally ranked, secular liberal-arts college. At this point in my career, I was more fully aware of the broader debate surrounding the place and nature of theological study in the secular university, and in particular secular religious studies. And although I was supported in my own pedagogical and scholarly theological endeavors by my department, I realized that theology’s place in the wider secular university was by no means secure. Or, to be more specific, I realized that the place of traditional theological inquiry, as a tradition-based form of rational inquiry into the existence and nature of the divine, was by no means secure (for reasons I will discuss at length in this book). During my second year at Bucknell, I became involved in an intercollegiate research project and workshop, sponsored by The Teagle Foundation, dedicated to investigating the place and role of “big questions” (questions about meaning, purpose, and value) in the secular liberal arts. The more deeply I became involved in this project over the years (since it lasted well beyond its initial, proposed termination date), the more I became interested in and committed to

x

Preface

developing and defending an argument for making Christian theology an important and enduring part of what we in the group came to call a “reconceived secular liberal arts” hospitable to the personal and even religious contemplation of big questions. Inspired and informed by the work I had done with the Teagle group, along with my own ongoing, scholarly work and study, I then wrote and published “Studying Christian Theology in the Secular University,” an article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion that furnishes the basis of the argument that I develop and defend at much greater length in this book. In order to make this argument, and hence write this book, I have relied on the guidance and support of many persons, to whom I owe thanks. I am grateful to Sam Speers, Ian Oliver, and Jonathon Kahn, with whom I worked the most closely as part of the Teagle project. The rich conversations that we engaged in over the years have helped me to think both long and hard about what makes the secular university “secular” as opposed to “secularist,” and so what place Christian theology has at a “secular” but not “secularist” university. I also am grateful to Joel Brown, Adam Pelser, and Brent Kyle, my colleagues at the United States Air Force Academy, for reading parts of the book manuscript and providing essential philosophical feedback. I owe particular thanks to Joel, who read multiple chapters of the book and provided some of the vital feedback and encouragement that I needed in order to finish it. I also owe particular thanks to the editorial staff at Routledge and an anonymous reviewer for Routledge, who read the entire manuscript and whose feedback provided both the direction and stimulus that I needed in order to make some important, final revisions to the manuscript and elevate the book as a whole. I could not have written this book without the generous financial support provided by the Earhart Foundation, which helped fund my research and writing during the academic year 2012–13. It was during that year that I researched and drafted much of the main content of the book, which I in turn significantly developed, refined, and added to during the last several years while serving in an endowed chair in the Philosophy Department at the U.S. Air Force Academy. To be clear, the views expressed in this book are solely my own, and do not represent an official position of the U.S. Air Force Academy or the Department of Defense. Finally, I am grateful to my family, whose unceasing love, support, and prayers have guided and sustained me throughout the entire book-writing process. My wife, Jennifer Winslow Macdonald, first suggested to me that I write this book; and without her steady, deep reassurance, guidance, and love, it never would have been written. I dedicate Christian Theology and the Secular University to her.

Introduction

In this book, I argue that traditional Christian theology can and should occupy a definitive place within the twenty-first-century secular university. And I indeed will argue on behalf of this claim, since I do not take it for granted that it is true, or that everyone within the twenty-first-century university should immediately recognize it to be true. In fact, there seem to be definitive reasons for keeping theology, at least in any robust form, out of the secular university. For the purposes of ground-clearing, or setting up my main argument (which I summarize in this introduction), it is worth identifying those reasons right from the start. First, let me begin by referencing the transformation that the university in the West has undergone in becoming secular. While at one time, academic study in the university took place within the overarching intellectual and ecclesial framework that Christianity provided (in the words of theologian John Milbank, “[o]nce, there was no ‘secular’”), now such study takes place within a different framework altogether, one that (ostensibly) facilitates free, open, and critical intellectual inquiry as well as the autonomous pursuit of knowledge and truth, whatever they might be and wherever they might be found.1 If we further interpret this transformation, or process of “secularization,” as a story of progress or “Enlightenment,” critical questions quickly arise. Having finally and fully emancipated itself from the theological yoke that once burdened it, why would the twenty-first-century university once again want to retain theological inquiry as a part of its intellectual life? Even if the secular university no longer allows theology, as the “queen of the sciences,” to govern and guide all of its intellectual life, wouldn’t retaining theology in any capacity still require sacrificing all that the secular university had tirelessly fought for and gained – the ability to engage in any and all valid intellectual pursuits without being told how such pursuits should be framed, where they should be directed, and where they should lead? Second, questions quickly arise concerning how the twenty-first-century secular university can accommodate specifically Christian theological study without also accommodating all other forms of theological study. In our religiously pluralistic world, on what grounds can the secular university include Christian theology, especially at the expense of excluding other, arguably

2

Introduction

equally valid theological traditions of intellectual inquiry, which explore the existence and the nature of the divine from their own, unique theological perspectives? Here, one could argue that to be consistent and fair, the secular university should exclude all forms of theological inquiry, Christian and otherwise. Instead, it should continue to promote the pluralistic study of religion, or what has come to be called “religious studies,” from a specifically academic perspective, which privileges no one religious framework or any specifically religious claims to possess knowledge and truth. Consequently, rather than encouraging its citizenry to enter the thorny and contested – as well as speculative – realm of theological knowledge- and truth-seeking, the secular university can and should encourage its citizenry to pursue knowledge of the decidedly human realm of thought, practice, and experience, drawing on all of the non-theological intellectual resources and methodologies that the secular university provides. Third, it can seem difficult, if not impossible, to argue that the secular university should make any room for Christian theological study when its already existing programs of liberal academic study, particularly within the humanities (at least within the U.S.), are in “crisis.”2 In an era when most undergraduate liberal-arts universities and colleges face increasing pressure to demonstrate how the education that they provide pays actual economic dividends, or services specific vocational ends (better and higher-paying jobs for its graduates), it can seem not only unrealistic but also unfair to ask the secular university to do anything more than defend its already embattled liberal-arts curriculum, in which even mainstream courses of study in the humanities are struggling to survive. Thus, from this standpoint, asking the secular university to make room for specifically Christian theological study in its curriculum is pouring salt on an already open and painful wound. Given these concerns and challenges, then, how can the twenty-first-century secular university make room for traditional Christian theological study, whether inside or alongside its already existing courses of study, and why should it do so? To begin to answer this question – which is the central question animating this book – I need to begin to reflect on our two principal terms: “theology” and the “secular.” Following Augustine, I take theology to be “reason or discourse concerning divinity” (theologia – from theos, “God,” and logos, “reason” or “discourse”).3 In one sense, then, theology has a definitive subject matter: divinity, whatever one might think that “divinity” more specifically denotes. Roy Clouser, for example, claims that “the divine is whatever is unconditionally, nondependently real.”4 Thus, in Clouser’s view, even materialism has a conception of divinity: Matter itself. Similarly, the late Ronald Dworkin, who claimed to be a “religious” atheist, claims that the fundamental “religious attitude” consists of a commitment to “the full, independent reality of value,” which permeates both human life and the universe as a whole (including all of its parts).5 To be clear, I have no ambition here to restrict the concept of divinity or religion so that it narrowly refers to what traditional monotheistic religions like Christianity have meant by “God.” And in fact, I see the apologetic value of defining divinity and religion more broadly. If materialists and atheists in the

Introduction 3 secular university engage in reasoning or discourse about divinity, broadly understood, then on what reasonable grounds can the secular university exclude Christian reasoning or discourse about divinity?6 However, this is not the chief argument that I pursue in the book. In order to make a fully successful case for being included in the secular university, Christian theology still needs to account for its reasoning or discourse about the divine, which consists of showing how its reasoning or discourse about the divine can be directed on the divine, as it conceives the divine to be. I make no definitive argument on behalf of the claim that Christian theology’s reasoning or discourse about the divine is, in fact, directed on the divine. As a result, I make no definitive argument on behalf of the claim that Christian theological study is conducive for attaining its traditional epistemic and educative end: knowledge of the truth about divine, and all other things, or truths, as related to the divine. However, I do show how it is both possible and reasonable to view Christian theological study as conducive for attaining this end, especially when Christian theology embraces – and is allowed to embrace – its traditional selfunderstanding as a “realist” discipline founded upon divinely revealed truth, or God’s own reality as revealed within the broader, created order and the authoritative epistemic resources of the Christian faith. Not everyone in the secular university will accept that Christian theology has a divine origin and aim. And yet, as I argue, they still can and should recognize the importance of allowing a discipline like Christian theology to draw on its own epistemic resources – or as I also call them, authorities – which it says that its practitioners need in order to engage in successful knowledge- and truth-seeking concerning the divine, using the rational means of knowledge- and truth-seeking that Christian theology provides. It is a robust Christian theology that I claim is best equipped to make a distinct, important, and even invaluable contribution to the diverse and deep knowledge- and truth-seeking that can and should characterize secular academic life. But which “secular” university do I have in mind? And what kind of “secular” university do I argue can and should include Christian theology (hereafter also “theology”) within its academic ranks and course of study? On the broadest of levels, I have in mind universities and colleges in the Western world (particularly North America; the U.K.; and, to a lesser degree, continental Europe) which, whether they possess a theological foundation or not, do not view themselves or their educational enterprises as framed by any specifically theological (or more largely religious) orientation and perspective. More narrowly, I have in mind those universities and colleges that aim to offer a wide-ranging course of study in the arts and sciences, or the liberal arts, whatever other vocational or professional courses of study they offer at the undergraduate or graduate levels. Finally, I also have in mind (albeit to a lesser degree) sectarian or church-affiliated Christian institutions whose intellectual and educational activity (research, teaching, etc.) at least partially takes place within a secular mode. For these institutions, justifying the existence of theology in the curriculum may be becoming increasingly difficult, given what those within their ranks,

4

Introduction

who carry on their intellectual and educational lives within a secular mode, think that a properly secular education should be. I argue throughout the book that the secular university should “include” Christian theology in its academic ranks and course of study. I use the term broadly, since I realize that theological study continues to exist in many secular academic contexts, like that of the U.K., where (for the most part) it is integrated with a broader, more pluralistic form of religious studies.7 In this sense, “including” theology also means “retaining” it, and more than that, allowing it to pursue its own epistemic and educative ends, in service to what I think can and should be the secular university’s multifaceted, far-reaching, and lofty epistemic and educative ends. I do not take it for granted, then, that the mere existence of theology in particular secular universities guarantees that theology is being studied there in any robust form. Nor do I think that the current existence of theology in certain secular universities ensures its future existence there, given the sorts of concerns that I already have identified in this introduction. As such, I am arguing for the full inclusion of theology in these secular universities as much as I am in those universities in which theology no longer continues to exist. Which of the universities I have in mind, though, is a much less interesting question than why we should consider them “secular,” or what their “secularity” consists in. Accordingly, I argue that we should construe the “secular” as a normative and not just a descriptive concept. While the “secularist” university seeks to remove or tame the presence of theological knowledge- and truth-seeking within its academic life, given its commitment to particular, secularist principles and ideals, the “secular” university, which is inclusive and non-secularist, seeks to embrace and even promote theological knowledge- and truth-seeking, at both the individual and disciplinary levels, within its academic life. As such, the “secular” university can and should be committed to what I call epistemological pluralism: the recognition of all valid forms of knowledge- and truth-seeking, including theological ones, whatever they might be and wherever they claim to lead us. Given this commitment to providing its constituency with specifically theological lines of knowledge- and truth-seeking, we might also deem the inclusively secular university “postsecular.”8 However, I choose instead to employ the term “secular” in both the descriptive and normative sense just specified, especially since I juxtapose it with “secularist” (making the “secular” university “non-secularist”). Not surprisingly, it remains a matter of ongoing debate, particularly within the disciplines of religious studies and theology, whether theology belongs in the secular university and also which kind of theology (if any) belongs there. In order to further develop and defend the argument that I make on behalf of including traditional Christian theology within an inclusively secular and so epistemologically pluralist university, I critically engage this debate and the various approaches that contemporary thinkers take within it. The “secularist” and “sectarian” approaches that I discuss both exclude the study of theology from the secular university, though for different reasons. Secularists think that

Introduction 5 theological knowledge- and truth-seeking is fundamentally opposed to what should be secular religious studies’ and hence the secular university’s “scientific” or “public” approach to the study of religion and religious phenomena. Sectarians think that the study of theology can only be properly and fully carried out in sectarian academic environments, where Christian commitments explicitly and actively can govern and guide the pursuit of not just theological knowledge and truth but all knowledge and truth. “Inclusivists” argue that theology has a place within the university, but make different claims about what it should look like and how it should be studied. Against both secularists and sectarians, I argue that Christian theological study can and should take its rightful place in secular academic study once we deny that any and all academic study be framed by a “secular perspective” – a perspective that promises to lead us beyond our particular, varying perspectives on what’s true and real to a (putatively) objective cognitive vantage point from which it is possible to survey the true and real “as they are,” independent of how they may appear from within any given perspective. I also argue against inclusivists who seem to require that theology be studied from a “secular perspective,” which, upon closer analysis, turns out to be secularist, and so informed by its own particular, highly debatable commitments and claims about what legitimate knowledge- and truth-seeking should look like and where it should lead. Building on the larger principle that valid intellectual inquiry not only can be but also in fact is and should be governed and guided by a variety of epistemic authorities and directed on a variety of epistemic ends, I argue for a form of “theological inclusivism,” or “inclusive sectarianism” – theology as “faith” seeking understanding – which allows liberal learners of whatever theological persuasion to pursue specifically theological knowledge and truth along the particular, rational lines of inquiry that theology provides. To be clear, my argument on behalf of an inclusively secular, epistemologically pluralist university hospitable towards and even encouraging of Christian theological knowledge- and truth-seeking does not entail that the secular university must be hospitable towards all forms of theological knowledge- and truth-seeking. Certainly, my argument for including specifically Christian theological study in the secular university is compatible with arguments others might make for including non-Christian theological study (or even non-traditional Christian theological study) in the secular university. In fact, my endorsement of epistemological plurality within an inclusively secular university encourages theologians of other faiths or intellectual worldviews to make their own case for why the secular university should include and feature theological study of a sort other than what I exposit and defend here. But it is still necessary to make such a case, which also entails showing how theological study, of whatever sort, can make a positive epistemic and educative contribution to secular academic life. I make such a case on behalf of Christian theology, which entails filling out the model of theological study as “faith” seeking understanding in more detail. The first step in this process consists of answering what I think is a fundamental and perennial question: “What’s a university education for?” In response

6

Introduction

to that question, I develop and defend an epistemology of liberal learning, which lays out the kinds of epistemic and educative aims that liberal learners within the secular university, or any liberal-arts university or college worthy of the name, can and should pursue. I not only defend the traditional claim that knowledge and truth are their own ends, worth pursuing and possessing for their own sake, but also the claim that all knowledge and truth, of whatever kind and whatever level or depth, are worth pursuing and possessing for their own sake. However, I also argue that there are certain levels of knowledge and truth that are the most epistemically and educationally valuable and so the most worth pursuing and possessing for their own sake. Understanding affords deep knowledge of deep truths; and wisdom, as the supreme form of understanding, affords the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths, or what I call ultimate truths, and so also explanatory, ordered, and unified insight into the nature of reality, or all truth, as a whole. Thus, any university that claims to promote truly liberal learning not only can and should help its constituents attain diverse epistemic and educative ends but also the highest epistemic and educative ends, or the greatest epistemic goods. By developing and defending this epistemology of truly liberal learning, I really accomplish two main tasks. First, I address real concerns about the ultimate meaning and purpose of a university education head-on. In my view, the real “crisis” in higher education is not the struggle that the university faces in justifying its own existence, or at least aspects of its existence (some of its embattled courses of study) to a consuming public anxious for economic security and gain. Rather, the real crisis is that the university does not know (or fails to remember) why it exists in the first place, or what it is truly meant to be. Therefore, I offer an argument on behalf of the intrinsic value of the university’s educational aims, and specifically the intrinsic value of knowledge- and truth-acquisition as educational aims. Second, I lay down yet another key plank in my argument on behalf of Christian theological study in the secular university. Insofar as such study greatly enhances truly liberal learning, and so helps those who engage in it to attain the highest epistemic (and not merely economic) ends, or the greatest epistemic (and not merely economic) goods, then it should occupy an important and even invaluable place within secular academic life. How, exactly, does Christian theological study enhance truly liberal learning? Studying theology fosters critical thinking, or the ability to assess and thereby also discover legitimate reasons as conduits to truth. It also fosters growth in intellectual virtue, and hence the honed ability and willingness to attain everdeeper domains of knowledge and truth in the various realms of human intellectual inquiry. Beyond this, studying theology plays a unique role in fostering what I call contemplative reasoning, and so the development of contemplative habits or dispositions of mind that liberal learners need in order to attain understanding and, especially, wisdom as the absolute highest epistemic end and greatest epistemic good. My most controversial claim, at least from a nontheological perspective, is that theological study, according to a reasonable interpretation, is conducive for attaining theological wisdom, and that theology

Introduction 7 therefore reasonably can claim to make liberal learners wise. However, I also argue that one need not embrace this interpretation of theological study in order to recognize and endorse the vital role that theological study can and should play in significantly aiding the pursuit of wisdom, thereby helping liberal learners to attain wisdom – whatever the actual content of that knowledge is or may (upon discovery) turn out to be. The final stage of my argument concerns the positive role that Christian theology can and should play in helping the secular university educate its citizenry on a specifically moral level. While I am skeptical that theology, or any intellectual and educative programs within the secular university for that matter, can effect widespread, substantive, and enduring change in moral character, I do think that theological study can help liberal learners within the secular university attain moral knowledge, and specifically moral wisdom: knowledge of what I generically refer to as “the Good,” or those ultimate truths that most profoundly illuminate what the good life is for human beings on both an individual and communal level. As such, any university that cares (as it should) about educating its citizenry on both an intellectual and moral level, and thereby also promoting larger human flourishing (or the “common good”), has strong reason to make theology an important part of its truly liberal course of study – again, regardless of whether one thinks that theology generates specifically theological wisdom in the moral realm or not. As should be clear even from this brief introduction, the overall argument that I make in this book proceeds – and is intended to proceed – at a high theoretical level. I do not principally engage in Christian theology (though, I do engage in at least some Christian theology). Instead, I principally argue about and on behalf of Christian theology, which means that the arguing that I engage in about the place and nature of theological study in the secular university proceeds (and must proceed) at a certain level of abstraction. Also, in order to make my case successfully, I draw heavily on philosophy, and especially the analytic tradition of philosophizing. This does not mean that the sole kind of theology that I think belongs in the secular university is philosophical theology, or what has come to be called “analytic theology.”9 However, I do think that philosophy and theology enjoy a special, symbiotic relationship: philosophy helps theology sharpen and strengthen its reasoning about divine matters, and theology helps philosophy direct its reasoning on divine matters, as subject matters about which philosophy, with theology’s help, can and should (and is meant to) investigate. In this sense, the best theology is philosophically attuned, and the best philosophy is theologically attuned. Finally, the fact that I argue at a high level theoretically in this book does not mean that I am ignorant of or desensitized to the actual problems (economic, political, cultural, etc.) that particular universities and colleges face in making academic programs like Christian theology a full, permanent part of their academic lives. Nor is it because I have an overly romanticized view of where theology can take those who study it, or what the university, secular and nonsecular, can and should be. In my view, if theology is going to have any chance

8

Introduction

of being retained within – or as is often the case, readmitted into – the secular university, where it rightfully belongs, then it must be able to make a case for its full, permanent inclusion on distinctly theoretical grounds. That is, it not only must it call into question those arguments that unjustifiably seek to exclude its presence and influence from secular academic life, but it also must give strong argumentative support for its viability as an intellectual discipline and its value as a distinct, even leading contributor to what secular academic life both can and should be. Only on that basis can theology, and those like myself who study theology, make the further, requisite arguments needed to ensure that theology assumes its proper, positive place in actual, secular universities and colleges, regardless of who and where they are, what reputations they may have, and which challenges that they may face. Nevertheless, I do hope that the book, even if only partially digested, starts many conversations about how practically to implement traditional Christian theological study within secular academic study. Thus, sensitive to the question, “so where do we go from here?” (which I suspect even readers sympathetic to my argument will be wondering at the book’s end), I conclude the book by offering just a few, practical recommendations for how I think that theological study can take its rightful place in the secular university. In this sense, the ending of the book also constitutes a new beginning, insofar as it begins to point the way for actually making Christian theology a full, permanent participant in and positive contributor to twenty-first-century secular academic life.

Notes 1 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, second edn. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 9. 2 For an excellent resource on the supposed “crisis in the humanities” that includes links to multiple, recent articles in reputable news publications, see David Boonin’s “The ‘Crisis in the Humanities’ Homepage,” available online at http://stripe.colorado. edu/~boonind/crisis%20in%20the%20humanities.html (accessed 18 August 2016). For a more comprehensive report on the state of the liberal-arts college in the U.S., see Victor E. Ferrall, Jr., Liberal Arts at the Brink (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Ferrall’s conclusion, based on his assessment of data for 225 U.S. liberalarts institutions from the years 1986–1987 to 2007–2008, is sobering: “There is no evidence that the movement away from liberal-arts education to vocational instruction is temporary, or that it is cyclical and, over time, will reverse itself. To the contrary, it appears to be an accelerating trend. The demand for vocational instruction is sky-rocketing” (155). For a good, recent defense of the liberal arts (which at its core bears much similarity to my own), see Mark William Roche, Why Choose the Liberal Arts? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). 3 Augustine, De civitate Dei 8.1, translated as The City of God against the Pagans by R.W. Dyson, trans. and ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 312. 4 Roy Clouser, Knowing with the Heart: Religious Experience and Belief in God (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1999), 21. Italics are in the original text. 5 Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 10. 6 An anonymous reviewer for the book suggested that I pursue this argument, and although I do not pursue it, I do think that it is worth mentioning here.

Introduction 9 7 See David F. Ford, “Theology,” The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. John R. Hinnells (London, UK: Routledge, 2005), 66. 8 Broadly speaking, “postsecular” refers to the continual presence if not resurgence of religion within human society, signaling the fact that claims about the world becoming increasingly areligious are false, or at least dubious. Douglas and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, for example, say that “[w]hat we mean by the term postsecular is the simple fact that secularization as a theory about the future of human society seems increasingly out of touch with realities on the ground” (The American University in a Postsecular Age [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008], 10). For further discussion about whether we are living in a postsecular age, and what scholars, particularly in the social sciences, are saying about religion today, see The PostSecular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society, eds. Philip S. Gorski, David Kyuman Kim, John Torpey, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2012). 9 See in particular Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, eds., Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Bibliography Augustine. De civitate Dei. Translated as The City of God against the Pagans by R.W. Dyson. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Boonin, David. “The ‘Crisis in the Humanities’ Homepage.” Available online at http:// stripe.colorado.edu/~boonind/crisis%20in%20the%20humanities.html (accessed 18 August 2016). Clouser, Roy. Knowing with the Heart: Religious Experience and Belief in God. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1999. Crisp, Oliver D. and Michael C. Rea, eds. Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. Dworkin, Ronald. Religion without God. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Ferrall, Victor E., Jr., Liberal Arts at the Brink. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Ford, David F. “Theology.” In The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by John R. Hinnells, 61–79. London, UK: Routledge, 2005. Gorski, Philip S., David Kyuman Kim, John Torpey, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, eds. The Post-Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2012. Jacobsen, Douglas, and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen. The American University in a Postsecular Age. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Milbank, John. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Second edn. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. Roche, Mark William. Why Choose the Liberal Arts? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.

1

Whose theology? Which university?1

Making an argument for including Christian theology in the secular university first requires addressing some fundamental questions. Whose theology should be included in the secular university? And which university should include theology? The first question is essential since, especially in the modern (and now postmodern) world, there are many different ways not only of characterizing and doing theology broadly understood, but also many different ways of characterizing and doing theology that conform to traditional theologizing, and hence traditional Christianity, to varying degrees. The second question is essential since mainstream universities and colleges, many of which originally were founded on theological principles, are avowedly secular, and as such lack the sort of explicit commitments that one could argue need to be in place in order for theological study to be able to proceed. More pointedly, the university’s decidedly secular orientation may seem to prohibit altogether forms of intellectual inquiry that have decidedly theological aims, like gaining knowledge of specifically theological truths. This sort of inquiry may be fitting within schools and universities that presume certain theological beliefs to be true, but they have no place within a secular university that holds no such presumption, and may even reject it altogether. With these issues and concerns in mind, my main goal in this chapter is not only to define what I mean by Christian “theology” and the “secular” university but also to show how, as properly defined, theology can make an initial, positive case for being included within the secular university. In the first half of the chapter, I argue that theology should avoid aligning itself (or being aligned with) epistemologies that generate a debilitating skepticism, and thereby prevent those who study theology from attaining real theological knowledge and truth, or knowledge of the truth about the divine. I further argue that in order to avoid succumbing to skepticism, and thereby retain its identity as a knowledge- and truth-aimed discipline, theology needs to retain its traditional self-understanding as the science of God, or a “realist” intellectual discipline that habituates those who study it in rational modes of theological knowledge- and truth-seeking. It is this kind of Christian theology that is best equipped to yield knowledge of the truth about its own, divine subject matter, and so best equipped to make a distinct and important – even invaluable – contribution to secular academic life.

Whose theology? Which university?

11

In order to continue to defend this admittedly controversial claim, I engage in some sustained, critical reflection in the second half of the chapter on the concept of the “secular,” and what it means for the secular university to be “secular.” There, I argue that a properly interpreted, inclusively “secular” but not “secularist” university can and even should welcome specifically theological knowledge- and truth-seeking so that its constituents can attain a plurality of epistemic and educative ends, or all kinds and levels of knowledge and truth – including theological knowledge and truth. In the end, then, I lay important groundwork for the arguments that I will be making in subsequent chapters of the book, in which I defend the place and purpose of traditional theological study in the inclusively secular university in much more detail.

Theology and skepticism, or theology without a subject matter In the introduction to this book, I followed Augustine by giving an initial, broad definition of theology as “reason or discourse concerning divinity.” So Christian theology, in turn, consists of reasoning or discoursing about the Christian God, or more specifically, what Christians profess to be the truth about God and all other things as related to God. My main claim, of course, is that so understood, Christian theology belongs in the secular university. Note once again that this claim does not also entail that non-Christian theology does not belong in the secular university. Since I think (and subsequently will argue) that the secular university should be epistemologically inclusive and pluralist, it would be inconsistent for me to claim that Christian theology belongs in the secular university but non-Christian theology does not. In fact, I do think that the secular university can and should house all valid forms of theologizing that can aid secular university citizenry in their pursuit of knowledge and truth, including specifically theological knowledge and truth. But I only can argue so much, and so will be developing an argument for including Christian theology in the secular university, leaving it to members of non-Christian intellectual traditions to develop arguments of their own for including non-Christian theology in the secular university. To start, I claim that if Christian theology is going to make a strong case for being fully included within the secular university as a knowledge- and truth-aimed discipline, then it needs to avoid aligning itself with – or, for that matter, being aligned with – two problematic, undesirable, and damaging epistemological theories or views: classical foundationalism and anti-realist non-foundationalism. Not only do these epistemologies face internal problems, but they also generate an untenable skepticism that eviscerates theology’s ability to gain and further knowledge of the divine, and so theology’s ability to make a distinct, important, and even invaluable contribution to secular academic life. My goal, then, in steering theology away from these two epistemological pitfalls is not to restrict theology, or those who engage in it, but rather to ensure that it can realize its fullest potential, and help the secular university to do the same.2

12

Whose theology? Which university?

According to classical foundationalism, which was born out of the Enlightenment and became the dominant epistemology within modern thought, beliefs are rational only if they are grounded in certitudes. Thus, as Nicholas Wolterstorff explains it, according to classical foundationalism, “theistic belief, to be rationally held, must be grounded in evidence, and…such evidence must ultimately consist of that of which one is certain.”3 Thus, if Christian theology were to align itself with classical foundationalism – or, were the secular university to require this of theology – then theology would have to show through its reasoning or discourse how all of its beliefs (about God, salvation, human beings, etc.) are grounded in the sort of evidence of which one can be certain, and in particular, arguments resting on premises or truths of which one can be certain. (This is presuming, of course, that Christian beliefs are not indubitable, taken by themselves.) According to Randal Rauser, classical foundationalism therefore also imposes a universality criterion, according to which a belief is rational if, all by itself, it compels “universal assent among rational individuals”; or, if “the truth of the belief is readily demonstrable to all rational people.”4 So, in addition, if theology was to align itself (or be aligned) with classical foundationalism, then rationally defending the claim that it is able to gain and further knowledge of the divine would require that it demonstrate the truth of Christian beliefs to all rational people. To be sure, if Christian theology were able to produce indubitable and universally persuasive arguments, which provide indubitable and universal support for Christian beliefs, then it would be able to make not just a strong argument but also an irresistible one for being included in the secular university. Historically, theologians like Anselm and Thomas Aquinas have claimed to demonstrate God’s existence, and, as Rauser points out, some modern, conservative theologians (particularly within the Protestant tradition) have claimed to demonstrate the revealed status of the Bible, as the primary source of theological reflection. However, as Rauser rightly contends, not only do many people doubt these demonstrations, or find them rationally uncompelling as arguments, but theology also traditionally has been highly attuned to its inability to produce them, certainly on behalf of specific Christian beliefs, whose truth simply lies beyond what the human mind can demonstrate. In my mind, this does not mean that theology should not aspire to proffer rationally convincing arguments, at least where it is able – say, in aiming to prove the existence of God along various rational lines of inquiry. And yet, this is very different from requiring theology to produce these arguments on behalf of all Christian beliefs, such that if it fails to produce them, it fails to qualify as rational. Here, one might say, so much the worse for theology: if it cannot produce the requisite arguments, then it does not qualify as rational. However, classical foundationalism faces serious problems of its own, which give us independent reason for rejecting it as the proper epistemological framework in which theology – and arguably any form of intellectual inquiry – should be carried out. Perhaps most obviously, classical foundationalism is excessively restrictive: it fails to recognize that many of the beliefs that we hold – whether

Whose theology? Which university?

13

by way of perception, induction, memory, or testimony – are rational, and so reasonably held by us, even though they are not grounded in certitudes. And even if we wanted to show that these beliefs are rational, in some non-circular way, we could not: as William Alston has argued, there is no way of showing that the cognitive faculties or processes that produce these beliefs are reliable without drawing on the very resources that they provide (like the deliverances of sense perception in order to show that sense perception is reliable).5 Moreover, confidence in classical foundationalism has eroded, based on what Rauser calls “the loss of certainty”: even intellectual inquiry in the most trusted, hallowed disciplines like mathematics and the natural sciences has yielded impressive but not necessarily indubitable results, and so has proven to be reliable (insofar as it offers very well-grounded insights into the nature of the world) but not infallible.6 Perhaps most damningly, philosophers like Alvin Plantinga have argued that classical foundationalism is self-referentially incoherent: it fails to meet its own criterion of what constitutes rational belief.7 Does classical foundationalism rest on an indubitable foundation? Is it compelling to all rational people? It certainly does not seem to be, and as a result, it cannot be reasonable to require Christian theology to meet its severe epistemic demands. I also think that classical foundationalism is self-defeating in another way: it generates an untenable skepticism, not towards particular knowledge-claims but towards knowledge itself. That is to say, it requires us to renounce our most basic commitment to knowledge itself, which underpins every facet of our intellectual and, more broadly, cognitive lives (and so all of our cognitive interactions with the world and each other). To illustrate this, consider what would happen if the secular university were to require not just theology but any academic discipline to ground all of its reasoning or discourse in epistemic certitudes, per the stipulation of classical foundationalism. All members of the secular university would become trapped in the endless and seemingly impossible task of trying to find indubitable and universal foundations for the beliefs that they hold. This quest for epistemic certitude across the disciplines, insofar as it yielded few if any results – epistemically impeccable beliefs or claims for which there are truly indubitable and universal foundations – inevitably would become beset by a debilitating skepticism, as honest intellectual inquirers in whatever discipline would succumb to the doubt that most if not all of the beliefs that they hold and the claims that they make are wholly unjustified and so wholly untethered to reality. In fact, under the weight of this skepticism, it would become possible to doubt even those beliefs for which members of the secular university claimed to have indubitable and universal support (for their collective certainty still could be misplaced, after all). As a result, the quest for knowledge and truth would eventually come to a grinding halt and the very mission of the secular university, as an institution dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, would be undermined. Since I think that we should find this kind of all-encompassing skepticism to be not just undesirable but also unreasonable – insofar as we find it eminently reasonable to claim that we can and do know things – we might wonder why

14

Whose theology? Which university?

classical foundationalism has proven to have such a powerful grip on the modern mind. The answer, I think, is that our craving for epistemic certainty is a powerful one: attaining epistemic certainty, in whatever intellectual domain, does seem to guarantee that we are, in fact, in touch with reality, and so able to gain knowledge of it. Without abandoning classical foundationalism wholesale, then, the Christian theologian (especially one seeking to gain access to the secular university) could seek to satisfy this craving in another way. If Christian theology was able to show that it was grounded not on indubitable, universally compelling arguments made on behalf of the divine but rather on an indubitable, universal experience of the divine – which it turn was capable of expressing through its reasoning or discourse – then it could find a permanent place in the secular university, along with any other, non-Christian theologies that were capable of doing the same. This “experiential-expressivist” approach to Christian theology (as it has come to be called) has proved to be remarkably attractive to modern theologians seeking to establish an objective, public basis for theology. However, there are significant difficulties that it faces as well. First, it is very difficult to pin down both what the experience is and what it purports to be about, especially since theologians have identified it under varying descriptions. Friedrich Schleiermacher calls it the “feeling of absolute dependence,” which he also says is identical with the feeling of being in relation with God: “to feel oneself absolutely dependent and to be conscious of being in relation with God are one and the same thing.”8 Paul Tillich calls it “ultimate concern,” or “unconditional, total, infinite concern” about the “ultimate,” the “unconditional,” and the “infinite,” or “being-itself,” which is immediately present to us as the “power of being” or “ground of being.”9 David Tracy, in his earlier work, calls attention to “limit-experiences” that he thinks constitute the distinctly religious dimension of our common human experience.10 Perhaps all of these theologians are picking out the same experience, but we still need some reason to think that this is the case, if it is going to provide an indubitable and universal ground for theology. Second, we need some reason to think that all human beings do indeed have this experience, especially since it seems readily possible and even reasonable to doubt that we all have it. Those who are not aware of having this experience have at least prima facie evidence to think that it doesn’t exist. And, since the experience only can take concrete form in and through diverse religious and theological expressions of it, there is seemingly no way of identifying it apart from those diverse expressions, and so for thinking that it actually is there. As George Lindbeck puts it, “Because this core experience is said to be common to a wide diversity of religions, it is difficult or impossible to specify its distinctive features, and yet unless this is done, the assertion of commonality becomes logically and empirically vacuous.”11 Furthermore, even if the theologian were able to specify the experience’s distinctive features, she would not thereby establish that it is veridical, or truly directed on the divine, rather than something else or nothing at all. To defend the experience’s veridicality, the theologian would have to appeal to other theological beliefs and claims about God (most

Whose theology? Which university?

15

notably, his existence) and the human being (our Godward orientation), and in turn reason or discourse on their behalf. But in doing that, the theologian would show that it is not a common experience of God but rather particular beliefs and claims about God (or, more specifically, the truth contained therein) that constitute the real foundation on which theology is based. Third, there is a distinct worry about Christian theology’s ability to gain and further knowledge of the divine, even if it is founded on a veridical experience of the divine. The experience may be indubitable, universal, and veridical, but since (as typically understood) it bears no specific cognitive content, it bears no specific cognitive relation to Christian belief. How, then, is theology supposed to derive and develop Christian belief – versus any other kind of religious or theological belief – from it? Here, the experiential-expressivist will claim that Christian belief most adequately expresses our experience of the divine: Tillich, for example, claims that Christian “symbols” of the divine, insofar as they “participate” in the power of the divine to which they also point, genuinely mediate the presence of the divine to us. In this sense, these symbols are subjectively true. However, even if, for Tillich, these symbols are subjectively true, there is no guarantee that they, or the experience that they purport to express, genuinely relate or direct us to the divine on any cognitive level. Tillich exacerbates this worry further by holding both that a symbol can die “if the correlation of which it is an adequate expression dies,”12 and that the decisive criterion of a symbol’s truth, insofar as it also purports to express the ultimate objectively, “is that it implies an element of self-negation.”13 “That symbol is most adequate,” Tillich says, “which expresses not only the ultimate but also its own lack of ultimacy,” or its utter inability to express the ultimate.14 Not only, then, is all theological inquiry potentially totally revisable, since theology’s symbolic structure only holds up insofar as we take it to adequately express our experience of the divine, but such inquiry, insofar as it is symbolic in nature, must ultimately negate even its own best efforts to express the divine in order to remain true to the ultimacy of the divine. Skepticism within theology once again looms. Tillich’s specific claims about the symbolic character of Christian theology and the truth of Christian symbols reflect a commitment to at least some elements of the other epistemological position that I think that theology should avoid aligning itself (or being aligned) with: anti-realist non-foundationalism. As Rauser points out, these non-foundationalists, anxious to get out from under the shadow of classical foundationalism and the skepticism that it engenders, not only deny the need to ground knowledge in certitudes but also radically redefine “knowledge, truth, and reality relative to human concerns and capacities.”15 In other words, rejecting the quintessentially modern project of trying to furnish an epistemically indubitable and universal foundation for belief, and thereby build an unbreakable bridge between mind and world, or thought and reality – a project that only can generate a debilitating skepticism – these nonfoundationalists close the gap between mind and world or thought and reality by tying knowledge, truth, and reality to what is immediately epistemically

16

Whose theology? Which university?

accessible to us: our own subjectivity. However, like classical foundationalism, anti-realist non-foundationalism both suffers from difficulties of its own and, despite its aspirations to lead us out of the quagmire of skepticism, only drags us – and a discipline like theology that attaches itself to it – into that quagmire further. This becomes evident by engaging in an even brief survey of the kinds of anti-realist non-foundationalism that contemporary theologians espouse and represent. Consider, to start, the sort of non-foundationalism that rejects metaphysical realism, the view that there is a mind-independent reality that does not owe its existence to our conceptions of it. One chief philosophical argument on behalf of rejecting metaphysical realism goes as follows: since there is no unmediated access to reality apart from the concepts and words we use to think and speak about it, and so no way to check what we think and say about reality against reality itself, as it exists independently of what we think and say about it, then we have no reason to think that reality exists apart from the words and concepts we use to think about it. As radical postmodern philosopher and theologian, and self-avowed “non-realist,” Don Cupitt puts it, since the world as we describe and understand it is always interpreted by human thought and codified in a human language, then there is really only our world, a world built and constituted by thought and language that is “radically outsideless.”16 Everything, including God, Cupitt says, is made of “symbols” and “signs.” There is also the sort of non-foundationalism that denies, or at least sharply qualifies, epistemological realism, the view that we can attain knowledge of a mind-independent reality, or what Linda Zagzebski calls “cognitive contact with reality.”17 For example, according to theological constructivists, like the late Gordon Kaufman and feminist theologian Sallie McFague, while reality exists independently of thought and language, our only way of (somehow) ordering ourselves to it is by forming conceptual and linguistic constructions – symbols and metaphors – of it. Thus, when it comes to thinking and speaking about divine reality, Kaufman says, “every image/concept of God is best understood as a creation of the human imagination in its search for symbols that will adequately orient human life.”18 And McFague claims (writing in a decidedly experiential-expressivist vein), “how language, any language, applies to God we do not know; what religious and theological language is at most is metaphorical forays attempting to express experiences of relating to God.”19 Finally, there are those non-foundationalists who reject or at least sharply qualify alethic realism, or the correspondence theory of truth, usually on the grounds that there is no way to step outside of our cognitive and linguistic frameworks in order to check and ensure that the requisite correspondence or equivalence holds between our beliefs and claims qua truth-bearers and external facts and features of reality qua truth-makers.20 As a result, these non-foundationalists typically embrace an epistemic account of truth, which, in Rauser’s words, “defines truth in terms of epistemic justification, with respect to either coherence or consensus,” and / or a pragmatic account of truth, according to which truth “is particularly useful or effective for achieving ends.”21 Kaufman, for example,

Whose theology? Which university?

17

offers a “pluralist / dialogical” account of truth (theological and otherwise) that seems to blend both epistemic and pragmatic elements. According to Kaufman, truth is not “a property of particular words, symbols, propositions, or texts” but rather “is a living reality that emerges from within and is a function of ongoing living conversation among a number of different voices.”22 For Kaufman, then, truth seems to be an intersubjective phenomenon that emerges through dialogue and presumably consensus (the epistemic element), but which also enables dialogue amongst a plurality of voices to proceed (the pragmatic element), even though ultimately “no one voice or formulation [in the dialogue] can possess or adequately express it.”23 Lindbeck’s account of truth also possesses an epistemic and pragmatic dimension, even while it aims to maintain at least a minimal commitment to correspondence. According to Lindbeck, there are two kinds of truth: truth as coherence and truth as correspondence. A theological belief or claim is intrasystematically true insofar as it coheres not simply with other beliefs or claims but with the whole context or pattern of Christian living, or the Christian “form of life.” (This is epistemic coherence, more broadly construed). A theological belief or claim is ontologically true insofar as it is “performed” and so constitutes an entire Christian way of being in the world, “which itself corresponds to the Most Important, the Ultimately Real.”24 Thus, it is only when a theological belief or claim actually informs and directs an authentic Christian life – and so helps the Christian realize a decidedly practical end – that it takes on propositional force, and its truth or falsity is exhibited within the life that the Christian leads. There are problems that afflict all of these non-foundationalist rejections and reformulations of reality, knowledge, and truth. Cupitt claims that we should reject metaphysical realism because we have no way of checking our perspectives on reality, whether worldly or divine, against reality itself. However, if we are limited to our own different perspectives on reality, then what epistemological basis do we have for making any absolute pronouncements about the objective constitution of reality – most notably, whether it exists independently of us or not? Just because our knowledge of reality is perspectival (and presumably no one would deny that), it does not follow that reality doesn’t exist independently of our knowledge of it. Again, how could we ever determine that – limited as we are to our own perspectives? Cupitt further claims that our modern (or perhaps better, postmodern) experience “is that there isn’t any objective, fixed, intelligible reality out there, such as may be replicated in our language and invoked to check our theories. We now live wholly inside our own history, our language, and the flux of cultural change.”25 But to what experience is he referring? And what about those of us who don’t have that experience? Why should we think that “there isn’t any objective, fixed, intelligible reality out there”? Theological constructivists, who reject or at least sharply attenuate epistemological realism, also face serious problems. Both Kaufman and McFague claim that our symbolic and metaphorical constructs do refer to reality.

18

Whose theology? Which university?

McFague says that “there is a reality to which our constructions refer, even though the only way we have of reaching it is by creating versions of it.”26 And, regarding those theological symbols that we construct in order to orient ourselves in life – presumably towards God qua “ultimate mystery” – Kaufman says, “[f]aith believes that they refer, but to what they refer remains in many respects mystery.”27 However, if theological activity, like all of our cognitive and linguistic activity, is constructed by us, then on what basis can we believe or claim that our constructions bear any positive cognitive or semantic relationship to divine reality? Kaufman says that we “reality-test” all of our imaginative constructs, even in the sciences, “by what they enable us to do, how they enable life to go forward.”28 But of course, an imaginative construct or symbol like “God” can have pragmatic power while lacking any referential power: it successfully can enable our lives to go forward without bearing any cognitive relation to a reality outside of the cognitive world, theological and otherwise, that we construct and inhabit. Similarly, McFague claims that in the realm of theology, as in any realm of intellectual inquiry, since we have no way of measuring a metaphorical construction against reality itself, the most we can do “is to ‘live within’ it, testing it for its disclosive power, its ability to address and cope with the most pressing issues of one’s day, its comprehensiveness and coherence, its potential for dealing with anomalies, and so forth.”29 But a theological metaphor that passes this test, and so proves to have even a high level of disclosive and adaptive power in our contemporary world, need not possess any referential power. So, for both Kaufman and McFague, whatever “faith” we have in the referential power of our constructed symbols and metaphors seems completely unjustified. Theological non-foundationalists who reject alethic realism face the daunting challenge of putting a coherent alternative in its place. On Kaufman’s view, truth emerges as a “living reality” amongst a plurality of voices engaged in dialogue. But surely, this means that truth as a “living reality” changes, and so becomes even less accessible (or understandable) the more voices enter the dialogue and consensus and convergence of belief shifts in any number of directions. Given his commitment to pluralism, Kaufman explicitly embraces truth’s fluidity and unpredictability, but by doing so, he evacuates truth of any meaning or substance, as something concrete at which meaningful, pluralistic dialogue can aim and which members of the dialogue reasonably can claim to know or possess. Unlike Kaufman, Lindbeck claims to embrace alethic realism, at least of a certain sort. But his account of truth also suffers from some crucial ambiguities. First, how is it that performing or enacting a certain theological belief or claim within a Christian context creates a correspondence between that belief or claim and the divine reality it purports to be about? Lindbeck simply gives no explanation for how ontological correspondence is created and consequently leaves it open to doubt whether this correspondence actually holds. Second, and more fundamentally, even if we grant that performance does indeed yield genuine correspondence (at least in the appropriate contexts), we still need to question

Whose theology? Which university?

19

the nature of the correspondence. A theological belief or claim can be true insofar it enables the Christian to live a certain kind of life, and so accomplish a distinctly pragmatic end, even though it fails to conform the Christian to the divine on any cognitive level. So what, then, does the correspondence of the Christian way of life (of which Christian beliefs and claims are a part) actually consist in? In what way does it positively orient the life of the Christian to God, rather than something else or nothing at all? Given these criticisms, it should not be difficult to see how embracing antirealist non-foundationalism (and so rejecting or at least sharply attenuating metaphysical realism, epistemological realism, and alethic realism), far from enabling Christian theology to escape the skepticism that afflicts classical foundationalism, only bogs down theology in skepticism even further. Rejecting metaphysical realism in theology may alleviate the initial anxiety of trying to bridge any gap between the mind and God, but it only gives rise to the deeper anxiety (and may even directly entail) that there really is no God outside of the mind to which theological beliefs and claims are answerable and on which they bear. It is no help, either, if theology embraces metaphysical realism but also rejects epistemological realism, and so dispenses whatever content it deems fit into theological beliefs and claims (qua symbols and metaphors) in the hope of retaining some of sort tether between itself and the divine. Symbols and metaphors that are solely constructed within the mind, whatever ability they possess to express our varied experiences and orient human life, just as well can subsist solely within the human mind without bearing any substantive cognitive or semantic relationship to any reality that exists external to the mind. Finally, once theology rejects alethic realism, and so ties truth to epistemic justification or pragmatic success, it loses any hope of claiming that true beliefs and claims about the divine can possess objective purport, or so are capable of directing the mind beyond the subjective horizon of human belief and practice to the divine itself. In sum: once theology embraces the anti-realism characteristic of non-foundationalism, then it ultimately will be forced to embrace the skeptical conclusion that its putative reasoning or discourse about divinity is devoid of specifically theo-logical meaning, purpose, and content, and so is not really theo-logical at all. This is bad for Christian theology, not only because it no longer can claim to produce even a modicum of knowledge about its proper subject matter, but also because it thereby loses its ability to make a distinct and important contribution to the secular university and the varied pursuit of real knowledge and real truth that can and should occur there. Why would the secular university include, let alone feature, a form of inquiry that can add nothing to – and may even work directly against – the wide-ranging and knowledge- and truth-seeking that it can and should seek to foster? Granted, I am still assuming that the secular university’s educative aims are essentially epistemic in nature, a claim that I will defend at length in chapter 3 of the book, building on some of the key claims that I have made so far. But for the moment, we still should see the reasonableness of claiming that any discipline that generates an eviscerating skepticism

20

Whose theology? Which university?

about its proper subject matter makes a strong case for being disallowed from participating in secular academic life – and really, the life of any academic institution that pursues and prizes real knowledge and truth. Thus, not only does Christian theology have a definitive reason to avoid falling into the skeptical pitfalls created by both classical foundationalism and anti-realist nonfoundationalism, but all other forms of intellectual inquiry, and even the secular university itself, have definitive reason to do so as well.

Theology as a realist intellectual discipline, or theology as knowledge So how can Christian theology avoid falling into these skeptical pitfalls, and so reasonably claim to be a knowledge- and truth-aimed (that is, reality-aimed) discipline capable of making a distinct and important contribution to the secular university’s diverse and deep knowledge- and truth-seeking? In this section, I articulate and begin to defend a traditional conception of theology as rooted in the divine, or as possessing a divine foundation. More specifically, according to its traditional self-understanding, theology is based in and centered upon the truth about the divine, as revealed by the divine. And it is by virtue of being based in and centered upon divine truth that theology is able to help its practitioners gain and grow in knowledge of divine truth as well as all other truth as related to divine truth. I therefore endorse what Rauser calls a “broadly realist” model of Christian theology wedded with a “moderate foundationalism”:30 theology as a form of study that habituates its practitioners in rational modes of knowledge- and truth-seeking based in and centered upon what Christians profess but cannot prove is God’s self-revelation within both the specific epistemic resources of the Christian faith and the broader created order.31 According to this model, God not only is metaphysically independent of human thought and language but also transcends all human thought and language. And yet, via an act of self-revelation, God has communicated the truth about himself within human thought and language. In other words, like any good pedagogue, God has accommodated himself to human thought and language (including human thought and language about God’s world) without exhausting his transcendent reality within human thought and language, so that, as an epistemologically realist enterprise, theology can use human thought and language in order to reason or discourse truthfully about God, and thereby attain as well as further real knowledge of God. Thus, although theology (and those who practice it) cannot ensure that its reasoning or discourse corresponds to God’s own reality, God can do so. The more theology as an alethically realist discipline conforms its reasoning or discourse to the revealed truth about God, the more God is able to conform theological reasoning or discourse to himself, and so create a real correspondence between theological conceptions and claims qua truth-bearers and God himself qua truth-maker, or the Truth itself. This broadly realist model of Christian theology fits most closely, I think, with the model of theological study that theologians, following the rule of

Whose theology? Which university?

21

“faith seeking understanding,” have engaged in throughout the ages. But it also is the form of theological study that I think anyone interested in pursuing and ideally attaining theological knowledge and truth should engage in, whether they hold specifically Christian beliefs or not. I will discuss and defend this particular claim at more length in the chapter that follows, after I have summarized and analyzed the current debate about the place and nature of theological study in the secular university. Still, it is worth introducing here the larger intellectual and educational principle that informs my argumentative work both in that part of the book and in this part of the book, in which I am making an initial case for including Christian theology in the secular university. Just as gaining and growing in knowledge of a given subject matter requires being instructed or apprenticed by those who already have knowledge of that subject matter, so, from a Christian perspective, gaining and furthering knowledge of the divine requires being instructed or apprenticed by the divine, engaging in reasoning or discourse about the divine that is governed and guided by the divine, and specifically those epistemic authorities that Christians claim have been provided by the divine. Theological study also includes being instructed or apprenticed by those theologians qua epistemic authorities whose reasoning or discourse is informed and guided by the divine, and who therefore can help others gain and grow in their knowledge of the divine. Christian or not, then, students of theology can learn these ways of reasoning or discoursing about the divine, and thereby pursue knowledge of the divine in the same manner that they would pursue knowledge of any other subject matter. That, then, is where we are headed. But first, we need to reflect further on the claim that Christian theology has a divine foundation, on which it bases its rational inquiry concerning the divine and all other things as related to the divine. Here, I am going to enlist the help of two powerful and influential theologians, or epistemic authorities within the Christian tradition: thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas and twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth. Aquinas identifies theology, or what he also calls sacra doctrina (divine teaching), with an Aristotelian science: an ordered body of knowledge inferentially derived from a set of indemonstrable, “first” principles, the illuminating sources and causes of knowledge within a given subject matter. Like the other sciences, theology has its own principles: the revealed scriptural and creedal truths of the Christian faith. Unlike the principles of other sciences, however, theology’s principles cannot be reached or discovered through pure intellectual inquiry. Nor are they “known in themselves” (per se nota) by us. Instead, like those scientific principles that the “lower” sciences (like music) borrow from “higher” ones (like mathematics), theology’s principles derive from “a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed.”32 The theologian, in turn, accepts these principles on divine authority and proceeds to engage in rational inquiry on their basis, drawing further, related theological conclusions and thereby expanding and enriching his knowledge of the truth about God that they provide. Barth also identifies Christian theology as a science: “As a theological discipline dogmatics is the scientific self-examination of the Christian Church with

22

Whose theology? Which university?

respect to the content of its distinctive talk about God.”33 Like all sciences, then (as Barth understands what a science is), theology attempts to comprehend, exposit, investigate, and instruct within the parameters set by its subject matter.34 But of course, theology’s subject matter is unique: it is the Christian Church, and specifically “the content of proclamation in the Christian Church,” or the Christian community’s proclamation of “the Word spoken by God” in the person of Jesus Christ.35 Moreover, while theology engages in the chief scientific exercise of critical self-examination it does so using the very rule or measure that its proclamation provides. As the producer of theology, the Church “puts to itself the question of truth, i.e., it measures its action, its talk about God, against its being as the Church”36 in order to ensure that the Church’s distinctive talk about God agrees or corresponds with the being of the Church, “namely, Jesus Christ, God in His gracious revealing and reconciling address to man.”37 In particular, the Church measures its God-talk, and thereby ensures the truthfulness of its God-talk, using the standard that the Bible, as “the evidence of God’s self-evidence,” or self-revelation in Christ, provides.38 “Should a dogmatics lose sight of this standard,” Barth writes, “it would be an irrelevant dogmatics.”39 Put more pointedly, Christian theology’s claim to be a scientific, truth-aimed discipline faithful to God’s self-revelation in Christ would be entirely undermined. While Aquinas and Barth may not be commending precisely the same view of Christian theology, both recognize that theology has a divine foundation: it is a science derived from and directed on the Christian God. In Aquinas’s case, theology is rooted in revealed principles or truths about God, expressed propositionally in Christian Scripture and creeds; in Barth’s case, it is rooted in the divine reality to which Christian Scripture and the creeds witness: God in Jesus Christ, who is God’s “gracious revealing and reconciling address to man.”40 And it is because theology has a basis in God – what Aquinas calls the science of God that God and those with God in heaven possess, and what Barth calls the “self-evidence” of the Word God to which the written Word of God attests – that it is able to think and speak truly about God, using the very principles and evidence that God has provided as both an objective source and guide for the intellectual inquiry in which it engages. Thus, theology can claim for itself a realist orientation, and so claim to be a genuinely knowledge- and truth-aimed discipline, because it grounds its inquiry in objective rather than subjective reality, or the objective realm of divine truth made known by God rather than exclusively subjective, human attempts to know God or relate to God. Now, especially to us moderns, this move to ground Christian theology in divine truth and reality can seem flatly unjustified. To start, we might question what epistemic right theology in particular has to claim for itself a divine origin and aim, since none of us – especially in a religiously and theologically pluralistic world – can claim to be in an epistemic position to determine whether it has a divine origin and aim or not. In other words, there simply seems to be no way to know for sure whether Christian theology has a divine origin and aim or not. Moreover, classical foundationalism has cast a long shadow, and so

Whose theology? Which university?

23

we might continue to be especially suspicious of theology’s self-professed inability to ground its claim to possess a divine origin and aim in epistemic certitudes. Add to this modernity’s (and postmodernity’s) further skepticism about the possibility of attaining transcendent knowledge and truth, and it might very well seem that we must admit that we are the least epistemically certain about theology’s claim to possess a divine origin and aim. However, Christian theology traditionally has not claimed to base its inquiry on epistemic or subjective certainty, but instead on what we might call metaphysical or objective certainty: the reality of God and God’s veridical teaching to humankind in Christian revelation. In this sense, Aquinas says boldly, the certainty that the science of theology possesses actually surpasses the certainty that the other sciences possess: while they “derive their certitude from the natural light of human reason, which can err; [theology] derives its certitude from the light of the divine knowledge, which cannot be misled.”41 Consequently, while Aquinas readily admits that it is possible for us to doubt what theology proclaims to be true, he denies that such truth deserves to be doubted – or, in his words, that such truth is somehow uncertain “in itself,” according to its own nature. “Hence the fact that some happen to doubt about articles of faith is not due to the uncertain nature of the truths,” Aquinas writes, “but to the weakness of human intelligence; yet the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.”42 Again, to the modern mind, this may seem utterly puzzling, if not straightforwardly contradictory, because Aquinas in effect subverts the dominant modern move to put the mind of the subject first and external reality, which is always filtered through the perspective of the subject’s mind, second. Instead, Aquinas grounds knowing in being, since being not only serves as the object of knowledge but also that which determines knowledge and makes it possible in the first place. Similarly, Barth, who explicitly aligns himself with the Anselmian tradition of “faith seeking understanding,” challenges modern thought on two counts.43 First, modern thought wrongly puts knowing before being, thereby making epistemology itself, in the words of Barth commentator Christoph Schwöbel, “the gateway to the real.”44 Second, it wrongly puts possibility before actuality, locating the very possibility of knowledge within the subject rather than the world or broader reality that the subject is aiming to know. Instead, as Schwöbel points out, in direct opposition to the modern view, and in full alignment with the premodern view, Barth argues both that “the being of God must be understood as the ground for knowledge of God” and that “the actuality of the Word of God determines the possibility of theology.”45 And this, Barth argues for good reason: without God governing and guiding its attempt to know God, not only will Christian theology fail to escape the confines of its own subjectivity in its efforts to know God, but the very possibility of knowing God is undermined from the start. While Barth makes this claim with regards to “revealed” (or “dogmatic”) theology, with Aquinas, I think that it is also equally possible to make it with

24

Whose theology? Which university?

regards to “natural” theology, or the traditional theological project of inquiring into and (ideally) gaining knowledge of the divine based on broader epistemic starting points furnished by reason and the senses.46 On one level, to be sure, natural theology is not directly dependent on divine revelation, or specifically revealed principles and sources, since it offers a wider epistemic base for inquiring into the existence and nature of the divine. However, on a metaphysical level, natural theology does remain completely dependent on divine revelation: it is only because God, as creator of the world, has revealed himself in the world, and given human beings a mind in order to know the world (and himself), that the world offers a legitimate epistemic basis for thinking and speaking truly about God. As Kenneth Surin puts it, “the language of the world can speak the truth about God precisely because it is the language of the world created by God…. The language of the world can speak about God only because this language comes – via God’s work of creation – from the being of God.”47 Thus, it is because God has established an ontological relationship with his creation – including the human creature – and creation, however dimly, expresses the very being of God, that natural theology, like revealed theology, can afford us a real perspective on God, rather than just a larger perspective on the world, or, even more narrowly, human experience of the world. Of course, that natural theology, like revealed theology, has a divine origin and aim is an epistemic principle or commitment from which theological inquiry proceeds, not a conclusion that such inquiry can reach. In contemporary philosophical parlance, the belief that theology professes about its divine origin and aim is epistemically basic – it lies at the foundation of theology’s epistemic enterprise, along with all other specifically Christian beliefs that theology claims that it has received from the divine. Christian theology cannot, then, prove that those beliefs derive from the divine, or that those who hold them to be true do so on account of the divine (divine authority or testimony). But again, as I argued above, theology should not be required to do so either. There are, in fact, a legion of beliefs that we readily recognize not only to be basic but also properly basic – reasonably and responsibly held even in the absence of propositional argument or evidence – and while there also may be some substantial disagreement about whether Christian beliefs qualify as properly basic, there is no singular epistemic vantage point to which we can ascend in order to determine definitively whether they are properly basic or not. In principle, then, there is nothing irrational about Christian theology, like any other intellectual discipline or form of inquiry, relying on what it takes as properly basic in order to carry out its reasoning or discourse about its subject matter successfully. And while theology certainly does bear the epistemic responsibility of reasoning on behalf of these beliefs using all of the rational resources at its disposal, fulfilling this epistemic responsibility is constitutive of the larger reasoning or discourse about the divine that theology engages in, not an epistemic bar that theology – or any other discipline for that matter – must cross or hurdle in order to gain the right to engage in such reasoning or discourse.

Whose theology? Which university?

25

This also means that Christian theology, like other intellectual disciplines, cannot show how its basic beliefs, and the larger perspective on reality that they inform, match up with or correspond with reality – in theology’s case, divine reality. And yet, like any other discipline, theology should not therefore shrink back from claiming that the perspective on reality that it develops and defends using rational inquiry also affords genuine epistemic insight into the nature of reality. Against what radical postmodern thinkers like Cupitt affirm, we cannot assume that attaining knowledge of the real (or objectivity in thought) requires transcending the perspectives we take on the real precisely in order to check or verify whether those perspectives accurately represent the real. This falsely assumes that we already are trapped within the various perspectives that we inhabit, or our human subjectivity more broadly, and hence unable to determine whether these systems are veridical or not. If, however, reality – whether worldly or divine – is granted primary epistemic authority, and hence the ability to inform and shape our perspectives on it, we eliminate any need to discover for ourselves, in some fruitless quest for absolute certainty, whether these perspectives disclose reality to us or not. We can locate the cognitive vantage point we need in order to gain knowledge of reality within the very perspectives we inhabit, rather than some wholly inaccessible cognitive vantage point wholly outside those perspectives that alone can afford knowledge of reality “as it is.” Surely, too, insofar as Christian theology aspires to offer a veridical perspective on not just divine reality but also all other dimensions of reality as they exist in relation to the divine, then it needs to address our distinctly modern (and postmodern) experience of the world, and examine itself and the truth it proclaims particularly in the light of whatever knowledge and truth that experience affords us. Put another way: if theology is, in fact, a knowledge- and truth-aimed discipline (as I am claiming that it is), then it needs to positively engage genuine advances in knowledge- and truth-seeking, which occur in other areas of intellectual inquiry like modern science. However, making theology primarily accountable to human experience, broadly construed, which many modern theologians in particular have done, undermines rather than enhances theology’s ability to think and speak truly about the divine and the world, and human persons as they truly exist in relation to the divine. Without a firm anchoring in divine truth, especially as revealed to us by God, theology lacks any critical framework for evaluating human experience, and thus determining when and how it should change in the light of experience – if it should change at all – in order to achieve a surer, clearer self-understanding and understanding of the truth about the divine that it professes. In other words, unless theology has a definitive anchoring in divine truth, which does not change, then what theology thinks and says about the divine, based on what we human beings continually experience, is always subject to change, and every attempt to think and speak about the divine becomes open to thoroughgoing reinterpretation and even total dissolution. The deeper worry here is that in the absence of any accountability to the divine, then Christian theology in effect can think and speak about the divine

26

Whose theology? Which university?

however it wishes so long as it serves distinctly human interests and needs. Not only, then, does theology lose any ability to track the real truth about the divine, but as a result it actually ends up producing distorted and even patently false conceptions of the divine – the very epistemic and practical end which theology, by fully opening itself to ongoing revision in the light of human experience, was aiming to avoid. Theologians like Kaufman and McFague (and before them, Tillich) claim to stand diametrically opposed to idolatry in theology, by effectively reducing theological doctrines to constructed metaphors and symbols imbued primarily with expressive and pragmatic (life-orienting) rather than reality-depicting value. It is therefore never possible to attain knowledge of God (“whatever it might be,” says Kaufman) employing decidedly human constructs of God – which, like experience and life itself, can grow, change, and even die.48 However, what this means is that we are still ultimately in charge of the theological enterprise, not God, who remains forever beyond the scope of that enterprise, and who does not (or cannot?) positively govern and guide the varying, winding constructive forays that it takes. Completely untethered to the divine, theology goes wherever we decide it will go, ultimately answerable only to ourselves. Idolatry in theology – or constructing misleading and even patently false conceptions of the divine – seems not just possible but also inevitable. It is true that realist Christian theology, as I have described it, also needs to be wary of becoming idolatrous. In particular, realist theology needs to be wary of becoming a form of what conservative postmodern philosophers and theologians (following Martin Heidegger) call “onto-theology.” Onto-theology treats God as a reified object of human understanding, solicited by philosophy (but arguably also theology) to underpin its autonomous project of comprehending “being” in its totality as well as gaining “human mastery of the real.”49 The worry here is that by locating divine truth within theological principles or doctrines, and hence an enduring conceptual structure that we subsequently can rationally investigate, we divest God, or at least the truth about God, of any mystery: so like constructivist theology, realist theology makes God fully accessible to and manipulable by our human conceptual powers. Or, in Merold Westphal’s words, it gives in to the “temptation to have God at our disposal, conceptually speaking.”50 In response, we must remind ourselves that according to a realist model of Christian theology, God has put himself at our disposal, conceptually speaking, within revealed sources like Scripture and those theological principles or doctrines that theologians traditionally have used in order to further express and order the revealed truth about God found in those sources. Again, this does not mean that God has put himself fully at our disposal, conceptually speaking. What God reveals about himself always remains a mystery, which is why theology must also engage in reasoning or discourse about what God is not, or how God differs fundamentally from everything else that exists, if it is going to be faithful in its reasoning or discourse to who God really is. However even affirming theology’s “negative” or “apophatic” character does not require

Whose theology? Which university?

27

evacuating theological reasoning or discourse of objective (theo-logical) cognitive and semantic content – or, with Lindbeck (and those following in his wake), reconfiguring Christian doctrine so that it aims to provide direction for how to live life in relation to the divine, instead of truthful descriptions of the divine (including what the divine is not) on a specifically ontological level.51 Therefore, while the realist theological enterprise is not immune to error, or invulnerable to veering off into idolatry, it is not idolatrous through and through, and in fact is decidedly non-idolatrous insofar as it remains faithful to God’s necessarily non-idolatrous self-revelation in theology’s specific doctrinal structure and, even more broadly, the world as God’s creation. But where does truth within Christian theology actually lie? More specifically, how is it possible to determine which lines of theological inquiry are genuinely knowledge- and truth-oriented and which are not? From a skeptical standpoint, it may seem as if sorting out veridical from non-veridical (especially idolatrous) theological inquiry simply is not possible. Peter Byrne, for example, argues “that God has been notably lax in establishing some cast-iron, external signs for distinguishing between the fruitful, authentic lines of theological enquiry from those which are not. God could make the truth about the divine more manifest, but God chooses not to.”52 In response, I argue that the primary reason that it is difficult (though not impossible) to distinguish authentic from inauthentic theological inquiry is not because divine truth is inscrutable or hidden, but rather because even as directly manifest by the divine it remains a profound mystery, and so always transcends what the finite human mind fully can grasp. As a result, we should expect even the best human attempts to attain, and then gain further insight into, the nature of divine truth to be characterized by at least some level of uncertainty, conjecture, and even error. And, as in any discipline where the truth is difficult to discern clearly and fully, we should expect there to be significant disagreement amongst theologians about how to attain and understand divine truth correctly. Beyond this, there is nothing mysterious about how Christian theologians pursuing genuine knowledge of divine truth sort out who is tracking that truth successfully and who is not. Theologians who offer strong reasons and arguments for their positions, which more effectively clarify and bolster what Christians claim to be the revealed truth about God, have a stronger case for claiming to track divine truth successfully than those who offer weaker reasons and arguments for their positions. And theologians sift through which reasons and arguments are better and worse in the context of intramural theological and even wider academic discussion and debate. Thus, while there may be no “cast-iron, external signs” for definitively determining which theological reasons and arguments are conducive for obtaining and furthering theological knowledge, this does not mean there are no truth-conducive reasons and arguments within theology to be found. As I will continue to argue, it is precisely by engaging in collective theological inquiry, even within the secular university, that theologians and those who study with theologians are able to uncover which theological pathways lead to genuine theological knowledge and which do not.

28

Whose theology? Which university?

As I conclude this half of the chapter, and begin to transition into the argumentative work that I will be doing in the second half of the chapter, I need to make two important claims. First, a reminder: the argument that I have made here on behalf of a broadly realist account of Christian theology is meant to liberate theological study, not to restrict it, so that those who engage it are able to gain knowledge of theology’s proper, divine subject matter. Admittedly, there are many other ways of doing theology (well beyond what I have discussed here), and I am sure that those theologians who are committed to either a classically foundationalist epistemology or, on the other hand, an anti-realist, non-foundationalist epistemology (in whole or in part) will argue that it is important to continue to do theology in their particular, chosen epistemological vein. To be clear, none of what I have argued here should suggest that theologies that link themselves with either of these epistemologies lack any rational merit, and so have nothing to contribute to genuine theological knowledge- and truthseeking. And so, my aim here is not to banish them entirely from theological study. My main goal, instead, is to help carve out what I think is the best epistemic pathway for theology to take insofar as it aspires to attain and further real knowledge of the divine, and so not ultimately dead-end in skepticism concerning the divine. As a result, it behooves theologians who want to defend theology’s status as a knowledge- and truth-aimed discipline – worthy of study inside or outside the secular university – to adopt the broadly realist model of theological study that I have proposed and defended. Second, there is clearly much work that I need to do in order to defend the claim that Christian theology, of the sort that I have described and advocated, belongs in the secular university. Part of this work entails showing in more detail how theology can make a positive and enduring contribution to the liberal learning that I think can and should go on within the secular university, and how liberal learners within the secular university can engage in robust theological study without possessing specifically Christian theological commitments. But before I engage in these very important tasks, I first need to reflect on the secular university itself, and discuss why a “secular” but not “secularist” university can and should accommodate theological study of the sort that I have been discussing and defending. It is to that task that I turn next.

Secularism, secularity, and the secular university Any argument for including Christian theology in the secular university requires reflecting on what makes the secular university “secular.” As I will go on to show, there are, in fact, different ways of conceiving of the secular university, since there are different ways of conceiving of or defining the “secular.” If we choose to define the “secular” more narrowly, as describing an anti- or nonreligious orientation that seeks to restrict or replace the place and role of religious belief and expression within social, political, and intellectual life, then the secular university clearly will be inhospitable to theological study. However, if we define the “secular” more broadly, as denoting an orientation that

Whose theology? Which university?

29

accommodates a plurality of religious and non-religious perspectives on social, political, and intellectual matters, then the secular university can and even should accommodate theological study, even of the traditional sort I have been discussing and defending. In what follows, then, I first discuss some different and competing conceptions of the “secular,” and then, in the final section of the chapter, make a case for adopting the more inclusive concept of the “secular” that I just identified: a concept that I think can and should be used to define secular academic life. Let’s begin by reflecting on the narrow conception of the “secular”: what I will call “secularism,” making those who subscribe to it “secularists.” According to Jeffrey Stout, “[s]ecularism comes in many forms, but what they all have in common is the aim of minimizing the influence of religion as such. Secularism comes into focus only when we notice that it takes religion, rather than some particular religion or type of religion, to be the problem.”53 For instance, secularists like “new atheist” Sam Harris view religion as inherently irrational and intolerant, so that even religious moderates who are otherwise not prone to conflict or violence are nonetheless “in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed.”54 Hence, from Harris’s perspective, secularists not only need to stop tolerating the intolerant within religion but also religion (in any form) itself. The late Richard Rorty, who Stout calls a “democratic secularist,”55 argues that religion should be kept out of public life generally because it is an attempt “to make one’s own private way of giving meaning to one’s own life – a way which romanticizes one’s relation to something starkly and magnificently nonhuman, something Ultimately True and Real – obligatory for the general public.”56 Like Harris, then, Rorty thinks that religion, particularly in its fundamentalist form, is coercive and even destructive: religious fundamentalists find “various … ways of making their neighbours miserable for the greater glory of God.”57 And while religion, in its more moderate or benign form, is not necessarily coercive or destructive, it still “needs to be privatized [since] in political discussion with those outside the relevant religious community, it is a conversation-stopper.”58 Here, Rorty claims that religion is pragmatically counterproductive: religious believers thwart social and political conversation on issues of shared concern by introducing premises (such as “abortion is against the will of God”) and citing sources (such as the Bible) which carry no traction for others trying to further such a conversation. Speaking religiously in the public square “is far more likely to end a conversation than to start an argument,” he claims.59 Thus, if democratic discourse is going to proceed, all citizens need to learn to enter the public square and offer arguments consisting of premises held in common. In sum, then, on Rorty’s view, the “Jeffersonian compromise,” itself the product of “the central secularizing message of the Enlightenment,” allows the private practice of religion in a pluralistic society but simply insists – and rightly so, he thinks – that such practice should not be allowed to influence public, democratic discourse and debate.60

30

Whose theology? Which university?

Rorty’s secularist attitude towards religion therefore remains largely negative: in fact, he fully admits that “the best society would be one in which political action conducted in the name of religious belief is treated as a ladder up which our ancestors climbed, but one that now should be thrown away.”61 But he also thinks that once religion (and specifically organized religion) has been abandoned, or at least completely privatized, “that gap will be filled, we like to think, by a [sic] increased sense of participation in the advance of humanity – theists and atheists together, shoulder to shoulder – toward the fulfillment of social ideals.”62 Taken more broadly, then, secularism can include and even be defined by a positive vision that its adherents claim should replace the religious vision that has predominated and continues to predominate in human society, at least in certain parts of the West (like the U.S.). Philip Kitcher, for example, claims that secularism – or the view “that there are no supernatural entities” of any sort (deities, divinities, spirits, and other supernatural forces) – is not “a merely negative doctrine” but actually, as a properly formulated “secular humanism,” can “replace the functional aspects of traditional religions.”63 In fact, Kitcher thinks that the central challenge for secularism is to “make good the losses it entails,” and in particular the vital social functions that religion plays in the lives of so many.64 In defense of secularism, he writes, “Thoroughly secular societies can have community structures that enable people to enter into sympathetic relations with one another, to achieve solidarity with their fellows, to exchange views about topics that matter most to them, to raise questions about what should be done, and to work together toward goals that have been collectively determined.”65 Kitcher further claims that secularism does not entirely remove value or purpose from the universe: even if ethics is “something we make,” an evolved “form of social technology,”66 it enables us to meet fundamental human interests, needs, and desires – and even if there is no divinely infused purpose within the universe, we can give our lives purpose and meaning “by defining for [ourselves] what matters most, shaping [our] lives around projects and relationships.”67 Finally, Kitcher claims that secularists can live lives characterized by what Charles Taylor calls “fullness”: they too can feel a “connection to something far vaster” than themselves – the natural world and other human beings – and seek to cultivate that feeling so that it can have a more regular and enduring positive effect on their lives.68 So as Kitcher describes it, secularism is not simply a position on the place and role of religion in public life: taken more broadly, it constitutes an entire worldview, or what Paul Cliteur calls an “outlook” that consists of its own philosophical, especially metaphysical and moral commitments.69 Kitcher’s outlook, while not straightforwardly atheistic, is still avowedly naturalistic: he not only doubts that there are supernatural beings but also that there are any “nebulous entities and processes” such as “nonnatural properties, faculties of moral perception or ethical intuition, commands of pure practical reason and the like.”70 Cliteur makes atheism, or what he prefers to call “non-theism” – “the view of someone who rejects the theistic worldview and proclaims to do

Whose theology? Which university?

31

this on good grounds” – a central tenet of the secular outlook, albeit as a private doctrine or personal conviction.71 But he also associates several other doctrines with the secular outlook, which he claims “have an indispensable public function in contemporary society”:72 freethought, manifest as both religious criticism and freedom of expression, and moral as well as political secularism (that is, moral and political autonomy). As a worldview or outlook, then, “secularism” is something that some persons (or as the case may be, some institutions or states) adopt, but not something that everyone adopts; there are secularists and non-secularists, just as there are theists and non-theists. But are we free to be “secular” or “non-secular”? Are these positions or perspectives on the world that we can take up or refuse to take up (or at least possess or fail to possess)? Charles Taylor has made an extensive historical and philosophical argument in defense of the claim that we in the West now all live in a “secular age,” or an age in which he says belief in God is no longer “unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic,” but rather “is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.”73 Thus, for Taylor, “secular” – or perhaps better, “secularity” – does not refer to any stance one might take towards religion, or life and society more generally. Instead, it “is a matter of the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place.”74 In this sense, we also could think of secularity as a condition that all of us (living in the modern West) experience. We all recognize that belief in God, which in a former age was “unchallenged and indeed unproblematic,” is now, even if many of us still choose to believe in God, “one option among others” (and that as a result, many have abandoned belief in God or chosen alternative forms of belief, religious and otherwise). This doesn’t mean that all of us are “secular,” but that “secular” (whether we choose to be “secularist” or not) defines the overarching context or milieu in which we all live. While I won’t rehearse all of the details that go into the “master narrative” that Taylor tells about how the West became secular (nor do I need to, for the purposes of what I am arguing here), I will highlight certain aspects of the narrative that will help us think more deeply about the nature of “secularity” and the “secular.”75 Originally, Taylor says, the “secular” arose as a category within Latin Christendom: it denoted profane time as contrasted with sacred time to which certain times, places, persons, institutions and actions were assigned. But with the onset of modernity, the profane or secular was no longer viewed as part of the same temporal order as the sacred, but instead was viewed as something entirely distinct from and even opposed to the sacred. “[T]he secular was, in its new sense, opposed to any claim made in the name of something transcendent of this world and its interests.”76 Consequently, while in the premodern world it was effectively impossible to view the lower realm, the everyday world, as independent from the higher realm and the higher beings or spirits that constituted that realm, as the Western world moved through the Reformation and farther into modernity, it became increasingly possible to view the profane or the secular as a completely independent and therefore self-sufficient order.

32

Whose theology? Which university?

Consequently, as Taylor reads the story of the rise of the “secular” within the modern West, for a secular climate to come about, “[f]irst, there had to develop a culture that marks a clear distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’, and second, it had to come to seem possible to live entirely within the natural.”77 The first condition came about as a result of a deliberate project of reform within Christianity, which occurred along with the twin vectors of personal commitment (a drive towards personalized religion) and disenchantment (the repression of the sacramental or “magical” elements in religion, such as commerce with the higher world of spiritual beings, that were central to religious practice in the premodern world). The second condition – a possibility unthinkable in the premodern world – came about inadvertently as a result of this program of religious, and along with it, social reform. As a result, there arose within the modern West “the possibility of living within a purely immanent order; that is, the possibility of really conceiving of, or imagining, ourselves within such an order, one that could be accounted for on its own terms, which thus leaves belief in the transcendent as a kind of ‘optional extra’ – something it had never been before in any human society.”78 Once again, the dominant feature of Taylor’s secular age: belief in God or the transcendent remains one option among many, and more than that – given the live possibility of conceiving of ourselves as living within a wholly immanent, natural order – one contested option among many. It goes well beyond the scope of this chapter, or this book, to engage fully the historical and philosophical account that Taylor gives us for how the Western world became secular (or was secularized). However, I do think that his account poses a significant alternative and challenge to accounts that make the onset of secularity in the modern West simply a matter of finally abandoning the religion that we once had (what Taylor calls “subtraction stories” of secularization), especially as we become more modern (as the now-embattled “secularization thesis” in sociology had predicted).79 In particular, what I find most illuminating is Taylor’s claim about where, as a result of his story of secularization, we stand now, as the inhabitants of a secular age. We now all live, Taylor says, within an “immanent frame,” that is, “cosmic, social, and ethical orders which can be fully explained in their own terms and don’t need to be conceived as dependent on anything outside, on the ‘supernatural’ or the ‘transcendent’.”80 However, Taylor also says that the immanent frame, while “common to all of us in the modern West,” is not “closed” for all of us.81 It remains possible to “live it as open to something beyond,” just as it is possible to live it as closed to something beyond us.82 The way Taylor puts it, the immanent frame can be “spun” in either direction, and the “spin” of closure actually can seem rationally obvious or necessary when in fact it is not. In A Secular Age, Taylor discusses four ways of pushing the immanent frame towards complete closure. According to the first account, or “closed world structure” (“CWS”), modern science has shown that there is no God, and therefore established naturalism or materialism as the only viable intellectual worldview. According to a second, “death of God,” account (which Taylor

Whose theology? Which university?

33

deems a subtraction story), there is no longer any need for belief in God – and in fact, a positive need to abandon the illusion of God – because our modern moral and political lives are now entirely focused around attaining this-worldly (i.e., human) goods and ends. The third account offers a powerful moral picture of ourselves as free, equal individuals who exist in independent moral and political spaces, able to secure mutual benefit for ourselves without any need of traditional religion or God. The final account says that we human beings have courageously wrested authority from God, or abandoned the illusion that human norms and values have a transcendent basis and justification, and grounded those norms and values instead in our own authority. We are the sole authority in a Godless universe. Now, Taylor claims that what gives these closed interpretations of the immanent frame – what I think of as “secularist” interpretations of the “secular” – their purchase and power is not rational argument. For example, it by no means follows by way of reason or argument that since science has experienced unparalleled epistemological success in giving us knowledge of the material world, that on an ontic level the material world is all that there is (as powerful as an ontological story materialism seems to many within the secular world). Instead, “it is only within some understanding of agency, in which disengaged scientific enquiry is woven into a story of courageous adulthood, to be attained through a renunciation of the more ‘childish’ comforts of meaning and beatitude, that the death of God story appears obvious.”83 In fact, Taylor says that all of the closed world structures he discusses “are in a sense variants on a narrative of coming of age, moving from a childlike to an adult consciousness.”84 So insofar as we are captivated by the modern picture of human beings (or the world itself) as come-of-age, we will find the overall account of a closed immanent frame compelling. Strip away the coming-of-age story, however, and what we discover instead is that these closed interpretations of the immanent frame “function as unchallenged axioms … often grounded on illegitimate naturalizations of what are in fact profound cultural mutations, and in general survive largely because they end up escaping examination in the climate in which they are taken as the undeniable framework for any argument.”85 Therefore, we may live in a secular age, and operate within an immanent frame, but the claim or presumption that the immanent frame is entirely closed off to transcendence is decidedly not a feature or requirement of secularity itself. At this point, we have covered enough ground (though of course, not all of the ground that we could cover) in thinking about secularism and secularity to begin to think about what makes the secular university “secular,” and more pointedly, in what ways the secular university should be “secular.” To start, what would a “secularist” university look like, and what reasons are there for making (or, as some might argue, keeping) the secular university “secularist”? Clearly, it is difficult if not impossible (at least in those nations that endorse and protect religious liberty) for the secular university to adopt a militant secularism: one that is explicitly intolerant of religion and actively seeks to minimize if not also entirely eradicate religious expression and practice within

34

Whose theology? Which university?

its walls, or all of the dimensions of secular university life. It also seems impossible for the secular university, so long as it at least permits (but perhaps does not encourage) religious expression and practice within its walls, to officially adopt atheism or naturalism as explicit frameworks in which it conducts all of its intellectual inquiry and carries out all of its educational programs. Of course, the secular university could adopt atheism or naturalism as its official outlook, which in turn would govern and guide the whole of its intellectual life, but then the secular university in effect would become sectarian. In other words, in order to carry out all of its work from an explicitly atheistic or naturalistic perspective, the secular university would have to adopt an official charter and creed that mirrors the explicitly religious or theological charters and creeds that sectarian colleges, universities, and divinity schools adopt, thereby differing from these latter institutions in degree but not in kind. But what if the secular university became (or remained) “secularist” in a broader sense? Following Cliteur’s model, the secular university could keep its commitment to non-theism (or atheism, or naturalism) private, and not part of its public intellectual and educational enterprise. Or, perhaps it could endorse non-theism only insofar as it supports non-theistic intellectual and educational enterprises, and ensures that those enterprises remain intact and effective, without also removing its support of other, explicitly religious intellectual and educational enterprises, so long as these enterprises don’t interfere with the secular university’s broader, non-religious educational aims (like providing a liberal academic course of study in which all of citizens, regardless of religious conviction, can participate). Publicly, the secular university would promote only those elements of secularism that it conceives to be necessary to carry out its educational program in full: freethought, freedom of expression, and moral as well as political secularism. The secular university then would only target and seek to remove those intolerant elements of religious expression and practice that it deems to be a threat to the preeminent secular values of freethought and freedom of expression – which for Cliteur include “free discussion,” or the pursuit and establishment of truth “by a painful process of discovery,” rather than the mere dogmatic assertion of truth.86 The “secularist” university also could actively pursue a program of moral and political education free of the influence (or in more extreme forms, coercive effect) of religion: that is, a purely secular ethics that presumably anybody in the secular university could endorse. Following Kitcher, it could encourage all of its citizenry, whatever private religious or non-religious convictions they possess, “to enter into sympathetic relations with one another, to achieve solidarity with their fellows, to exchange views about topics that matter most to them, to raise questions about what should be done, and to work together toward goals that have been collectively determined.”87 Part of this collective task even could involve pursuing a secular version of “fullness,” or the sorts of activities and purposes – now understood as those held in common – that in Taylor’s words make life “fuller, richer, deeper, more worth while, more admirable, more what it should be.”88

Whose theology? Which university?

35

Some important questions arise, here, though, which I soon will address in more detail: on what grounds can the secular university promote Cliteur’s “secular outlook” and Kitcher’s “secular humanism” without still actively suppressing the very religious voices it is supposed to tolerate? More than that, why would the secular university want to suppress these voices, especially insofar as they may be needed to help the secular university carry out its intellectual and more broadly educational (namely, moral) projects and pursuits successfully? Rorty, on behalf of secularism, offers one important answer, particularly to this latter question: it is necessary to privatize religious belief in secular academic life, just as in political life, since to “those outside the relevant religious community” within the secular university “it is a conversation-stopper.”89 Were the secular university not to require its citizenry to keep their religious commitments private, and pursue only those intellectual projects and pursuits held in common, then it would stymie the discussion and debate needed to carry out those projects and pursuits successfully. In fact, a Rortian could argue that the secular university needs to be “secularist” in precisely this regard. Specifically religious arguments constituted by specifically religious premises – and beyond that, courses of study with specifically religious content and direction – will carry traction for those who inhabit the relevant religious community, but they will carry no traction whatsoever with those who inhabit other religious or non-religious communities. Consequently, religious believers making religious arguments will do nothing to help the secular university carry out its larger intellectual and educational tasks – and in fact, they may derail the secular university’s intellectual and educational mission entirely by generating unnecessary confusion and even conflict in the peaceable intellectual forums that the secular university aims to create and sustain. It is much better, then (and arguably even necessary), to keep religion and hence theology out of the secular university’s intellectual life entirely. I will begin to discuss and critique this secularist rationale for keeping the secular university’s intellectual life “pure” (that is, free from explicitly theological study) in the next section of the chapter; and I will deal with it even more extensively in the chapter that follows. As I complete this section of the chapter, however, I want to begin to think about another way of construing the secular university’s identity as “secular.” Taylor claims that the defining feature of our secular age is that we inhabit an immanent order or frame, which means that it is possible to conceive of ourselves and our world as self-contained, as bearing no real relationship to anything supernatural or transcendent. But this immanent frame is not necessarily closed: while many of us view it as closed, and live our lives accordingly, many of us, aware that others think differently, view it as open to something beyond it. “[M]y understanding of the immanent frame,” Taylor writes, “is that, properly understood, it allows of both readings, without compelling us to either.”90 A secular university that operates within Taylor’s immanent frame surely will not claim to possess explicit ties to the transcendent (or the ultimate, or the sacred), or endorse any specific beliefs about the transcendent (or the ultimate,

36

Whose theology? Which university?

or the sacred). However, it also will recognize that it cannot reasonably endorse a closed immanence as part of its commitment to secularity either. This would require taking as axiomatic metaphysical truths, say, about the non-existence of God, or moral truths about humanly created values, or human autonomy in a Godless universe – all of which are contestable, and which only appear axiomatic given a further, contestable coming-of-age story that makes renouncing theological belief a necessary condition for attaining true intellectual maturity. Thus, a secular university that rightly refuses to “spin” the immanent frame as an entirely closed system, or for that matter, as definitively open to a reality that transcends it, can recognize and even promote intellectual and educational activities of all sorts: those that interpret the immanent order as closed to a reality that transcends it and those that interpret the immanent order as open to a reality that transcends it. In other words, by adapting and expanding Taylor’s conception of secularity, it is possible to hold that what makes the secular university “secular” is not that it denounces or restricts intellectual inquiry into the realm of transcendent knowledge and truth, but that it places such inquiry alongside other forms of inquiry that pursue realms of knowledge and truth conceived of in purely immanent terms. There is still some level of irony here, of course, if Taylor’s master narrative about secularization in the West is correct: by virtue of initiating and carrying out its program of religious reform, Christianity in the West inadvertently reduced itself to one intellectual perspective among many, and hence Christian theology to one form of knowledge- and truth-seeking among many – which, in secular academic contexts, can be especially difficult to follow. The Western story of secularization, then, is not without its losses, even serious ones (as Taylor points out), especially when it is viewed and assessed from a specifically theological perspective.91 Once theology is reduced to one perspective among many, it is much more difficult for it to speak with authority not only about theological matters but also all other matters that it traditionally has claimed to set in their proper theological context, as part of a larger reality that is inescapably related to God. Moreover, as I already have argued, theology suffers internally: like the modern self in Taylor’s view, theology becomes “buffered” from the very divine reality it traditionally has sought to inquire about, and therefore struggles (if not fails entirely) to think and speak about a world of meaning and truth that transcends human subjectivity. However, we need not interpret this story as one of irretrievable loss. In fact, it is possible to interpret it in such a way that it allows for some significant gain: establishing or (as the case may be) maintaining ground in the secular university for theological knowledge- and truth-seeking, even along specifically Christian lines. First, on Taylor’s account, there is no direct line that links “secularity” to “secularism,” so in secular academic contexts it remains unjustifiable to supplant theological (or even more broadly religious) knowledge- and truth-seeking with non-theological (or non-religious) knowledge- and truthseeking wholesale. Second, even in a secular world, secularist or blatantly nontheological ways of conceiving of and investigating ourselves, our world, and

Whose theology? Which university?

37

reality as a whole remain one option among many; as a result, just like theological (or more broadly religious) conceptions of reality, they cannot claim the secular university as their own, as the source and sustainer of an infallible truth about the immanent order and hence the direction that all knowledge- and truth-seeking must take.

The non-secularist, inclusively secular university We are now in a position to interpret the concept of the “secular” more broadly and generously, and so describe the “secular” university more broadly and generously. Properly conceived, the “secular” university, unlike a “secularist” university, while of course not theological in orientation, nevertheless can accommodate and even support multiple ways of conceiving of and investigating the larger world or reality we inhabit, including specifically theological ones. Just as the secular university cannot adopt a theological perspective on the grounds that it is secular, so it cannot adopt a non-theological perspective, or other elements of a decidedly secularist worldview, on the grounds that it is secular either. But it can include both sorts of perspectives, and even encourage its citizenry to engage in intellectual and educational pursuits that are framed by those perspectives, without inhabiting either perspective itself, and only providing the perspective that it needs in order to help its citizenry live rich intellectual and educational lives. Let’s begin by considering Rorty’s claim that religion is a “conversationstopper” which must be privatized so that we will be able to achieve common democratic and (I argued by extension) intellectual goals, especially within secular academic life. On one level, we can assess Rorty’s proposal on pragmatic grounds. Stout wonders both how it is possible to carry out the secularist program that Rorty (and Harris, even more aggressively) defends (especially if we espouse freedom of religion) and what the consequences of carrying out that program will be. Not only is it unlikely that religious citizens will heed the secularist warning about the dangers of admitting religion into politics, but the more aggressive the secularist becomes in seeking to rid democracy of religion the more aggressive religious citizens (both moderate and extremist) will become in response. “Secularist resentment is grist for the hateful preacher’s mill, and it pushes religious moderates into the arms of their extremist brethren,” Stout writes. “It further polarizes a political community in which polarization is a primary impediment to democratic action on behalf of the poor and the oppressed.”92 Stout also claims that if the main reason for silencing religious citizens is that they thwart democratic discussion and debate, by virtue of proffering arguments that contain specifically religious premises that are not held in common, then we must also silence non-religious citizens as well, insofar as they proffer arguments couched in specifically non-religious premises that are not held in common. “If the reason for excluding the expression of religious commitments is that they create this type of discursive impasse,” Stout writes, “then the only

38

Whose theology? Which university?

fair way to proceed is to exclude the expression of many nonreligious commitments, as well. But if we go in this direction, Rorty’s view will require silence on many of the most important issues on the political agenda.”93 Consequently, Rorty’s “policy of restraint,” so fairly extended to prohibit all citizens from expressing faith-claims or basic commitments as reasons for the positions they adopt on important political matters, “would itself be a conversation-stopper.”94 Analogously, the secular university that adopts Rorty’s secularist “policy of restraint” faces multiple problems as well. First of all, practical questions loom regarding how the secular university would even go about implementing this policy: how could it ensure that its theological constituents, including Christian ones, refrain from engaging in theological discussion, or more specifically, theological knowledge- and truth-seeking, in the various intellectual and educational venues of secular life? What would this sort of intellectual policing look like, and how could it even be accomplished effectively and comprehensively? Second of all, what would happen if the secular university actually were able to carry out this “policy of restraint” successfully? In part, there is the same kind of worry that Stout expresses: theologically oriented persons in the secular academy would only become more entrenched, more vocal, more angry, and hence come to view those secularists seeking to restrain their voices as enemies to be conquered rather than allies with whom they can enter into meaningful and substantive dialogue about important intellectual and educational matters. Beyond this, by creating profound intellectual dissension and fragmentation within its ranks, the secular university would stymie the multifaceted knowledgeand truth-seeking that it can and should promote, thereby cutting off secular university citizenry from pursuing all kinds and levels of knowledge and truth. Not only, then, would the secular university generate the very conflict it was aiming to avoid by restraining theological voices in the first place, but it also would undermine its capacity to achieve its most important intellectual and educational aims. Finally, to be fair and just, the secular university enforcing Rorty’s “policy of restraint” would have to ensure that none of its constituents engaged in knowledge- and truth-seeking, or broader intellectual conversation, drawing on beliefs and commitments not held in common – theological and otherwise. Put another way, the secular university would have to ensure that all of its citizens engage in forms of knowledge- and truth-seeking that are based in singular intellectual perspectives and directed on singular, restricted intellectual ends all held in common. But then (once more assuming that enforcing this policy is even possible), wouldn’t the secular university run into the same intellectual and educational impasses? Wouldn’t intellectual conversations across the secular university dry up, and the multifaceted knowledge- and truth-seeking that the secular university can and should seek to foster eventually altogether cease? The irony here, then, again, is that enforcing Rorty’s “policy of restraint,” far from protecting the secular university’s intellectual life or ensuring that it accomplishes its stated ends, actually damages the secular university’s intellectual life and derails it from accomplishing its stated ends. In the end, the very

Whose theology? Which university?

39

safeguard that Rorty claims that democracy needs in order to proceed would bring democracy to a halt; and analogously, the very safeguard a Rortian secularist could claim that secular academic life needs in order to proceed would bring secular academic life to a halt, or at the very least, prevent it from reaching its fullest potential.95 There is an even further, arguably deeper concern with Rorty’s secularism that I now need to voice. In response to Rorty, Wolterstorff points out that Rorty’s move to privatize religion is not rooted in some neutral, pure love for democracy. In fact, it is an expression of his own “Darwinian pragmatist” worldview, which also consists (as we have seen) of a particular social vision, in which religion, particularly in its ecclesiastical form, has been “pruned back to the parish level” so that American society can obtain Rorty’s secularist utopian ideals.96 According to Wolterstorff, then, Rorty’s move to privatize religion actually requires that religion “shape up” so that it conforms to Rorty’s secularist expectations for what a democracy should be. But why must religious persons in a democracy “shape up” to be made acceptable for Rortian secularists? Why should Rortian secularists not “shape up” to be made acceptable for religious believers like Wolterstorff? Unlike Rorty, Wolterstorff explicitly claims that no one needs to “shape up”: It’s my view that it is the genius of liberal democracy to guarantee certain basic rights and liberties to its citizens and resident aliens, and to assure access by all normal adults to fair voting procedures. Given that basic framework, it accepts all “comprehensive perspectives” – to use Rawls’ term – as they come. It does not tell religious people that they have to shape up by privatizing their religion, neither does it tell Darwinian pragmatists that they have to shape up. It doesn’t tell anybody that they have to shape up. Come as you are.97 Wolterstorff, then, is not telling Rorty to abandon his commitment to Darwinian pragmatism, or also what Rorty, following other preeminent American intellectuals, calls “the American Sublime,” or the Deweyan exaltation of democracy and growth for their own sake. He is telling Rorty to let him speak and argue from the standpoint of his own, religious Sublime. “It remains my conviction,” Wolterstorff concludes, “that Rorty with his Sublime, and I with mine, can and should live together in our American liberal democracy without either of us demanding that the other shape up so as to conform to our own Sublime.”98 Later in this section, I will come back to this positive vision of what a secular but non-secularist liberal democracy should look like, which I think also should inform (or at least parallel) a positive vision of what liberal learning in the secular university should look like. For the moment, though, it is worth reflecting some more on Wolterstorff’s criticism of Rorty, particularly as it informs the criticism I am mounting of secularist versions of secular academic life. By making its constituents privatize their theological commitments, and therefore also privatize any theological intellectual and educational pursuits,

40

Whose theology? Which university?

isn’t the secular university actually doing much more than aiming to safeguard the purity of its intellectual life? Isn’t it, in fact, forcing its constituents to conform to the particular intellectual and educational agenda that it has set for them, and hence to “shape up” so that they not only can participate in secular academic life but also help the secular university realize its own intellectual and educational version of the “Sublime”? Of course, the secularist requirement that religion must be “shaped up” or “liberalized” to conform to a particular moral, political, and (I am arguing) intellectual and educational worldview need not be rooted in a militant secularism. In fact, it can be much more subtle. Kitcher, for example, does not want to destroy religion but rather to find a secular humanistic substitute that operates as a functional equivalent to religion, with its own naturalistic creed, socially engineered ethics, and even surrogate religious experiences of “fullness.” Cliteur directly opposes his “secular outlook” with “the worldview of religious fanaticism,” not religion generally speaking, and what he celebrates is the freedom both to criticize religious fanaticism and to speak out freely against the darker, violent sides of religion.99 Central to the concept of freethought for Cliteur, then, is not just the right to criticize religion, but also “an affirmation of the importance of freedom of thought and speech, independent of all political and ecclesiastical authority.”100 However, a secular university that adopted only some elements of Kitcher’s secular humanism or Cliteur’s secular outlook – and hence what we might describe as a modest secularism – would still be instituting and imposing a particular framework for how secular academic life should proceed. For example, even if the secular university did not actively require that all of its constituents be naturalists, but only presupposed naturalism as an implicit assumption undergirding its intellectual life, it still would restrict the kinds of knowledgeand truth-seeking – particularly within the realm of religion and theology – that could take place within the course of study and broader intellectual venues that it provides. It may not require abandoning all forms of theological knowledgeand truth-seeking, but it certainly would require bringing such knowledge- and truth-seeking into line with at least a broadly naturalistic worldview, thereby closing off any and all exploration of (at least potential) realms of knowledge and truth that naturalistic intellectual inquiry simply cannot reach. Similarly, if the secular university embraced freedom of thought as a political secularist like Cliteur defines it, then it not only would reserve the right to criticize what it considered to be fanatical or simply overly conservative (orthodox) expressions of religiosity within its intellectual life. It also would marginalize if not eliminate altogether those forms of inquiry rooted in particular, authoritative outlooks – like the Christian theological outlook – that not everyone in the secular university shares, but which arguably still offer viable and potentially illuminating ways of pursuing knowledge and truth in the theological realm. Once again, theological inquiry broadly understood may not be in jeopardy, once it has been purged of what the secular university determines (arbitrarily?) are its (putatively) threatening (that is, unpopular) elements, as well as its

Whose theology? Which university?

41

(putatively) irrational cognitive aims. But such inquiry still must be forced to serve the particular intellectual agenda, and a particular but of course debatable (or at least incomplete) understanding of “freethought,” to which the secular university, under the prevailing auspices of secularism, subscribes.101 The argument that I have been making so far gives us strong reasons to reject making (or keeping) the secular university “secularist.” But in what sense, then, is the secular university “secular”? Does the concept of the “secular,” as applied to the secular university, have any positive meaning or value at all once it no longer bears the imprint of “secularism”? In the previous section of the chapter, I began to answer these questions by borrowing and expanding on Taylor’s conception of secularity as the condition or experience of living within an immanent order or “frame” that for many is no longer decidedly connected to anything (or anyone) supernatural or transcendent. In the age we all live in, belief in the supernatural or transcendent no longer can be taken for granted; it constitutes one perspective among many. The “secular” university, then, also operates within an immanent frame, and so carries out its intellectual life without the undergirding assumption or belief that there is anything (or anyone) outside or beyond the frame in which it operates. However, as I also argued (further adapting Taylor), the secular university is not thereby licensed to presuppose that the immanent frame is entirely closed, either. As such, while it can and should support intellectual inquiry that conceives of the world as (or at least presumes the world to be) a purely immanent order, it also can and should support intellectual inquiry that conceives of the world as part of a much larger order, or a reality that cannot be wholly exhausted by an inventory of the natural. So conceived, the “secular,” as applied to secular university’s intellectual life, cannot be identified with any one perspective on the real but rather constitutes the very condition that makes multifaceted intellectual inquiry into the nature of the real, as viewed from multiple perspectives on the real, possible. Consequently, I am arguing for an inclusively secular university: one that is not purified of theological knowledge- and truth-seeking, or even one that is simply neutral regarding theological knowledge- and truth-seeking generally speaking, but one that actually endorses such knowledge- and truth-seeking along with the other, varied kinds of knowledge- and truth-seeking that can and should occur within secular academic life. Thus, on one level, the secular university, or truly liberal university, is one that actively encourages its citizens to draw on their varying faith-beliefs or baseline commitments, as well as their overall intellectual worldviews, in order to think, speak, and reason with those who possess alternative or even contradicting commitments and worldviews. However, if the secular university is going to provide the proper intellectual context for its citizens to engage in this sort of varied intellectual activity, especially so that they can attain varied and valued intellectual and educational ends, then, on another level, the secular or truly liberal university also needs to endorse disciplinary forms of thinking, speaking, and reasoning that are rooted in and shaped by commitments and worldviews that not everyone in the secular university shares. This also means that the secular university, like a truly liberal

42

Whose theology? Which university?

democracy, invites valid forms of knowledge- and truth-seeking to “come as you are,” able and willing to make a distinct but also positive contribution to the varied knowledge- and truth-seeking that can and should characterize secular academic life. In effect, what I am proposing is that the secular university should be characterized by epistemological inclusiveness and plurality, or what Wolterstorff calls “‘dialogic pluralism’: a plurality of entitled positions engaged in dialogue which is aimed at arriving at truth.”102 As “secular,” then, the secular university provides an overarching epistemic framework in which it is possible to engage in intellectual inquiry from multiple epistemic bases or angles in pursuit of multiple epistemic and educative ends. And based on what I have been arguing in this section of the chapter, there is good reason for the secular university to embrace true epistemological plurality: in order for the secular university to truly flourish in its intellectual life, it needs to embrace forms of knowledgeand truth-seeking that will enable its constituents to attain multiple epistemic and educative ends – the varying kinds and levels of knowledge and truth at which these varying lines of intellectual inquiry are (ideally) directed. As a result, it is by embracing its secularity – now construed in a broad, inclusivist or pluralist sense – rather than any elements of a particular, secularist worldview, that the secular university is able to make room for Christian theological inquiry, which works from its own epistemic bases or sets of theological commitments, and which pursues distinctly theological epistemic and educative ends. To exclude such inquiry wholesale not only would be unjustified, given the secular university’s commitment to epistemological pluralism, but it also would be detrimental, since it would prevent the secular university from fulfilling its epistemic and educative goals effectively. As I bring this section to a close, I need to make a few final, important points. First, the argument that I am making here on behalf of an inclusively secular university cannot also be comprehensively wielded against educational institutions that are sectarian in nature, and hence are governed and guided by particular, usually theological, principles and ideals. Certainly, insofar as a theological institution, Christian or otherwise, stifles or blatantly prohibits multifarious knowledge- and truth-seeking across the disciplines and its larger intellectual life, then it suffers from the same epistemic myopia as the secularist university, and hence is deserving of the same criticism that I have mounted here against the secularist university. However, while the secularist university, in my view, necessarily suffers from epistemic myopia, insofar as it categorically excludes, or at least actively seeks to restrict, specifically theological knowledgeand truth-seeking, the sectarian university does not. For example, Christian colleges and universities not only promote specifically theological knowledgeand truth-seeking – and hence inquiry into the realm of transcendent and just immanent knowledge and truth – but they can and do offer wide-ranging courses of study in which all kinds and levels of knowledge- and truth-seeking take place. True, these institutions view and evaluate all genuine knowledgeand truth-seeking in the light of the knowledge and truth they claim Christian

Whose theology? Which university?

43

revelation and Christian theological reflection on revelation provides. But their principal epistemic and educative goal here is not to supplant or truncate valid forms of knowledge- and truth-seeking, but rather to order and unite them so that those who engage in them attain an integrated knowledge of the truth in all of its variety and depth. Second, while the secular university, unlike the sectarian university, indeed lacks a specific overarching and organizing epistemic framework in which the pursuit of knowledge and truth can take place, it is not devoid of any framing intellectual perspective of its own. As I mentioned earlier, I will argue at length in chapter 3 that the secular university should be committed to providing a program of truly liberal learning that enables its citizenry to attain diverse and deep knowledge of the truth, taken as its own epistemic and educative end. As such, I will continue to argue that the secular university should value the pursuit of knowledge and truth, particularly the deepest knowledge and truth, for their own sake – and that this overarching commitment should govern and guide the entirety of its secular academic life. This also means, of course, that the secular university is committed to the truth that there is such a thing as truth and that a secular university education can and should help its citizenry gain knowledge of it. The secular university, then, is not devoid of commitments of its own; however, as a university it only commits itself to what it needs to in order to ensure that multifaceted intellectual inquiry aimed at all knowledge and truth can and will take place within it. Third, the inclusively secular university that I have been discussing and defending is not so radically inclusive that it indiscriminately permits the study of any and all knowledge- and truth-claims, along with the various worldviews, religious and otherwise, that they reflect. Wolterstorff says that a dialogically pluralist university should house “a plurality of entitled positions engaged in dialogue which is aimed at arriving at truth [my emphasis].” Similarly, while I think that the practitioner or representative of a given intellectual discipline, or broader form of knowledge- and truth-seeking – in whatever realm – has a prima facie right to make a case for including her discipline within secular academic life, the practitioner still needs to make a case for her discipline’s inclusion. In particular, the practitioner needs to show how her discipline can make a positive, even necessary, contribution to the multifarious knowledgeand truth-seeking that can and should characterize secular academic life. It is just such a case that I will continue to make in this book on behalf of Christian theology.

Notes 1 I am adapting the title of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). 2 Some of the summary and analysis that I offer here comes from my book, Knowledge and the Transcendent: An Inquiry into the Mind’s Relationship to God (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). I also draw somewhat on my article, “Analytic Theology: A Summary, Evaluation, and

44

3 4 5 6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Whose theology? Which university? Defense,” Modern Theology 30.1 (2014): 32–65. I draw even more heavily on Randal Rauser’s excellent book, Theology in Search of Foundations (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009). Nicholas Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology Became Possible within the Analytic Tradition of Philosophy,” Analytic Theology, 158. Randal Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 85–6. See William P. Alston, The Reliability of Sense Perception (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). See Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 86–91, in particular 86. See Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, eds. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 59–63. Rauser says “that Plantinga’s argument does not quite establish self-referential defeat” (Theology in Search of Foundations, 105). However, “[e]ven if this theory is not quite a dead option, that hardly means it is a live one” (ibid). Italics are in the original text. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith §4, trans. D.M. Baillie, eds. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1999), 17. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), 12, 235–38. See also Paul Tillich, “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1959), 22–6. See David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology, with a new preface (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996). George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1984), 32. Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 240. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York, NY: Perennial Classics, 2001), 112. Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 112. Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 111. Don Cupitt, “Free Christianity,” Is Nothing Sacred? The Non-Realist Philosophy of Religion: Selected Essays (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2002), 53. Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 167 and passim. Gordon D. Kaufman, “Mystery, God and Constructivism,” Realism and Religion: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives, eds. Andrew Moore and Michael Scott (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 29. Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1987), 39. With Alston, I agree that a minimalist correspondence theory (which holds that a proposition p is true iff it is a fact that p) “does nothing to spell out what the relation is between the proposition that p and the fact that p by virtue of which the fact makes the proposition true.” Nevertheless, this theory “displays that relationship by the identity of content, by the fact that the same sentence is used to specify the content of both the proposition and the fact…. And though this is not all we would like to know about correspondence, it is enough to assure us that truth and correspondence are tightly connected” (William P. Alston, A Realist Conception of Truth, [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996], 39. Italics are in the original text.). Furthermore, with Alvin Goldman, I hold that there is nothing strange or suspect about invoking facts as truth-makers. True propositions, and beliefs with true propositional contents, correspond to reality, and supporters of the correspondence theory of truth can differ widely “on the question of what ‘reality’ consists in” (Alvin I. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999], 65).

Whose theology? Which university?

45

21 Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 122, 123–4. 22 Gordon D. Kaufman, “Critical Theology as a University Discipline,” Theology and the University: Essays in Honor of John B. Cobb, Jr., eds. David Ray Griffin and Joseph C. Hough, Jr. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), 45. 23 Kaufman, “Critical Theology as a University Discipline,” 48. 24 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 65. 25 Cupitt, “Anti-Realist Faith,” Is Nothing Sacred?, 37. Italics are in the original text. 26 McFague, Models of God, 26. 27 Gordon D. Kaufman, In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 331. Italics are in the original text. 28 Kaufman, “Mystery, God, and Constructivism,” 18. 29 McFague, Models of God, 27. 30 Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 255. 31 Rauser specifically weds his broadly realist account of theology with Plantinga’s moderate, “externalist” foundationalism, or the externalist epistemology of faith that Plantinga develops most thoroughly in Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000). I do not link the realist account that I develop here with any particular epistemology, though I do think that the Christian theologian ought to claim that specifically Christian beliefs are “properly basic.” I explain this more below. For a Thomistic epistemology of faith that holds that Christian beliefs are properly basic, see my Knowledge and the Transcendent, 199–223. 32 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST) I.1.2. All translations are from the Summa Theologica, 5 vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York, NY: Benziger Bros., 1948; reprint, Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981). 33 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD) I.1, §1, 1, trans. G.W. Bromiley, G.T. Thomson and Harold Knight, eds. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 2010). 34 In his Dogmatics in Outline (trans. G.T. Thomson [New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1959]), Barth proposes “that by science we understand an attempt at comprehension and exposition, at investigation and instruction, which is related to a definite object and sphere of activity” (9). 35 Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, 11. 36 CD I.1, §1, 2. 37 CD I.1, §1, 3. 38 Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, 13. 39 Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, 13. 40 For an interpretation of Aquinas’s view of theology that aims to demonstrate its affinities with Barth’s, see Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). Rogers’s interpretation of Aquinas on the nature of sacra doctrina (in chapter two) is particularly illuminating: he argues that it is by modeling theology on Aristotle’s philosophical conception of a science that Aquinas also is able to uphold theology’s scriptural and Christocentric form and basis. 41 ST I.1.5. 42 ST I.1.5 ad 1. 43 See Barth’s reading of Anselm in Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of His Theological Scheme, trans. Ian W. Robertson (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1960). 44 Christoph Schwöbel, “Theology,” The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29. 45 Schwöbel, “Theology,” 30. 46 Barth’s explicit rejection of natural theology in his Church Dogmatics on the grounds that it is subversive of divine revelation is well known. For more recent

46

47 48 49

50

51 52

53 54

55 56 57 58

Whose theology? Which university? Christian theological objections to natural theology, see Andrew Moore, “Theological Critiques of Natural Theology,” The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. Russell Re Manning (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 227–46. For a nice summary of and reply to various philosophical arguments against natural theology, see Charles Taliaferro, “The Project of Natural Theology,” The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, eds. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009), 1–23. Kenneth Surin, “Creation, Revelation and the Analogy Theory,” The Turnings of Darkness and Light: Theological Essays (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 14. Kaufman, In Face of Mystery, 356. Italics are in the original text. See Merold Westphal, “Overcoming Onto-Theology,” Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2001), 4. For a further description of onto-theology, see also Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, 2nd ed., trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 202–5. Westphal, “Overcoming Onto-Theology,” 23. I am adapting Westphal here, but still think that it is fair to hold that he would equate doctrinal realism with ontotheology, especially since he explicitly identifies himself as a Kantian “theological anti-realist” who affirms that “human thought and discourse never grasp God as God truly is” (Merold Westphal, “Theological Anti-Realism,” Realism and Religion, 142). As Westphal formulates it, however, this tenet of theological anti-realism is vague. If it means that God never can be fully comprehended in human thought and discourse, then all theologians are (or should be) anti-realists. If it means that no human thought and discourse can be directed on God, or that there is no correspondence between any human thought and discourse about God and God himself, then it clearly undermines theology and Christian theism in general. For more on doctrines as descriptions versus directives, and a defense of doctrines as (at least aspiring towards) truthful descriptions, see chapter ten of Rauser’s Theology in Search of Foundations. Peter Byrne, God and Realism (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 167. I deal with Byrne’s argument in much more detail in Knowledge and the Transcendent, 264–90. The remainder of this book, however, also constitutes a response to Byrne, insofar as I develop and defend a model of theological study in the secular university that is avowedly realist. Jeffrey Stout, “2007 Presidential Address: The Folly of Secularism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76.3 (2008): 534. Italics are in the original text. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 45; quoted in Stout, “The Folly of Secularism,” 537. Harris is not alone amongst the “new atheists” in making this claim. Richard Dawkins says that “even mild and moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes” (The God Delusion [Boston, MA: Mariner, 2008], 342). And similarly, Daniel C. Dennett: “Those who maintain religions, and take steps to make them more attractive, must be held similarly responsible for the harms produced by some of those whom they attract and provide with a cloak of respectability” (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon [New York, NY: Penguin, 2006], 299). Stout, “The Folly of Secularism,” 534 (italics in original). Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (New York, NY: Penguin, 1999), 157. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 157. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 171. Here, Rorty broadly aligns himself with contemporary liberal philosophers like John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas against Stephen Carter (from whom Rorty borrows the concept of a “conversation-stopper”). Both Rawls and Habermas require that religious believers in a secular democratic

Whose theology? Which university?

59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

47

state translate their religious reasons in public discussion and debate into secular terms; however, Habermas, interestingly, imposes this requirement not on ordinary citizens (for whom this requirement would be psychologically burdensome) but only on those who hold public office, since the secular state (and those who work for it) must remain neutral towards competing worldviews. Moreover, while there is still a burden on religious citizens to translate their religious reasons into secular ones at the institutional level, Habermas says that secular citizens must also learn to make an epistemic adjustment, learning to take religious reasons seriously, as having at least a possible cognitive or truth content. For a summary of Habermas’s position, see Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Square,” trans. Jeremy Gaines, European Journal of Philosophy 14.1 (2006): 1–25. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 171. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 170. Richard Rorty, “Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Religious Ethics 31.1 (2003): 142. Rorty, “Religion in the Public Square,” 142. Philip Kitcher, “Challenges for Secularism,” The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now, ed. George Levine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 24 (italics in original). Kitcher also claims that secularism poses a challenge for religion, and in this sense it does retain a negative or critical element on his view. For example, Kitcher claims that religious belief is acquired through a process of socialization that we should doubt is truth-aimed (especially since it yields widely divergent beliefs), religious experience cannot be tested to see if it is veridical, and religion answers various psychological and social needs. However, he also recognizes that the real challenge for secularism (which many secularists overlook) is to show how it is an adequate replacement for religion. Kitcher, “Challenges for Secularism,” 33. Kitcher, “Challenges for Secularism,” 35. Kitcher, “Challenges for Secularism,” 42 and 41. Kitcher, “Challenges for Secularism,” 45. Kitcher, “Challenges for Secularism,” 52. Paul Cliteur, The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Kitcher, “Challenges for Secularism,” 40. Cliteur, The Secular Outlook, 68. Cliteur, The Secular Outlook, 11. Italics are in the original text. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3. Taylor, A Secular Age, 3. Taylor develops the full “master narrative” over the course of four parts and 500 plus pages in A Secular Age, which is why I will be highly (but also judiciously) selective in summarizing some of its key features. Charles Taylor, “Western Secularity,” Rethinking Secularism, eds. Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 32. Taylor, “Western Secularity,” 50. Taylor, “Western Secularity,” 50. According to Calhoun et al., the secularization thesis elevates to a “quasi-scientific status,” “a trend, a general tendency toward a world in which religion matters less and various forms of secular reason and secular institutions matter more” (“Introduction,” Rethinking Secularism, 10). Similarly, Cliteur says that the secularization thesis, as propounded by sociologists within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, “held that religion would gradually fade in importance and even cease to be significant with the advent of modern society” (The Secular Outlook, 1–2). As a general thesis about human society, the secularization thesis is

48

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95

96 97

Whose theology? Which university? now widely (even if not universally) doubted, given the dominance or resurgence of religion in various parts of the world. But secularization, more broadly understood, surely does describe what many societies, or persons and institutions within societies (most notably, within western Europe) have experienced and continue to experience. Charles Taylor, “Afterword: Apologia pro Libro suo,” Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, eds. Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 306–7. Taylor, A Secular Age, 543. Taylor, A Secular Age, 544. Taylor, A Secular Age, 565. Taylor, A Secular Age, 589. Taylor, A Secular Age, 590. Cliteur, The Secular Outlook, 171. Kitcher, “Challenges for Secularism,” 35–6. Taylor, A Secular Age, 5. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 171. Taylor, A Secular Age, 550. As already noted, Taylor does say that in our secular age belief in God is not only “fragile” but also that “for some people in some milieus, it is very difficult, even ‘weird’” (“Western Secularity,” 49). He further writes that religion in general has become more fragmented, and as a result more unstable, in Western societies. “The whole culture experiences cross pressures, between the draw of the narratives of closed immanence on one side, and the sense of their inadequacy on the other,” making possible the emergence of “a number of middle positions, which have drawn from both sides” (A Secular Age, 595). Beyond this, as Warner et al. point out in Varieties of Secularism, Taylor holds that the rise of a secular age has resulted in the negative trend of “excarnation,” or “the transfer of our religious life out of bodily forms of ritual, worship, practice, so that it comes more and more to reside ‘in the head’” (A Secular Age, 613). Stout, “The Folly of Secularism,” 540. Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 88. Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 89, 90. The argument that I am pressing here (and which I will continue to develop throughout the book), serves in a way as a rejoinder to Stout’s worry, which he expresses in chapter eight of Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1988), about theology’s ability to address a largely non-theological intellectual culture. In my view, it is precisely by retaining “its distinctiveness as a mode of utterance” (ibid., 183–4) that theology is able to provide the non-theological citizenry of the secular academy distinct, rational avenues for pursuing theological knowledge and truth, which they otherwise might not even consider pursuing. Furthermore, the more non-theological citizenry familiarize themselves with theology’s distinct “mode of utterance,” the better equipped they will be to pursue knowledge and truth along specifically theological lines. Rorty, “Religion in the Public Square,” 142. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “An Engagement with Rorty,” Journal of Religious Ethics 31.1 (2003): 137. Interestingly, Wolterstorff also has defended this view of liberal democracy against Robert Audi – a fellow theist – who claims that “[c]itizens in a democracy have a prima facie obligation not to advocate or support any law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless they have, and are willing to offer, adequate secular reason for this advocacy or support (e.g. for a vote)” (Robert Audi, Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State

Whose theology? Which university?

98 99 100 101

102

49

[New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011], 65–6). Audi claims that this “principle of secular rationale” does not require privatizing religious commitments; this is, of course, debatable, especially since citizens who only can offer secular reasons for their positions have no reason to voice their religious commitments whatsoever. For the original debate between Wolterstorff and Audi, see Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). Wolterstorff, “An Engagement with Rorty,” 139. Italics are in the original text. Cliteur, The Secular Outlook, 173. Cliteur, The Secular Outlook, 71. Therefore, if the secular university is truly going to embrace and promote freedom of thought, then it needs to allow for thinking and speaking from intellectual standpoints that not everyone shares, and engaging in intellectual activities in ways that are governed and guided by particular intellectual commitments. This includes what Wolterstorff calls “freedom for religion,” and not just “freedom of religion”: that is, “freedom for citizens to engage in secular activities in distinctly religious ways,” and so also the freedom “to go beyond religious activities in the exercise of one’s religion” (Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Freedom for Religion,” Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Terence Cuneo [Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012], 299). Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Scholarship Grounded in Religion,” Religion, Scholarship, and Higher Education: Perspectives, Models, and Future Prospects, ed. Andrea Sterk (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 14. Wolterstorff claims that a picture of the university as dialogically pluralist should replace an outdated picture of the academy as not only a classically foundationalist enterprise but also a generically human one, devoid of the particularities that distinguish us as human beings (including our religious and theological beliefs).

Bibliography Alston, William P. The Reliability of Sense Perception. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Alston, William P. A Realist Conception of Truth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa theologiae I. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province as Summa Theologica. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Benziger Bros., 1948. Reprint, Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981. Audi, Robert. Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011. Audi, Robert and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. Barth, Karl. Dogmatics in Outline. Translated by G.T. Thomson. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1959. Barth, Karl. Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of His Theological Scheme. Translated by Ian W. Robertson. Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1960. Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, Volume I: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1, §1–7. Translated by G.W. Bromiley, G.T. Thomson, and Harold Knight. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 2010.

50

Whose theology? Which university?

Byrne, Peter. God and Realism. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003. Calhoun, Craig, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen. “Introduction.” In Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen, Rethinking Secularism, 3–20. Calhoun, Craig, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, eds. Rethinking Secularism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011. Cliteur, Paul. The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Cupitt, Don. Is Nothing Sacred? The Non-Realist Philosophy of Religion: Selected Essays. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2002. Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston, MA: Mariner, 2008. Dennett, Daniel C. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York, NY: Penguin, 2006. Goldman, Alvin I. Knowledge in a Social World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. Habermas, Jürgen. “Religion in the Public Square.” Translated by Jeremy Gaines. European Journal of Philosophy 14.1 (2006): 1–25. Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. Kaufman, Gordon D. “Critical Theology as a University Discipline.” In Theology and the University: Articles in Honor of John B. Cobb, Jr., edited by David Ray Griffin and Joseph C. Hough, Jr., 35–50. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991. Kaufman, Gordon D. In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Kaufman, Gordon D. “Mystery, God and Constructivism.” In Moore and Scott, Realism and Religion: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives, edited by Andrew Moore and Michael Scott, 11–29. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. Kitcher, Philip. “Challenges for Secularism.” In The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now, edited by George Levine, 24–56. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Lindbeck, George A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1984. Macdonald, Paul A., Jr. Knowledge and the Transcendent: An Inquiry into the Mind’s Relationship to God. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Macdonald, Paul A., Jr. “Analytic Theology: A Summary, Evaluation, and Defense.” Modern Theology 30.1 (2014): 32–65. MacIntyre, Alasdair. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Marion, Jean-Luc. God Without Being. Second edn. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. McFague, Sallie. Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1987. Moore, Andrew. “Theological Critiques of Natural Theology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, edited by Russell Re Manning, 227–46. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013. Moore, Andrew and Michael Scott, eds. Realism and Religion: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. Plantinga, Alvin. “Reason and Belief in God.” In Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, edited by Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, 16–93. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

Whose theology? Which university?

51

Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000. Rauser, Randal. Theology in Search of Foundations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009. Rogers, Eugene F., Jr. Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope. New York, NY: Penguin, 1999. Rorty, Richard. “Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration.” Journal of Religious Ethics 31.1 (2003): 141–9. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith. Translated by H.R. Mackintosh et al. Edited by H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart. Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1999. Schwöbel, Christoph. “Theology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, edited by John Webster, 17–36. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Stout, Jeffrey. Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents. Boston, MA: Beacon, 1988. Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Stout, Jeffrey. “2007 Presidential Address: The Folly of Secularism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76.3 (2008): 533–44. Surin, Kenneth. “Creation, Revelation and the Analogy Theory.” In The Turnings of Darkness and Light: Theological Essays, 1–19. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Taliaferro, Charles. “The Project of Natural Theology.” In The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, 1–23. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Taylor, Charles. “Afterword: Apologia pro Libro suo.” In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, edited by Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun, 300–22. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Taylor, Charles. “Western Secularity.” In Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen, Rethinking Secularism, 31–53. Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1951. Tillich, Paul. “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion.” In Theology of Culture, edited by Robert C. Kimball, 10–29. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1959. Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. New York, NY: Perennial Classics, 2001. Tracy, David. Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology. With a new preface. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Westphal, Merold. Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2001. Westphal, Merold. “Theological Anti-Realism.” In Realism and Religion, 131–45. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Scholarship Grounded in Religion.” In Religion, Scholarship, and Higher Education: Perspectives, Models, and Future Prospects, edited by Andrea Sterk, 3–15. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “An Engagement with Rorty.” Journal of Religious Ethics 31.1 (2003): 129–39. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “How Philosophical Theology Became Possible within the Analytic Tradition of Philosophy.” In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of

52

Whose theology? Which university?

Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, 155–68. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Freedom for Religion.” In Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by Terence Cuneo, 298–304. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

2

Theology in the secular university A critical analysis of the current debate

Having identified what makes the secular university “secular” (as opposed to “secularist”), and what I consider the best way to engage in the study of Christian “theology,” I now need to reflect on the current debate on the place and nature of theology in the secular university, since, as a matter of fact, there is no current scholarly consensus on whether or not theology – Christian or otherwise – can or should be studied in the secular university. And for those who grant theology admittance to the secular university, there is no consensus on what form theological study should take. Perspectives in this debate range from what I label – primarily for classificatory purposes – a hardline “secularism” to a hardline “sectarianism,” with all sorts of other “inclusivist” positions lying in between.1 As I read them, both secularists and sectarians argue that theology has no place in secular academic life, albeit for very different reasons. Hardline secularists seek to purge secular academic life of the presence of any sort of theological study since they think that it impairs or even derails either the secular university’s (and particularly, secular religious studies’) pursuit of “scientific” knowledge as well as truth or the “public” study of socially constructed phenomena. In the face of what they perceive to be an all-governing and oppressive secular ideology, hardline sectarians argue that the study of theology only can be properly and fully carried out in sectarian academic environments, where Christian commitments explicitly and actively can guide the pursuit of genuine theological knowledge and truth. Inclusivists, who argue that theology can and should be studied in the secular university, can take any number of positions. Some inclusivists argue that the study of theology should be fully domesticated within secular religious studies, or at least made to conform fully to the kinds of study, or intellectual inquiry, that they think occur within and throughout secular academic life. As a result, these sorts of thinkers argue that only the study of theology as a secular university discipline is justifiable. Other inclusivists, working from more explicit theological presuppositions, show how theology, even as traditionally conceived, can make a distinct contribution to the intellectual life of the secular university, and hence justifiably belongs within the secular university, whether inside or alongside religious studies. Thus, for these inclusivists, theology can and should play a more distinct, robust role within the academic study of religion and the

54

A critical analysis of the current debate

academic life of the secular university than other inclusivists seem to recognize or admit. One of my main goals in this chapter, then, is to show how there are a number of positions one can take on the place and nature of theological study in the secular university. My other main goal is to engage these positions and their representatives critically. In particular, I criticize the reasons both hardline secularists and sectarians offer for keeping theology out of the university; I also criticize inclusivists who are willing to admit theological study within the university only if it conforms to particular models of secular learning. Thus, the conclusions I draw in this chapter are in large part negative. However, by gleaning positive insights from some of the other inclusivist thinkers that I consider and critique, I carve out argumentative and polemical space for my own inclusivist model of Christian theological study in the secular university, which builds on the broadly realist model of Christian theology that I began to develop and defend in the previous chapter. I will continue to unpack and defend my vision for what Christian theological study in the secular university can and should look like in subsequent chapters of the book, when I discuss the role that such study plays in promoting truly liberal learning within the secular university.

The secularist study of religion and the “secular perspective” In the previous chapter, we saw how hardline secularists like Richard Rorty offer an indirect argument for keeping theology out of the secular university, since they think that “private” religious commitments, of the sort that traditionally have undergirded the study of theology, have no place in “public” political or intellectual life. Secularist scholars of religion make a more direct argument in defense of their own wall of separation: one entirely demarcating the study of theology from the academic study of religion, and secular academic study more broadly. For the secularist scholar of religion, a central achievement of the secular university is the establishment of religious studies, which (it is claimed) surpasses the study of theology insofar as it aspires towards a description and explanation of religion in all of its complexity and variety, free from the controlling, and hence restrictive, influence of theological doctrine or dogma. Academic religion and theology, therefore, stand in opposition: not only does the study of theology contradict the study of religion; it actually undermines it. According to Donald Wiebe, “theology, when it commits itself to the existence of the Ultimate, constitutes a form of religious thought which cannot complement the academic study of religion but can only ‘infect’ it.”2 In Wiebe’s view, if the study of religion is going to be truly “academic” it must function as a modern scientific enterprise, or Wissenschaft, that “aims at public knowledge of public facts.”3 The religious “facts” that Wiebe has in mind are not the facts that the natural sciences investigate but the facts of human experience and culture, which remain, however, “scientifically warrantable” and “intersubjectively

A critical analysis of the current debate

55

testable” insofar as they can be empirically observed, described, and then explained using various theoretical frameworks borrowed from other relevant (especially scientific) disciplines in the academy.4 Thus, Wiebe explicitly denies that the academic study of religion is “a religious or metaphysical enterprise” that concerns itself with “divine mystery” or the “quest for some ultimate meaning or truth.”5 Such decidedly theological pursuits are also decidedly nonacademic because they are bound up with the private beliefs and practices of religious adherents, and they concern postulated religious realities that lie forever beyond the realm of the empirically observable or testable. So the academic study of religion confines itself to “‘objective’ knowledge of a particular aspect of human culture.”6 Ironically, throughout his career, Wiebe has championed a conception of religious studies that he thinks does not exist: even as a fully established secular academic discipline, religious studies never has completely jettisoned the presence or influence of theology in its efforts to become a true Wissenschaft, which for Wiebe constitutes a fundamental “failure of nerve.”7 Wiebe, along with other scholars of religion like Luther Martin, do contend that fundamental changes in Western intellectual culture – most notably, the emergence of Enlightenment rationality as a prototype of modern, scientific rationality – “made it possible for scholars in the mid- to late-nineteenth century to attempt an emancipation of the study of religion from religious constraints and to institutionalize a new, nonconfessional, and scientific approach to the study of religions.”8 Nevertheless, they claim that by the middle of the twentieth century, “the scientific objectives of the new discipline had become seriously compromised by extrascientific and non-epistemological agendas,”9 like describing and even appreciating the “values” and “meaning” of religion, which for both Wiebe and Martin are essentially theological concerns. Perhaps not surprisingly, Christian theologians are quick to point out the inconsistency that secularist thinkers like Wiebe demonstrate in defense of their position (though, the latter are not alone in this). Gavin D’Costa, for example, claims that Wiebe’s desire to escape from theological ideology in the scientific study of religion is intrinsically flawed, because it is itself “utterly ideological.”10 Similarly, Paul Griffiths points out that for Wiebe what needs to replace the “religio-theological” approach to the study of religion is not simply a scientific approach but also a decidedly naturalistic approach. In other words, in order to develop a true Religionswissenschaft along Wiebean lines, we need to bracket out all appeals to and concerns with the divine or the supernatural and investigate the world of religion as a naturally observable and explainable phenomenon. Of course, this also means that practitioners of the Religionswissenschaft must assume, if only for the purposes of study, that there is no divine or supernatural reality that exists or is operative in the world, and that there is no divine or supernatural reality that is worth investigating. However, Griffiths argues, while Wiebe and others in the secular academy may think that naturalism is the best framework in which to carry out the scientific enterprise, or that naturalism is, in fact, true, not all do – and in fact, many do not. Moreover, since Wiebe’s

56

A critical analysis of the current debate

naturalism is an unargued commitment, he cannot justifiably use it to exclude those many other participants in academic life who possess commitments different from his own.11 The inconsistency here becomes particularly apparent when we reflect on the particular epistemology that Wiebe seems to claim should undergird the academic or scientific qua secular study of religion. According to this epistemology, the clearest, surest path to knowledge is via the path that modern science provides. And this is because modern science exemplifies what the “logic” of a true science or Wissenschaft is, understood along foundationalist lines. Here is how Wolterstorff describes this foundationalist understanding of a true science: “The theorist collects a body of evidence consisting exclusively of the deliverances of perception, consciousness, and reason; and his or her conclusions are to be deductively, inductively, or abductively (abduction = inference to the best explanation) based on that evidence.”12 This certainly seems to be how Wiebe pictures the scientific study of religion taking place: using what perception and reason in particular tell us about religion, and then using various methods of rational inference in order to deliver a scientific body of knowledge about religion – a true Religionswissenschaft. Or, to be more specific, using only what perception and reason tell us in order to derive a scientific body of knowledge about religion. If this is the case, however, then the scientific study of religion as Wiebe envisions it faces definite problems. Neither perception nor reason tell us (certainly not all of us) that the academic study of religion should not concern itself with any divine mystery, or that the academic study of religion is not a religious or metaphysical enterprise, or that the quest for ultimate meaning and truth is not an academic enterprise, let alone that there is no divine mystery or ultimate meaning and truth to be known. Nor do these claims seem to be the sorts of conclusions that we rationally could derive from whatever evidence about religion that we could accumulate using perception and reason. (If we could, then Wiebe would have to show us how this is the case.) Certainly they are not indubitable, universally compelling commitments or conclusions, per the stipulation of classical foundationalism. Furthermore, natural theologians have inferred decidedly metaphysical conclusions about the existence and nature of God, drawing on the deliverances of perception, consciousness, and reason. So if it is acceptable to develop a science of religion by relying on these epistemic resources, why is it not also acceptable to develop a science of divinity – at least in part – by relying on them? If we also rightly wonder why the academic study of religion should be an exclusively naturalistic, scientific enterprise, the answer seems to be not only that this enterprise aspires to offer knowledge about ourselves and our world but also that it offers the clearest and surest path to such knowledge. No other methodology or epistemology in the modern academy can rival it. However, as we saw in the previous chapter, not even science can claim to ground its knowledge- and truth-seeking in certitudes, or indubitable foundations. Moreover, while we should retain a high degree of confidence that science offers a

A critical analysis of the current debate

57

reliable path to knowledge, given that its practitioners engage in reliable methods of reasoning drawing on reliable sources of knowledge, surely it is presumptuous to hold that science is the only path to knowledge – or, for that matter, that science offers (or at least aspires to offer) a comprehensive knowledge that reveals all there is to know about ourselves and our world. Again, this is a basic commitment or belief – and a deeply questionable one at that – about what there is and most notably isn’t there for us human beings to investigate and seek to understand. Once we make this belief or commitment, and others like it, the sole assumptions guiding the academic study of religion (presuming that they are not conclusions that we can reach as a result of engaging in such study), then we actually constrain and even stymie the pursuit of genuine knowledge of a world and larger reality that many reasonably believe is far greater and richer than naturalists like Wiebe suppose. Imposing these commitments or beliefs ahead of time, and hence determining (limiting) the proper scope of intellectual inquiry a priori, is not only unjustified (because largely arbitrary); it is also epistemologically counterproductive, and even self-defeating. Wiebe’s other main claim is that allowing specifically religious or theological commitments to govern and guide the academic study of religion, and so allowing the academic study of religion to get hijacked by “extra-scientific and non-epistemological agendas,” derails the academic study of religion from pursuing and attaining its proper epistemological end. Here, then, another epistemological principle seems to be at work: properly studying religion, or any academic subject for that matter, requires adopting and inhabiting what I am going to call the “secular perspective”:13 a perspective that aspires to offer us a complete view of the truth, or at least the view we need in order to see the truth through the thicket of other “private,” “non-scientific,” and “subjective” perspectives. Thus, it is only by inhabiting a perspective on reality that transcends any and all particular – particularly religious or theological – perspectives on reality that we will be able to survey how things really stand, “as they are,” independent of how they appear from within more local, parochial perspectives. So, for example, obtaining genuine knowledge of a given religion hangs on assuming a perspective that transcends the particular perspectives on the divine or the ultimate possessed by that religion’s adherents as well as those possessed by oneself or anyone else engaging in the critical intellectual inquiry characteristic of academic study. True objectivity requires true transcendence, since the scholar as well as the student of religion must bring their skills of critical analysis to bear on the aspects of the religion that are the objects of pure intellectual interest and inquiry. Thus, the greater the critical distance, the greater the level of objectivity – the greater the level of objectivity, the greater the opportunity for gaining genuine knowledge of, or insight into, how things really stand or how things really are. The metaphor of “distance” here may be troubling to some, given its association with the widely discredited concept of a “God’s-eye view” or “view from nowhere.”14 But it still fittingly describes what someone like Wiebe seems to think is necessary for achieving genuine academic knowledge: bracketing or

58

A critical analysis of the current debate

ignoring particular sets of commitments marked by interiority, subjectivity, and hence partiality so as to attain a higher, more neutral plane of objectivity where the universal “facts” one seeks to know are more readily accessible and “in view” for all to observe and analyze. Thus, this “secular perspective,” as I am calling it, even if it is informed by at least some basic commitments or beliefs (and so does not rest on indubitable foundations, per the stipulation of classical foundationalism), still is not equal to one perspective among many. If it were one perspective among many, then it could not retain any right to offer genuine knowledge, or a true level of scholarly enlightenment. Instead, by virtue of transcending any and all perspectives within the university that are seemingly not conducive for attaining genuine knowledge, it provides (or hopes to provide) a singular vantage point – presumably located somewhere within the secular university itself – from which the truth about ourselves and our world can be accurately and fully surveyed. In other words, the “secular perspective” claims (or aspires) to be all-encompassing: it excludes all particular, local perspectives (constituted as they are by particular, local commitments) so as to provide clear, sure access to genuine knowledge and truth. However, I claim that the “secular perspective” cannot possibly get us all that we desire, or deliver what it promises. To see this, consider what intellectual inquiry in the secular university framed by the “secular perspective,” as I have described it so far, would look like. One of the central goals of the secular university is to obtain and instill a profound, penetrating knowledge of the human being, or the “human,” which encompasses the entire sphere of human life, history, behavior, and creative activity. Furthermore, the secular university pursues this knowledge along multiple intellectual lines that the various departments and divisions in the university provide. This description of what goes on in the university is fine as far as it goes, at least on a general level. However, once we become drawn in by the idea of the “secular perspective,” we are forced to amend it, postulating (either explicitly or implicitly) an external vantage point – some absolute conception of the “human” – towards which the study of the “human” in the university should progress, and which, when reached, will furnish us with the truly objective knowledge of the “human” at which all of our intellectual inquiry is aimed. Pursuing such knowledge requires that we then move beyond the broad realm of human belief, practice, and experience with which we are all familiar in order to achieve a clearer, surer, more comprehensive view of what the “human” really is.15 It is not difficult to see, however, how this project quickly becomes selfdefeating: the more we transcend our own subjectivity in our collective intellectual pursuit, the more we loosen our grip on important aspects of the “human,” which in turn means that, despite our initial hopes, the more we seek to converge on the vantage point, the more “we” as humans fade from view. So even presuming that we were able to reach the vantage point (and it is not at all clear that we could anyway), would we not discover that those aspects of ourselves that we had hoped to see or understand more clearly were actually no longer recognizable as such to us, since we had transcended the very perspectives in

A critical analysis of the current debate

59

which they were already “in view”? Consequently, would not we also discover the “secular perspective” on the “human” to be so impoverished or vacuous that it failed to qualify as any sort of perspective on the “human,” or for that matter, a perspective on anything at all? Thus, the following conclusions seem inescapable: there is no “secular perspective,” no all-embracing epistemological position or frame through which knowledge may be achieved or truth may be discerned in the secular university. Or, the “secular perspective” is one perspective among many: not only is it governed and guided by (arguably restrictive) normative assumptions but it also affords us a partial, and even occluded, path to real knowledge and truth. I now want to explore this idea in more detail, since there are other, arguably less obvious, ways that the “secular perspective” can manifest and assert itself within intellectual inquiry, thereby unfairly preventing such inquiry from pursuing knowledge and truth along specifically theological lines. Russell McCutcheon (a former student of Wiebe’s at the University of Toronto) argues that the principal goal of the secular or “public” study of religion is not to investigate or seek to discover deep, essential truths about “the very nature of things,” but rather “to historicize all ahistorical claims,” which in turn entails analyzing religion as a distinctly social construct.16 Indeed, a fundamental principle driving McCutcheon’s socio-anthropological approach to the academic study of religion is the following: while the theologian “presumes religion to contain a world of meaning and value somehow apart from, and therefore impinging on, the world of human doings,” the scholar of religion (by contrast) “presumes all meaning and value (including the social practice named theology) to be a thoroughly human, historical concoction.”17 In McCutcheon’s view, any discipline or person that fails to acknowledge that religion is a “thoroughly human, historical concoction” and instead presupposes “the natural world to be the tip of an unperceivable, supernatural, or ahistoric world” should be excluded from the public university, except as anthropological “data” awaiting analysis from public scholars of religion.18 McCutcheon claims, then, that deep-seated theological assumptions in particular have prevented scholars of religion from abandoning their roles as “reporters,” “translators,” and “caretakers” of religion so that they can fulfill their proper role as “critics” and public intellectuals: persons who can make “a contribution to larger issues of public concern.”19 Rather than seeking to show how religion explains things by referencing ultimate meanings and truths – because this is fundamentally a theological, non-academic endeavor – the scholar of religion qua public intellectual should seek to explain religion itself, and particularly why it is that “human beings who normally construct their lives based on often mundane experiences of the material, physical world sometimes invoke immaterial, nonempirical causes and explanations.”20 Religions and their adherents, including theologians, promulgate ahistorical and normative discourses about essential truths; the goal of the public scholar of religion, by contrast, is (once again) “to contextualize and redescribe [such discourses] as human constructs.”21

60

A critical analysis of the current debate

Importantly, however, McCutcheon also decries any attempt, whether theological or scientific, to offer a singular, all-encompassing explanation of religion and hence align religion with unchanging, ahistorical truths. Most notably, while Wiebe commends recent developments in the cognitive science of religion (however much he laments what they claim to expose about our pro-religious proclivities as a species), McCutcheon, reflecting on those same developments, expresses his suspicion and even dismay. Insofar as cognitive scientists of religion aim to locate the root of religion within the human brain or mind, and thereby attain “the ultimate naturalistic reduction of religion,” they take “what some of us understand to be a variable (i.e., historical, contingent, local, etc.) discursive object as a settled matter of eternal biological fact (i.e., ahistorical, necessary, universal, etc.), thereby interiorizing, medicalizing, and thus normalizing what, some of us would argue, is a contestable and always ongoing social, discursive event.”22 Consequently, in McCutcheon’s view, despite being avowedly scientific, the cognitive approach to studying religion also turns out to be haunted by specifically theological aspirations to gain access to ahistorical, necessary, and universal truths – in this case, about religion – and as such abandons what should be the proper scientific aim of developing a cross-cultural theory of “religion,” taken (yet again) as a thoroughly historicized, socially constructed object.23 Finally, McCutcheon claims that just as “there are no final explanations,” or “final, universal, total, metaphysical explanations” of the sort he says theology traditionally aims to provide, so there are no final explanations within the academic study of religion.24 “[S]cholars are just as deeply involved in the art of rhetoric, contestation, and social formation as anyone else.”25 Consequently, the scholar of religion must recognize that his academic theorizing, while certainly explanatory in nature – since it aims to explain the data that “mythmakers” like theologians provide – nonetheless constitutes a historicized social discourse that reflects the interests and even the biases of its practitioners. In this sense, the theories that the scholar of religion provides are “a meta-activity, a higher-order cognitive map designed to provide a rational, explanatory account for just this or that series of experiences, observations and events that we as scholars deem important, puzzling, or curious.”26 How, then, can McCutcheon of be guilty of aligning the academic study of religion with what I have deemed the “secular perspective,” if he explicitly denounces any attempt to offer “final explanations” or gain cognitive access to ahistorical, necessary, and universal truths about which religion and theology speak? McCutcheon makes what clearly appear to be ahistorical, necessary, and universal truth-claims in explaining and defending what he thinks the public study of religion should entail: claims like, there is no essential or real nature to things, all meaning and value are a thoroughly historical, human concoction, and “all human actions are historically constrained.”27 Moreover, McCutcheon canvasses all theological inquiry as essentially an activity of mythmaking: “unlike the humanist or theologian, I see ‘society’, ‘economy’, and ‘the nation-state’ – not to mention ‘God’, ‘sin’, or ‘heaven’ – as heuristically useful, everyday

A critical analysis of the current debate

61

rhetorical fictions that people in certain groups use to organize and negotiate their way through the complex worlds (both social and natural) that envelope them.”28 But this also constitutes an absolute truth-claim: “God,” “sin,” and “heaven” are rhetorical fictions, not terms that designate anything that exists in objective reality. By making these claims, then, McCutcheon seems to embroil himself in a blatant contradiction: he is making the very ahistorical assertions that he claims that the scholar of religion should historicize.29 To escape the contradiction, McCutcheon needs to concede that these claims reflect his own scholarly viewpoint and bias (or his own historicized social discourse): they underpin his approach to the academic study of religion, but do not serve as a universal basis on which the entire enterprise of the academic study of religion should proceed (nor do they serve as the universal conclusions such study should reach). However, once McCutheon makes this concession he loses any ground on which to rule out as academically unviable alternative forms of intellectual inquiry, like theology, that are governed and guided by different commitments – the very ones he thinks ought to be historicized, and so made fit for pubic academic analysis. Thus, if McCutcheon is going to have any hope of carrying out his project successfully, and so removing theology from religious studies and the secular university, he is going to have to claim for himself higher intellectual ground than those who refuse to reduce the religious and theological claims they make to data for the public scholar of religion to analyze. But this, in turn, entails occupying some transcendent, “secular perspective,” from which not just McCutcheon but presumably any practitioner of the academic study of religion should see, or eventually come to see, that truth-claims like all meaning and value are a thoroughly historical, human concoction, and “God,” “sin,” and “heaven” are rhetorical fictions, are in fact true. So the “secular perspective” gives McCutcheon the critical leverage he needs to carry out his project successfully; again, however, the “secular perspective” is not an epistemic position that, according to the tenets of his own project, he consistently can occupy. Furthermore, even if McCutcheon could consistently take refuge in the “secular perspective,” he should not want to do so, since, as I argued above, the “secular perspective” cannot deliver the comprehensive insight that it promises. So that I may show this, consider the following case study that McCutcheon offers.30 According to McCutcheon, there are effectively two ways one can approach the project of theodicy – that is, the classical philosophical, religious, and theological endeavor of making sense of why an all-powerful, all-knowing, wholly good God would allow evil and suffering to exist in the world. One can wrestle with the problem of evil directly, along with other religious and theological practitioners who have grappled with the problem and addressed it using theodicy. Or, treating and redescribing theodicy instead “as something ordinary” one can ask why human beings wrestle with the problem of evil and construct theodicies in the first place.31 This is what McCutcheon, as a public scholar of religion, recommends: according to his Foucault-inspired analysis, “the rhetoric of evil can be seen as both a problem in cognitive intelligibility

62

A critical analysis of the current debate

and a problem in political justification.”32 So first, theodicy ill-fatedly attempts “to create a seamless, totalized world by eliminating the divergence between a wishful belief in a rational, coherent, meaningful natural world, on the one hand, and those daily observations of the empirical, natural world (once again, everything from rock slides to genocides) that contravene that wish.”33 Second, since theodicy seeks to authorize a particular, socially created, politicized “world” as being the most in line with the natural world, theodicy thereby also amounts to “an exercise in overt political justification and an exercise of power.”34 Accordingly, McCutcheon concludes, “when redescribed as rhetorical devices, theodicies become sociodicies (i.e., discourses on the status and legitimacy of this or that ‘world’) and the so-called problem of evil then becomes the problem of the rhetoric of ‘evil’.”35 Employing the analysis I conducted above, we can interpret McCutcheon’s socio-anthropological explanation of the project of theodicy in one of two ways. First, although he explicitly claims that his own “master narrative,” like all scientific methodologies that aim to make the world “intelligible and knowable,” “is a thoroughly historical product,” McCutcheon engages in an enterprise that seeks to explain (or perhaps better, explain away) theodicy in its entirety as a problem of cognitive intelligibility and political justification.36 In fact, he concludes that “all theodicies are at their root political.”37 Arguably, then, McCutcheon has taken refuge in the “secular perspective,” which, by virtue of transcending all particular, partial, and even false religious or theological perspectives on the problem of evil, provides the cognitive vantage point from which the public scholar of religion can see theodicy for what it truly is, and so render the whole of theodicy intelligible and knowable. However, we then need to ask: does McCutcheon’s analysis of theodicy really afford us profound, explanatory insight into why human beings perennially raise questions about the existence of evil and suffering in the world that they inhabit? Does it “raise the curtain,” so to speak, and give us what we need to understand the deep human impulse to investigate the problem (or perhaps better, mystery) that the existence of evil and suffering presents? I am not denying that there is something to learn from McCutcheon’s analysis – but surely, once we completely redescribe theodicy as “sociodicy” we lose a genuine cognitive grip on why the problem of evil arises, and what motivates the project of theodicy for real human beings who deal with the problem of evil on a metaphysical, moral, and even existential level. Having intentionally transcended any and all perspectives in which human beings pose and address those questions, we enter an abstract and also largely vacuous space in which we lose substantive cognitive touch or familiarity with our own humanity. We thereby also jettison the possibility of gaining any explanatory insight into real, pressing questions that arise in the face of evil and which give rise to the project of theodicy in the first place. There is a second way, however, of interpreting what McCutcheon is doing. Once more, true to his word, he is bringing his own commitments to bear in redescribing theodicy as sociodicy, and therefore offering his own historicized

A critical analysis of the current debate

63

scholarly account of theodicy. But if that is the case, McCutcheon cannot justifiably rule out other intellectual approaches for dealing with theodicy, including specifically theological ones, merely on the grounds that those approaches are governed and guided by commitments that don’t align with his own or with those he considers part of his scholarly approach. Instead, insofar as McCutcheon is working from a largely “secular perspective,” which rules out any and all theologizing about theodicy or the existence of evil, he must admit that his is one perspective among many, or one intellectual avenue for rendering the world intelligible and knowable. In fact, even if it turns out that McCutcheon is right, and those engaged in the traditional project of theodicy are aiming both to resolve cognitive dissonances in their experience of the natural world and assert themselves politically through their constructive intellectual activity, it by no means follows that they are not also engaging in legitimate and even promising intellectual activity, which, if successful, will render more of the world and reality itself (say, in its metaphysical or moral dimensions) intelligible and knowable. Consequently, there seems to be a positive reason – which I will continue to defend – for making this kind of activity, and theological inquiry more broadly, a vibrant part of secular academic life.

Inclusivism, part one: theology as a secular academic discipline While there is a distinct trend within religious studies to eliminate theological study altogether from religious studies, and thereby also the secular university, not all scholars of religion share this view. In fact, some scholars think that they can honor Rorty’s “Jeffersonian compromise” not by eliminating theological study from religious studies and the secular university but rather by transforming theology into a secular academic discipline. For example, Delwin Brown argues that theology as an “academic” undertaking should be distinguished from theology as a “religious” (i.e., confessional or ecclesial) and even “personal” undertaking (which is driven by individual concerns and purposes rather than specifically confessional or ecclesial concerns and purposes).38 Brown claims that the seeds for academic theology actually were sown during the High Middle Ages, when scholastic theologians (particularly those interested in wedding Christian thought with Aristotelian philosophy) distinguished between theology as an exegetical exercise, principally focused on Christian Scripture, and theology as a university discipline based on “generally defensible criteria of scholarship” and “answerable to whatever canons of truth were widely defensible.”39 Hence, in Brown’s view, while both religious and academic theology take the same object – the religious beliefs of actual religious communities – the former is governed by the purposes and norms of the relevant religious community, while the latter is governed by the purposes and norms of the university. Brown conceives of academic theology as particular rather than universal, empirical rather than speculative: it is a kind of “ethnography of belief” or “theography”:40

64

A critical analysis of the current debate Its data are the beliefs-rooted-in-practice of particular religious traditions, its purposes are to analyze beliefs just as other scholars of religion attempt to make sense of, for example, a tradition’s rituals, and its criteria are those deemed defensible in debates of the academy. Its primary conversation partners are cultural theory and the various social sciences, including ethnographies of the particular traditions in which it is interested.41

Thus, for Brown, the main distinguishing mark of academic theology is that it follows the rules of reasoning operative in its “host” institution, the secular academy, rather than the rules of reasoning operative in sectarian institutions, which guide theological practitioners in “clarifying, extending, and defending the conceptual practices of particular religions or religious communities.”42 He continues, “Its [academic theology’s] methods, like theirs [other scholarly disciplines’], are those of evidence and reasonableness. Its conclusions, like theirs, are subject to critique from all quarters.”43 In the same vein, Sheila Greeve Davaney claims that “theologians can, as other scholars do, make interpretations, explanations, and normative proposals, but they, also like other scholars, must argue for them according to the canons of the university.”44 In so doing, theology earns a place within the university and cannot be excluded from it on theoretical grounds.45 In a decidedly postmodern vein, John Caputo argues that a properly academic theology is what he and others call “secular theology.” As its name suggests, secular theology has a thoroughly this-worldly orientation: it is “a theology of and for the world, a theology in which eternity has come into time, God come into the world, theology conducted on and for what Deleuze calls the plane of immanence.”46 In Caputo’s postmodern terms, the “God” with whom secular theology is concerned is therefore not the transcendent God of traditional Christian theology but rather an immanentized transcendence – an unforeseeable, surprising, and eruptive “event” that occurs within the world and human experience: “the possibility of the impossible, the end of representation, the desire to think the unthinkable, to surpass the same, to reinvent and repeat with a difference.”47 As Jeffrey Robbins claims, secular theology is not only immanent but also “profane”: what makes secular theology “secular” is both its focus “on this world, here and now” and also “the notion that theological thinking may function independently from religious control or authority.”48 Robbins therefore holds that secular theology is “in a state of double exile” and so “is simultaneously a profanation of ecclesiastical, confessional theologies and a profanation of religious studies as it is currently constituted.”49 And yet, since both Caputo and Robbins (along with other secular theologians), as self-avowed postsecular thinkers, denounce the secularist strategy to restrict or altogether renounce the place of theology (and religion more broadly) in public discourse, they claim that secular theology belongs in the secular study of religion alongside other viable academic methodologies and approaches. William Hart (who does not identify himself as a secular theologian) makes a comparable claim on comparable grounds. For Hart, “Theology” (capital “T”

A critical analysis of the current debate

65

intended), which is “a closed, dogmatic, and fideistic form of reason,” has no place within secular religious studies or the secular university writ large. However, “theology as an open, revisable, and hypothetical form of inquiry” or “a liberal, academic, and humanistic enterprise, a philosophical enterprise” does have a place.50 Hart makes this claim because he thinks that neither the secularist scholar of religion nor the theologian (the type he favors) can claim higher epistemological ground than the other. All intellectual inquiry springs from particular epistemological contexts and unargued beliefs, on the basis of which we offer revisable hypotheses about “the nature of things”:51 what Hart says amount to “‘guesses at the riddle’ of things.”52 Thus, “theology is a legitimate mode of inquiry within the methodological plurality of religious studies. It is a ‘guess at the riddle’, one among many hypotheses on an open road of inquiry.”53 These inclusivists may appear to offer us the kind of mediating model of theological study that we need in order to escape what one might argue are two opposing horns of a fundamental intellectual dilemma, or two opposing forms of intellectual oppression: secularist dogmatism on the one side and theological dogmatism on the other. However, I argue that the kind of theology these inclusivists each envision does not offer us the model we need because it still bears the mark of secularism. They require undertaking theology from an avowedly “secular perspective.” Brown and Davaney say that unlike theologians in sectarian institutional contexts, “academic” theologians must use methods of “reasonableness,” appeal to “evidence,” and argue for normative positions “according to the canons of the university.” On one level, then, they seem to assume that concepts such as “reasonableness” and “evidence” translate without remainder or distinction across all the disciplines that the university houses. On another level, they seem to assume that only academic theology, as they define it, is able to meet the epistemological standards that the secular university has set. Traditional or “religious” theology simply cannot meet those same standards until it is transformed into “academic” theology. To his credit, Brown is somewhat sensitive to my first concern. As he puts it, while it is necessary “that all claims to knowledge be based on forms of evidence that are open to reproducible processes of examination by any and all qualified investigators … what kinds of evidence are appropriate in this or that field of knowledge, what the appropriate qualifications of an investigator are, even how these are to be determined, etc., are debatable and debated.”54 But then, what does Brown want to say, exactly? That all truth-claims made within the secular university must be based on evidence that is in principle available for all rational inquirers to assess? If so, why should we think that the reasoning that a “religious” theologian engages in when “clarifying, extending, and defending” his beliefs (and those of his religious community) should be ruled out of secular university life? The fact that such reasoning is based in particular theological sources and put in the service of particular theological ends by no means renders it unintelligible or immune to broader rational scrutiny. Moreover, how can we definitely rule out

66

A critical analysis of the current debate

such reasoning if its “appropriateness” remains “debatable and debated,” particularly by those working outside of the theological field? Even more pointedly, how is such reasoning at all inappropriate? Don’t all of us employ it, at least to some degree, in order to attain a variety of professional and personal epistemic and educative ends? Certainly, all university disciplines care about backing up truth-claims with evidence; however, as Brown points out, what counts as evidence not only remains “debatable and debated” within varying fields of knowledge but also can vary considerably, even dramatically, across different fields of knowledge, depending on whether the claims being advanced and the truths being pursued are empirical, moral, or even metaphysical in nature. Different disciplines use different theoretical frameworks to explain and account for different kinds of phenomena, but all university disciplines care about retaining and using theoretical frameworks which, even if they cannot be straightforwardly falsified (as they can within the natural sciences), at least possess a high degree of explanatory power. Different disciplines provide their members different epistemic resources for reasoning towards and on behalf of discipline-specific knowledge and truth. However, each discipline needs to provide such resources if their members are going to be able to reason towards knowledge and truth within that discipline successfully. How is theology any different? Postmodern thinkers like Caputo and Robbins claim that traditional theology draws on confessional resources in order to reason towards and about the transcendent – and so on both counts, fails to qualify as “secular.” Only a fully secular, this-worldly theology divested of any ties to the transcendent, and hence traditional, confessional truth-claims about the transcendent belongs in the modern, secular university. Traditional or confessional theology does not. But why not? Why should we think that the secular university, even if it operates within what Taylor calls the “immanent frame,” should be fundamentally opposed to traditional theologizing about the transcendent? More specifically, on what grounds can secular theologians justifiably exclude traditional theologizing, especially when they explicitly denounce the “ideology of secularism,” or the liberal “containment of religion” (Robbins’s terms) that they think wrongly prevents them from carrying out their own, chosen form of theologizing?55 Similarly, insofar as Hart claims that we all are inescapably caught in our own web of beliefs, on what grounds can he justifiably include “theology” but not “Theology”? Aren’t practitioners of both types permitted to draw on their beliefs in order to make truth-claims (and not just guesses) about “the nature of things”? The deeper issue or problem for these thinkers is not simply what traditional theologians say but also how they say it. Speaking on behalf of his fellow secular theologians, Caputo says, “it is better to say that it is not precisely the confessional as such to which they object but confessional authority, the power claimed by the confessions to take certain questions off the table, to declare them non-negotiable, to invoke supernatural resources in order to command consent and forbid dissent – or else drop out of the community and the

A critical analysis of the current debate

67

conversation.” Likewise, Hart denounces “Theology” as essentially “closed, dogmatic, and fideistic.” However, despite what these thinkers suggest, it is possible to think and reason using a confessional authority (as traditional, confessional theologians have done) without requiring that others accept that authority, or stymying conversation with those who do not accept that authority, or rendering certain questions – even about the authority itself – intellectually off-limits. Beyond this (as Hart does seem to realize), it is possible for any form of thinking and reasoning, whether confessional or not, to become oppressively authoritative, or “closed, dogmatic, and fideistic,” especially insofar as it unfairly denounces other valid forms of thinking and reasoning, or knowledgeand truth-seeking, as invalid.57 As such, aren’t thinkers like Caputo and Hart exercising the very imperialistic authority they denounce, by seeking to conform traditional, confessional theology to what they consider to be appropriate modes of secular thinking and reasoning?58 To be sure, Christian theology traditionally has indeed made strong claims about the epistemic resources that its practitioners need in order to reason effectively towards and on behalf of theological truth. But even working within the unique epistemic frame that Christian revelation in particular claims to provide, theologians care about meeting the same rational standards that members of other disciplines meet, as part of their quest to gain and further knowledge of disciplinary truth. Some of the rational moves that theologians make, like clarifying a particular theological truth-claim, or correlating a particular truth-claim with other truth-claims within the Christian theological system, are more internal to theology as a discipline. Other rational moves are more discipline-inclusive, like evaluating a particular theological truth-claim in light of the true or at least very well-grounded insights that other disciplines provide. None of this rational activity (which I will discuss further in subsequent chapters of the book) corresponds exactly to the kind of rational activity that occurs in other university disciplines, especially given theology’s unique epistemic starting points and ends. However, even though it possesses unique, individuating epistemic characteristics, it nonetheless bears the requisite, Wittgensteinian “family resemblances” to the various other kinds of rational activities that members of other university disciplines (whether in the sciences or the humanities) engage in.59 Therefore, theology proves itself to be worthy of secular academic study not by displaying its ability to immanentize and de-dogmatize its reasoning or discourse about the divine, or render such reasoning or discourse purely conjectural, but rather by displaying its ability to engage in rational knowledge- and truth-seeking in its own distinct but also familially recognizable ways. To be clear, then, my main issue with all of these inclusivists is not that they require theologians to display rationality in the arguments they make, or offer evidence or warrants for the truth-claims they make, or even demonstrate a strong degree of epistemic humility regarding the truth-claims they make. It is that they seem to require theologians to think and reason on decidedly secularist terms, given what they seem to think we all should know, in Davaney’s 56

68

A critical analysis of the current debate

words, about “what falls within the range of human knowing,”60 or what we all should know about what counts as evidence, or what we all should know about how academic theologizing in a secular (or postsecular) world should proceed. Thus, the “secular perspective,” if left unchecked, once more subtly can assert itself and unfairly constrain not only what epistemic resources theologians in the secular university may draw on but also how they may think and reason using those resources. It also unfairly can dictate the sorts of epistemic ends – kinds and levels of knowledge and truth – at which their thinking and reasoning must be aimed. So while theology qua “theography” can be aimed at understanding theological beliefs and practices, which are clearly within the range of human knowing, it cannot be aimed at understanding the particular theological truths with which those beliefs and practices traditionally have been concerned – truths that (presumably) lie outside the realm of human knowing. Secular theology – and by extension, theology in the secular university – can and should concern itself with the “plane of immanence” or “God come into the world,” but not with the God of traditional, Christian faith. Accordingly, as Caputo puts it, secular theology “is necessarily a political theology,”61 which speaks primarily to and about the political order, and the broader realm of human experience (e.g. “experiences of the limit”62 and what Robbins calls “a society’s sense of ultimacy”).63 Theology qua speculative philosophy humbly can pursue truth but apparently cannot draw on (and certainly cannot assert) traditional, confessional beliefs about where truth is to be found; nor, it seems, can theology draw on its own epistemic resources in robustly pursuing (rather than merely hypothesizing about) what it takes to be genuine knowledge and truth. However, the only reason we should convert theology into ethnography or confine theology to worldly politics or dogma-free philosophizing is if we have access to a cognitive vantage point – provided by the “secular perspective” – from which it is possible to see or know, for example, that the empirical but not the metaphysical is humanly knowable, that there is no transcendent referent for the name “God,” that religious authorities prohibit genuine knowledge- and truthseeking, or that all forms of intellectual inquiry into the metaphysical are ultimately hypothetical and revisable. If, on the other hand, we do not have such access – that is, if there is no “secular perspective,” or the “secular perspective” is one perspective among many – then we no longer justifiably can insist that theology be fully altered or truncated so that it can fit and function properly within secular academic life. In particular, Christian theology as a traditionbased, rational form of knowledge- and truth-seeking, can make its own case for being fully included within the secular university’s methodologically and epistemologically pluralist academic life, and hence the secular university’s pursuit of knowledge and truth, of all types and levels, along multifarious intellectual lines.

Inclusivism, part two: theological inclusivists Not all inclusivism bears the mark of secularism. “Theological inclusivists,” as I call them, who are motivated or at least influenced by specifically Christian

A critical analysis of the current debate

69

theological commitments, also think that theology belongs in the secular university, not as a secularized university discipline but rather as a distinct contributor to the secular university’s intellectual life. The positions they offer certainly are not above critique, but they do offer insights that I will employ as I continue to develop and defend my own inclusivist model for theological study in the secular university. Theologian David Ford offers a perspective on the place of theology in the university that reflects his specific European, and more narrowly British, academic context. Ford teaches at the University of Cambridge, which he claims is a leading, modern research university in the tradition of the University of Berlin and, even farther back, the medieval university (to which Ford thinks the modern university is still linked).64 Thus, like Berlin, at least as originally established in the early nineteenth century, Cambridge today is founded on certain educative principles, which also amount to educative goals that Ford admits Cambridge meets to varying degrees: in particular, promoting the free, interdisciplinary, rational pursuit of knowledge or Wissenschaft – which Ford interprets broadly and inclusively – as well as engendering holistic educational formation (Bildung), all in service to a society that is both religious and secular.65 Consequently, Ford links his reflection on the place of theology in the university and religious studies more narrowly to a broader conception of what he thinks the twentyfirst-century university – in both the Berlin and medieval traditions – can and should accomplish, which is to promote the truly interdisciplinary pursuit of knowledge, offer “an all-round education aiming to form students in a wisdom that seeks the common good,” and contribute in the broadest possible way to society (rather than simply to produce a narrowly conceived, quantifiable public good).66 “Part of the value of universities to society,” Ford writes, “is that they can be independent places of debate and deliberation about such matters in the interests of the long-term ethical and intellectual ecology of our civilisation.”67 Concerning the place of theology in religious studies and the university, Ford is clear: “Our religious and secular world needs theology with religious studies in its schools and universities.”68 In part, Ford defends this claim by pointing to the make-up of the modern university (particularly his own university), which, like the world that we live in, is not completely secular but rather a complex mixture of both the religious and the secular. Western universities tend to treat the world as if it were wholly or mostly secular (or secularist, divested of the presence and influence of religion), but in doing so clearly ignore the fact that “hundreds of millions of people (in fact, the vast majority of the world’s population), including a great many students and academics, see reality differently.”69 Thus, ideally, “there should be universities that are complexly religious and secular in modes that reflect, reflect on, study, discuss and are responsible towards our religious and secular world in appropriately academic religious and secular ways.”70 Here, Ford argues, theology and religious studies in fact share mutual responsibilities. First, they have a responsibility to the academy, which entails promoting “excellence in the study and teaching of texts, history, laws, traditions, practices, institutions, ideas, the arts and so on, as these relate to

70

A critical analysis of the current debate

religions in the past and the present.”71 Second, they have a responsibility toward religious communities, which includes educating members of those communities as well as providing settings where interreligious study and dialogue can take place. Third and finally, they have a responsibility to society, which entails engaging issues of public concern (in politics, law, the media, education, and so on). Moreover, theology can and should play a fundamental part in enhancing the university’s role in debating “vital issues transcending specialties, such as the relation of knowledge to power, rational justification and the nature of truth.”72 Ford describes this more holistic academic pursuit as the “search for wisdom,” wisdom being “about insight into the many-faceted complexity of reality combined with right practice within it.”73 The search for wisdom (admittedly so difficult to quantify) also entails engaging the sort of broader, deeper questions of “meaning, truth, beauty and practice” that are posed with particular clarity and force by the world’s religions, and which therefore inevitably surface through any sustained academic study of the world’s religions.74 Theology, too, of course, deals with these sorts of questions, which is why Ford thinks that the full integration of theology with religious studies, and hence within the larger university, is necessary. Thus, “academic” or “public” theology, as Ford defines it, “seeks wisdom in relation to questions, such as those of meaning, truth, beauty and practice, which are raised by, about and between the religions and are pursued through engagement with a range of academic disciplines.”75 The kind of academic or public theology that Ford envisions, then, is not specifically Christian, although he does think that Christian theology – and a Christian theological conception of wisdom – can help the secular university fulfill its highest intellectual ideals. Most notably, “The wisdom of loving God for God’s sake … might provide a Christian rationale to inspire and champion the love of truth and knowledge for their own sake …. There are other ways of championing it, but arguably in a religious and secular world they are greatly weakened if this taproot of the medieval amor scientiae is cut off.”76 Ford does not specify how he envisions the pursuit of wisdom taking place; clearly, however, we should expect such an academically robust as well as inclusive investigation to be characterized by serious disagreement, and we should hope reasoned disagreement. Ford’s former colleague at Cambridge, Denys Turner (now of Yale University), claims that this is precisely why theology can and should be studied in the university. If, at its core, the contemporary university, like the medieval university, is a place of disputation or argument (as Turner thinks it is), then theology as argumentativa – that is, “argument between traditions of truth-claim in contestation over the truths they make claim to” – firmly belongs in the university.77 Moreover, Turner claims, “any university should want to have in its midst the presence of theologians.”78 Unlike their counterparts in religious studies, who ask the same sorts of questions as do members of other academic departments, theologians “ask distinctive questions all of their own that no one else would have thought of asking”79 – in particular, “demonstrably ultimate questions about the world”80 like “why is

A critical analysis of the current debate

71

there something rather than nothing?” – which it behooves members of the university across varying faith traditions to debate, both in order to discover where real, substantive theological disagreement (along with irreconcilable difference) lies and to strive to determine what the true answers to those questions are. As Turner further points out, then, engaging ultimate questions – say, about the existence of God – is not the same as expressing preferences or tastes: ultimate questions, like all legitimate, rational questions, have genuine answers, and, more specifically, true and false answers. Consequently, critically engaging or debating demonstrably ultimate questions must have as its goal attaining truth, even when it concerns the mystery of the divine. Turner’s conception of the university as a place of disputation or argument bears an important resemblance to theologian Kathryn Tanner’s conception of the university as a place of “cultural contest.” There is a need, Tanner says, especially as the university moves away from “a view of knowledge that is at once both abstractive and universalizing” towards a view of knowledge as contextual, integrated, and socially embedded, for the university to re-embrace its historical mission “to produce an educated citizenry capable of making good decisions about the running of their lives together.”81 In this view, the university becomes “the site for a socially significant cultural contest among old and new, familiar and foreign, rediscovered and newly constructed, visions of the world and our place in it.”82 Amongst those visions, which can reflect any number of scientific, humanistic, or religious outlooks, Tanner envisions theology playing an important role: Christian theology in particular can help construct a specifically “Christian outlook on the world and our place in it with special attention to the most pressing problems and challenges of contemporary life.”83 The basis of Christian theological participation in the university’s cultural contest does not rest in any appeal to special epistemological insight (privileged sources or methods), or Christian cultural influence, but rather in the strength and novelty of the proposals that Christian theology, itself rooted in “already formed normative judgments about a Christian perspective on life,” can offer (say, on the nature of human dignity, or justice, or any number of pressing problems and challenges of contemporary life).84 So, even those members of the university who disagree with the sources and norms theologians appeal to in constructing their proposals may nevertheless agree with the conclusions that those theologians draw; or, they may dispute those conclusions drawing on their own sources and norms. Tanner’s conception of constructive theology is also similar in important respects to her conception of “public” theology.85 Just as the primary goal of Christian participation in public debate is (and should be) to reach consensus with other participants on a specific issue or policy that affects all citizenry in a democratic polity, and not to achieve consensus on “political theory” or “comprehensive doctrine” (including comprehensive religious or philosophical views), so the primary goal of Christian participation in cultural contest within the university is to reach consensus with other members of the university on the most important matters facing the wider world or collective human life.86 Like

72

A critical analysis of the current debate

everyone else, “[t]he Christian simply hopes that the arguments others construct will eventually converge on the conclusions that Christians propose. The Christian hopes, in short, for an overlapping consensus to develop as non-Christians consider the recommendations that Christians have made.”87 I think that Tanner’s model of university-wide cultural contest and Turner’s model of intellectual contest between varying faith traditions only make sense, and are viable, once we have fully abandoned any commitment to the “secular perspective,” taken as anything more than its own normatively driven perspective on how to approach knowledge- and truth-seeking within secular academic life. Only once we deny such a perspective an adjudicating role within the various modes of contestation that occur within the secular university can we begin to appreciate fully Christian theology’s distinct role as a robust participant in such contests. Moreover, we further can support theology’s role as a robust participant in such contests by pointing out theology’s long history of engaging critically with other non-theological, often philosophical and scientific, worldviews and the rationalities at work in them. Tanner does remind us that theology is, at bottom, “a parasitic or consumptive field, establishing its distinctiveness from others in and through what it does with borrowed materials.”88 This should give theologians not only warrant but also motivation for engaging in cultural contest, as Tanner envisions it, since making sense of their own proposals concerning matters of urgent social importance requires critically engaging alternative perspectives and traditions of reasoning other than their own. However, even though she rightly makes a place for theology in university-wide or multidisciplinary cultural contest, Tanner does not adequately specify what the ultimate goal of engaging in such a contest is. Either achieving “overlapping consensus” on how best to address pressing social problems and live our lives together is the epistemic endpoint of cultural contest – the point at which we gain genuine knowledge and truth about how we ought to address these problems and live together – or it serves as an important way station on the longer epistemic route to attaining such knowledge and truth. Regardless, it seems that the most fundamental goal of engaging in cultural contest in university life, insofar as it is fundamentally intellectual in nature, is attaining knowledge and truth, or at least providing participants in cultural contest rational avenues for attaining knowledge and truth, however difficult they may be to attain. Along the way, lack of consensus between competing perspectives and worldviews over what counts as true should not prohibit secular-university constituents, including theologians, from vigorously pursuing knowledge of the truth using rational means, just as lack of consensus over what counts as good for human beings should not prohibit secular-university constituents from vigorously pursuing knowledge of what is good using rational means, as a central part of engaging in cultural contest. Once again, then, we run up against an important principle: intellectual contest characterized by true epistemological plurality must allow its contestants to argue for varying kinds and levels of truth – not simply truths the

A critical analysis of the current debate

73

contestants already all believe or specify ahead of time as singular, worthy objects of intellectual pursuit. Ford recognizes this principle, I think, when he points out that religious studies, particularly of the secularist variety, only can bracket out or ignore questions of theological truth by arbitrarily converting religion into an intellectual artifact supposedly fit for purely “public,” “scientific,” or “objective” study. Ford’s point, in part, is that theological inquiry necessarily entails reference to God (certainly within Christianity) – and God, or at least the question of God, “transcends the boundaries” that religious studies, or any other discipline, aims to lay down in order to circumscribe or “fix” its subject matter.89 Moreover, Ford argues that since “religion” is primarily not a controlled object of study but a lived practice, then in studying religions one inevitably encounters the search for wisdom that runs throughout them. And the question of God, or questions concerning the truth about God, which theology addresses, is one important aspect of this search. Thus, Ford calls for “a reconstitution of the priorities of theology and religious studies to allow for the full question of truth” – and while “[i]t is not easy to realize this institutionally … it is better to risk doing so than to continue with a constricted religious studies which is impoverished by its inhibitions in relation to the largest questions of truth and practice raised by its own field.”90 We also can put Ford’s point here this way: if it is true, as Turner argues, that reasoning and arguing are essential to the study of theology, wherever it occurs, then it not only are arbitrary but also unnatural to draw a boundary around where such reasoning and arguing can and cannot lead. As a general intellectual rule, one cannot divorce rational inquiry from truth-seeking (again, unless one does so arbitrarily, and I also would add, forcefully); this is especially the case with Christian theology, whose practitioners traditionally have employed reason and argument in order to better understand the truth of their own epistemic community’s commitments. Furthermore, the question of theological truth is far too important for religious studies, or the secular university more broadly, to continue to bracket or ignore, especially when members of the secular university community, who teach and take courses in religion and / or are adherents of the world’s religions, continue to raise it in their personal and academic lives. An analogy here proves helpful. As trained scientists, physicists investigate the nature of physical reality at both its micro- and macro-levels, and, in doing so, often make highly reasoned but often highly speculative, and hence highly disputable, claims and theories about their subject matter. And the study of physics in the university entails, in part, learning and discussing what these various claims and theories are. However, what if the study of physics in the secular university were limited to learning what these various claims and theories are? What if the truth-value of those claims and theories was left entirely untouched? As David Ray Griffin argues, if this were the case, then, Professors of physics would report what physicists (working outside the university structure, of course) had said about the real existence of

74

A critical analysis of the current debate electrons, neutrinos, and so on, but the professors would not raise the question of the truth of these claims …. [However] [s]uch an approach to physics in the university would, of course, be absurd. It would mean that the university would cease to be a locus for progress for the understanding of the universe.91

The idea here is that since physics professors and their students in the secular university are justified in openly discussing particular truth-claims and theories about the nature of physical reality so as to enable progress in understanding physical reality, then theology professors and their students in the secular university are also justified in openly discussing particular truth-claims and theories about the nature of divine reality – claims and theories which, we should note, are highly reasoned but also highly speculative, and hence highly disputable. The point, then, does not immediately concern the epistemic status of truth-claims but the epistemic entitlement of those who make those claims: if physicists raise and pursue the question of cosmological truth within their own sphere of intellectual inquiry, then theologians are entitled to raise and pursue the question of divine truth within their own sphere of intellectual inquiry. This example is also illuminating insofar as it highlights what I take to be the most important, albeit most controversial, feature of theology in the secular university: theology as an inescapably metaphysical undertaking.92 Ford points us in this direction – he invokes the concepts of “meaning, truth, beauty and practice,” but he chooses not to define them or name their referents. That is to say, he chooses not to address the more difficult and more pressing question: where does pursuing questions of “meaning, truth, beauty and practice” ultimately lead us? Or more pointedly, where do the ultimate answers to (or, we could say, grounds of) these questions ultimately lie? To properly address these questions requires inquiring unabashedly into the very nature of truth, beauty, goodness, and even divinity itself. Thus, if theology is effectively going to assist the secular university in carrying out the pursuit of wisdom then it cannot be limited to engaging in wisdomseeking as mere humanistic inquiry (since humanists also care intensely about “meaning, truth, beauty and practice”) or even, as Ford suggests, a primarily cross-cultural or comparative religious exercise. If we mute the specific contribution Christian theology can make to the secular university’s arguably most important epistemic and educative project – wisdom-seeking – we not only downgrade the opportunity for secular-university constituents to engage in true, interdisciplinary debate about the nature of wisdom but we also cut off those constituents from pursuing potential epistemic avenues for attaining wisdom. Inquiring about divine reality, as Christian theologians traditionally have done, is certainly a robust form of wisdom-seeking, so if the secular university truly cares about wisdom – which it should – then it ought to allow its constituents to seek wisdom along the specific intellectual lines of wisdom-seeking that Christian theology provides.

A critical analysis of the current debate

75

Theology as an exclusively sectarian academic discipline Admittedly, I continue to make claims that require further defense: a task that I will carry out fully in the chapters that follow. For the moment, though, we need to press on with our current task and consider sectarian positions and arguments, which occupy a distinct place on the spectrum of views one can take on the place of theology in the secular university. Like inclusivists, sectarians think that theology is a viable academic discipline; however, they don’t think that theology should be studied, or at least can be studied fully and effectively, within the secular university. Theology only properly can be studied within specifically Christian academic environments. For sectarians, the problem therefore does not lie with Christian theology. It lies with the secular university. In his book, Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation, Gavin D’Costa makes the most developed argument on behalf of the sectarian position. He claims that Christian theology is currently being held in “Babylonian captivity” by the modern secular university, which has fully thrown off the “sacred canopy” that once governed it, thereby also abandoning the ecclesial practices needed to inform and guide it.93 In particular, D’Costa criticizes secularist religious studies, which he claims always has striven to be a neutral, objective science (or Wissenschaft), and hence required that one abandon or bracket “one’s own beliefs, attitudes, and values, in order to avoid contaminating objective description with personal prejudice such as one’s own personal religious commitment.”94 D’Costa argues that this questionable methodology, born out of Enlightenment rationalism, and solidified in the nineteenth century (with the full emergence of the modern university) is antithetical and even harmful to the proper study of theology as rooted in virtue and, even more specifically, prayer “as its epistemological presupposition, precisely because theology is primarily concerned with a communal love affair with the living God …. Without prayerfulness in students and teachers of theology, the university cannot produce theologians.”95 In developing this claim, D’Costa further argues that theology, like other intellectual disciplines (including the sciences), is a tradition-dependent form of intellectual inquiry, and prayer facilitates the proper initiation into or “cohabitation” with the dynamic, living tradition undergirding theological inquiry, thereby also enabling loving “cohabitation” with God as well as the Christian Church. By doing so, the theologian also grows in love, and love engenders true knowledge or wisdom – correctness in theological judgment – which is what the theologian, as a servant of God and the Church, seeks. The main problem for D’Costa, then, is that the study of theology in the secular university (along with Christian universities in both America and Britain) has been fully secularized, or divested of its ecclesial ties and base, and therefore has become assimilated to other, dominant disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. As a result, it also has allowed itself to be governed and guided by non-theological methodologies and trends. In contrast, D’Costa wants “to recover the disciplinary integrity of theology, whose object of concern, to put it in Aristotelian disciplinary terms, is God,” rather than other formal objects of

76

A critical analysis of the current debate

intellectual inquiry (like human societies and culture).96 Consequently, D’Costa gives voice to a distinct worry, which other sectarian thinkers share, about where the academic study of theology in the university, if it is divorced from loving “cohabitation,” inevitably will lead. Griffiths, for example, argues that since the divine is utterly ontologically unique, Christian theology’s methods of inquiry are also utterly unique. “God,” he writes, “is neither an item in nor an aspect of the cosmos. He is the creator of all that is, seen and unseen: He who called the cosmos into being out of nothing, and He whose essence is by definition unknowable to human reason.”97 Consequently, theology cannot conduct its inquiry following reason alone but must rely fundamentally on faith, which is itself based on divine revelation as proclaimed by the Church. When it operates independently of faith and the revealed truths of faith, theology not only becomes impoverished but also runs the dangerous risk of veering off into the realm of idolatry. Griffiths readily admits, then, “that theology is not for everyone. It is not a public discipline. It is a work of the Church, a work of the faithful, an elucidation of what God has revealed and the Church does its best to understand and teach (speaking now of its Catholic variety).”98 Even more stridently, David Hart argues that the main reason for excluding the study of Christian theology from the secular university is that secularization has sundered the state’s rightful subordination and accountability to the Church as a sacral authority, the result being not only the privatization of religion but also the emergence of the modern state as an absolute, corrupt power that has made itself the sole authority on moral, legal, and political matters. Accordingly, Hart writes, “So when I say it is not obvious that theologians should desire the restoration of their discipline in the modern university, it is not because I believe in a wall of separation or because I am a Christian separatist …. It is because I simply find it impossible to grant that the modern secular state is anything other than a frequently wicked perversion of social order.”99 Furthermore, since the secular university, as a function of the modern sate, reflects this perverted (or we could say, inverted) social order, then it cannot rightfully acknowledge theology’s autonomy and authority as an academic discipline: “it is not natural to theology that it should function as one discipline among others, attempting to make its contribution to some larger conversation; as soon as it consents to become a perspective among the human sciences, rather than the contemplation of the final cause and consummation of all paths of knowledge, it has ceased to be theology and has become precisely what its detractors have long suspected it of being: willful opinion, emotion, and cant.”100 Similarly, D’Costa argues that if Christian theology is to function properly at all then it must regain its status as “queen of the sciences,” able not just to govern but also to integrate the various disciplines and the knowledge they claim to produce. Since he thinks that even Christian universities (in both America and Britain) have generally been secularized, D’Costa argues for the creation of a new sort of Christian, and specifically Roman Catholic, “desirably sectarian” university in which theology, with the aid of philosophy, can serve as

A critical analysis of the current debate

77

“queen.” The goal for Christian theologians in the university, then, is not to dictate imperialistically how the various university disciplines should be studied but rather to collaborate with members of other disciplines (themselves trained to some degree in theology and philosophy) “in a constant effort to determine the relative place and meaning of each of the various disciplines within the context of a vision of the human person and the world that is enlightened by the Gospel, and therefore by a faith in Christ, the Logos, as the center of creation and of human history.”101 John Milbank makes a comparable, albeit even more radical, claim: Christian theology must retain a hegemonic role in relation to other academic disciplines – a feat impossible within the modern, secular university as it is currently constituted – because without theology these disciplines cease to treat their respective objects of intellectual inquiry for what they really are: inherently and inescapably related to God, who is their ultimate source and cause. Theology, then, far from being a form of nihilism – “a fantasising about the void” – as its secularist (atheist and agnostic) opponents hold it to be, proves to be the one discipline able to stand against nihilism.102 Theology not only helps organize and relate other academic disciplines; it alone is capable of making them intelligible. Without theology “all other disciplines, which claim to be about objects regardless of whether or not these objects are related to God, are, just for this reason about nothing whatsoever …. Thus for theology, other disciplines … are, precisely as secular disciplines (although they will nearly always possess also an implicit and redeeming supernatural orientation) through and through nihilistic.”103 Having already criticized a series of contemporary thinkers for denying anyone in the secular university the right to draw on specifically theological epistemic resources in order to pursue distinctly theological epistemic ends, I certainly need to deal with the central sectarian contention that it is only possible to study Christian theology on its own epistemological terms: that is, when it sets the agenda not only for how it should pursue knowledge and truth but how all university disciplines and their constituents should pursue knowledge and truth. Are not Christian faith and its attending practices ultimately needed to carry out the academic study of theology, and potentially any academic study, in the requisite fullness (or with the requisite truthfulness)? If so, then how can the academic study of theology intelligibly proceed in the secular university, which by definition is free from any particular ecclesial basis or ties? Or, as D’Costa puts the question to Ford: can “academic” or “public” theology, as studied in the secular university, really be theology after all, or will it, in fact, always be “an imaginative, rich, and creative form of religious studies” – a subtly crafted, secular academic discipline?104 It is certainly a challenge for theological inclusivists to be wary of the ways that they sever or at least attenuate the link between Christian theology, as an academic discipline, and the faithful traditions that traditionally have governed and guided it. But including theology in secular-university study does not necessarily require severing or attenuating that vital link. Sectarians, then, offer

78

A critical analysis of the current debate

us a false alternative: in D’Costa’s case, the prayer-based study of theology, animated by the love of God, which yields genuine theological knowledge, or the secularized “positivist examination of Christian history,”105 which does not. Clearly, with D’Costa, I reject any mandate that theology must be fully aligned with a positivist or scientistic epistemology (or, more broadly, the epistemological standards supposedly ruling the various academic disciplines) in order to be made fully fit for study within the modern, secular university. But if we reject this secularized model of theological study, why should we be forced to embrace D’Costa’s sectarian model as the only other viable alternative? Most notably, one can endorse D’Costa’s claim that prayer and love are significant and even primary epistemological presuppositions or points of access to the study of theology without making the further claim – which I think is unjustified – that they are the only epistemological presuppositions or points of access to such study. For example, in defense of his own position, D’Costa cites Aquinas, who claims that there are two types of theological wisdom: one type of wisdom results from the supernatural work or gifting of the Holy Spirit, along with supernaturally infused virtues, such as love; the other type of wisdom results from (in D’Costa’s words) “the hard workings of the intellect, with requisite training.”106 And yet, inexplicably, D’Costa seems completely unwilling to acknowledge with Aquinas that this latter sort of wisdom is also epistemologically valid, insofar as it is the fruit of a rightly trained mind working from the right epistemological starting points: the first principles or revealed truths found in the Bible and the teaching of the Church (sacra doctrina). As Eugene Rogers points out (since he also cites Aquinas), the study of theology does not necessarily require the Spirit or infused virtue but “faith” in the larger sense of a willingness and ability to practice certain skills or subject oneself to hard, academic study, critically engaging the principles of Christian revelation (and the reasoning concerning them), even if one does not accept those principles as revelation.107 Thus, D’Costa also needs to offer reasons (which he does not) for why proper habituation in the study of theology, even if it is not guided by prayer or animated by divine love, cannot also be grounded in and guided by other intellectual virtues like “faith,” or the amor scientiae, which can help the student of theology, whether Christian or not, pursue and even attain at least some degree of genuine theological knowledge. The other, principal sectarian claim is that Christian theology is not content, in David Hart’s words (from above), to “function as one discipline among others, attempting to make its contribution to some larger conversation.” Instead, theology, as “the contemplation of the final cause and consummation of all paths of knowledge,” must function as the “queen of the sciences.” Milbank is even more imperialistic: without theology, academic study within the university not only suffers but also falls apart entirely, for it ceases to be about anything real or substantive at all. Thus, either theology occupies its place as “queen,” standing as the only bulwark against nihilism, or it occupies no place at all. Once again, though, we are faced with an unnecessary, and I think, false

A critical analysis of the current debate

79

alternative, born of the sectarian’s fear that divesting theology of its status as “queen” also entails divesting it of its status as knowledge, reducing it to “willful opinion, emotion, and cant” (Hart’s words) or “fantasising about the void” (Milbank’s words). Such a fear, however, is not only extremist but also unfounded. Once we recognize that there is no such thing as an overarching, all-encompassing “secular perspective,” and hence no singular, comprehensive means for gaining knowledge of the truth, then we must also recognize that the secular university is in no position to claim categorically that theology is an enterprise devoid of knowledge and truth. So, even though the secular university may not honor theology’s epistemic status as “queen” any imperialistic move on the part of the secular university to exclude theology on the grounds that it is pure fideism or fantasy is completely unjustified. The sectarian’s larger point of emphasis here, however, which I also need to address, is that only Christian theology is capable of properly integrating and relating the university’s disparate disciplines. For Milbank, this entails denying that other disciplines are capable of yielding knowledge and discovering truth in their own right, a claim that is extraordinarily difficult to defend both empirically and philosophically. However, not all sectarians construe theology’s role as the “queen of the sciences” in the same way. For example, as D’Costa argues, while the role of theology in the university, along with philosophy as a mediating discipline, is to safeguard as well as promote the university’s collective (rather than fragmented) pursuit of knowledge and truth, it also must respect the individual ways, within the various disciplines, that the pursuit of knowledge and truth occurs. So understood, theology, along with philosophy, “facilitates the intellectual co-ordination (and sometimes questioning) of the methods and findings of the disciplines, while never questioning the legitimate autonomy of any.”108 In this sense, theology is not only “queen” but also “servant,” since it seeks to relate, challenge, educate, but also respect those disciplines as unique, individual spheres of intellectual inquiry. In response, I see no reason why Christian theology cannot play an analogous role as “servant” in the secular university, even though it cannot claim any right to be “queen.” “Sibling” is perhaps a more adequate term to describe theology’s relationship with the other disciplines in the secular university. First, at a bare minimum, the very presence of theology and theologians in the secular university reminds members of other disciplines of their own need to pay adequate scholarly attention to the theological aspects or implications of their own disciplinary study and work.109 Second, and more importantly, while theology should respect the autonomy of the secular university’s various disciplines, and recognized disciplinary boundaries, it certainly can and should press the secular university to overcome any inveterate tendency toward fragmentation and the compartmentalization of knowledge- and truth-seeking, or the secular university’s own version of sectarianism. In particular, without unjustly arrogating to itself the right to orient all of the disciplines’ pursuits of knowledge and truth around its own (as the disciplines’ “queen”), theology still can press the other disciplines to consider and even explore deeper dimensions of knowledge

80

A critical analysis of the current debate

and truth – or in Ford’s words, “the full question of truth” – and thereby help positively order the disciplines, along with the secular university itself, towards genuine wisdom: an explanatory, ordered, and unified knowledge of the truth in all of its variety and depth, which sectarians rightly point out theology traditionally has claimed to provide. It remains an interesting and important question to what degree Christian theology – in its role as a servant, sibling discipline – actively can push the other disciplines in the secular university to pursue what it considers to be preeminent knowledge and truth, specifically theological knowledge and truth. In his more recent work, D’Costa has suggested that if theology has any positive role to play in the secular university, it is to serve both as a “thorn in the flesh” of the secular university – “always asking questions of method, presupposition, object, and telos in the disciplines” – and as “a thorn in the flesh within its own subject area,” seeking to expose its eradication as an ecclesial discipline, as well as making a case for its proper restoration.110 I have no issues with theology engaging in this sort of forceful intellectual exchange and jockeying with the secular university’s other disciplines (and even those within its own subject area), as long as they are able to do the same: that is, always remaining free to ask theology questions about its methods, presuppositions, objects, and aims, as well as make their own case for their importance and even primacy within the secular university’s disciplinary ranks. Unlike D’Costa, however, I do not think that theology qua intellectual “thorn in the flesh” or gadfly needs to have as its goal evangelizing the secular university, or eventually making it into “a Christian, faith-based university.”111 Certainly, if this is its goal, theology very easily could undermine the positive confrontational role it can play within the secular university, especially if (or most likely, when) the other disciplines begin to accuse it of intellectual hegemony and imperialism. Moreover, theology could undermine its primary servant or sibling role of helping the secular university attain its own valuable epistemic and educative ends – in particular, the highest epistemic and educative ends at which all liberal learning should be aimed. Of course, in order to help the secular university and its constituents attain these ends, Christian theology must be free to provide a course of study that it has good reason to believe is conducive for attaining them: that is, genuine, rational pathways for attaining wisdom, even specifically theological wisdom. However, which students take these rational pathways to their end, or when they do so (even if they do so) is not up to theology to decide. Nor is it up to theology to decide whether or not the secular university writ large will come to possess theological wisdom (and so once again make theology its “queen”). If such a conversion does come about, it will not be because theology has hijacked intellectual life at the secular university but rather because theology has led the secular university to attain the wisdom – the greatest epistemic and educative good – that it had been seeking all along. Finally, there is this important warning that Griffiths expresses: once Christian theology has ceased to be a work of the Church and the Christian faithful, it will produce not only an impoverished but also a false, idolatrous

A critical analysis of the current debate

81

knowledge – that is, a secular simulacrum of authentic theological knowledge. I certainly share Griffiths’s concern here, since (as I argued in chapter 1) theology will become distorted, even undermined entirely, once it severs itself from the divine source in which it claims to originate and from which it claims to flow. But on the model I am proposing and beginning to defend, theology can claim for itself the requisite epistemic clarity and authenticity so long as it utilizes epistemic resources like the Church, which Christians believe is the custodian (and for many Christians, the proper interpreter) of the truth that God has revealed. Thus, we still can heed Griffiths’s warning, and thereby defuse the sectarians’ broader concern, by ensuring that the theological study that occurs in the secular university bears the proper epistemic connection to the Church and the truth that the Church claims to possess. That it is in the secular university’s best epistemic and educative interest to include and even promote traditional theological study is a claim that I already have made and will continue to defend. For the moment, though, the following claim holds: as long as the secular university commits itself to including theology, as traditionally conceived, as an essential part of its own epistemologically pluralistic quest for knowledge and truth, and Christian theologians in the secular university choose to contribute to that quest in their own work, in service to both the university and the Church, then sectarians such as Griffiths have no grounds for barring the study of theology – or theologians, for that matter – from secular academic life.112

Theology in the secular university as “faith” seeking understanding Where, then, do I fall on the spectrum of positions one can take on the place of theology in the secular university? Clearly, I am an inclusivist; however, my inclusivism differs from the inclusivism articulated and defended by those whom I consider to be more secularist than Christian. If I side with anyone, then, it is the theological inclusivists. However, I think that my position is best defined as “inclusive sectarianism.” This is not because I want to make the secular university sectarian. It is because I think that the secular university is already or at least should be sectarian, in the following sense: all intellectual inquiry in the secular university proceeds from somewhere, rather than nowhere in particular – that is, some external vantage point furnished by the “secular perspective.”113 As a result, all intellectual inquiry is informed and directed by particular intellectual sources, principles, norms, and exemplars – invaluable epistemic resources that also serve as invaluable epistemic authorities. Once again, this does not mean that there are no definitive, rational ways of inquiring into truth and ideally attaining truth. What it does mean is that one’s rational pursuit of knowledge and truth will vary, sometimes drastically, depending on which epistemic authorities are governing and guiding one’s pursuit and which kind and level of knowledge and truth that one is pursuing. The implicit argument that I am making, which I now need to make explicit – building on the argument that I made in the previous chapter – locates and celebrates the broadly realist study of Christian theology in the secular

82

A critical analysis of the current debate

university as faith seeking understanding, or perhaps better, “faith” seeking understanding: the rational pursuit of theological knowledge and truth governed and guided by theology’s own epistemic authorities. On this model, then, studying theology does not require believing that Christian theology’s epistemic authorities – Christian Scripture, the Christian Church, Christian theological principles and rational norms, and even other Christian theologians – are repositories of theological knowledge and truth, or are conduits for attaining theological knowledge and truth. Instead, it requires leaning on those epistemic authorities as one would lean on epistemic authorities in any discipline where one does not yet know the truth that one is seeking, or where one is seeking to grow in the knowledge of the truth that one already possesses. Recall the intellectual and educational principle that I introduced in the previous chapter, which is worth repeating here: just as gaining and growing in knowledge of a given subject matter requires being instructed or apprenticed by those who already have knowledge of that subject matter, so gaining and furthering knowledge of the divine requires being instructed or apprenticed by the divine, engaging in reasoning or discourse about the divine that is governed and guided by the divine – and, specifically, those epistemic authorities that Christians claim have been provided by the divine, including those theologians who submit to the divine in their own reasoning or discourse about the divine. As I see it, then, “faith” seeking understanding is a ubiquitous form of knowledge- and truth-seeking, both within Christian theology and outside of it. Consider, again, how few truths there are that we can know firsthand, solely employing our individual cognitive resources, and so how many truths there are which we either must always lean on other epistemic authorities in order to know or which we only can come to know for ourselves by leaning, at least in part, on other epistemic authorities who are already “in the know.” This is especially staggering when we remind ourselves that there are entire realms of truth that are in principle closed off to us, lest we rely on other epistemic authorities who are already “in the know.” Augustine points out, for example, that the facts of ancient history are truths that we cannot possibly come to know, and so subsequently better seek to understand (or know better), if we do not take up the proper epistemic attitude of belief or faith towards them, relying on the epistemic authority of others. Analogously, Augustine thinks it should come as no surprise that coming to know divine truth requires first believing that truth under the direction of the requisite epistemic authority, which for Augustine is the Christian Church.114 This is especially the case since the teaching of the Church concerns fundamental mysteries about the divine for which faith is required if any progress in understanding and knowledge concerning them is going to be made. Augustine also argues that faith is necessary because it disposes the mind to gain a better understanding knowledge of the divine that would otherwise not be available to it. Augustine states plainly that “[a]uthority demands belief and prepares man for reason. Reason leads to understanding and knowledge.”115 So Augustine affords reason the primary role of furnishing depth of understanding

A critical analysis of the current debate

83

and knowledge to what we believe in faith even if we only can achieve full understanding and knowledge, and thus perfect happiness, in the life to come.116 In theological matters, then, faith enables the proper use of reason, since divine truth only can be cognitively attained “gradually step by step.”117 More specifically, faith is necessary because it makes the mind more supple and willing to inquire into divine truth: we become more “fit to receive the truth” by first believing what we are told.118 But here, Augustine once again employs a general epistemic and educative principle. Just as “[e]very kind of scholastic discipline, however humble or easy to acquire, demands a teacher or a master if it is to be acquired,” so the study of theology – and especially the study of theology, which deals with mysteries that remain “unseen” – demands a teacher or master to whom we must first submit in faith and from whom we must learn, so that we can continue to grow in our understanding and knowledge of God.119 So while Augustine’s conception of theology as “faith seeking understanding” may initially seem exclusively sectarian, in fact, his greater epistemological lesson has definite applicability in the secular university. The first step in learning any academic discipline requires believing what we are told – or at least, going along with what we are told, for the sake of gaining and growing in knowledge – by a “master” within that discipline. In addition, those of us who are teachers or masters within our respective academic disciplines recognize the importance, even necessity, of submitting to the requisite epistemic authorities (sources, principles, norms, exemplars) within our fields, because it is only by doing so that it is possible to acquire the cognitive tools and dispositions needed to attain the requisite disciplinary knowledge, from the most basic acquaintance with disciplinary truths to the deepest knowledge or understanding of such truths. And we all have our own epistemic authorities to which we freely submit, from which (and whom) we derive certain commitments and on the basis of which we continue to hold those commitments. I contend that for many of the commitments we hold, even in our own academic disciplines, it is not a matter of whether they are derived from and grounded in an authority, but which authority they are derived from and grounded in: authority, in whatever form, plays an irrepressible role in our professional and personal intellectual lives.120 Finally, the basic commitments or beliefs that we hold also can serve as authorities: they, too, can possess a “normative power” that governs and guides how we think – in both our professional and, more broadly, personal intellectual lives.121 All of us possess these sorts of commitments, which, given their embedded structure in our thinking, we only can evaluate ad hoc and piecemeal. In fact, not only is it not possible to evaluate our most basic commitments or beliefs wholesale, which would require suspending any field of inquiry (and thinking itself) in its entirety, but also intellectual inquiry, for the most part, cannot proceed without those commitments in place. We largely reason in light of what we believe, and those beliefs provide the critical framework and impetus we need for carrying out intellectual inquiry successfully. As such, there is good

84

A critical analysis of the current debate

reason to rely on those beliefs, so that we can carry out intellectual inquiry, in whatever field of study, successfully. And it would be unreasonable to do otherwise. Since authority does play a pervasive and positive role in our collective and individual intellectual lives, then asking students of theology to submit to the requisite theological authorities in “faith” is what we would ask of any student looking to gain knowledge in any given area of intellectual inquiry (even though, as I will go on to argue, the act of submitting to these authorities does not require blind “faith”). In the realm of revealed theology, one must accept certain theological principles, or the principal truth-claims of the Christian faith, in “faith” for the sake of argument or for the sake of learning as one would accept certain axiomatic “givens” in learning a mathematical proof. This “faith,” then, need not be sectarian: that is, it need not require actual assent to particular theological truths (though, of course, it may) but rather a basic willingness to reason about such truths – at least treated initially as serious truth-claims – in pursuit of genuine theological knowledge, whether that be a knowledge of theological positions and rationales or a more advanced knowledge of theological truth itself. Even in the realm of natural theology, which is purportedly governed and guided by one’s own reasoning, one must submit in “faith” to the requisite epistemic authorities, whether past exemplars or current teachers (who almost always possess theological faith) not only in order to understand natural theological arguments better but also to learn how to employ natural theological reasoning in order to pursue and ideally attain knowledge of theological truth. “Faith” enters into the study of theology at the secular university in another important sense. Christian theology offers a sweeping narrative about divine action in human history, from creation to redemption to the final end of human history and the world. In telling this sweeping narrative – however differently they tell it (which are really different variations on the same theme) – theologians also raise and address perennial questions about the origins and end of the universe; human nature; the meaning of human existence; and of course the existence and nature of God, or ultimate reality itself. These types of questions (which by no means are limited to theology) are extremely difficult to address from within a neutral critical framework or with total critical as well as personal distance. “Faith,” again taken more holistically as including basic, background beliefs about the world; the human person; and God, or ultimate reality, thus inevitably informs and directs the study of theology insofar as it provides a critical framework and impetus for properly addressing these questions in pursuit of answers to them. Therefore, we still can affirm with Augustine that in engaging in theological study of whatever sort and from whatever epistemic position “there is for souls no certain way to wisdom … unless faith prepares them for the use of reason.”122 To be sure, like any discipline seeking to be included within an epistemologically pluralist university, Christian theology must be prepared to give at least some level of justification for the epistemic authorities that its practitioners rely on

A critical analysis of the current debate

85

when conducting theological inquiry, or telling some story about how and why those authorities offer a rational basis for pursuing knowledge and truth to those who don’t recognize trust in theological authorities as being prima facie rational.123 Augustine entirely agrees: “reason is not entirely absent from authority, for we have got to consider whom we have to believe.”124 And yet, employing this sort of discriminatory reasoning is not something that we can do all at once, since there is no singular, rational rule that we can use to carry it out with immediate, deductive success. Distinguishing good – that is, reasonable or reliable – epistemic authorities from bad ones is a largely inductive; interpretive; and, I also would emphasize, careful affair, like the process of determining which kinds of intellectual inquiry should constitute secular academic life and which should not. In particular, we need to observe how members of an epistemic community like theologians (across space and time) rely on and employ their various epistemic authorities in reasoning towards, and on behalf of, the truth they (or others) claim to believe and even know. Good reasoning practices – however diversely they are employed, and whatever epistemic authorities are driving them – can make a reasonable claim to truth. Bad reasoning practices cannot. My provisional claim, which I will defend in full as the book proceeds, is that theology, as traditionally practiced, meets this epistemic bar. As such, it is reasonable to interpret theological study as conducive for attaining and growing in knowledge of theological truth. Of course, asking Christian theology to give reasons for why it trusts certain epistemic authorities is different from requiring it to justify its authorities to every conceivable intellectual audience. If the secular university were to require this of every discipline and its members – since to be fair, everyone in the secular university needs to be held to the same epistemic standards – then arguably no discipline could gain access to secular academic life. Nor could the disciplines and their members make any genuine intellectual progress, since they would be caught in the endless exercise of justifying the very authorities that make intellectual inquiry possible. Eventually, the secular university would come under the sway of a debilitating skepticism, or a sort of epistemological vertigo from which it could not recover: given the utter lack of epistemic trust that would pervade all of secular academic life, all knowledge- and truth-seeking would come to a grinding halt. The main epistemic and educative goal for the Christian theologian or anyone in a truly pluralist secular university, then, is not to abandon forms of reasoning that are couched in and steered by particular epistemic authorities but rather to offer faith-based (or “faith”-based) arguments with enough sophistication and cogency to move forward intellectual conversation on matters of genuine intellectual (and more broadly, human) importance. Having considered these arguments, some members of the secular university will be persuaded, while others will not. But of course, learning to live with genuine epistemic disagreement over important truth-claims is constitutive of academic life in an epistemologically pluralist university, just as learning to live with genuine disagreement over important issues of public policy is constitutive of life in a truly democratic polity.

86

A critical analysis of the current debate

At bottom, then, the Christian theologian should follow and be held to the same epistemic rule as everyone else in the secular university: make good arguments for the truth-claims that you advance, not make good arguments the conclusions of which everyone in the epistemic community accepts, or arguments whose premises are derived from epistemic authorities and which constitute commitments that everyone in the epistemic community accepts. The former rule, which allows for secular-university constituents to rely on a variety of epistemic authorities in order to pursue a variety of epistemic ends, opens up the intellectual life of the university and enhances the university’s quest for knowledge and truth. The latter rule threatens to stymie the intellectual life of the university and its quest for knowledge and truth. In particular, the former rules allows members of the secular university, whether Christian or not, to pursue theological knowledge and truth along specifically theological lines, and so enhances their ability to attain and grow in knowledge of theological truth. The latter rule does not, and so prevents members of the secular university from attaining and growing in knowledge of theological truth, or at least the full range of such knowledge. This brings me to my final point. Like the practitioners of any viable academic discipline, Christian theologians rely on their epistemic authorities in order to attain specific epistemic ends. In fact, they recognize that without relying on those authorities – and, at bottom, the divine reality on which the entire theological enterprise claims to be based – attaining those ends will not be possible. Furthermore, as I already have begun to argue, theology traditionally has pursued what it considers to be the highest epistemic and educative ends, or the deepest truth that can be known, which the truly wise person knows. Insofar as the secular university also aspires to attain the highest epistemic and educative ends, then, it behooves it to include and even promote specifically theological means of pursuing them – even if (unlike theology) it makes no authoritative claims about what they consist in and where they are to be found. What the secular university therefore needs to consider is not only what it would gain by including theology in its course of study but also what it potentially could lose by failing to include theology in its course of study. “So long as we cannot know pure truth,” Augustine writes, “it is misery no doubt to be deceived by authority; but it is certainly greater misery not to be moved by it.”125 In other words, where knowledge of the truth is most uncertain or the most debated, but also the most valuable, we should trust those authorities, including specifically theological ones, which open up rational avenues for pursuing and (ideally) attaining it. At this point, further articulating and defending the model for Christian theological study in the secular university that I am offering requires thinking much more deeply about the epistemic and educative goals of the secular university. A truly epistemologically pluralist university that accommodates all types and levels of epistemic and educative pursuits still needs to be unified in its overall mission and aim. Consequently, in the next chapter, I develop a philosophy of education, and specifically an epistemology of truly liberal

A critical analysis of the current debate

87

learning, which I think affords the secular university a coherent as well as a lofty, aspirational mission and aim, which flow directly out of the secular university’s commitment to epistemological plurality or its commitment to pursue all types and levels of knowledge and truth, especially the deepest levels of knowledge and truth, whatever they might be and wherever they might be found. Thus, a secular university committed to promoting truly liberal learning also commits itself to including, and even promoting, disciplines like Christian theology that are fully equipped to help the secular university achieve its truly liberal epistemic and educative ideals.

Notes 1 To be clear, I am not using the terms “secularist” or “sectarian” in a pejorative sense, but only as a way to denote specific viewpoints on the place of theology in the secular university. Also, in this chapter, I will be drawing on my article, “Studying Christian Theology in the Secular University,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78.4 (2010): 991–1,024. 2 Donald Wiebe, The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 155. 3 Donald Wiebe, “‘Why the Academic Study of Religion?’ Motive and Method in the Study of Religion,” Religious Studies 24.4 (1988): 407. 4 Wiebe, “‘Why the Academic Study of Religion?’,” 408. 5 Wiebe, “‘Why the Academic Study of Religion?’,” 410 and 412. 6 Wiebe, “‘Why the Academic Study of Religion?’,” 412. 7 Wiebe, The Politics of Religious Studies, 156. See also his more recent criticism of AAR presidents, who, rather than advocating “an objective, neutral, and disinterested study of religion and religious phenomena,” instead hold “the primary work of the Academy to be that of bringing unity among the religions as an avenue to peace and prosperity to society, locally and globally” (Donald Wiebe, “The Eternal Return All Over Again: The Religious Conversation Endures,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.3 [2006]: 688 and 687). 8 Luther H. Martin and Donald Wiebe, “Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion,”Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80.3 (2012): 589. 9 Martin and Wiebe, “Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline,” 590. 10 Gavin D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy, and Nation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 4. Other, non-sectarian thinkers have made this claim as well: William Hart, for example, says that Wiebe (and fellow scholar Robert Segal) may reject theology “but they are theologians just the same. Thus having gotten rid of God, they replace him with Science” (William D. Hart, “From Theology to theology: The Place of ‘God-Talk’ in Religious Studies,” Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain, eds. Linell E. Cady and Delwin Brown [Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002], 104). While I endorse Hart’s criticism, I have some issues with his model for academic theology, which I consider and critique below. 11 See Paul J. Griffiths, “The Very Idea of Religion,” First Things 103 (May 2000): 33–5. 12 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Travail of Theology in the Modern Academy,” The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann, eds. Miroslav Volf, Carmen Krieg, and Thomas Kucharz (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 39. For Wolterstorff, the modern model of the well-formed Wissenschaft also included the

88

13

14

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

A critical analysis of the current debate idea that well-formed learning is “a generically human enterprise” (38), shorn of particularity (gender, race, nationality, religion, etc.). Italics are in the original text. While Wolterstorff further says that this foundationalist, generic understanding of learning in the modern university now has been “shattered,” I think it still holds sway, in varying and often subtle ways, as is evidenced in the ongoing, divisive debate over the place and nature of theology in the secular university. For a further critique of the Western academy’s dominant self-understanding, and the claim that it has been “shattered,” see Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Scholarship Grounded in Religion,” Religion, Scholarship, and Higher Education, 3–15, in particular 8. I first encountered this phrase when one of my students said that he was taking my class to learn about Christianity from a “secular” and “scholarly” perspective. According to James Stoner, the phrase also appeared in the political arena in 2004, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Locke v. Davey, 540 U.S. 712 (2004) that the State of Washington should continue to endorse a statute explicitly excluding the study of theology from qualification for state scholarship support – support that is extended to vocational training in every other field. As Stoner reports it, although Justice Thomas dissented from the decision, he still reinforced the idea that “devotional theology” (Chief Justice Rehnquist’s term) should be distinguished from “the study of theology from a secular perspective” (Justice Thomas’s term). Stoner argues that while Thomas’s dissent “leaves room for a future legal challenge to the reigning academic orthodoxy that equates emotion and religion, to the exclusion of reason,” it is still built on the majority assumption “that religious commitment (‘devotion’) automatically disqualifies any knowledge claims from the realm of the scholarly, academic debate that universities seek to foster” (James R. Stoner, Jr., “The ‘Naked’ University: What If Theology Is Knowledge, Not Belief?” Theology Today 62.4 [2006]: 524–5). I am employing the phrase to denote a particular, problematic epistemology. In marshaling the critique that follows, I am drawing broadly on the following philosophical resources: Thomas Nagel, “Subjective and Objective,” Mortal Questions (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 196–213; Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986); and John McDowell, Mind, Value, and Reality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). For the example to work, the “human” does not need to be construed in a robustly metaphysical sense, as denoting some essence or ideal. Moreover, “objective” knowledge in this context may also just mean enlightened consensus concerning what every educated member of the secular university agrees the “human” is. I take this way of thinking about objectivity to be more amenable to Rortians, even if “objectivity” as a concept has not been eradicated entirely and replaced with “solidarity” instead. For more on this latter distinction, see Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Russell T. McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), 129. Russell T. McCutcheon, “The Study of Religion as an Anthropology of Credibility,” Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 16. McCutcheon, “The Study of Religion as an Anthropology of Credibility,” 18. McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers, 132. McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers, 138. McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers, 139. Russell T. McCutcheon, “Everything Old is New Again,” Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion: Essays in Honor of Donald Wiebe, eds. William E. Arnal, Willi Braun, and Russell T. McCutcheon (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014), Google Books edn., 108 and 116.

A critical analysis of the current debate

89

23 I should note that this is not the only place where Wiebe and McCutcheon disagree. Wiebe has accused McCutcheon of being as ideological in his aim qua public scholar of religion to criticize and even undermine religion as those who assume the decidedly unacademic role of helping to create a good society. (See Donald Wiebe, “The Politics of Wishful Thinking? Disentangling the Role of the ScholarScientist from that of the Public Intellectual in the Modern Academic Study of Religion,” Temenos 41.1 [2005]: 7–38). In response, McCutcheon not only claims that Wiebe totally misrepresents him but also that Wiebe cannot possibly maintain the scientific disinterest and purity he espouses. (See Russell T. McCutcheon, “A Response to Donald Wiebe from an East-Going Zax,” Temenos 42.2 [2006]: 113–29). I agree that Wiebe’s labeling McCutcheon an ideologue is inconsistent; however, I question whether McCutcheon, in his own efforts to naturalize and historicize all religious phenomena, has fully jettisoned the scientism that Wiebe openly espouses. 24 McCutcheon, “The Study of Religion as an Anthropology of Credibility,” 18. 25 McCutcheon, “The Study of Religion as an Anthropology of Credibility,” 18. 26 McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers, 112. Italics are in the original text. 27 McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers, 135. The italics are mine. 28 Russell T. McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (London, UK: Routledge, 2003), 150. Italics are in the original text. 29 According to Griffiths (critiquing the essay, “A Default of Critical Intelligence? The Scholar of Religion as Public Intellectual,” which appears in Critics not Caretakers, 125–44), McCutcheon’s main problem is that he “doesn’t see the incoherence in recommending that scholars of religion abjure the search for the essential make-up of things (to use his phrase) in the name of assumptions about the essential make-up of things” (Paul J. Griffiths, “Response: Some Confusions about Critical Intelligence: A Response to Russell T. McCutcheon,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66.4 [1998]: 895). There is therefore a “deep confusion” in McCutcheon’s work: “the program … that McCutcheon recommends (indeed, requires) of scholars of religion is not (and in principle cannot be) free of deep axiological and metaphysical commitments that give it sense, purchase, and power” (894). 30 The case appears in both “The Study of Religion as an Anthropology of Credibility” and The Discipline of Religion. I will be referring to the case as it appears in the latter. 31 McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion, 156. 32 McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion, 156. 33 McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion, 156. Italics are in the original text. 34 McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion, 159. 35 McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion, 161. Italics are in the original text. 36 McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion, 157. 37 McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion, 160. Italics are in the original text. 38 See Delwin Brown, “Believing Traditions and the Task of the Academic Theologian,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62.4 (1994): 1167–79. 39 Delwin Brown, “Academic Theology in the University or Why an Ex-Queen’s Heir Should Be Made a Subject,” Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 130. 40 Brown employs the latter term in “Refashioning Self and Other: Theology, Academy, and the New Ethnography,” Converging on Culture: Theologians in Dialogue with Cultural Analysis and Criticism, eds. Delwin Brown, Sheila Greeve Davaney, and Kathryn Tanner (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 51. 41 Brown, “Academic Theology in the University,” 133. 42 Brown, “Academic Theology in the University,” 131. 43 Brown, “Academic Theology in the University,” 135. 44 Sheila Greeve Davaney, “Rethinking Theology and Religious Studies,” Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 151.

90

A critical analysis of the current debate

45 Brown also makes the argument that academic theology should be included in the university on political grounds: since the university now possesses unparalleled cultural influence, it must include “the study of any phenomenon of social and cultural importance” (“Academic Theology in the University,” 136). 46 John D. Caputo, “Open Theology – Or What Comes After Secularism?” CSSR Bulletin 37.2 (2008): 46. For Clayton Crockett, doing secular theology on a “plane of immanence” seems to require reorienting theology away from otherworldliness rather than transcendence (though it is not clear what a this-worldly transcendence is supposed to be). He writes, “Although Deleuze was opposed to the language of transcendence, for me a saeculum or a plane of immanence does not preclude any questions of transcendence, but it means that all discussions of transcendence must be indexed on the plane or register of immanence. In this sense, secular theology is an affirmation of the Enlightenment shift of value from outside or beyond the world (an otherworldly transcendence) towards a more immanent, worldly locus of value and significance” (Clayton Crockett, “Secular Theology and the Academic Study of Religion,” CSSR Bulletin 37.2 [2008]: 38). See also Clayton Crockett, “Introduction,” Secular Theology: American Radical Theological Thought, ed. Clayton Crockett (London, UK: Routledge, 2001), 1–9. 47 Caputo, “Open Theology,”, 47. 48 Jeffrey W. Robbins, “Theses on Secular Theology,” CSSR Bulletin 37.2 (2008): 35. 49 Robbins, “Theses on Secular Theology,” 34. 50 Hart, “From Theology to theology,” 104 and 94. Italics are in the original text. 51 Hart, “From Theology to theology,” 107. 52 Hart, “From Theology to theology,” 105. 53 Hart, “From Theology to theology,” 107. Italics are in the original text. 54 Brown, “Academic Theology in the University,” 127. 55 Robbins, “Theses on Secular Theology,” 35. 56 Caputo, “Open Theology,” 47–8. 57 See Hart, “From Theology to theology,” 103. 58 Caputo recognizes that “[o]f course, secular theology would at the same time always worry that it was instituting itself as a new authority” (“Open Theology,” 48), but he provides little assurance that secular theology is not already imposing its own authority by seeking to remove confessional theology from the secular university. 59 Richard Miller contends that once we eschew methodological purity and “essentialism” in religious studies (championed by Wiebe and his ilk), properly locating theology in religious studies and the secular academy more broadly becomes an interpretive, “poetical” affair – a matter of good judgment and discernment that requires examining the Wittgensteinian “family resemblances” or the “overlapping consensus of diverse spheres of investigation” that actually characterize religious studies as an academic field. See Richard B. Miller, “On Not Keeping Religious Studies Pure,” Casuistry and Modern Ethics: A Poetics of Practical Reasoning (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 199–221, in particular 201. 60 Davaney, “Rethinking Theology and Religious Studies,” 150. See also Sheila Greeve Davaney, “Theology and the Turn to Cultural Analysis,” Converging on Culture, 3–16. 61 Caputo, “Open Theology,” 48. 62 Caputo, “Open Theology,” 47. 63 Robbins, “Theses on Secular Theology,” 33. 64 In fact, Ford thinks that the modern university still seeks to balance and fulfill three main goals, which were originally established in the medieval university: “first, understanding and truth for their own sake; second, formation in a way of life, its habits and virtues; and third, utility in society – study oriented towards practical use and employment in various spheres of life” (David F. Ford, Christian

A critical analysis of the current debate

65

66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

91

Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love [New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 308). Italics are in the original text. Ford notes that at the University of Berlin’s founding, “there was a passionate debate between Fichte (first Rector of the University of Berlin), whose concept of Wissenschaft (fully rational scientific and scholarly method) excluded theology from the university, and Schleiermacher, who also advocated Wissenschaft but saw it as contributing to (though not dominating) theology and the professional training of clergy in the university” (Christian Wisdom, 312). Ford endorses the concept of Wissenschaft as “knowledge and rational understanding across the range of disciplines” (ibid., 330), a concept rooted in the medieval ideal of amor scientiae, love of knowledge for its own sake. Ford, Christian Wisdom, 336. Ford, Christian Wisdom, 332. Italics are in the original text. David F. Ford, “Epilogue: Twelve Theses for Christian Theology in the Twentyfirst Century,” The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, third edn., ed. David F. Ford with Rachel Muers (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 761. David F. Ford, Shaping Theology: Engagements in a Religious and Secular World (Malden, MA: Blackwell. 2007), 116. Ford, Shaping Theology, 116. Ford, Shaping Theology, 13. Ford, Shaping Theology 33. Ford, Shaping Theology, 40. Ford, Shaping Theology, 25. Ford, Shaping Theology, 4. Italics are in the original text. Ford, Christian Wisdom, 349. Denys Turner, “Doing Theology in the University,” Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-first Century, eds. David F. Ford, Ben Quash, and Janet Martin Soskice (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 35. Turner, “Doing Theology in the University,” 36–7. Turner, “Doing Theology in the University,” 37. Turner, “Doing Theology in the University,” 38. Kathryn Tanner, “Theology and Cultural Contest in the University,” Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 204. Tanner, “Theology and Cultural Contest in the University,” 205–6. Tanner, “Theology and Cultural Contest in the University,” 206. Tanner, “Theology and Cultural Contest in the University,” 209. See in particular Kathryn Tanner, “Public Theology and the Character of Public Debate,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (1996): 79–101. Tanner, “Public Theology and the Character of Public Debate,” 90. Tanner, “Public Theology and the Character of Public Debate,” 94–5. Tanner, “Theology and Cultural Contest in the University,” 210. David F. Ford, “Epilogue: Christian Theology at the Turn of the Millennium,” The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, second edn., ed. David F. Ford (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 724. Ford, “Epilogue: Christian Theology at the Turn of the Millennium,” second edn., 725. David Ray Griffin, “Professing Theology in the State University,” Theology and the University: Articles in Honor of John B. Cobb, Jr., 11. As Sarah Coakley points out (in part, against Ford), “if we want to keep questions of ‘God’, ‘truth’ and metaphysical ultimacy robustly in play in our theological discourses, we also need to defend in some form the traditional distinction between ‘religious studies’ and ‘theology’, like it or not” (Sarah Coakley, “Shaping the Field: A Transatlantic Perspective,” Fields of Faith, 48). Italics are in the original text.

92

A critical analysis of the current debate

93 D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square, 1 and 2. 94 D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square, 23. Although D’Costa is critical of secularists like Wiebe, in this passage, he is referring explicitly to the practice of epoche-, or “bracketing,” which is central to phenomenological approaches to the study of religion. 95 D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square, 112. 96 Gavin D’Costa, “On Theology, the Humanities, and the University,” Theology, University, Humanities: Initium Sapientiae Timor Domini, eds. Christopher Craig Brittain and Francesca Aran Murphy (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), 195. 97 James R. Stoner, Jr., Stanley Hauerwas, Paul J. Griffiths, and David B. Hart, “Theology as Knowledge: A Symposium,” First Things 163 (May 2006): 25. 98 Stoner, Hauerwas, Griffiths, and Hart, “Theology as Knowledge,” 25. 99 Stoner, Hauerwas, Griffiths, and Hart, “Theology as Knowledge,” 27. Although he does not offer as sharp a condemnation as Hart, Stanley Hauerwas also thinks that the modern university has been made subservient to the modern state – and it was the modern university, driven by principally economic ends, which pushed theology out of the university, since it construes theology as being of no economic use to the state. I do not place Hauerwas in this continuum of thinkers because, at least on my reading, he refuses to take a clear position on whether theology belongs in the secular university or not. Like sectarians, he is critical of the secular university insofar as it refuses to acknowledge that theology is knowledge and requires the subordination of the study of theology to the interests of the modern university and state. Moreover, he argues that the study of theology must be shaped by ecclesial practices. And yet, he also holds that Christians should not abandon the secular university, and that theology can play a positive role in the university without being hegemonic. To see how Hauerwas develops these claims in more detail, see Stanley Hauerwas, The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007). For an excellent summary of Hauerwas’s, as well as D’Costa’s, book, see David H. Kelsey, “Theology in the University: One More Time, with Feeling,” Modern Theology 25.2 (2009): 315–27. 100 Stoner, Hauerwas, Griffiths, and Hart, “Theology as Knowledge,” 27. 101 Gavin D’Costa, “Windows into Faith: Theology and Religious Studies at the University,”Communicating Faith, ed. John Sullivan (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 226. 102 John Milbank, “The Conflict of the Faculties: Theology and the Economy of the Sciences,” Faithfulness and Fortitude: In Conversation with the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas, eds. Mark Thiessen Nation and Samuel Wells (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 2000), 39. 103 Milbank, “The Conflict of the Faculties,” 41–2. Unlike, D’Costa, Milbank does not make an explicit argument for creating a new university with theology as “queen.” He does, however, make it clear that the secular academic enterprise cannot succeed – and for that matter, no academic enterprise can succeed – if theology does not reign as “queen.” Effectively, then, he rules theology out of the secular university, and makes at least an implicit argument for a sectarian university, because only sectarian universities would be willing to make theology “queen.” 104 D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square, 75. 105 D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square, 123. 106 D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square, 128. 107 See Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., “Theology in the Curriculum of a Secular Religious Studies Department,” Crosscurrents 56.2 (2006): 364–74. 108 D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square, 194. 109 Stoner also argues that theological knowledge is necessary for other secularuniversity disciplines to achieve a better self-understanding (both in “The ‘Naked’ University” and in “Theology as Knowledge”). 110 D’Costa, “Windows into Faith,” 227.

A critical analysis of the current debate

93

111 D’Costa, “Windows into Faith,” 227. 112 Although I will not pursue this point further, it is worth noting that Griffiths offers resources for including theology in the secular university despite his express intentions. His criticisms of secularists like Wiebe and McCutcheon do directly support his sectarianism; however, I have marshaled them to help support my more “inclusive sectarianism.” Moreover, Griffiths discusses the importance of authority for religious reading, particularly insofar as religious reading requires “some acknowledged constraints upon what and how religious readers should read and compose” (Paul J. Griffiths, Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999], 63). Griffiths also argues that “[a]uthority of this kind is present in all human discursive practices” (ibid., 63) and that “[i]f tradition-specific reading skills are not practiced, then much knowledge (and probably all the most important knowledge) … remains unavailable” (ibid., 74). It is unfortunate that Griffiths does not employ this rich epistemology of religious reading in order to defend the study of theology in the secular university, as I aim to do in a comparable way. 113 Alasdair MacIntyre, of course, has argued powerfully for this type of conclusion, and others have repeated a similar refrain. Nicholas Lash, for example, says that we should give up the illusion “that the human grasp of truth could ever be other than tradition-constituted. We are not incapable, as human beings, of making sense of things, of speaking truth and acting with integrity. But all these things we do from somewhere, shaped by some set of memories and expectations, bearing some sense of duty borne and gifts that have been given. All sense, and truth, and goodness, are carried and constituted by some story, some pattern of experience, some tradition” (Nicholas Lash, The Beginning and the End of “Religion” [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 19). So I realize that I am making claims regarding the tradition-rootedness of all intellectual inquiry that are comparable to ones others already have made. But insofar as I focus on epistemic authority, the contribution I am making here is original. 114 See in particular Augustine’s De utilitate credendi (hereafter De util. cred.), translated as The Usefulness of Belief in John H.S. Burleigh, ed. and trans., Augustine: Earlier Writings (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1953) and De fide rerum invisibilium, translated as “Faith in the Unseen” by Michael G. Campbell in Boniface Ramsey, ed., On Christian Belief, vol. I.8, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2005), as well as Book VI of his Confessiones, translated as Confessions by Henry Chadwick (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), written some years later. 115 Augustine, De vera religione (hereafter De vera. relig.) 24.45. Translation in Burleigh, Augustine: Earlier Writings, 247. All subsequent references to Augustine in this chapter are from the Burleigh translation. 116 Augustine emphasizes this point in his Retractationes 1.14.2. “For in this life,” he writes, “knowledge, however great, does not mean perfect blessedness, for that which is still unknown is incomparably greater” (285). 117 De util. cred. 10.24, 310. 118 De util. cred. 10.24, 311. 119 De util. cred. 17.35, 322. 120 Interpreting Augustine, Alfred Freddoso concurs: “So in the end the crucial issue for Augustine was not whether to make a faith-commitment qua inquirer but rather just which such commitment to make” (Alfred J. Freddoso, “Fides et Ratio: A ‘Radical’ Vision of Intellectual Inquiry,” Faith, Scholarship, and Culture in the 21st Century, eds. Alice Ramos and Marie I. George [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002]: 26–7). Italics are in the original text. 121 I am borrowing the phrase “normative power” from Zagzebski: she says that the word “authority” can refer both to a person or institution that has authority and

94

122 123

124 125

A critical analysis of the current debate to the normative power that person or institution possesses. See in particular chapter five of Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012). I extend the notion of epistemic authority to encompass lots of things, including beliefs. De util. cred. 17.35, 321–22. Thomas Lewis argues that religious studies as a discipline is shot through with normativity, or claims regarding what we ought to think. This, however, is not problematic. “What is important,” he writes, “is not to try somehow to exclude normative claims but rather to be willing to offer justification for the norms that we invoke” (Thomas A. Lewis, “On the Role of Normativity in Religious Studies,” The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, ed. Robert A. Orsi [New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012], 170). I agree with Lewis on this point, though I think that there should be a limit on how much justification one needs to provide for the normative claims one makes. De vera. relig. 24.45, 247. De util. cred. 16.34, 319.

Bibliography Augustine. Confessiones. Translated as Confessions by Henry Chadwick. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. Augustine. De fide rerum invisibilium. Translated as “Faith in the Unseen” by Michael G. Campbell in Boniface Ramsey, ed., On Christian Belief, vol. I.8, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2005. Augustine. De utilitate credendi. Translated as The Usefulness of Belief in Burleigh, Augustine: Earlier Writings. Augustine. De vera religione. Translated as Of True Religion in Burleigh, Augustine: Earlier Writings. Augustine. Retractationes. Translated as Retractations in Burleigh, Augustine: Earlier Writings. Brown, Delwin. “Believing Traditions and the Task of the Academic Theologian.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62.4 (1994): 1,167–179. Brown, Delwin. “Refashioning Self and Other: Theology, Academy, and the New Ethnography.” In Brown, Davaney, and Tanner, Converging on Culture, 41–55. Brown, Delwin. “Academic Theology in the University, or Why an Ex-Queen’s Heir Should be Made a Subject.” In Cady and Brown, Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 126–39. Brown, Delwin, Sheila Greeve Davaney, and Kathryn Tanner, eds. Converging on Culture: Theologians in Dialogue with Cultural Analysis and Criticism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001. Burleigh, John H.S., ed. and trans. Augustine: Earlier Writings. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1953. Cady, Linell E. and Delwin Brown, eds. Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. Caputo, John D. “Open Theology – Or What Comes After Secularism?” CSSR Bulletin 37.2 (2008): 45–9. Coakley, Sarah. “Shaping the Field: A Transatlantic Perspective.” In Ford, Quash, and Soskice, Fields of Faith, 39–55.

A critical analysis of the current debate

95

Crockett, Clayton. “Introduction.” In Secular Theology: American Radical Theological Thought, edited by Clayton Crockett, 1–9. London, UK: Routledge, 2001. Crockett, Clayton. “Secular Theology and the Academic Study of Religion.” CSSR Bulletin 37.2 (2008): 37–40. Davaney, Sheila Greeve. “Theology and the Turn to Cultural Analysis.” In Brown, Davaney, and Tanner, Converging on Culture, 3–16. Davaney, Sheila Greeve. “Rethinking Theology and Religious Studies.” In Cady and Brown, Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 140–54. D’Costa, Gavin. Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy, and Nation. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. D’Costa, Gavin. “Windows into Faith: Theology and Religious Studies at the University.” In Communicating Faith, edited by John Sullivan, 214–28. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010. D’Costa, Gavin. “On Theology, the Humanities, and the University.” In Theology, University, Humanities: Initium Sapientiae Timor Domini, edited by Christopher Craig Brittain and Francesca Aran Murphy, 194–212. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011. Ford, David F. “Epilogue: Christian Theology at the Turn of the Millennium.” In The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, second edn., edited by David F. Ford, 720–28. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997. Ford, David F. “Epilogue: Twelve Theses for Christian Theology in the Twenty-first Century.” In The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918, 3rd edn., edited by David F. Ford with Rachel Muers, 760–61. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Ford, David F. Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Ford, David F. Shaping Theology: Engagements in a Religious and Secular World. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 2007. Ford, David F., Ben Quash, and Janet Martin Soskice, eds. Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-first Century. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Freddoso, Alfred J. “Fides et Ratio: A ‘Radical’ Vision of Intellectual Inquiry.” In Faith, Scholarship, and Culture in the 21st Century, edited by Alice Ramos and Marie I. George, 13–31. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002. Griffin, David Ray. “Professing Theology in the State University.” In Theology and the University: Articles in Honor of John B. Cobb, Jr., edited by David Ray Griffin and Joseph C. Hough, Jr., 3–34. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991. Griffiths, Paul J. “Response: Some Confusions about Critical Intelligence: A Response to Russell T. McCutcheon.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66.4 (1998): 893–5. Griffiths, Paul J. Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. Griffiths, Paul J. “The Very Idea of Religion.” First Things 103 (May 2000): 33–5. Hart, William D. “From Theology to theology: The Place of ‘God-Talk’ in Religious Studies.” In Cady and Brown, Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 93–109. Hauerwas, Stanley. The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. Kelsey, David H. “Theology in the University: One More Time, with Feeling.” Modern Theology 25.2 (2009): 315–27.

96

A critical analysis of the current debate

Lash, Nicholas. The Beginning and the End of “Religion.” Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Lewis, Thomas A. “On the Role of Normativity in Religious Studies.” In The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, edited by Robert A. Orsi, 168–85. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Macdonald, Paul A., Jr. “Studying Christian Theology in the Secular University.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78.4 (2010): 991–1,024. Martin, Luther H., and Donald Wiebe. “Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80.3 (2012): 587–97. McCutcheon, Russell T. Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001. McCutcheon, Russell T. “The Study of Religion as an Anthropology of Credibility.” In Cady and Brown, Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 13–30. McCutcheon, Russell T. The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric. London, UK: Routledge, 2003. McCutcheon, Russell T. “A Response to Donald Wiebe from an East-Going Zax.” Temenos 42.2 (2006): 113–29. McCutcheon, Russell T. “Everything Old is New Again.” In Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion: Essays in Honor of Donald Wiebe, edited by William E. Arnal, Willi Braun, and Russell T. McCutcheon, Google Books edn., 104–23. New York, NY: Routledge, 2014. McDowell, John. Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Milbank, John. “The Conflict of the Faculties: Theology and the Economy of the Sciences.” In Faithfulness and Fortitude: In Conversation with the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas, edited by Mark Thiessen Nation and Samuel Wells, 39–57. Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 2000. Miller, Richard B. Casuistry and Modern Ethics: A Poetics of Practical Reasoning. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Nagel, Thomas. “Subjective and Objective” In Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions, 196–213. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986. Robbins, Jeffrey W. “Theses on Secular Theology.” CSSR Bulletin 37.2 (2008): 31–36. Rogers, Eugene F., Jr. “Theology in the Curriculum of a Secular Religious Studies Department.” Crosscurrents 56.2 (2006): 364–74. Rorty, Richard. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Stoner, James R., Jr. “The ‘Naked’ University: What If Theology Is Knowledge, Not Belief?” Theology Today 62.4 (2006): 515–27. Stoner, James R., Jr., Stanley Hauerwas, Paul J. Griffiths, and David B. Hart. “Theology as Knowledge: A Symposium.” First Things 163 (May 2006): 21–27. Tanner, Kathryn. “Public Theology and the Character of Public Debate.” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (1996): 79–101. Tanner, Kathryn. “Theology and Cultural Contest in the University.” In Cady and Brown, Religious Studies, Theology, and the University, 199–212. Turner, Denys. “Doing Theology in the University.” In Ford, Quash, and Soskice, Fields of Faith, 25–38.

A critical analysis of the current debate

97

Wiebe, Donald. “‘Why the Academic Study of Religion?’ Motive and Method in the Study of Religion.” Religious Studies 24.4 (1988): 403–13. Wiebe, Donald. The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Wiebe, Donald. “The Politics of Wishful Thinking? Disentangling the Role of the ScholarScientist from that of the Public Intellectual in the Modern Academic Study of Religion.” Temenos 41.1 (2005): 7–38. Wiebe, Donald. “The Eternal Return All Over Again: The Religious Conversation Endures.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.3 (2006): 674–96. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “The Travail of Theology in the Modern Academy.” In The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann, edited by Miroslav Volf, Carmen Krieg, and Thomas Kucharz, 35–46. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Scholarship Grounded in Religion.” In Religion, Scholarship, and Higher Education: Perspectives, Models, and Future Prospects, edited by Andrea Sterk, 3–15. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. New York, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012.

3

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

In the last chapter, as part of analyzing the entangled and often divisive debate concerning the place of theology in the secular university, I further exposited and defended the claim I made in chapter 1 that intellectual inquiry in the secular university should be epistemologically multifaceted and pluralistic, and hence inclusive of Christian theological study. Since chapter 1, I also have claimed – but have not fully defended – the following: that intellectual inquiry in the secular university, diverse as it may be, should be organized around the singular principle or aim of attaining knowledge and truth in all of their variety and depth. Thus, the goal of this chapter is to build on the work of the previous chapters. Specifically, I construct as well as defend an epistemology of liberal learning that explains how the secular liberal-arts university, committed to offering a wide-ranging course of study, can help its constituents attain knowledge and truth of all kinds and levels, including the loftiest epistemic and educative ends. By constructing and defending this epistemology of truly liberal learning, then, I create argumentative room for making and defending a further, principal claim of this book: that the study of theology promotes truly liberal learning, and as such should occupy a vital place within secular academic life. The chapter will unfold as follows. In the first section, I begin to defend the claim that the goal of liberal learning is to gain knowledge, and that knowledge, even at the most basic and broadest level of true belief, is worth pursuing and possessing for its own sake. Here, I rely and build on claims that John Henry Newman makes in his seminal and timeless contribution to Western intellectual reflection on liberal learning, The Idea of a University (which I draw on later in the chapter as well).1 In the second and third sections of the chapter, I discuss the epistemic and educative importance of critical thinking and intellectual virtues, respectively, since becoming a critical thinker and possessing intellectual virtue are necessary for attaining deeper knowledge and truth. In the fourth and fifth sections of the chapter, I contend that the highest goal of liberal learning is not simply to attain understanding, or deep knowledge of deep truths about what is real, but also wisdom, the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths about what is real. Both understanding and wisdom are also the most important intellectual virtues. My main argument in the chapter is therefore essentially twofold. First, there are varying kinds and depths of knowledge that liberal learners in the secular

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

99

university should strive to attain, ranging from the most basic form of knowledge, or true belief, to the deepest knowledge, or wisdom. Second, there are varying kinds and deeper levels of truth that liberal learners should strive to know, from more basic (but still important) truths about reality, which pertain to ourselves and our world, to the deepest truths about reality, or ultimate truths, which, when wisely understood, furnish an explanatory, ordered, unified knowledge of reality as a whole. Thus, for liberal learners engaged in a program of truly liberal learning, of the sort that I argue the secular university should provide, the ultimate epistemic and educative goal is to attain wisdom, the premier epistemic good towards which all knowledge- and truth-seeking in the secular university, in every discipline and at every stage, ultimately should be aimed, and at which they are meant to end.

Knowing the truth is its own end In the preface to the lectures that eventually came to comprise The Idea of a University, Newman claims that the university “is a place of teaching universal knowledge.”2 He then immediately clarifies what he means: the object of university study is “intellectual, not moral,” and the goal of that study is “the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement.”3 Newman further claims that the object of knowledge is “Truth,” by which he means “facts and their relations, which stand towards each other pretty much as subjects and predicates in logic.”4 These facts, which “possess a correlative character one with another,” range “from the internal mysteries of the Divine Essence down to our own sensations and consciousness, from the most solemn appointments of the Lord of all down to what may be called the accident of the hour, from the most glorious seraph down to the vilest and most noxious of reptiles.”5 Clearly, Newman says, the human mind cannot grasp these facts – which, by virtue of their “correlative character,” comprise “one large system or complex fact,” the Truth itself – all at once.6 It needs to investigate and discover Truth piecemeal, from various intellectual angles, or “partial views or abstractions,”7 furnished by the various university disciplines, which, which when “[v]iewed altogether … approximate to a representation or subjective reflection of the objective truth, as nearly as is possible to the human mind, which advances towards the accurate apprehension of that object, in proportion to the number of sciences which it has mastered.”8 Newman also clearly defends the unity of knowledge, as well as Truth: in the end, “all knowledge forms one whole” because reality itself forms one, ordered, interconnected, and hence rationally penetrable whole, which only can be demarcated by way of “mental abstraction.”9 The goal of intellectual inquiry, therefore, is to gain knowledge of the world, or the universe (by which Newman really means all that is the case, “from the internal mysteries of the Divine Essence down to our own sensations and consciousness”) as a single, interconnected whole. And again, one cannot attain this sort of knowledge by engaging in one-sided intellectual inquiry, from the standpoint of one university

100

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

discipline or “science” alone. Since reality itself (comprised of “facts and their relations”) is a vast, interrelated whole, then knowledge of reality – along with the pursuit of such knowledge within the university – also must be an interrelated whole. As Gerald Loughlin puts it, the pursuit and impartation of knowledge in Newman’s university therefore entails “a truly interdisciplinary labour for the truth.”10 I actually am beginning to rehearse Newman’s well-known argument for including theology, as a form or branch of knowledge, in the university. But for our present purposes, it is important to stay focused on Newman’s conception of knowledge: the kind of universal knowledge that he thinks should be taught in the university. We might question whether Newman’s ideal is even realizable within the twenty-first-century university – secular or religious – which arguably lacks the cooperative spirit and common methodological, as well as epistemological, commitment necessary to “labour for the truth.” Consequently, we might also question his conception of knowledge and truth, and particularly his view that the goal of knowledge-seeking in the university is to apprehend and contemplate truth, let alone Truth in its entirety. Should liberal learning be geared towards attaining the high epistemic ideal Newman sets for it? Is attaining this ideal even possible? My initial answer to these questions is twofold. First, the issues that Newman raises and addresses about the educative goals of the university (not just particular universities, or particular departments and divisions within the university) are perennial and fundamental. In other words, like Newman, I think that it is an essential, ongoing task, especially for those of us who are educators, to reflect on the very idea of the university, and what the university can and should accomplish as a whole, which includes not just thinking about but also identifying larger, comprehensive educative ideals that span across disciplines, divisions, and even entire universities. One starts with reflection on the highest possible educative ideals, and then reflects on how to best to realize them, which includes addressing current and anticipated issues and challenges within the university. We cannot fault Newman or anyone else for that matter, then, either for identifying an organizing educative ideal for the university writ large or for holding the university to the highest possible educative standards, even if we disagree with Newman regarding what that ideal and those standards are or should be. Second, once we agree with Newman (as I think we all should) that the primary object of university study is intellectual, and that as such the goal of the university is to impart knowledge, then it also becomes necessary to affirm that the goal of the university is to impart truth, which includes impelling its citizenry to seek after truth. Contemporary philosophers, particularly those working within the realm of Anglo-American or analytic epistemology, widely (if not universally) hold that truth is a necessary condition for knowledge: one cannot know what is false. In other words, to know that p (where p stands for a particular proposition or propositional content), it must be case that p is true, rather than false. Of course, on these same accounts, to know that p, in the most robust sense, one must also believe that p (hold or take p to be true) and be justified in

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

101

believing that p, which means (minimally) that one holds the belief that p nonaccidentally – not by way of luck or blind acceptance, but by way of reasons, grounds, or epistemic processes that are connected with truth or are aimed at truth. Contemporary epistemologists continue to debate what property or properties, more precisely, make a belief justified, such that when added to true belief yield knowledge. And, as I called attention to in chapter 1, they also debate what makes a true belief “true.” However, the larger point here is that true belief is an essential component of knowledge, and that one cannot have knowledge even on a most basic level (we could say, in a broad or weak sense) without also having true beliefs. I am not suggesting that all intellectual inquiry, particularly of the sort that can and should occur within the university, should be aimed solely at yielding true beliefs. My main point here is only that attaining truth – beginning with true belief, a more modest epistemic aim – is fundamental to attaining knowledge, and as such, should be fundamental to the intellectual work that constitutes university life. In large part, we in the university should educate liberal learners so that they attain a wide range of true beliefs about the world (its physical laws, chemical composition, biological processes and entities) and ourselves (including our history, cultural and artistic creations, and sociopolitical structures). Part of this education also surely includes helping liberal learners abandon false beliefs as they grow in knowledge (at the level of true belief) and hence overcome error as well as ignorance in their intellectual lives. Moving beyond my initial defense of Newman’s claims about the university, then, let’s continue to reflect on the epistemic and educative importance of true belief, and hence the importance of truth as a fundamental goal of intellectual inquiry. Why should we think that it is important to educate liberal learners so that they attain true beliefs about the world as well as themselves as human beings? Begin by imagining what would happen if we human beings possessed no true beliefs, or very few true beliefs about ourselves and our world. We would then lack the cognitive basis needed to succeed in most areas or departments of human life, particularly those that require deeper cognitive functioning. Worse yet, as Alston points out, if we possessed mostly false beliefs, “we would constantly be led astray in our practical endeavors and would be unlikely to survive for long …. As for the higher life of the mind, it would become a chaos if we had to rely on mostly false beliefs. Our attempts to understand the natural world, to create beauty, and to engage in fruitful and rewarding interactions with our fellows would be frustrated at every turn.”11 The larger idea here is that living well as human beings, or achieving full human flourishing, requires that we possess true rather than false beliefs. Alston therefore concludes, “the idea that it is important for human flourishing to be guided by correct rather than incorrect suppositions about how things are, where this is of interest or importance to us, is so obvious that it would seem to be unnecessary to belabor the point.”12 But to strengthen the argument, let’s belabor the point a bit further. Surely, as Alston points out, lacking many true beliefs about matters of real interest

102

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

and importance to us human beings, and / or possessing many false beliefs about those same matters, leads to negative consequences, in both our cognitive and everyday lives. This gives us clear reason to help liberal learners attain true beliefs and relinquish false ones. And yet, our primary reason for helping liberal learners attain true beliefs and relinquish false ones lies elsewhere. Many students graduate from their respective colleges and universities having not acquired or retained all of the true beliefs they could and should have acquired and retained by engaging in liberal academic study; in fact, some of them may even graduate holding on to more false beliefs than true beliefs. Perhaps they acquire enough true beliefs in the relevant areas to succeed in a given career. But the fact that they still possess no beliefs or many false beliefs about other matters of human interest and importance is something that I suspect most (if not all) contemporary educators would judge to be a problem. For example, significant ignorance among college graduates about human cultural diversity may not necessarily breed intolerance or even animosity towards persons of cultures other than their own (although, it surely can and does); regardless, it remains ignorance about matters of real interest and importance, a genuine educational lacuna or deficiency. Thus, from an educational standpoint, whether or not being ignorant or in error about matters of real interest and importance bears negative fruit, and regardless of whether being in such a state can bear negative fruit, is not the primary issue. Being ignorant or in the wrong about matters of real human interest and importance is intrinsically bad. The badness I am referring to here is principally intellectual in nature: it constitutes a failure on the part of liberal learners to be knowledgeable in an area in which it would be intrinsically good for them to be knowledgeable. In other words, by being ignorant or in the wrong about matters of real human interest and importance – possessing no beliefs or false beliefs about these matters – liberal learners lack a dimension of knowledge which it would be intrinsically good for them to possess, which is why it is intrinsically bad for them to be in ignorance or error. And if it is intrinsically good to be knowledgeable (at least about matters of real human interest and importance), then possessing knowledge, even at the basic level of true belief (which includes not possessing false beliefs), is intrinsically valuable – just as lacking knowledge, or having false beliefs (along with lacking true beliefs) is intrinsically disvaluable. So in reflecting on even the most basic aims of cognition and education, we run up against a fundamental epistemic and educative principle: if it is intrinsically bad or disvaluable to lack true beliefs and possess false beliefs, and intrinsically good or valuable to possess true beliefs and lack false beliefs, then knowledge of the truth is worth pursuing and possessing for its own sake. To be sure, I think that fully defending this claim requires specifying in much more detail what kinds and levels of knowledge in addition to true belief are worth pursuing and possessing for their own sake. However, for the moment, we are still in a position to recognize that knowledge of the truth, broadly understood, has an intrinsic value independent of whatever extrinsic goods it also enables us to attain, and therefore is worth pursuing and possessing for its

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

103

own sake. As Newman notes, we primarily value knowledge not because of what it gets for us but because it is good for us: attaining knowledge enables us to fulfill or perfect our nature as rational beings – that is, beings who naturally desire and seek out knowledge, and who will not be satisfied until we have it. In explicating this claim, Newman cites Cicero, who says that “‘we are all drawn to the pursuit of Knowledge; in which to excel we consider excellent, whereas to mistake, to err, to be ignorant, to be deceived, is both an evil and a disgrace’.”13 But of course, there are others we can cite here as well. “All men by nature desire to know,” says Aristotle in an oft-quoted passage from the opening of his Metaphysics.14 “[T]he good of the intellect is truth, and falsehood is its evil,” says Aquinas in the Summa theologiae.15 Consequently, Newman claims that in holding that knowledge is “an end sufficient to rest in and to pursue for its own sake” he is “uttering no paradox” but rather “stating what is both intelligible in itself, and has ever been the common judgment of philosophers and the ordinary feeling of mankind.”16 Newman does not merely appeal here to philosophical tradition or popular consensus (that is, “the common judgment of philosophers and the ordinary feeling of mankind”). On a deeper level, he is noting that there is something intellectually basic about the claim that knowledge of the truth is worth pursuing and possessing for its own sake. This claim should not be foreign to us, or require significant unpacking or defense, once we reflect on our own nature and acknowledge that in attaining knowledge “we are satisfying a direct need of our nature,”17 much like in attaining (and maintaining) health we are satisfying a direct need of our nature, albeit of a different sort. Just as health is worth possessing for its own sake, even if we also desire it for the sake of the further good that comes from it, so knowledge is worth possessing for its own sake, even if we also desire it for the sake of the further good that comes from it. As health is the primary good of the body so knowledge is the primary good of the mind or soul.18 But what, more precisely, is the nature of this “good”? In saying that health is the good of the body, we identify a standard of proper bodily functioning: to have bodily health is to meet that standard. Likewise, in saying that knowledge is the good of the mind, we identify a standard of proper mental functioning: to be knowledgeable is to meet that standard. Here, we may be tempted to question whether the knowledgeable person (unlike the healthy person) meets an objective standard, since (one could argue) what it means to be knowledgeable can and does vary across space and time. However, I think that our norms about what constitutes genuine knowledge, and hence genuine intellectual success or flourishing, are simply not that flexible – and in fact, prove to be remarkably inflexible. As I have been arguing, one cannot coherently ascribe knowledge to someone who does not possess truth, or who remains ignorant of the truth: “knowledge,” like “health,” is therefore not an equivocal concept (or at least, not a purely equivocal concept). Thus, even if we rightly recognize that there are different kinds and levels (as well as amounts) of knowledge that persons can possess, the knowledgeable person in whatever field of inquiry, and so at

104

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

whatever university, attains an objective standard that all genuine intellectual inquiry aims to meet, and to which it is answerable: the truth itself. With Newman (and a great many other philosophers), I conceive of the “truth,” most broadly, as the way things really are, or what reality actually is like. Thus, when one knows the truth, one’s mind conforms to and hence is conjoined with the way things really are, as they really exist independently of our minds. When one fails to know the truth, one’s mind fails to conform to or be conjoined with the way things really are, as they really exist independently of our minds. Now, I realize that in making these claims I once again am endorsing a particular view of knowledge and truth: what I identified in chapter 1 as a realist or correspondence construal of knowledge and truth. And while it goes well beyond the scope of this chapter or this book to defend realism in adequate detail, nevertheless, I still want to show, expanding on some of the analysis that I conducted in chapter 1, why any epistemology of liberal learning that celebrates the pursuit and possession of knowledge for its own sake is best served by realism, even very broadly construed. The more we depart from realism, and subjectivize the epistemic goals and gains of liberal learning, the more difficult it is to defend the claim that such learning yields knowledge worth having for its own sake, and the easier it is to undermine the importance and purpose of such learning altogether. Recall that there are two chief competitors to a realist understanding of truth: the epistemic theory of truth and the pragmatic theory of truth. A proponent of the epistemic theory of truth could argue the following: attaining truth across a range of subject matters within the university is equal to gaining a high epistemic standing amongst the larger epistemic community of which we are a part. On this view, “knowledge” consists of something like “enlightened consensus.” We count ourselves as knowledgeable, as persons who possess the truth, insofar as we hold certain beliefs that have a high degree of justification or warrant – particularly as recognized by other, enlightened members of the academic community (both in one’s own academic community and across other academic communities). And, we could add, it is by virtue of possessing this positive epistemic status that our beliefs count as true. Similarly, according to the coherence version of the epistemic theory of truth, we have knowledge or possess truth insofar as we possess beliefs that all cohere with one another, and beyond that, ideally, with the beliefs that other members of the academic community possess. On the pragmatic theory, we secure truth insofar as we attain certain ends, since truth on this theory is useful for attaining ends. As William James puts it, “ideas … become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience.”19 Or, the pragmatic view is “the view that truth in our ideas means their power to ‘work’.”20 So, in the academic context, we could claim that we know the truth when we get into a satisfactory relationship with our experience of the world and ourselves, or, beyond that, a satisfactory relationship with each other – what each of us believes. Also, if the beliefs that we all hold enable us, in Kaufman’s words, “to go forward” in life,

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

105

or advance academic dialogue within the academic community and more narrowly within our various academic disciplines, then we can count them as true. There are two main problems with each of these anti-realist views of truth, one which I highlighted in chapter 1, and one which I did not, but which is worth calling attention to now. Anti-realist views of truth lead to an unpalatable and self-defeating relativism. Once we equate knowing the truth with attaining a high epistemic standing within the academic community, it becomes impossible to determine exactly when, if ever, a liberal learner has acquired a true belief, given ever-shifting academic audiences and contexts. The question always arises, with whom, more precisely, must she achieve the requisite consensus? Her immediate epistemic community, which may assign her a certain positive epistemic standing (given a high degree of consensus), or her larger epistemic community (the university writ large), which may afford her a different, downgraded epistemic standing? And what if she acquires a belief that coheres with her other beliefs but does not cohere with all of the beliefs possessed by others within her epistemic community? Is that belief true only if it ultimately coheres with the beliefs held by members of a hypothetical, ideal epistemic community – and consisting of whom, exactly? Likewise, regarding the pragmatic theory of truth, Rauser writes, “given one desired outcome it may be pragmatically advantageous to believe P while relative to another desired outcome it may be pragmatically advantageous to believe not-P.”21 Not only do the ends that we set for ourselves vary but they also can remain permanently elusive, and so impossible to attain. What counts as knowing the truth, then, changes as often as our desired outcomes or chosen ends change; furthermore, the more ambiguous these outcomes and ends are, the harder they are to attain. It becomes impossible to determine, then, whether a liberal learner who has attained a given end – like getting into a satisfactory relationship with others within her epistemic community, or moving forward with those within her epistemic community – really has laid hold of truth or not. The even larger problem with an anti-realist approach to truth is that it engenders an unpalatable and self-defeating skepticism. On one level, as I just suggested, attaining the right sort of consensus, coherence, or end is seemingly impossible, which places knowing the truth forever beyond our reach. For example, say we hold, with philosophers like Charles Sanders Peirce and the early Hilary Putnam, that a belief is true only if it is justified under ideal epistemic circumstances, when all relevant reasons or evidence for the belief are available. Since none of us, even within the best universities, are ever in ideal epistemic circumstances (presuming they even could obtain), then there is no way for any us ever to acquire any true beliefs. As Alvin Goldman critically notes, according to the Peirce / Putnam theory, “truth would be accessible to creatures in ideal epistemic circumstances, but since ordinary mortals are never in ideal epistemic circumstances, how can it help them?”22 On another level, even if we grant that attaining truth is equal to attaining the right sort of consensus, or coherence, or end, we still are left wondering about the relationship between true belief and the world, or external reality. A belief can be widely possessed, or widely

106

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

coherent with other beliefs (not just one’s own), or be conducive for attaining certain ends, but still afford no real window into the way things really are, beyond how they are merely believed to be, by those within a given epistemic community or for whom it is important to attain certain ends. Consequently, on this view, there is no guarantee that knowledge, even on the basic level of true belief, can be ascribed any objective content: far from illumining us about the putative objects of our knowledge, our true beliefs, while fully justified, may amount to no more than cognitive “stabs in the dark,” with no genuine, objective aim or target. Our confidence that our true beliefs are answerable to and revelatory of anything real external to ourselves becomes undermined, and total skepticism looms. Pragmatists like Rorty claim to avoid this problem by trying to disabuse us of the need to proffer any theory of truth. However, by claiming instead that we should aim intellectual inquiry at a kind of social justification or warrant, he ends up offering what looks like a hybrid epistemic and pragmatic theory of truth.23 In seeking to advance intellectual inquiry, Rorty says, we remain answerable only to our fellow human beings and not any non-human authority or reality. Rorty thinks that when we adopt this alternative goal of intellectual inquiry we cease to worry about whether or how our beliefs measure up to or correspond with the world, and thereby also cease to worry about skepticism. Thus, when we say (perhaps innocuously) that truth is our goal, we are not invoking a fixed, objective end that exists independent of us or our shared human community. What we really mean is “we hope to justify our belief to as many and as large audiences as possible. But to say that is only to offer an everretreating goal, one that fades forever and forever when we move. It is not what common sense would call a goal. For it is not something we might realize we had reached, nor something to which we might get closer.”24 Rorty further says that this model of intellectual inquiry applies across the various disciplines: “We should relish the thought that the sciences as well as the arts will always provide a spectacle of fierce competition between alternative theories, movements, and schools. The end of human activity is not rest, but rather richer and better human activity.”25 While I agree with Rorty that there is something important and enriching about perpetually seeking to win the uncoerced approval of our peers, justifying our beliefs “to as many and as large audiences as possible,” I strongly disagree that we intelligibly can make sense of genuine intellectual inquiry as being ultimately groundless and goalless. On one level, Rorty’s move to replace the goal of inquiry with justification rather than truth or knowledge represents what Jonathan Adler calls “a kind of Sartrean epistemic ‘bad faith’”: that is, an unwillingness to take on full commitment or responsibility for terminating intellectual inquiry in full belief, which “claims truth,” rather than partial belief, which does not. Thus, Rorty’s “replacement view does not accord with our willingness to risk error, to go beyond our evidence, to claim truth or knowledge, as the elimination of the possibility of error.”26 On another level, it seems inescapable to me that the vitality that characterizes genuine intellectual

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

107

inquiry, especially as it occurs in the university, would be utterly eviscerated if we conceded that such inquiry has no real goal outside of itself or objective end at which it is directed. For example, how could we experience the joy of genuine intellectual discovery, or attaining genuine understanding, once we honestly recognized that we had not attained truth but only some further level of justification or acceptance amongst our peers? Even if we worked harder at attaining more justification or acceptance, how could we avoid not giving up altogether as our intellectual target continually faded from our view? By aiming at “an ever-retreating goal” we inevitably become caught in an epistemic vertigo which, contrary to what Rorty contends, ends not in “richer and better human activity” but rather in self-defeating skepticism and even despair. This analysis brings me back to a fundamental point that I have made in this section of the chapter. Rorty tries to convince us that what Newman calls the “common judgment of philosophers and the ordinary feeling of mankind,” which tell us that intellectual inquiry aims at objective truth, are actually false, or misleading: the product of a bygone metaphysical era in the history of humankind, in which human beings sought to attain cognitive contact with a reality (whether mundane or supra-mundane) that transcended them. But in response, we must ask: why should we agree with Rorty here? Why should we doubt this common (even if not also comprehensive) judgment and ordinary view of intellectual inquiry – which should strike us as accurate and rational rather than distorted and irrational – in order to accommodate an entirely different and incongruous view of intellectual inquiry? At bottom, there is something profoundly unnatural about Rorty’s suggestion that we human beings should abandon the pursuit of objective knowledge and truth, which would require entirely rewriting the Aristotelian dictum that “all human beings by nature desire to know” as something like “all human beings by nature desire to seek further justification from as many and as large audiences as possible.” Therefore, far from humanizing intellectual inquiry, as it occurs within the university and more broadly in human life, Rorty actually dehumanizes it, stripping it of its true nobility and potential. There is another issue we must face, or danger we must confront, once we subjectivize (or internalize) the epistemic goods – knowledge and truth – that liberal learners gain by virtue of engaging in academic study. Subjectivizing knowledge and truth massively decreases the value of knowledge and truth as epistemic goods; and the more we devalue these goods, the easier it is to direct intellectual inquiry, of the sort that characterizes liberal learning, at goods other than knowledge and truth – that is, entirely non-epistemic goods. In other words, it becomes much easier to treat knowledge- and truth-seeking in the university as purely instrumental. Now, I recognize that many within the university (perhaps mostly at the administrative level) actually may be drawn to such a view: economic pressures in particular can press the university to “market” the liberal arts in terms of their cash (that is, purely pragmatic) value. However, once we instrumentalize liberal learning or view it as a mere stepping stone towards attaining non-epistemic goods, then there is no reason to require

108

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

that it should be aimed at distinctly epistemic goods like knowledge and truth at all. Whether or not such learning engenders real knowledge and reasonably claims truth is irrelevant, as long as it enables its possessor to attain a further, desired outcome or a wider range of projects, whatever they might be. As Erik Schmidt argues, “If we only value the liberal arts for the sake of their contribution to other projects then the first element that drops out is the practice of reasoned discourse governed by a limiting commitment to the value of truth.”27 Once untethered from the reasoned pursuit of truth, liberal learning can devolve into any number of pointless and vacuous intellectual pursuits, and therefore cease to have any genuine educational meaning or value whatsoever. Ultimately, too, the question arises as to whether liberal learning, once instrumentalized, is even necessary as a core part of university study, and whether other programs of study that are oriented towards specific vocations are equally well-equipped to prepare liberal learners not only to succeed in a given profession but also to succeed in other social and political venues. In this case, the university no longer needs to be bound by a singular aim or any organizational framework; it ceases to be a university, properly speaking, and survives solely as a loose connection of professional schools, each guided by their own specific utilitarian agendas and divergent – possibly conflicting – aims. Consequently, once we instrumentalize liberal learning, we put the very integrity and identity of the university in jeopardy. It is in the university’s best interest, then, to pursue and promote knowledge of the truth for its own sake, and therefore also to uphold knowledge of the truth as an objective epistemic and educative end.

Critical thinking and the truth as telos I have argued that the principal goal of the liberal-arts university, whether secular or not, is to educate its citizenry for knowledge of the truth, so construed as an objective intellectual standard, good, and end. We educators, especially in the liberal arts, should desire our students to gain a content-rich knowledge, starting at the level of true belief, about a great many important subject matters, which is why we also should educate them in a number of subjects and require them to pursue further, discipline-specific courses of study to deepen that knowledge. There is no other institution as fit and reputable as the modern university to impart as many true beliefs in as many areas of real human interest and importance (the sciences, the humanities, and the arts) over so relatively short a time. And yet, clearly, there is more to an education than merely coming to possess and retain many true beliefs. We should want students to attain those beliefs and continue to hold them in the right way. Moreover, we should want our students, as liberally educated persons, to come to possess the right sort of intellectual habits and even virtues so that they can continue to grow in knowledge throughout their lives. One could argue, then, that although procuring true belief is of fundamental educational importance, it is equally if not more important to procure rational belief, and the cognitive skills, abilities, and dispositions needed to reason

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

109

well – that is, to engage in critical thinking. Philosopher of education Harvey Siegel takes precisely this position. “On the view of ‘the crucial epistemic aim’ that I favor,” he writes, “education should strive to foster, not (just) true belief, but (also) the skills, abilities and dispositions constitutive of critical thinking, and the rational belief generated and sustained by it.”28 In identifying what he considers “the crucial epistemic aim” of education, Siegel seeks to differentiate himself from Alvin Goldman, who offers a “veritistic” (truth-aimed) view of education, and the social epistemology that he thinks is at work in education. According to Goldman, “Critical thinking or rational inference is a useful means to the fundamental epistemic end of true belief. It is a crucial skill that should be developed in cognizers to help them attain true belief. Acknowledging an important role for critical thinking in education, then, is no admission of any flaw in veritism. It can be seen as merely an elaboration of veritism’s implications.”29 Siegel admits that his dispute with Goldman “is an in-house dispute, carried on within the Enlightenment camp.”30 In other words, against recent theoretical trends in education (like postmodernism) that are either skeptical or inhospitable towards truth (and are therefore, in Goldman’s terms, “veriphobic”) or, like feminism and certain forms of multiculturalism, that decry attempts to universalize educational ideals, both Siegel and Goldman think that education has a universal goal, which is to produce knowledge (most notably, true belief) and foster rationality in students. And yet, Siegel thinks that fostering rationality in students, and specifically teaching students to assess and determine the goodness of “candidate reasons” for beliefs, is as important as helping students attain true belief. Siegel defends this claim on a number of fronts. First, he says that if attaining true belief were the sole or even primary epistemic goal of learning, teachers would be justified in resorting to all sorts of undesirable educative methods like indoctrination, deception, or coercion that bypass rationality in order to impart true belief. Second, since rational true belief is a more robust form of knowledge than true belief simpliciter, it is also of more epistemic and educative value than true belief simpliciter. Third, since truth is often difficult to discern, and our access to it is both indirect and fallible, then it is imperative that we educate students so that they attain the skills, abilities, and dispositions necessary to discern truth, or work through the social epistemic practice of justification on the way towards truth. Fourth, while rational belief has an instrumental value by virtue of its tie to truth – since rationality and justification are “fallible indicators” of truth – it “is also valuable, and virtuous, independently of its admitted instrumental tie to truth.”31 Fifth and finally, education is not geared towards the inculcation of strictly propositional knowledge. According to Siegel, we should want our students to become certain kinds of persons who possess certain kinds of traits, like the ability to be reflective about their beliefs and enjoy independence of judgment regarding them.32 Siegel’s main point, then, is that the primary goal of education should be to foster rationality, or critical thinking, which he deems the “educational

110

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

cognate” of rationality.33 Here, in order better to evaluate this claim, we should be clear that for Siegel (along with most critical thinking theorists), critical thinking consists of two main components: (1) a reason-assessment component – namely, the ability to reason well, or assess the “probative force of reasons,”34 which also includes “the ability to utilize principles governing the assessment of reasons”;35 and (2) a dispositional (“critical spirit”) component – namely, “a well-developed disposition to engage in reason assessment” that also includes the relevant skills and character traits.36 Once we adopt this conception of critical thinking, Siegel says, we also adopt a particular epistemology – one which reinforces the distinction between justification and truth; one which rejects relativism, or the notion that the standards for assessing reasons are relative to different persons and perspectives; and one which holds that justification, while distinct from truth, is nevertheless an indicator of truth. Consequently, we have a prima facie right to regard claims that are justified or rationally warranted as true, although any reasons (justification or warrant) we could offer for a given claim or belief “are always open for further consideration.”37 This further means that “[i]n helping students to become critical thinkers, we help them to become estimators of the truth, not determiners of it.”38 Siegel makes a strong case for the claim that critical thinking has an intrinsic epistemic and educative value, independent of its tie to truth. It is certainly important for students, particularly those students who have been liberally educated, to possess rational (and not simply true) beliefs, along with the honed ability and disposition to assess candidate reasons for further beliefs. Even a rational belief that turns out to be false has its own epistemic and educative value, which is why we evaluate liberal learners qua critical thinkers not only on the basis of whether they possess true beliefs but also on the basis of whether they possess good reasons for their beliefs. However, I still think that Siegel goes too far in distinguishing rationality (or critical thinking) and truth as epistemic and educative goals. If, as Siegel contends, “it is not truth which is critical to critical thinking, but rather justification,” then it becomes much harder to defend the claim – which Siegel also wants to uphold – that critical thinking is truth-aimed.39 The more we emphasize that our access to truth is always fallible, and that our reasons or evidence for the truth are always defeasible, the more we relegate truth to, in Rorty’s words, “an ever-retreating goal, one that fades forever and forever when we move.” “Truth” then simply becomes a name of an epistemic and educative goal that we hold to in theory (what Siegel calls a Kantian “regulative ideal”), but which we have a hard time identifying as something that we intelligibly aim at or move towards in our epistemic and educative practices, including critical thinking.40 The fallibilism that undergirds critical thinking can very quickly give way to skepticism, and the very idea of critical thinking as a rational enterprise that is answerable to truth – as an objective standard and goal of intellectual inquiry – is undermined. There is, though, a way of construing Siegel’s account of critical thinking that simultaneously honors the specific epistemic and educative value of critical

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

111

thinking and the value of critical thinking as rational activity that engenders knowledge of the truth. In the context of university life in particular, critical thinking is not simply one useful means among many of attaining truth; it is a primary means. Otherwise, as Siegel rightly contends, we as educators could justify any number of ways of attaining truth, or inculcating true belief, that bypass real learning, particularly the firsthand learning that occurs when students use independent rational judgment in critically assessing the reasons for a given belief, claim, or action. This is why, consistent with what I argued in the first section of the chapter, we should hold that the relationship between critical thinking (or rationality) and truth is teleological: the telos of critical thinking, along with the cognitive processes that constitute it, is attaining knowledge of the truth – not only true belief but also rational true belief, which constitutes a deeper form of knowledge and hence also a more significant epistemic, as well as educative, achievement. Consequently, while attaining rational belief has epistemic, and especially educative, value in its own right, as a genuine epistemic and educative goal of critical thinking it is not the final goal of critical thinking. Critical thinking only fully succeeds as an epistemic and educative enterprise when it terminates in truth, and particularly deeper knowledge of the truth. But why should we think that critical thinking is fundamentally and finally truth-aimed? We can answer this question in part by affirming that critical thinking is a normative concept. As Siegel and fellow philosopher of education Sharon Bailin point out, to say that the concept of critical thinking is a normative one is “to judge that it meets standards or criteria of acceptability, and is thus appropriately thought of as ‘good’.”41 Thus, critical thinking is good insofar as it enables us to identify reasons that meet specific standards or criteria (that are both subject-neutral and subject-specific) for what constitute good reasons. If we then wonder why we should think that the standards or criteria we use to assess reasons are good ones, and are therefore justified, Siegel says that “[t]here is no short, snappy answer to this question. In order to justify a claim about something’s being a legitimate criterion of reason assessment, one has no choice but to appeal to epistemology – that is, to the general theory of knowledge, truth, reasons, justification and evidence.”42 Moreover, Siegel says, we, along with our students, have continually “to think critically about critical thinking itself,” which requires addressing epistemological questions that underlie critical thinking.43 Ultimately, however, in order to escape getting caught in endless epistemic circularity (justifying our standards of justification by appealing to further standards of justification, and so on), and to fully defend critical thinking as a truth-aimed epistemic and educative enterprise, I think that we need to reaffirm a basic truth about who we human beings are and what we want. We are rational beings whose natural telos is not only to seek the truth but also to find it, and thereby lay hold of what is good for us as rational beings. Put another way, critical thinking uncovers good (versus bad) reasoning, and good reasoning ultimately directs us to attain what is good for us: knowledge of the truth. Therefore, like all good epistemic and educative enterprises, critical thinking

112

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

does not simply enable us to attain intersubjective “standards or criteria of acceptability,” but also (and primarily) an objective standard for human flourishing. My move here once again to invoke the concept of human flourishing and link the final goal of critical thinking to objective intellectual ends that all human beings are by nature wired to seek and attain may seem unnecessary or unwarranted, especially to those who continue to doubt or even deny that we human beings have a teleology, intellectual or otherwise. My response to this is that it is difficult to defend the full value and integrity of liberal learning, and the exercises of critical thinking that constitute it, without making such a move or appealing to what I consider a first principle or basic belief about who we human beings are and what we want and are able to achieve. As I just suggested, without such a first principle in place we become susceptible to doubting the veracity of the epistemic standards or criteria that inform and guide educational practices like critical thinking (which we always feel the need to further justify). Moreover, we become susceptible to belittling educational practices like critical thinking by appealing to pragmatic reasons (or the practical utility of education) that have little to do with deeper, substantive educational development or the formation of our students in intrinsically positive, and hence praiseworthy, ways. Of course, our natural disposition to know cannot by itself ensure that critical thinking is successfully truth-aimed. And this is because critical thinking requires more than just the ability to reason well, and so uncover good reasoning – an ability that hones our natural disposition to know. As Siegel reminds us, while a critical thinker indeed possesses the ability to reason well, he also is someone who is “appropriately moved by reasons … [has] habits of mind which make routine the search for reasons … [and is] disposed to base belief, judgment and action on reasons according to which they are sanctioned.”44 These cognitive habits or dispositions also include “open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, independentmindedness, an inquiring attitude, and respect for others in group inquiry and deliberation.”45 Siegel and Bailin suggest that these dispositions are necessary for critical thinking because they enable the critical thinker to use her abilities “systematically or routinely.”46 This seems true, but clearly we can and should say something more. The more one is suitably disposed or inclined to be moved by reasons, or (in Siegel’s words) to live “a life in which reasons play a central role,”47 and the more open-minded, fair-minded, appropriately independentminded, inquisitive, and respectful that one is, the better able one is to track good reasoning within as well as across fields of intellectual inquiry, and thereby follow that reasoning as it leads, albeit often indirectly and fallibly, towards knowledge of the truth. We also can put this point another way: when not conjoined with and influenced by the requisite dispositions, our ability to think critically not only will be largely inactive and inconsistently utilized, it also will be much less effective in directing our rational quest for knowledge of the truth. For example, a student who possesses a highly developed ability to assess the probative force of reasons but who lacks open-mindedness most likely will overlook good reasons for

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

113

particular beliefs, simply because she is uninclined to consider reasons for beliefs which, say, do not cohere well with her own (or her overall worldview). Conversely, a student who possesses open-mindedness, but who may lack a highly developed ability to engage in reason assessment, nevertheless will be inclined to consider reasons for beliefs that conflict with her own beliefs, and thereby be prone to exercise and even grow her ability to engage in reason assessment. In my view, while the latter student may not be as intellectually advanced as the former, she has a much greater chance of maturing as a critical thinker, and thereby maturing in knowledge, than the former. The former student’s close-mindedness prevents her from venturing out into new, potential domains of knowledge and truth; the latter’s open-mindedness enables her to venture out into new, potential domains of knowledge and truth. Even this brief analysis suggests that educating liberal learners to be critical thinkers, and hence also educating them to be knowledgeable, also requires helping them to grow in intellectual virtue. In other words, just as we university educators should care about helping liberal learners become critical thinkers – with the attendant ingrained abilities and dispositions – so should we care (arguably, even more deeply) about helping them become persons of excellent intellectual character, who possess the requisite intellectual virtues, or what John Greco calls “characteristics that promote intellectual flourishing, or which make for an excellent cognizer.”48 And the reason we should care is because, as I have been arguing throughout the chapter, intellectual flourishing and excellent cognizing consist in attaining objectively desirable epistemic ends. This is not to deny that attaining intellectual virtue, like becoming a critical thinker, isn’t valuable as a proximate goal of liberal learning. However, the final goal of becoming intellectually virtuous, like the final goal of becoming a critical thinker, is to attain knowledge of the truth, since knowing the truth is the final goal at which all intellectual inquiry aims.

The intellectually virtuous pursuit of knowledge and truth Properly explicating and defending the above claim requires addressing several important questions and issues. To start: what is an intellectual virtue? Following both classical virtue theorists and contemporary virtue epistemologists,49 I think of intellectual virtue as a good, stable habit or disposition whose proper exercise leads us towards and conjoins us to what is true. In this sense, “disposition” denotes both an ability and an inclination: intellectual virtues enable and incline us to employ our cognitive faculties so that we consistently can attain truth. Linda Zagzebski calls this the “success component”: an intellectual virtue reliably disposes us to form true beliefs as well as attain other forms of “cognitive contact with reality.” Interestingly, Zagzebski also holds that intellectual virtues, like moral virtues, possesses a “motivational component”: the motivation for knowledge, which “leads a person to follow rules and beliefforming processes that are truth conducive and whose truth conduciveness she is able to discover and use by the possession of intellectual virtue.”50 The

114

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

broader idea, as Jason Baehr points out, is that the person of intellectual virtue “desires and is committed to the pursuit of goods like knowledge, truth, and understanding.”51 This desire by itself does not ensure that the person of intellectual virtue will attain the aforementioned epistemic goods; again, however, it motivates the person of intellectual virtue to engage in epistemic practices, or (as Baehr describes them) virtue-specific cognitive activities that are conducive for attaining them.52 Insofar as they claim that intellectual virtue has a motivational or desiderative component in addition to a success component, virtue epistemologists deny that we can make a sharp distinction between moral and intellectual virtues. For classical thinkers like Aristotle and Aquinas, intellectual virtues perfect our intellectual powers so that we successfully can apprehend what is true; moral virtues perfect our appetitive powers so that we successfully can do what is good. In contrast, Zagzebski holds that we cannot neatly compartmentalize our intellectual and moral lives: both moral and intellectual virtues have cognitive and affective dimensions. Moreover, “many moral virtues such as patience, perseverance, and courage are causally necessary for having intellectual virtues” and virtues such as courage, humility, and discretion have both moral and intellectual forms.53 Similarly, Robert Roberts and Jay Wood claim that for the intellectually virtuous, both the intellect and the will function interdependently: wanting to understand is necessary to develop one’s powers of understanding, and developing one’s powers of understanding is necessary to have the will to proceed in difficult areas of intellectual inquiry. Subsequently, they also say that in human beings “[t]he operation of the intellect is itself affective; the will itself functions intellectually …. [V]irtues reside, not in faculties, but in people, and … they integrate functions from more than one faculty.”54 Finally, while Aquinas, interpreting Aristotle, holds that intellectual virtues unwaveringly direct us to truth rather than falsehood, contemporary virtue epistemologists hold that intellectual virtues reliably, but not infallibly, direct us to truth.55 For example, Zagzebski says that “we may legitimately call a trait or procedure truth conducive if it is a necessary condition for advancing knowledge in some area [like philosophy] even though it generates very few true beliefs and even if a high percentage of the beliefs formed as the result of this trait or procedure are false.”56 There are reasons for and against departing from what I am calling a classical conception of intellectual virtue. One could argue on behalf of Aristotle and Aquinas that flourishing in the moral life is not necessary for flourishing in the intellectual life, which means that intellectual virtues remain ethically neutral. Thus, one can be an excellent cognizer, say, in the natural sciences, without being morally just, courageous, or temperate (citing some of the “cardinal” virtues). Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see how acquiring and developing certain habits or dispositions of will are necessary for achieving excellent intellectual functioning. Or, put another way, having the requisite motivation for knowledge along with the requisite abilities is essential not only for attaining knowledge but also for growing in knowledge, or exploring hitherto untraversed domains

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

115

of knowledge. This should be particularly clear in the educational context: as educators, we realize that liberal learners, even highly advanced ones, will hardly succeed in growing in knowledge if, at bottom, they lack the requisite motivational structure needed not only to drive but also to guide their pursuit of knowledge. Moreover, pursuing knowledge, particularly in more difficult and / or speculative areas of intellectual inquiry, can be extremely challenging and often circuitous. Thus, I think that it is appropriate to depart from the classical philosophers on two counts: (1) we can stretch the term “intellectual virtue” to include good habits or dispositions of intellect and will; and (2) we can hold that an intellectual virtue can be truth conducive even if, when exercised, it only leads its possessor to truth indirectly and imperfectly over time. Having more closely defined what an intellectual virtue is, we are now in a position to answer the larger question of why we should educate for intellectual virtue, especially if there are other, viable epistemic and educative means for attaining knowledge of the truth. I do agree that it is possible to acquire true beliefs about a wide range of subject maters simply by going through ordinary educative processes, exercising basic dispositions or rudimentary virtues like a desire to learn. However, as I have been suggesting, there seem to be clear limits on what more ordinary forms of intellectual inquiry and more basic cognitive dispositions can do for us as knowledge- and truth-seekers. In Baehr’s words, “[g]etting to the truth about historical, scientific, moral, philosophical, psychological, or religious matters, for instance, can make significant agencyrelated demands: it can require the possession of certain intentions, beliefs, and desires.”57 As a result, Baehr says, reaching the truth in those areas “that we as humans tend to value most … is often explained largely or most saliently in terms of an exercise of certain traits of intellectual character: traits like intellectual carefulness, thoroughness, tenacity, adaptability, creativity, circumspection, attentiveness, patience, and honesty.”58 Another of way of putting this is that acquiring deep truths – truths “that we as humans tend to value most” because they are intrinsically valuable – is difficult if not impossible unless one possesses and exercises certain intellectual virtues. Often this is because deep truths are not immediately cognitively accessible (unlike, say, perceptual truths about our world), but only can be reached after engaging in serious, sustained, and supervised intellectual inquiry, whether in a given field or academic discipline or across several (perhaps even all) of them. Thus, one not only needs to be initiated in ways of reasoning within a given field to reach deep truths but one also needs to possess relevant character traits or virtues in order to carry out that reasoning successfully, given the many “agency-related demands” it inevitably will require. For example, any liberal learner engaging in scientific inquiry in a discipline like physics inevitably will face obstacles, whether internal to her (like fear and self-doubt) or external to her (the inherent difficulty of the subject matter), as she pursues knowledge of deep truths concerning the physical make-up of the universe, including those physical laws that govern the universe. In order to reach these truths, then, she will need traits or virtues

116

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

like courage and perseverance, which will make her able and willing to overcome those obstacles and follow the scientific inquiry she is engaging in to its proper epistemic and educative end. There also is a large domain of deep truths that is difficult to access because it is not immediately clear what rational means, amongst the many available, are conducive for accessing it. Consider, for example, the metaphysical truth about the existence of the human soul. Whether we human beings do have a soul (so construed as an immaterial entity or part of our nature) is a matter of real, ongoing philosophical dispute. Therefore, to reach the truth about the soul (whether it exists or not and what it is like) a liberal learner needs to possess true open-mindedness, both so that she can rise above her preconceived notions (which may be misleading and even false) about the existence of the soul, and so that she can pursue unknown, foreign, but still potential and even promising lines of metaphysical reasoning in pursuit of the truth about the soul. She also will need intellectual humility in order to be able and willing to recognize her own epistemic limitations, or the depths of what she does not know, and thereby be able and willing to follow the lead of multiple philosophers and the reasoned arguments that they offer in order to procure knowledge of the deep truth about the human soul. Just as possessing and exercising intellectual virtue are necessary for attaining deep truths, so they are necessary for attaining deeper knowledge, and so more valuable epistemic achievements beyond the most basic epistemic achievement of true belief. A credulous liberal learner, or uncritical thinker, may acquire many true beliefs by believing whatever she reads on the Internet, but she will not thereby necessarily acquire rational true belief. An open-minded liberal learner habitually able and willing to consider the various reasons for and against particular truth-claims, whatever field of inquiry she may be in, is suitably disposed to fortify the true beliefs she holds with reasons, and acquire new true beliefs through rational means, while a close-minded or viciously dogmatic liberal learner, for whom true belief is all that matters (even if it is held irrationally), is not. If attaining rational true belief in the liberal arts requires possessing and exercising intellectual virtue, then certainly attaining understanding requires possessing and exercising intellectual virtue as well. I will discuss understanding, along with wisdom, in more detail shortly; my point, for the moment – which I think liberal-arts educators should readily appreciate – is that attaining understanding in a given field of inquiry is superior to attaining true belief, even rational true belief, as an epistemic and educative achievement. The main reason for this is that it is simply more valuable, epistemically and educationally, to see or recognize how and why something is the case, and thereby possess the knowledge characteristic of understanding, than simply believing truly that something is the case (that Germany lost World War II, that water is represented by the chemical symbol H2O), even with good reason. And once again, the more valuable epistemic goods typically prove to be the most arduous: procuring and possessing them makes the most significant “agency-related

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

117

demands” (to use Baehr’s phrase again), especially on liberal learners. In fact, the deeper the understanding and the more comprehensive knowledge it provides, particularly of deeper subject matters, the more valuable it is as an epistemic good, and hence the harder it is to attain, on both a cognitive and volitional level. Consequently, only liberal learners outfitted with the requisite, entrenched habits of mind and will constitutive of virtues like open-mindedness, humility, and courage – along with inquisitiveness, perseverance (tenacity), patience, and attentiveness – will be able to attain it. At this point, we need to reflect briefly on two other intellectual virtues that I think liberal learners need to possess in order to attain both deeper levels of knowledge and deeper levels of truth: love of knowledge and autonomy. As Roberts and Wood point out, the person who possesses a genuine love of knowledge is not simply disposed to pursue knowledge, of whatever sort, but able to discriminate which knowledge is worth pursuing, both for its practical import and for its intrinsic value: “[t]he proper lover of knowledge will value some knowledge more than others because some knowledge is more worthy.”59 Indeed, a chief goal of the liberal arts, they say, is not simply to transmit highergrade knowledge but “to produce people with a taste for what is excellent.”60 Here, Roberts and Wood refer not only to the content of knowledge, or the object (truths) known, they also are referring to the kind or level of knowledge that is sought. For example, a proper, unprejudiced lover of knowledge will pursue not just true belief but also well-grounded or warranted true belief; this means that she will discriminate between warranted and unwarranted belief, which in turn will help her discriminate true from false belief. Additionally, the true lover of knowledge will seek both to acquire and to purvey the knowledge that she possesses to others, through reputable social epistemic practices such as testimony and teaching: “[h]ere love of knowledge is not just a love of epistemic goods as such, but of other people’s having them.”61 Roberts and Wood also discuss the virtue of autonomy, which is most often associated with Enlightenment thought and the Kantian admonition “to make use of your own understanding!” without relying on “direction from another.”62 They recognize the obvious virtue in being autonomous or self-regulating in one’s intellectual life, rather than being unduly or improperly dependent on others. But they also realize that autonomy quickly can become a vice: taken too far, it can lead to total intellectual isolation and even solipsism, and hence help breed emaciated intellectual agents. As a result, the virtuously autonomous individual “must incorporate elements of intellectual heteronomy – not the vice, of course, but the phenomenon of being regulated by others.”63 Autonomy is not “immunity from hetero-regulation” but is instead “a disposition to respond virtuously to hetero-regulation – variously and appropriately and actively,” i.e., in stage-appropriate ways, especially in one’s educational development.64 Adopting certain “hetero-regulators,” or relying on outside epistemic influences – authorities, as I like to call them – intelligently and discriminately, is therefore an expression of autonomy, not a flight from it. Key here is the idea that the autonomous epistemic agent must not accept the hetero-regulator blindly but

118

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

actually appropriate the hetero-regulator herself – understand it, use it habitually, and care about its influence and import in her life. Equally important, the virtuous autonomous agent must be suitably motivated to resist improper, alien hetero-regulators, or those external influences that would seek to stymie real independence of thought or lead her to violate her intellectual integrity. To all of this, I add the following analysis. Not only will the lover of knowledge in the university not rest content with attaining many true beliefs about a wide range of objectively important subject matters, as she journeys through the liberal arts (as well as her broader university education). And not only will she want to discover why those beliefs are true, and what reasons there are for holding those beliefs to be true (as well as rejecting other beliefs as false). She also will not rest until she has attained the best or most prized epistemic goods, including knowledge (specifically understanding) of the deepest truths (wisdom), which also constitutes for her a final epistemic and educative end. Thus, the love of knowledge is, at bottom (or at its depth), a love of wisdom, which drives – and is needed to drive – the pursuit of wisdom within the university, secular or otherwise. Additionally, no liberal learner, really no human being, can attain deep knowledge of deep truths on her own. At a disciplinary level, to be sure, the liberal learner will require the virtue of autonomy needed to adopt and rely on hetero-regulators or epistemic authorities internal to the discipline, particularly experts within the field, in order to acquire true beliefs. But she also needs the virtue of autonomy in order to learn how to procure rational true belief and, on an even deeper level, understanding, especially of deeper disciplinary truths. Beyond this, the following intellectual rule applies: the deeper the truths, the harder it is for one to apprehend those truths relying on solitary intellectual inquiry, and hence the more dependent one must be on epistemic authorities, including more speculative traditions of intellectual inquiry (and their proprietors) in order to pursue those truths and ultimately determine where they lie. Again, discovering and then following those intellectual traditions (and their proprietors) which and (who) possess the greatest promise of leading the liberal learner to the best goods and deepest truths requires careful, discriminating assessment, including independent rational judgment, and hence a virtuous exercise of autonomy. But this kind of intellectual self-regulation services the virtuous liberal learner’s quest for deep knowledge and truth, since, once again, it is only by allowing her life to be governed and guided by the right epistemic authorities (rather than merely her own epistemic resources) that she will be able to attain such knowledge and truth. At this point, I realize that I am making some important, strong claims about the existence and nature of certain epistemic goods, especially the deepest knowledge and truth, which I claim the intellectually virtuous liberal learner can acquire. I will develop and defend these claims in more detail in the section that follows; however, in order to bring this section to a close, I need to say something, at least briefly, about how one becomes intellectually virtuous. Here, I agree with Zagzebski: unlike skills, the kinds of virtues that

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

119

contemporary virtue epistemologists typically identify cannot be taught (at least not easily).65 For example, we can teach liberal learners how to think critically to a significant degree, insofar as we teach them how to engage in reason assessment, particularly using the rules and methods of reasoning internal to our fields. What is much harder, or very difficult to do, is to teach liberal learners to engage in critical thinking in an open-minded way, since we do not have concrete rules or methods that we can turn to for assistance: there is no textbook that can tell them when and how to be open-minded in the varying contexts of their intellectual lives. Consequently, to a large extent, our students learn how to be intellectually virtuous (at least in the ways specified in this section) through imitation and practice: imitating persons who possess the relevant virtues “to an exemplary degree” (Zagzebski’s words), and engaging in the practice of acting virtuously so as to master the relevant virtues within the context of their own lives.66 “Teaching” these virtues within the liberal-arts context really means modeling them, as well as exposing students to other intellectual exemplars who model them. “Teaching” the virtues therefore also means affording liberal learners ample opportunity to engage in the sort of intellectual work that requires them to practice the virtues. This places an important burden on us educators and our students. We cannot expect liberal learners to become intellectually virtuous if we are not (at least to a significant degree), and if we are not intentional about showing them how to be intellectually virtuous in the context of our own academic lives. Central to this pedagogical enterprise, I think, is demonstrating our love of knowledge, in the hope that they too can develop this virtue, or at least the motivational base (habits of will) needed to acquire it. Moreover, we can encourage liberal learners to imitate us, or follow the kind of intellectual lives that we freely choose to lead; we also can encourage them to practice acting virtuously (and reward them accordingly), in the hopes that they will eventually acquire the virtues themselves. And yet, the onus is still on liberal inquirers to choose to develop the requisite virtues. In many cases, for many of these inquirers, practicing the intellectual virtues will require overcoming various intellectual vices (like close-mindedness, or intellectual cowardice), along with what Zagzebski calls “intellectual akrasia,” weakness of intellectual will that leads to detrimental intellectual behavior or poor intellectual functioning, and hence the failed or aborted pursuit of valuable epistemic goods.67 We also need to ask ourselves whether the curriculum we educators in the university offer is structured in such a way that those who partake of it are able, if not likely, to become intellectually virtuous. In the next chapter, I will argue that Christian theological study within the secular liberal-arts university can help students grow significantly both as critical thinkers and as intellectually virtuous human beings. At this point, however, we need to complete the work of the current chapter, which entails discussing and defending the intrinsic epistemic and educative value of understanding and wisdom as the premier epistemic goods and virtues.

120

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

Understanding as an epistemic and educative end So far, not only have I argued that knowledge of the truth, broadly understood, is worth pursuing and possessing for its own sake but I also have begun to argue that deeper knowledge of deeper truths is worth pursuing and possessing for its own sake. Thus, the proper goal of liberal learning is to acquire deep knowledge of deep truths, and beyond that, the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths. Put another way: truly liberal learning, when carried out successfully, ultimately directs the liberal learner to the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths because this is where all genuine intellectual inquiry, or the life of the mind, is supposed to end. In what follows, then, I defend this claim in some detail – first, by discussing what understanding is and why it constitutes a higher or more valuable epistemic as well as educative end; second, in the final section of the chapter, by discussing what wisdom is and why it constitutes the ultimate epistemic and educative end. To begin, it may seem strange to deem understanding a premier epistemic good. Isn’t achieving understanding – of a text, a figure, a period of history, a scientific theorem, or a mathematical proof – a basic educative goal, especially in the liberal arts? In fact, one could argue that attaining understanding is an even more basic goal than attaining true belief concerning a variety of subject matters and truths. It is difficult to conceive how liberal learners (or anyone for that matter) could form and hold true beliefs, say, about the natural world (its biological entities or communities, chemical constituents, and physical laws) without also having some basic understanding of the conceptual or propositional content of their beliefs, as well as the facts or truths which they believe or at which they aim their beliefs. Thus, while understanding may be profound or perceptive, it need not be. In fact, it can be quite superficial: for example, even elementary-school students learning their multiplication tables understand mathematics to a small degree. Nevertheless, I think that there is a kind of understanding that we rightly celebrate in the liberal arts and that we readily can identify as a great epistemic and educative good. As I began to argue in the previous section of the chapter, there is a large (and to us educators, often obvious) epistemic and educative distance separating a liberal learner who possesses knowledge about a certain subject matter, which is usually directed at discrete aspects of that subject matter, and a liberal learner who sees or recognizes the ways the various parts of that subject matter not only coherently interrelate, and even depend on one another, but also comprise a larger, complex system or whole. While the former learner possesses knowledge in the sense of true belief, or even rational true belief, the latter learner possesses understanding: a deeper knowledge since it affords the liberal learner explanatory, ordered, and unified insight into the subject matter taken as a larger, complex system or whole. The larger and more complex the whole, the harder (but also the more valuable and praiseworthy) it is to achieve understanding of it. Admittedly, in defining understanding in this way, I once again am drawing on some contemporary epistemological analysis. According to Jonathan Kvanig,

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

121

“[u]nderstanding requires the grasping of explanatory and other coherencemaking relationships in a large and comprehensive body of information …. It is the internal seeing or appreciating of explanatory and other coherence-inducing relationships in a body of information that is crucial for understanding.”68 Wayne Riggs claims that understanding “is the appreciation or grasp of order, pattern, and how things ‘hang together’.”69 Likewise, Roberts and Wood say that understanding, which can operate at any number of cognitive levels (from basic perceptual recognition “to the grasp of the deepest, scientific, conceptual, and narrative truths”), entails “grasping connections or fitting things together.”70 Drawing on the Platonic conception of episteme (often translated as “knowledge”), Zagzebski holds that understanding “is not directed toward a discrete object, but involves seeing the relation of parts to other parts and perhaps even the relation of part to a whole.”71 Finally, Greco contends “that understanding consists in systematic knowledge of dependence relations.”72 The broader idea here, which Greco borrows from Aristotle and seeks to update, is that episteme (which Greco translates as “understanding”) affords a “knowledge why and knowledge how”: that is, an explanatory knowledge that enables one “to cite appropriate dependence relations” within a given system.73 Thus, while the kind of understanding gained through liberal academic study surely will include knowledge of (or at least, true beliefs about) various, relevant facts, the insight it offers into a given subject matter is both broader and deeper than merely factual knowledge. In particular, since understanding takes as its object larger, complex systems or wholes comprised of various, interrelated and dependent parts, it principally consists of what Greco calls a “knowledge why and knowledge how” things are so rather than a knowledge that things are so. So, for example, the liberal learner who understands physics (or at least a significant part of physics) does not merely possess many true beliefs about the laws of physics; she also is able to see or recognize how and why quantum physics differs from (and builds on) classical physics. The liberal learner who understands the history of art does not merely possess many true beliefs about nineteenth- and twentieth-century art; she also is able to see or recognize how and why the various movements within nineteenth- and twentieth-century art are all distinctly “modern.” Does this mean that liberal learning aimed at understanding is not also aimed at truth? It may seem that understanding is not aimed at truth, since it can be directed on any number of things besides truth: other human persons, literary texts, works of art (including pieces of music), historical epochs, political systems, scientific theories, and even (I think) whole academic disciplines. Moreover, understanding also can be directed on things which, strictly speaking, are false, like a scientific theory that has been shown to be false. And yet, as Riggs rightly points out, to have understanding of a subject matter M, one must still be “largely ‘correct’ in one’s overall representation of M.”74 In other words, one cannot be said to understand M unless one’s representation of M conforms to a large degree to the truth about M, whether M is real (like an ecosystem or an economy) or merely representational (like a scientific theory).75 Moreover, it

122

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

seems impossible to assess the quality of one’s understanding of M, which can vary considerably, unless there is some objective truth about M – however broadly we define “truth” here – to which one’s understanding of M can conform to a greater or lesser degree. Not only can I understand a subject matter such as a human person, political or scientific theory, or movements in the history of art, to varying degrees, but I also can have a better or worse, more or less penetrating, or perceptive understanding of these things – an understanding of them that is largely true or largely false – depending on how well my mental conception or representation of them conforms to the actual truth (or “truth”) about them. Understanding is also directed on truth in an even more profound sense. While understanding indeed can take as its immediate object any number of things in addition to truth (things of the sort that I repeatedly have mentioned), the ultimate goal of understanding those objects is to understand ourselves and our world – that is, the truth about ourselves and our world, or, most broadly, reality itself. For example, while gaining understanding of a scientific theory taken on its own is a genuine epistemic and educative goal, ultimately we seek to understand scientific theories in order better to understand the truth about how and why the world works the way it does, since the ultimate goal of a scientific theory is to explain how and why the world works the way it does.76 Similarly, I think that the ultimate goal of studying great literary texts and works of art (particularly good literary texts and works of art) is to understand ourselves as human beings better, which entails understanding the truth about who we are and how and why we work (or act) the way we do, both individually and corporately. Therefore, we seek to understand the truth about ourselves and our world, or reality itself, through understanding a scientific theory, literary text, or work of art. The understanding we gain of objects such as these services the higher, more important epistemic and educative end of gaining understanding of the truth itself. Of course, the kind of understanding that I am identifying here conjoins us to truth in a more profound way than the more ordinary ways that we can become conjoined to truth (most notably, through belief). Just as there is a kind of understanding that affords us knowledge of objects as complex and integrated wholes, so there is an even deeper kind of understanding that affords us knowledge of truth – or perhaps better, what Newman calls the Truth – as a complex and integrated whole. Specifically, a person who possesses this deeper kind of understanding sees or recognizes what Greco calls the dependence relations that exist between truths within a given a system or network of truths: not only the ways in which all of the truths hang together, but also the ways in which certain (deeper) truths within the system explain, order, and unify other (dependent) truths that exist within the system. Thus, as I will continue to argue, there are certain truths that are simply more worth understanding than others, both because of their intrinsic value and because they afford the person who understands them explanatory, ordered, and unified insight into larger, truthful wholes. In fact, the deeper the truths that a person understands, the

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

123

more penetrating the understanding or knowledge she will gain of Truth, or reality, as a whole. And it is this kind of deep understanding at which truly liberal learning should be aimed. So that I may illustrate and adequately defend these claims, consider a central epistemic and educative goal of humanistic study in the academy: understanding texts. Certainly, we should expect a good student of literature who understands a great literary text like William Shakespeare’s Macbeth to possess a sound grasp of the text as a whole: the various ways parts of the text connect or cohere with other parts of the text, both at the level of the narrative and at the thematic level, and (ideally) the various ways parts of the text relate to the whole of the text. But is this all that there is for this student to understand? A good student of English Literature, who possesses a true understanding of Macbeth, will be able to explain how and why Macbeth’s grave moral wrongdoing, and particularly his initial act of murder (which he commits against King Duncan), causes the whole series of tragic, deadly events that occur within the play, including Macbeth’s eventual demise. This entails knowing the source and explanation of Macbeth’s actions: unrestrained ambition, which led him, along with Lady Macbeth, to commit grave moral wrongdoing and thereby unleash widespread suffering. Thus, understanding a foundational thematic truth is necessary for understanding Macbeth as a whole. Now, say that this student, after engaging in further literary study, then rightly reasons that the play Macbeth also conveys the following deep moral truth about human beings: inordinate ambition or self-love is a source and cause of grave moral wrongdoing and widespread human suffering.77 By simply believing this truth, the student gains some important and valuable knowledge about human beings. But if she understands this truth, she gains even more important and valuable knowledge. Her understanding affords her both the cognitive basis and the ability that she needs in order to explain, and thereby also order and unify, a host of other truths she has come to know about human beings: for example, truths about the wars we have waged, the kinds of crimes that we commit, and the various social ills that we still struggle to eradicate. Working from another epistemic angle, we also can say the following: the student of literature now properly understands how and why a host of historical, psychological, and sociopolitical truths follow from, or are dependent upon (explained by), the deep moral truth that she has come to understand by virtue of engaging in literary study. Broken down into parts, then, her understanding takes two different objects: (1) a deep moral truth about human beings, which she must apprehend with sufficient clarity and strength in order to explain, order, and unify a variety of other truths about human beings that she believes or knows; and (2) those same truths as explained, ordered, and unified by the deep moral truth.78 Therefore, by virtue of understanding a deep moral truth about human beings, and other important truths in light of the deep one, the student of literature now has a superior – more comprehensive, systematized, and integrated – understanding or knowledge of human beings, even human nature, as a whole.

124

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

Of course, as it stands, such understanding remains incomplete (even radically so), since the truth about ourselves as human beings cannot be fully grasped from one intellectual viewpoint, as clear or illuminating as that viewpoint may be. A true student of human nature, therefore, will possess (or at least seek) an understanding informed not only by literature but also by other humanistic disciplines as well as the social and natural sciences. By virtue of engaging and succeeding in truly liberal intellectual inquiry within and across the various university disciplines, she will be able to relate the distinct understandings she has gained within the various disciplines to one another, thereby also ordering and consolidating her knowledge of human nature as a whole. As a result, she will gain a composite understanding that she could not have gained otherwise: an understanding which we should count among the highest epistemic achievements of a truly liberally educated mind.

Wisdom: the ultimate epistemic and educative end The kind or level of understanding I have just identified therefore far exceeds more base-level understanding: it constitutes, or at least approximates, what we only properly can identify as wisdom, the greatest epistemic and educative good as well as the ultimate epistemic and educative end of liberal learning.79 Although wisdom historically has been heralded by many as the greatest epistemic good, it unfortunately has not received much attention within the contemporary intellectual world. Zagzebski suggests that neglect of wisdom is the consequence of a kind of skepticism or “pessimism about the concept of the good life, the life a wise person understands.”80 While I agree with Zagzebski on this latter point, especially because I think (and will argue later in the book) that knowledge of the good life (or as I will put it, knowledge of the Good) is constitutive of wisdom, I additionally think that the neglect of wisdom is also directly linked with wider intellectual doubt concerning the possibility of attaining any sort of non-localized, more universal, and even transcendent knowledge. Beyond this, on a pragmatic level wisdom may seem like an extravagant epistemic good that simply is not worth the cost of pursuing – particularly within contemporary university life, focused as it is on achieving more narrow professional and technical aims. Recovering wisdom therefore requires discussing why it should continue to be valued as well as how it can be obtained. It also requires discussing the nature of wisdom in some detail: the more we gain conceptual clarity on what wisdom is, the better we will be able to see how and why it should serve as the greatest epistemic and educative good as well as the ultimate aim of truly liberal learning. Amongst contemporary philosophers, Baehr offers us as good a starting point as any, especially since the philosophical reflection on “theoretical” wisdom (in Greek, sophia) that he offers us both captures classical philosophical insights on the nature of wisdom (most notably, in Aristotle) and provides substantive content to engage critically. As part of his overall aim “to shed light on the basic character of sophia understood in the relevant way,” Baehr first

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

125

articulates what he calls the “epistemic state conception” of wisdom, according to which wisdom “is a kind of firm and settled knowledge that is to be aimed at and sought after by rational and properly motivated inquirers.”81 More concretely, Baehr identifies wisdom qua epistemic state as “deep explanatory understanding of epistemically significant subject matters.”82 This understanding is “‘deep’ in the sense (roughly) that its possessor will have a grasp of the fundamental concepts and principles relative to the subject matter in question”; it is “‘explanatory’ in the sense that this person will also be in a position to see or articulate why things within the relevant domain are the way they are.”83 More technically: “to possess sophia or ‘deep explanatory understanding’ is to grasp, relative to a given ‘epistemically significant’ domain D, (1) that which is fundamental to D, (2) how the fundamental elements of D stand in relation to each other, and (3) how they stand in relation to the non-fundamental elements of D.”84 According to a second conception of wisdom, the “cognitive faculty conception,” wisdom is a cognitive ability that enables its possessor to acquire deep explanatory understanding of epistemically significant subject matters. Baehr identifies this faculty as theoretical reason along with the capacities (like intuitive, deductive, and inductive reason) that are constitutive of theoretical reason. By itself, Baehr says, the faculty of theoretical reason does not enable one to acquire deep explanatory understanding, but one can undergo the requisite intellectual training and development so that one’s theoretical reason, as suitably tutored, enables one to do so. Finally, Baehr says that we can think of wisdom not simply as a cognitive faculty but also (and even primarily) as an intellectual character trait akin to a moral character trait. “On this conception, to possess sophia is to possess a positive volitional or desiderative orientation toward – a kind of ‘love’ of – the relevant understanding, together with a disposition to act on behalf of or to pursue such understanding.”85 Since Baehr thinks that every intellectual virtue is rooted in “something like a ‘love of knowledge’,” then what really distinguishes sophia is its status “as a kind of meta- or master-intellectual virtue … involving an understanding of how best to pursue deep explanatory understanding or how best to negotiate the terrain and demands of inquiry aimed at such understanding.”86 As a result, Baehr further thinks that “we can view sophia or theoretical wisdom as a mode of phronesis or practical wisdom … applied to the domain of inquiry.”87 Just as we need practical wisdom in order to navigate the moral life successfully, so we need theoretical wisdom in order to navigate the intellectual life successfully. I think that we can gain something from each conception of sophia that Baehr offers us in our efforts to determine what wisdom is and why it should be valued – particularly since, in my view, Baehr does not offer us competing or mutually exclusive conceptions of wisdom but rather ways of viewing and valuing wisdom from overlapping epistemic viewpoints or angles. But I also think that it is necessary to build on and even depart from Baehr’s analysis at certain points in order fully to capture and appreciate what wisdom is. To start, I think that Baehr’s most accurate and fruitful conception of wisdom is the “epistemic state conception.” Again, according to this conception, to be

126

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

theoretically wise with respect to a domain D, one must know what is fundamental in D so that one can know how to relate the fundamental elements of D to one another and the other, non-fundamental elements of D. Dennis Whitcomb, who also holds that theoretical wisdom “is a kind of explanatory knowledge” based in the “knowledge of the principles that explain things in a relevant domain,” gives a clear example to illustrate this.88 A theoretically wise chemist has knowledge of the fundamental chemical structures that exist, along with the laws governing how they interact. As a result of possessing such knowledge, the wise chemist “is able to explain a wide range of particular, token chemical phenomena that occur in labs and in the real world,” specifically by virtue of being able “cognitively [to] subsume these phenomena, under the fundamental principles that explain them.”89 Accordingly, “[i]t is this fundamental knowledge and ability to subsume particular facts under it that constitutes unificatory insight,” or wisdom.90 Given what I argued above, I agree that to be wise with respect to a domain D, one must have knowledge of the fundamental principles that explain everything within D, presuming that D is an epistemically significant subject matter. It is a common intellectual practice to explain particular phenomena or elements within a given domain, as numerous and varied as they may be, by appealing to more fundamental principles. More than that, though, it only seems possible to be wise with respect to that domain if one has a knowledge of fundamental principles, which in turn furnish the epistemic framework needed in order to explain, order, and unify one’s knowledge of the various, discrete elements or phenomena that also constitute that domain. But now we need to ask: is wisdom, so construed as the greatest of epistemic goods, only limited to specific domains? What about the person who is not only wise with respect to chemistry, mathematics, or literature (or at least aspects of chemistry, mathematics, or literature) but who is wise with respect to all of these domains? If, in order to be wise with respect to a specific domain D, one must know the fundamental principles that explain everything within D, then it also seems that to be wise with respect to multiple domains – D, E, and F – taken collectively, and not simply individually, one must know not simply the fundamental principles of D, E, and F, but even more fundamental principles, or still deeper truths, so that one can relate D, E, and F – and, specifically, the explanatory understanding(s) one has of D, E, and F – to one another. And to be wise with respect to all domains of knowledge and truth, or at least a wide range of such domains, one must have knowledge of the most fundamental principles or deepest truths – what Aristotle and Aquinas identify as the ultimate causes of being or reality itself – so that one is able to order and unify the knowledge, or understanding, one possesses of those domains. In Aquinas’s words, the truly wise person who knows these causes “rightly judges all things and sets them in order, because there can be no perfect and universal judgment that is not based on the first causes [my emphasis].”91 Consequently, I depart from Baehr (and Whitcomb for that matter) and side with Aristotle and Aquinas in this regard: the truly wise person knows the most

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

127

epistemically significant subject matters, and specifically ultimate truths concerning those subject matters, which in turn most fully explain all that we can and do know about ourselves and our world, or reality more broadly.92 In this sense, we could say, wisdom, as an epistemic state, takes as its proper object its own domain of ultimate truths. Furthermore, it is because the wise person knows and, more specifically, understands these truths that she is able to order and unify all of the other knowledge that she has (or may come to possess) of other, subordinate or dependent, domains of knowledge, thereby gaining explanatory, ordered, and unified insight into the nature of reality as a whole. Newman deems the kind of understanding or insight that I have identified here “philosophical,” not because it is unique to philosophy but because it denotes an excellence or perfection of the mind rather than some particular aspect of functioning within the mind. According to Newman, a mind truly “enlarged” and “illumined” by liberal study has “a connected view of old and new, past and present, far and near” and also “has an insight into the influence of all these one on another; without which there is no whole, and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their mutual and true relations; knowledge, not merely considered as acquirement, but as philosophy.”93 On one level, then, philosophical knowledge constitutes an enlarged and illumined state of mind. On another level, it constitutes a “habit,” “virtue,” and “power” of mind – that is, “the power of viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the universal system, of understanding their respective values, and determining their mutual dependence.”94 It is precisely this power or habit that distinguishes the truly liberally educated mind, which is capable of reaching out and apprehending reality not just in part but as a unified whole. “[T]o have mapped out the Universe,” Newman says, “is the boast, or at least the ambition, of Philosophy.”95 Newman does not fully explain how the person with philosophical knowledge is able to connect “old and new, past and present, far and near,” gain “insight into the influence of all these one on another,” and view “many things at once as one whole.” Again, I don’t think that any of this is possible unless one also possesses a knowledge of those ultimate truths that explain how and why all truths concerning numerous and diverse elements or phenomena, which populate an exceedingly vast and diverse universe, all hang together or form one, interconnected whole. Put another way, it simply does not seem possible to “map out” the universe in its entirety without having the requisite epistemic principles or “cartographic” tools in hand. Nevertheless, Newman does rightly recognize that philosophical knowledge is no ordinary achievement of an uneducated mind. Procuring it is only possible if one possesses the requisite habit or virtue of mind that a truly liberal education should aim to cultivate. Even more specifically, procuring it is only possible if one’s reason has been virtuously cultivated. As he makes clear, “liberal education and liberal pursuits are exercises of mind, of reason, of reflection,” and as a result, the university “educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.”96 Thus, according to Baehr’s taxonomy, Newman’s philosophical knowledge is not

128

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

simply an epistemic state but also as a cognitive faculty and an intellectual trait, or “meta- or master-intellectual virtue.” However, unlike Baehr, and like Aristotle and Aquinas, Newman does not claim that philosophical knowledge – or what I am identifying as wisdom – has a desiderative component: there is no “firm and abiding desire for deep and significant theoretical knowledge,” which, along with the “disposition to act or inquire in sophia-relevant ways,” orients its possessor towards and somehow enables her to procure “deep and significant theoretical knowledge.”97 While I agree with Baehr that acquiring wisdom requires an abiding love of wisdom (a point that I reiterate below), I am not convinced that this love or desire is, or should be, a component of wisdom. Moreover, there seems to be no guarantee that the desire for wisdom, along with the knowledge of how best to pursue the deep explanatory understanding that is characteristic of wisdom (acting or inquiring in sophia-relevant ways) are jointly sufficient to bring about wisdom. Since it is so difficult to attain wisdom, as well as engage in the deepest cognizing characteristic of wisdom, I therefore think that we need to follow the classical philosophers once again in identifying habits or dispositions of mind specific to wisdom that empower us not only to pursue the knowledge characteristic of wisdom but also to attain and exercise that knowledge. So for the sake of clarity, building on what I have argued throughout this section of the chapter, let’s make an important distinction between understanding, which is a more limited and qualified wisdom, and wisdom proper. As an intellectual act, understanding consists both of grasping, or firmly laying hold of, deep truths about reality and of grasping the ways in which these truths explain, order, and unify other known truths about reality. Thus, the sort of understanding that qualifies as a great epistemic good affords deep knowledge of deep truths. As an intellectual virtue, understanding denotes the good habit or disposition that perfects our intellects or reasoning so that we properly can grasp or firmly lay hold of deep truths, apprehending them with sufficient clarity and strength. And it disposes us to engage in and complete the cognitive task of explaining, ordering, and unifying the knowledge that we have of other truths based on our knowledge of deep truths. As a virtue, then, understanding affords the ability to gain and exercise deep knowledge of deep truths. The truly wise person knows ultimate truths, or the deepest truths about reality. And she knows the ways in which ultimate truths explain, order, and unify all other truths, whatever their intellectual depth or domain. In this sense, the intellectual act called wisdom affords the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths, and so an explanatory, ordered, and unified knowledge – or more specifically, understanding – of reality as a whole. As a possessor of the virtue called wisdom, the truly wise person has acquired two essential cognitive habits or dispositions: the disposition needed to know ultimate truths, and the disposition needed to know the ways in which ultimate truths explain, order, and unify all other truths, or at least the significantly wide range of truths that the truly wise person also knows.

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

129

At this point, it should be clear why wisdom, as suitably identified and defined, possesses supreme epistemic and educative value, and hence also constitutes the ultimate epistemic and educative end of truly liberal learning. Still, acknowledging the difficulty that many may still have in embracing wisdom as an epistemic and educative ideal, I conclude this chapter by addressing two relevant and admittedly pressing questions. First, even granting that there are ultimate truths that the wise know, what are they, and how can we identify them? Second, how can liberal learners obtain knowledge of these truths? In other words, how can a liberal learner in the university become wise? According to Eleonore Stump, the answer to the first question “depends on the rest of one’s worldview.”98 Thus, for both Aristotle and Aquinas, the highest cause is God, the first or ultimate principle of being – so wisdom consists in knowing truths about God. More specifically, for Aquinas the theologian, Stump says, “wisdom is a matter of knowing God’s nature, God’s actions, and God’s decrees.”99 One also could equate ultimate truths with what Plato calls the “Forms,” such as Goodness, Justice, and Beauty – or put another way, goodness itself, justice itself, and beauty itself. Given his Christian Platonist worldview, Stephen Evans defines wisdom as “knowledge of the Forms,” where “knowledge” means “conceptual understanding” or a direct awareness (and appreciation) of reality as disclosed by or under fundamental concepts of the Good, the Just, the Beautiful, etc., which in turn exist as “Ideas in the Divine Mind.”100 In Evans’s view, it is the wise person’s knowledge of the Forms that also enables her to understand “in a deep way what it is to be good, what justice is, what courage is,” as well as the relationship between goodness, justice, and courage, and the different ways that goodness, justice, and courage might possibly be instanced and encountered.101 Aquinas and Evans both possess a distinct, theistic metaphysical worldview, from which many within the secular academy in particular will dissent. This may lead us to think that the concept of an “ultimate truth” has an intrinsic religious dimension or value – so that if one rejects religion, one also rejects ultimate truths. However, I don’t think that this claim is sustainable: while one certainly can deny that ultimate truths concern an ultimate, even worldtranscendent reality, one cannot deny that any and all truths are ultimate. Once one denies that ultimate truths are world-transcendent, for example, then one is forced to affirm that other truths – ones wholly immanent to or inclusive of the world – are ultimate. Even someone who says that there are no ultimate truths makes a claim about what the nature of reality, or the universe, is ultimately like. So inevitably, in seeking to understand ourselves and our world on the deepest and most comprehensive level, we end up appealing to ultimate truths or making ultimate truth-claims of some sort. Furthermore (and here I agree with Stump), in making these appeals, we inevitably draw on our broader intellectual, and more specifically metaphysical, worldviews. That is, in making ultimate truth-claims, we don’t ascend to some wholly external epistemological vantage point; rather, we speak from inside whatever worldview we inhabit, however widely shared that worldview may be.

130

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

Now, this may seem to put us in a precarious position: given how widely worldviews can vary, particularly within an epistemologically pluralist secular university, we may then think that the search for wisdom in the secular university is doomed from the start. However, building on what I argued in the previous chapter, I think that a lack of intellectual consensus concerning ultimate truths should serve not as a roadblock for inquiring into the nature of ultimate truth, but rather as a catalyst for doing so. An epistemologically pluralist secular university certainly is not obligated to recognize all claims regarding the nature of ultimate truth, but it can and should recognize all rational claims regarding the nature of ultimate truth and offer them room to be explored and tested. In particular, it should include and even feature disciplines that provide an intellectual course of study conducive for pursuing and, ideally, attaining wisdom. It is only by allowing truly liberal learners to explore and test various ultimate truth-claims, and so to think and reason not just about but also within various intellectual worldviews, that we afford them every opportunity to attain ultimate truth – or at least to acquire the habits of mind and will needed to attain it. In other words, if we do not afford truly liberal learners every intellectual opportunity to inquire into the nature and province of ultimate truth, we prevent them from reaching the ultimate goal of what I am arguing truly liberal learning should be. This leads to the second important question: how can liberal learners acquire wisdom? In large part, I already have laid the groundwork for answering this question: attaining wisdom, as well as any deep understanding, requires following the knowledge- and truth-aimed epistemological and educative program that I expounded and defended in this chapter. To start, acquiring true beliefs in a wide range of academic subject matters is necessary for attaining wisdom because without a sufficient knowledge base there is nothing of epistemic significance for wisdom (or the ultimate truths known by the wise) to illumine, nor is there any substantive cognitive basis for engaging in any deeper intellectual pursuits. Furthermore, since I argued that the telos of critical thinking is truth, then critical thinking, too, while not directly aimed at ultimate truth, and hence wisdom, nonetheless develops our natural intellective capacity both for seeking after truth and also for attaining truth through specifically rational means. Thus, the more one grows as a critical thinker, the more able and willing one will be to track good reasoning within and across various intellectual fields, and thereby discover for oneself those lines of rational inquiry, as speculative as they may be, that lead to both understanding and wisdom. Growing in intellectual virtue is essential for attaining understanding and wisdom as well, because it is only by coming to possess intellectual virtues like open-mindedness; courage; humility; autonomy; and above all, love of knowledge that the liberal learner will possess the dispositions needed to pursue and obtain these premier epistemic goods. And that is because the best epistemic goods are the hardest to attain: understanding the truth is a more significant and arduous epistemic achievement than merely believing the truth, and understanding deep truths about ourselves and our world, or reality more broadly, is even more

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

131

significant and arduous still. Only the truly intellectual virtuous liberal learner will be able and willing to engage in the most serious and sustained rational inquiry into the nature of ultimate truth so as to attain wisdom. However, in order to acquire understanding and wisdom it is not enough to be open-minded, intellectually courageous, humble, autonomous, or even the greatest lover of knowledge. As I just argued above, since the knowledge characteristic of understanding and wisdom is so difficult to attain, and consists in the deepest level of cognizing, we need specific dispositions that enable us both to attain such knowledge and to exercise it. How, then, do we acquire these dispositions? In order to acquire more basic intellectual virtues, it is enough to watch and imitate those who exemplify the virtues in their intellectual life and behavior. In order to become a person of true understanding and wisdom, though, imitation is not enough: one must be taught by those who have understanding and wisdom. In other words, one must undergo what John Jenkins, interpreting Aquinas and following M.F. Burnyeat, calls “intellectual habituation,” or “a process of familiarization” with the fundamental principles in a given area of inquiry “so that they become the foundation of our thinking and reasoning” within that area.102 Thus, Jenkins says that it is “by undertaking a period of training and discipline under the guidance of those more accomplished with the field” that we acquire what “those more accomplished with the field” have: the habit needed to understand the fundamental principles within that field, and the habit needed to understand everything else about that field in light of those principles.103 Similarly, I submit, in order to attain the virtues of understanding and wisdom, one must undergo a comparable period of intellectual habituation under the pedagogical direction of those premier epistemic authorities who possess understanding and wisdom, or at least have made significant progress in attaining them. It is only by doing so that one will come to possess understanding and wisdom. But who are persons of understanding and wisdom, and how can we identify them? While there is no quick and easy way to answer this question (just like, particularly in a secular academic context, there is no quick and easy way to determine what ultimate truth is and where it lies), nevertheless we can say the following. First, they are persons of intellectual virtue: they possess key virtues such as open-mindedness, courage, humility, autonomy, and the love of knowledge to the highest degree. Second, they are committed to a life of reason: not only are those who possess understanding and wisdom premier critical thinkers who are able and willing to assess reasons for a wide range of beliefs, which includes being able and willing to provide reasons for what they believe, but they also actively engage in what I will continue to call contemplative reasoning, as they inquire into and seek to further their understanding of deeper and even ultimate truths.104 (I discuss contemplative reasoning at length in the next chapter). Third, as a result, these persons can offer reasons for thinking that they possess understanding and wisdom. So even if they cannot convince every reasonable inquirer what deep truths there are and where they lie, they nevertheless can reason effectively and persuasively about these truths (as they take them to be),

132

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

and explain how and why they think that reality, whether in part or as a whole, is rendered the most fully intelligible in their light. I conclude, then, that the secular university only effectively can educate for understanding and wisdom if it contains educators who possess understanding and wisdom – or at least, educators who, following the lead of others (great thinkers, past and present), can open up epistemic and educative pathways that ideally lead to understanding and wisdom. Accordingly, I also argue that it behooves the secular university to include those academic disciplines that in addition to furnishing true belief, fostering critical thinking, and engendering more familiar and easily attainable intellectual virtues also seek to cultivate understanding and wisdom, and set liberal learners on the epistemic and educative path that leads to understanding and wisdom. Otherwise, the secular university never will be able to fulfill its epistemic and educative mission, or help truly liberal learners to attain final epistemic and educative ends. Thus will run my further argument for including Christian theology in the secular university.

Notes 1 Throughout the rest of the book, I am going to be adapting elements of Newman’s argument on behalf of a specifically Catholic university in The Idea of a University in order to further develop my argument for the inclusion of Christian theology within the secular university. Some may consider this move on my part to be a fundamental misstep: Mike Higton, for example, claims that “[t]o leave out of account the relationship between the university and the Catholic Church is to leave out the keystone of Newman’s argument” (A Theology of Higher Education [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012], 98). However, I am going to show how the insights that Newman offers can and should guide our thinking about the nature of truly liberal learning in the secular university, and the place of Christian theology more specifically in the secular university. In my mind, this does not detract from Newman’s arguments, but shows how strong and enduring they really are. 2 John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated, ed. I.T. Ker (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1976), 5. Italics are in the original text. 3 Newman, The Idea of a University, 5. 4 Newman, The Idea of a University, 52. 5 Newman, The Idea of a University, 52–3. 6 Newman, The Idea of a University, 52. 7 Newman, The Idea of a University, 53. 8 Newman, The Idea of a University, 54. 9 Newman, The Idea of a University, 57. 10 Gerald Loughlin, “Theology in the University,” The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, eds. Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 228. 11 William P. Alston, Beyond “Justification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 30. 12 Alston, Beyond “Justification,” 30. 13 Newman, The Idea of a University, 98. 14 Aristotle, Metaphysics, A1, 980a, trans. W.D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York, NY: Random House, 1941; reprint, 2001), 689.

An epistemology of truly liberal learning 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

133

ST I–II.57.2 ad 3. Newman, The Idea of a University, 97. Newman, The Idea of a University, 97. In Plato’s Republic, Bk. II, 357c, Socrates puts knowledge and health in the category of “a good which we welcome both for its own sake and for the consequences which arise from it” (Plato, The Republic, trans. R.E. Allen [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006], 38). I would add: we principally desire knowledge and health for their own sake, though of course we also desire them for the sake of those good things that come from them. William James, Pragmatism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 34; also cited in Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 124. Italics are in the original text. James, Pragmatism, 34. Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 145–6. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, 46. Rauser makes this point as well, in Theology in Search of Foundations, 124. Richard Rorty, “Is Truth a Goal of Inquiry? Donald Davidson versus Crispin Wright,” Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, vol. 3 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 39. Rorty, “Science as Solidarity,” Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, 39. Italics are in the original text. Jonathan E. Adler, “Knowledge, Truth, and Learning,” A Companion to the Philosophy of Education, ed. Randall Curren (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 290. Erik W. Schmidt, “How to Value the Liberal Arts for Their Own Sake without Intrinsic Values,” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 17.2 (2010): 42. Harvey Siegel, “Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust: Alvin Goldman on Epistemology and Education,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71.2 (2005): 347. Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World, 363; also quoted in Siegel, “Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust,” 348. Italics are in the original text. Siegel, “Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust,” 347. Siegel, “Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust,” 349 (italics are in the original text), 355. For more on this, see Siegel, “Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust,” 346–58. Harvey Siegel, Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education (New York, NY: Routledge, 1988), 32. Harvey Siegel, Rationality Redeemed? Further Dialogues on an Educational Ideal (New York, NY: Routledge, 1997), 14 and passim. Siegel, Educating Reason, 34. Siegel, Educating Reason, 39. Siegel, Rationality Redeemed?, 23. Siegel, Rationality Redeemed?, 23. Siegel, Rationality Redeemed?, 22. Siegel, Rationality Redeemed?, 23. Sharon Bailin and Harvey Siegel, “Critical Thinking,” The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education, eds. Nigel Blake, Paul Smeyers, Richard Smith, and Paul Standish (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), 181. Italics are in the original text. Siegel, Rationality Redeemed?, 16. Siegel, Rationality Redeemed?, 16. Siegel, Rationality Redeemed?, 3. Italics are in the original text. Bailin and Siegel, “Critical Thinking,” 183. Bailin and Siegel, “Critical Thinking,” 183. Siegel, Rationality Redeemed?, 3. John Greco and John Turri, “Virtue Epistemology,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 edn.), ed. Edward N. Zalta, available online at http://pla

134

49

50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58

59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

An epistemology of truly liberal learning to.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/epistemology-virtue (accessed 26 August 2016). Similarly, virtue epistemologists Robert Roberts and W. Jay Wood claim that intellectual virtues are “acquired bases of excellent intellectual functioning – this being one of the most important and challenging generically human kinds of functioning” (Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007], 60). The contemporary virtue epistemologists that I discuss and draw on most heavily in this section are virtue “responsibilists,” not virtue “reliabilists.” According to Jason Baehr, the former conceive of intellectual virtues as “excellences of intellectual character”; the latter (like Greco) identify intellectual virtues as “various cognitive faculties or abilities like memory, vision, hearing, reason, and introspection” (Jason Baehr, The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011], 47, italics in the original text). Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 176. Jason Baehr, “Educating for Intellectual Virtues: From Theory to Practice,” Journal of Philosophy of Education 47.2 (2013): 248–9. See Baehr, “Educating for Intellectual Virtues,” 250. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 159. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 71. For more on the intellectual virtues’ “indefectible ordering to the true” in Aquinas, see Gregory M. Reichberg, “The Intellectual Virtues (Ia IIae, qq. 57–58),” The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 134–5, in particular 135. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 182. Baehr, The Inquiring Mind, 53. Baehr, The Inquiring Mind, 53. Baehr acknowledges that Zagzebski makes a comparable claim (Virtues of the Mind, 273–80), but his main goal is to show more specifically why reliabilist approaches cannot explain (or at least, cannot best explain) how we are able to reach truth in these areas. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 159. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 160. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 165. Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary J. McGregor, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 17 (italics in original). Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 260. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 270. For more on the difference between skills and virtues, see Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 106–16. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 151. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 150–2, 154–5. Jonathan L. Kvanig, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 192, 198. Wayne D. Riggs, “Understanding ‘Virtue’ and the Virtue of Understanding,” Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, eds. Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007), 217. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 49, 45. Italics are in the original text. Linda Zagzebski, “Recovering Understanding,” Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, ed. Matthias Steup (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 241. John Greco, “Episteme: Knowledge and Understanding,” Virtues and Their Vices, eds. Kevin Timpe and Craig A. Boyd (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014), 292. Italics are in the original text.

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

135

73 Greco, “Episteme,” 294, 291. Italics are in the original text. 74 Riggs, “Understanding ‘Virtue’,” 219. 75 Greco points out that the object of understanding can be a “system of ‘real’ relations” like an ecosystem; a “representation of a real system,” such as a theory; or “[t]he relations between a real system and a representation,” like the relationship between a theory and the causal process that it represents (Greco, “Episteme,” 293). 76 I realize that there is a long-standing debate in the philosophy of science between realists and anti-realists on the nature of scientific theories and the goals of scientific reasoning. Obviously, I cannot fully enter into the debate here; however, I remind the reader that I offered a defense of the claim that intellectual inquiry of whatever sort is objectively knowledge- and truth-aimed in the first section of the chapter. 77 Even if one does not agree that this is a moral truth, one can still appreciate the role that it is playing in my argument: if there is such a truth, we can see how understanding it affords the liberal learner knowledge of human beings otherwise unavailable to her. For a good defense of the claim that humanistic study in particular is principally concerned with comprehending value (in a distinctly realist sense), see Jonathan Jacobs, “The Humanities and the Recovery of the Real World,” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 8.1 (2009): 26–40. 78 Put another way, if a deep truth were only vaguely and weakly known, then it would lack the requisite explanatory power for the liberal learner seeking to understand other truths in light of it. Arriving at this level of understanding of a deep truth, and thereby gaining the requisite cognitive familiarity with it, can take significant intellectual training and time. I discuss this more below. 79 Interestingly, Newman doesn’t use the term “wisdom” for what he deems “philosophy,” since in his view, wisdom “has a direct relation to conduct, and to human life” (The Idea of a University, 113). Nevertheless, I do think that Newman, when discussing “philosophy,” is referring to what philosophers deem theoretical wisdom. 80 Zagzebski, “Recovering Understanding,” 249. 81 Jason Baehr, “Sophia: Theoretical Wisdom and Contemporary Epistemology,” Virtues and Their Vices, 303, 309. 82 Baehr, “Sophia,” 310. Italics are in the original text. 83 Baehr, “Sophia,” 311–12. 84 Baehr, “Sophia,” 312. 85 Baehr, “Sophia,” 314. 86 Baehr, “Sophia,” 315. Italics are in the original text. 87 Baehr, “Sophia,” 316. Italics are in the original text. 88 Dennis Whitcomb, “Wisdom,” The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, edited by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011), 102. 89 Whitcomb, “Wisdom,” 102. 90 Whitcomb, “Wisdom,” 102. 91 ST I–II.57.2. 92 As Baehr points out, for Aristotle, sophia furnishes fundamental metaphysical knowledge; the same holds for Aquinas. I am interpreting this claim a bit more broadly: although knowledge of ultimate truths certainly consists of metaphysical knowledge (and may even be mostly metaphysical knowledge) it may also consist of knowledge of moral truths, truths about the human condition, the meaning and goal of human history, etc. All of these truths may be explained by deeper or more fundamental metaphysical truths, but I still think that it is appropriate to classify them as ultimate truths. 93 Newman, The Idea of a University, 121. 94 Newman, The Idea of a University, 122–3. 95 Newman, The Idea of a University, 105.

136

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

96 Newman, The Idea of a University, 100, 114. 97 Baehr, “Sophia,” 308, 315. Italics are in the original text. 98 Eleonore Stump, “Wisdom: Will, Belief, and Moral Goodness,” Aquinas’s Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, eds. Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 47. 99 Stump, “Wisdom: Will, Belief, and Moral Goodness,” 47. 100 C. Stephen Evans, “Wisdom as Conceptual Understanding,” Faith and Philosophy 27.4 (2010): 373, 376. 101 Evans, “Wisdom as Conceptual Understanding,” 376. 102 John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 47. Cf. M.F. Burnyeat, “Aristotle on Understanding Knowledge,” Aristotle on Science: The Posterior Analytics, Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium Aristotelicum, ed. Enrico Berti (New York, NY: Editrice Antenore, 1981), 130. 103 Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas, 49. 104 In this sense, the wise person is, in Sharon Ryan’s words, “deeply rational.” For Ryan, what distinguishes the wise person is that she possesses “a wide variety of epistemically justified beliefs on a wide variety of valuable academic subjects and on how to live rationally (epistemically, morally, and practically)”; she also “has very few unjustified beliefs and is sensitive to his or her limitations” (Sharon Ryan, “Wisdom, Knowledge and Rationality,” Acta Analytica 27.2 [2012]: 108). Finally, the wise person “is deeply committed to both: (a) Acquiring wider, deeper, and more rational beliefs about reality” and “(b) Living rationally (practically, emotionally, and morally)” (ibid). I have not engaged Ryan’s view, since it says nothing about wisdom as deep explanatory understanding. Nevertheless, Ryan rightly emphasizes the close relationship between wisdom and rationality. Also, for a comparable analysis of wisdom, see Sharon Ryan, “Wisdom,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 edn.), ed. Edward N. Zalta, available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/wisdom (accessed 26 August 2016).

Bibliography Adler, Jonathan E. “Knowledge, Truth, and Learning.” In A Companion to the Philosophy of Education, edited by Randall Curren, 285–304. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. Alston, William P. Beyond “Justification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa theologiae I-II. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province as Summa Theologica. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Benziger Bros., 1948. Reprint, Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981. Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by W.D. Ross. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon. New York, NY: Random House, 1941; reprint, 2001. Baehr, Jason. The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011. Baehr, Jason. “Educating for Intellectual Virtues: From Theory to Practice.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 47.2 (2013): 248–62. Baehr, Jason “Sophia: Theoretical Wisdom and Contemporary Epistemology.” In Timpe and Boyd, Virtues and Their Vices, 303–23. Bailin, Sharon, and Harvey Siegel. “Critical Thinking.” In The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education, edited by Nigel Blake, Paul Smeyers, Richard Smith, and Paul Standish, 181–93. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003.

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

137

Burnyeat, M.F. “Aristotle on Understanding Knowledge.” In Aristotle on Science: The Posterior Analytics, Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Enrico Berti, 97–139. New York, NY: Editrice Antenore, 1981. Evans, C. Stephen “Wisdom as Conceptual Understanding.” Faith and Philosophy 27.4 (2010): 369–81. Goldman, Alvin I. Knowledge in a Social World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. Greco, John. “Episteme: Knowledge and Understanding.” In Timpe and Boyd, Virtues and Their Vices, 285–302. Greco, John, and John Turri. “Virtue Epistemology.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2011 edn. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Available online at http://p lato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/epistemology-virtue (accessed 30 August 2016). Higton, Mike. A Theology of Higher Education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. Jacobs, Jonathan. “The Humanities and the Recovery of the Real World.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 8.1 (2009): 26–40. James, William. Pragmatism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. Jenkins, John I. Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kant, Immanuel. “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” In Practical Philosophy, translated by Mary J. McGregor, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Kvanig, Jonathan L. The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Loughlin, Gerald. “Theology in the University.” In The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, edited by Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan, 221–40. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Newman, John Henry. The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated. Edited by I.T. Ker. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1976. Plato. The Republic. Translated by R.E. Allen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Reichberg, Gregory M. “The Intellectual Virtues (Ia IIae, qq. 57–58).” In The Ethics of Aquinas, edited by Stephen J. Pope, 131–50. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002. Riggs, Wayne D. “Understanding ‘Virtue’ and the Virtue of Understanding.” In Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, edited by Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski, 203–26. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. Roberts, Robert C., and W. Jay Wood. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. Rorty, Richard. “Science as Solidarity.” In Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1, 35–45. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Rorty, Richard. “Is Truth a Goal of Inquiry? Donald Davidson versus Crispin Wright.” In Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, 19–42. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Ryan, Sharon, “Wisdom, Knowledge, and Rationality.” Acta Analytica 27.2 (2012): 99–112. Ryan, Sharon, “Wisdom.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2014 edn. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2014/entries/wisdom (accessed 30 August 2016).

138

An epistemology of truly liberal learning

Schmidt, Erik W. “How to Value the Liberal Arts for Their Own Sake without Intrinsic Values.” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 17.2 (2010): 37–47. Siegel, Harvey. Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education. New York, NY: Routledge, 1988. Siegel, Harvey. Rationality Redeemed? Further Dialogues on an Educational Ideal. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997. Siegel, Harvey. “Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust: Alvin Goldman on Epistemology and Education.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71.2 (2005): 345–66. Stump, Eleonore. “Wisdom: Will, Belief, and Moral Goodness.” In Aquinas’s Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, edited by Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump, 28–62. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Timpe, Kevin, and Craig A. Boyd, eds. Virtues and Their Vices. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014. Whitcomb, Dennis. “Wisdom.” In The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, edited by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard, 95–105. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. “Recovering Understanding.” In Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, edited by Matthias Steup, 235–51. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.

4

Theology and truly liberal learning in the secular university

If the goal of all genuine intellectual inquiry is to attain knowledge of the truth, and the raison d’être of the university, whether secular or sectarian, is to promote genuine intellectual inquiry – and, in Newman’s words, teach universal knowledge – then it behooves the secular university to include disciplines like Christian theology that have their own, rational traditions of knowledge- and truth-seeking. One cannot be truly liberally educated and yet lack knowledge of subject areas like theology which contain truth, or which at the very least can offer rational means of attaining truth. This is especially the case if the specific kind of truth that theology professes – what I have been calling ultimate truth – bears on all other truths that one knows or could know. “Admit a God,” Newman writes, “and you introduce among the subjects of your knowledge, a fact encompassing, closing in upon, absorbing, every other fact conceivable.”1 Accordingly, excluding theology is not like excluding any other discipline from university study. Not only is knowledge of the divine – and, specifically, ultimate truths concerning the divine, the most valuable kind of knowledge there is – worth pursuing and possessing for its own sake. Such knowledge (presuming it actually obtains) also affords us the most valuable knowledge of everything else that there is: explanatory, ordered, unified insight into the nature of reality as a whole, or the wisdom possessed and enjoyed by a truly liberally educated mind. What this really means, then, is that the secular university is faced with a challenge and choice. Newman puts it this way: I say, then, that if a University be, from the nature of the case, a place of instruction, where universal knowledge is professed, and if in a certain University, so called, the subject of Religion is excluded, one of two conclusions is inevitable, – either, on the one hand, that the province of Religion is very barren of real knowledge, or, on the other hand, that in such University one special and important branch of knowledge is omitted. I say, the advocate of such an institution must say this, or he must say that; he must own, either that little or nothing is known about the Supreme Being, or that his seat of learning calls itself what it is not.2

140

Theology and truly liberal learning

Clearly, Newman thinks that theology (his “Religion”) does afford knowledge; there is genuine truth about the “Supreme Being” that can be known, whether by way of natural reason or divine revelation. Consequently, any university that excludes the study of theology and still claims to teach universal knowledge “calls itself what it is not.” But it is precisely here that we may question Newman. It remains a matter of real disagreement, especially for those persons who inhabit the secular university, whether Christian theology is able to yield knowledge of the divine or really any valuable knowledge at all. Particularly for the secular mind, then, the question arises: why does the secular university need theology in order to fulfill its truly liberal quest for knowledge? And on what basis, if any, can theology claim to lead liberal learners to knowledge of the divine and consequently a genuine theological wisdom? The main goal of the present chapter is to answer these questions by continuing to develop and defend the epistemology of liberal learning that I developed and defended in the previous chapter. In particular, I make two distinct arguments. First, I argue that Christian theological study promotes truly liberal learning regardless of whether or not it ultimately enables liberal learners to acquire knowledge of the divine and hence genuine theological wisdom. Such study enables liberal learners to become better critical thinkers, it engenders growth in key intellectual virtues, and it habituates liberal learners in specifically contemplative modes of reasoning that, I argue, are needed in order to attain wisdom, whatever one might think the content of that knowledge is or may be. As such, even if one doubts or denies that there is genuine theological knowledge, one can still affirm, in broad alignment with Newman, that it is not possible to attain knowledge in all of its variety and depth without theology, and that theological study should therefore occupy a central place within secular learning and secular academic life. Second, having defended my first main claim, I offer what I think is a reasonable interpretation of theological study as oriented towards theological knowledge and truth, and thus as conducive for attaining theology’s own epistemic and educative ends. I do this not in order to establish that an actual body of theological knowledge and truth exists but rather to lay out, for non-theologians in particular, a positive direction that liberal learning, when infused by theological study, not only can but also may very well, in fact, take. The more theology can show that it possesses and generates not just knowledge broadly understood but also genuine theological knowledge, the more pressing it becomes for any university, secular or not, to make theological study a permanent part of both its program of truly liberal learning and its larger intellectual life. Neither argument that I make requires the secular university (or anyone in the secular university for that matter) to take a particular stance on where Christian theological study, as I explain and defend it, actually leads. In other words, by including theology in its program of truly liberal learning, the secular university does not exclusively commit itself to pursuing theological knowledge. Instead, it makes a further, more substantive commitment to pursuing knowledge and truth whatever they might be and wherever they might be found. Thus, by including and even promoting theological study the secular university does not

Theology and truly liberal learning

141

cease to be secular. It fulfills its own epistemic and educative aims of promoting truly liberal learning and teaching truly universal knowledge.

Reasoning and critical thinking in theology Studying Christian theology requires assessing the various reasons that theologians offer for the various truth-claims that they make. Consequently, theology provides as much opportunity as any other discipline for growing as a critical thinker skilled at and disposed towards assessing reasons – and more specifically, accurately assessing the epistemic value or merit of reasons. Of course, as is the case with any discipline, the reasoning that goes on within theology is both multifarious and complex, especially given theology’s nearly 2,000-year history. Moreover, as we have seen throughout the book, theologians, particularly in the (post-) modern world, think and reason differently depending on what they think that the proper epistemic and educative goals of theology are and should be. In this section of the chapter, then, I discuss some of the main kinds of reasoning that theologians not only can and do but also should engage in within the realms of both natural and revealed theology. But this discussion is also intentional. The forms of theological reasoning that I highlight here are not only readily assessable but also readily serviceable as at least potential avenues for pursuing and even attaining distinctly theological epistemic and educative ends. I will not defend this claim in full until the final section of the chapter. However, I make it now in order to flag for the reader where I think that critical thinking in theology, as a form of “faith” seeking understanding, can and may very well lead. Not only does tracking, evaluating, and even employing theological reasoning in one’s own thinking and reasoning help one become a better critical thinker overall, and thereby assist one’s larger quest for knowledge and truth, but as rightly understood, it also constitutes a viable pathway for attaining specifically theological knowledge and truth. Let’s begin by reflecting on the kind of reasoning that goes on within natural theology: inquiring into the existence and nature of God by drawing on the deliverances of reason and the senses, rather than the deliverances of Christian revelation. Although theological appraisals of natural theology and its relationship with revealed theology vary, the Christian intellectual tradition is replete with able practitioners of both types of theology, and in my mind, the best Christian theologians, recognizing theology’s one, ultimate divine foundation – God’s own thinking and being – practice both types, and so are unwilling to separate off natural and revealed theology into entirely independent (and worse yet, contradictory) spheres of inquiry. Moreover, apart from its rationalist forms theology never has held (for good reason, as I argued in chapter 1) that all of its reasoning must be exclusively based in or linked with the deliverances of reason and the senses – or that reason alone, or reason in conjunction with the senses, must furnish an epistemic foundation on which all theologizing must be based and against which it must be judged. Nevertheless, many theologians have recognized that reason and the senses, and more narrowly propositions

142

Theology and truly liberal learning

that are evident to reason and the senses, furnish valid, broad epistemic starting points for engaging in some reasoning in theology, especially as a means of gaining knowledge of the divine. As I began to explain in chapter 1, Christian theologians historically have employed natural theological reasoning in order to demonstrate not only that God exists but also that God possesses certain attributes. Perhaps most famously, Aquinas uses demonstrative reasoning in order to prove both that God exists, as the cause of what we observe to be true about the world (the phenomena of change, causation, contingency, gradation, and order), and that God possesses certain attributes such as incorporeality, perfection, immutability, eternality, and unity.3 In his Proslogion, Anselm offers another route. Writing explicitly “from the point of view of one trying to raise his mind to contemplate God and seeking to understand what he believes,”4 Anselm claims to prove not only that God exists, based on the concept of God as “that-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought,” but also that God possesses certain attributes.5 According to Anselm, a God about whom nothing greater can be thought, and who is therefore “whatever it is better to be than not to be,” must be omnipotent, omniscient, all-just, all-merciful, limitless, eternal, simple (non-composite), incorporeal, and impassible.6 Note here that the list of divine attributes that Aquinas and Anselm give us tells us more about who God is not (immaterial, unchanging, without limit and emotion, etc.) than who God is. Nevertheless, natural theology in the Thomistic and Anselmian traditions still claims to afford us not only true beliefs about the divine but also rationally demonstrated true beliefs, or factual knowledge in its truest sense. I think that it is fair to say that many (if not most) Christian theologians, particularly within the contemporary world, do not share the optimism that Aquinas and Anselm have about the prospect of demonstrating that God exists and possesses certain attributes. As Scott MacDonald points out, “a demonstrative science’s criteria for admissible data and methods are very strict. Indeed, few philosophers today are sanguine about the prospects of satisfying them outside the realms of logic and mathematics.”7 However, even so, this does not entail that there is something philosophically amiss in aspiring to meet these criteria, and so engaging in demonstrative reasoning within natural theology. A theologian who doubts the efficacy of demonstrative reasoning in the Thomistic and Anselmian traditions could engage in other, related types of such reasoning by offering and defending different versions of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments for God’s existence or by offering transcendental arguments for God’s existence (which demonstratively conclude that God exists because God is a necessary condition or presupposition of some fact about ourselves or our world).8 Furthermore, it is also possible to engage in natural theology using what MacDonald (“[f]ollowing a long tradition”) calls dialectical, as opposed to strictly demonstrative or deductive, reasoning.9 On one level, dialectical reasoning admits as data propositions for which we have some epistemic support but not definitive epistemic support. On another level, dialectical reasoning includes

Theology and truly liberal learning

143

broadly inductive methods of reasoning that are not “utterly truth- guaranteeing” – methods such as “enumerative induction, probabilistic reasoning, argument from analogy, inference to the best explanation and so on.”10 Thus, the main aim of dialectical natural theology is not to show conclusively that God exists but rather to show, using broadly inductive reasoning, that there is good reason to think God exists and possesses certain attributes.11 What this means is that it remains open to the practitioner of natural theology to engage in both demonstrative / deductive and dialectical / non-deductive reasoning, and so to use reason more broadly “to establish truths or acquire knowledge about God using deductive or non-deductive arguments the premises of which are evident or justified to some appropriate degree.”12 It also remains open to the Christian theologian to aim to establish specifically Christian truths and so acquire knowledge about the Christian God, along with our relationship to the Christian God, using arguments the premises of which are evident or justified to some appropriate degree. Writing in the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards draws on his observation of human behavior along with what he takes to be a “natural dictate of reason” in order to argue that human beings are tainted by original sin. Edwards says, “where there is an effect, there is a cause … sufficient for the effect; … and that therefore, where there is a stated prevalence of the effect, there is a stated prevalence in the cause: a steady effect argues a steady cause.”13 He then argues the following: given the steady effect of moral wrongdoing throughout the human race and human history, it is reasonable to infer that there is within human nature itself a propensity for moral evil (given that we lack the integrity of nature that we once possessed), which Christians call original sin.14 The effect does not prove the cause – Edwards is reasoning dialectically, not demonstratively, I think – but it arguably still lends at least some rational support, and even strong rational support, for a particular theological truth-claim about our status as “fallen” beings who continually fail morally in the ways that we relate to God and to one another. In defense of the doctrine of original sin, Edwards also draws freely and heavily on Scripture, which suggests that he, like most Christian theologians, nonetheless recognizes the inability of human reason to arrive on its own at a truth which seems to be, in principle, unknowable apart from being divinely revealed.15 In the main, then, theologians engage in a different kind of reasoning within the more specific realm of revealed theology: clarificatory reasoning. According to MacDonald, clarification or “[p]hilosophical reflection on and explication of the nature and content of a particular theory typically involves the analysis of the concepts central to that theory, the examination of the theory’s coherence and internal consistency, and the assessment of the theory’s relations to other theories and beliefs.”16 As MacDonald describes it, clarificatory reasoning seems to be closely linked with what Oliver Crisp, following Paul Helm, calls the procedural use of reason: using reason as “a tool for establishing the logical connections between different propositions, for distinguishing what I am talking about from what I am not, and whether what I am saying makes

144

Theology and truly liberal learning

sense, or is incoherent.”17 The broader idea here, I take it, is that there is a way of using reason, in theology as in any discipline, not only to reach truth but also to reflect on truth, or at least, propositions qua truth-claims which, in Helm’s words, “may simply be assumed for the sake of argument or experimentation.”18 Most notably, Christian theologians have employed clarificatory reasoning in order to elaborate the propositions or doctrines of the Christian faith – taken as the epistemic starting points of revealed theology – and thereby elucidate what Crisp calls their “‘internal logic’.”19 Take as a primary example the central, but also knotty, Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Although this doctrine is not directly taught in Scripture, early Christian theologians, using clarificatory reasoning, began inferring it from key Scriptural claims, in order properly to identify and express the truth about the Trinity and thereby also avoid falling into misunderstanding and even error. So, for example, in the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa makes a careful grammatical distinction (which helped further clarify the emerging doctrine of the Trinity laid out in the Nicene Creed) between the Greek term ousia, which, like the word “man,” refers to a common nature, and the term hypostasis, which, like “Paul,” or “Timothy,” enables us to pick out an object (person) in its (his) particularity.20 Applying these terms to God, we rightly conclude, Gregory says, that God is both one (ousia) and three (hypostases), characterized by both “community” of nature and “distinction” of persons. Thus, employing even a small degree of clarificatory reasoning, Gregory claims to show that when confessing the Trinity, while Christians may think and speak about the divine in a new, unprecedented way, they do not do so unintelligibly (“as if speaking in riddles”).21 Building on the massive influence of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology in the West, Aquinas draws on human psychology, as understood by Augustine, in order to explain how there can be “processions” in God: the Son proceeds from the Father as thought (a mental likeness) proceeds from the mind; the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as love proceeds from the will.22 In a human being, both thought and love are acts distinct from the faculties that produce them; in another sense, however, they remain internal to and one with the human being who possesses intellect and will. Analogously, there are distinct processions (and so persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) in God, but one divine essence or substance. Furthermore, since processions imply relations, Aquinas, adapting some Aristotelian metaphysics, claims that there are “subsistent relations” in God: the three persons (hypostases), Father, Son, and Spirit, are really distinct from one another by virtue of the way they uniquely relate to one another (Father–Son, Son–Father, and Spirit–Father and –Son), but they are all identical with the divine essence, by virtue of which they each subsist.23 Here, then, Aquinas engages in clarificatory reasoning about the Trinity relying on some key epistemic authorities in order to show that the Trinity is, as Gilles Emery puts it, “reasonably thinkable” even while always remaining, in essence, a mystery.24 To be sure, then, clarificatory reasoning never lays bare the intrinsic intelligibility of Christian doctrine or the truth about the divine mysteries that

Theology and truly liberal learning

145

Christians hold to in faith. As a result, clarificatory reasoning does not deliver univocal results: particularly as a constructive enterprise, it can and does take many, varied, and complementary – but also contradicting – forms. In fact, theologians, depending on their more specific philosophical and theological convictions, can and do take any number of competing positions on basically all theological matters, even when they aim to be faithful to the principal epistemic authorities that traditionally have governed and guided theological inquiry within the Christian community. Thus, it is part of the theologian’s ongoing task, especially in critical dialogue with other theologians, to determine which forms of clarification are successful and which are not. And while there is no quick and easy way to do this, one way for theologians to move forward when they inevitably do arrive at genuine impasses in their efforts to clarify Christian doctrine is to use clarificatory reasoning in order to correct each other. Clarificatory reasoning is a tool that can be used to identify ambiguities and inconsistencies that lie within a given system of truth-claims, and thereby help ensure that the reasoning going on within that system is tracking the truth successfully. Put to theological use, then, clarificatory reasoning is a tool that can be used to help identify the ambiguities and inconsistencies that lie within a given system of theological truth-claims, thereby ensuring that the reasoning going on within that system is tracking the truth successfully – in particular (what Christians claim is) the revealed truth about the divine, the ultimate epistemic benchmark against which theologians have measured all of their clarificatory and constructive efforts. For instance, analyzing some recent work in Trinitarian theology, Thomas McCall employs clarificatory reasoning in order to disambiguate and bolster a central theological concept: perichoresis (mutual “indwelling” or “interpenetration”), which he claims Jürgen Moltmann employs too broadly and vaguely within his theological system, leading him into confusion and even error.25 First, Moltmann uses perichoresis in order to understand divine unity: he says that the Trinitarian persons dwell in one another “[i]n virtue of their eternal love,” and enjoy a unity of fellowship, though they are not one in substance.26 This opens him to the charge of polytheism. Second, Moltmann uses perichoresis in order to affirm his panentheistic construal of the God–world relation: God “indwells” or “interpenetrates” the whole universe, which means that the world is included in God’s being. This opens Moltmann to the charge that he is a pantheist or monist, not a panentheist. In order to assist Moltmann, McCall distinguishes between what he calls “Trinitarian Perichoresis” (TP) and “Creational/Soteriological Perichoresis” (CSP). When applied to the Trinity, “perichoresis” denotes the fact that (1) the divine persons “share all their properties in a common essence apart from those properties that serve to individuate them or express a relation between two of them” ; (2) none of the divine persons could exist without the others; and (3) the divine persons “indwell one another in the eternal divine communion of love.”27 When applied to the God–world relation and God’s work in salvation history, “perichoresis” denotes (1) the unique love that human persons have been created to know, enjoy, and share with the triune

146

Theology and truly liberal learning

God; and (2) God’s salvific work in bringing human beings to this destiny. By adopting (TP), McCall claims, Moltmann consistently can retain his commitment to monotheism; by adopting (CSP), he consistently can affirm that his view of the God–world relation is not pantheistic or monistic. And he can still satisfy his primary desideratum “that the love that is essential to the triune God is the same love with which he loves us.”28 Essential to the enterprise of systematic theology is the practice of engaging in that aspect of clarificatory reasoning that aims not only to elucidate particular theological propositions or doctrines concerning, say, the divine nature and the God–world relation but also to elucidate how all theological propositions are rationally related to one another and therefore constitute a rational, ordered system. On a basic level, this entails showing how theological propositions together constitute an internally consistent, correlated system. On another level, this entails showing where the positive, rational connections between theological propositions actually lie. As an example, medieval theologians employed the concept or criteria of “fittingness” (conveniens) in order partially to explain and justify divine incarnation. While it may not have been necessary for God to become a human being (pace Anselm), it nevertheless is still reasonable to infer (non-deductively) that God did so, given the nature of God’s goodness, and God’s desire, rooted in his perfect goodness, to communicate his goodness to human beings to the highest degree possible.29 Thus, while fitting reasons of this sort obviously fall well short of providing definitive justification for a particular proposition, nevertheless they help justify or rationally support a particular proposition based on how well it fits or harmonizes with another proposition (or set of propositions) within a given system of propositions, theological and otherwise.30 As John Webster argues, systematic theology not only has an internal orientation, which consists of giving an ordered exposition of theological propositions (a task that Barth, for example, gives priority to), but also an external orientation – “what might be called the apologetic-hermeneutical element of the task” of systematic construction – which consists of explicating and defending theological propositions “in order to bring to light their justification, relevance, and value.”31 For example, Wolfart Pannenberg (whom Webster quotes) claims that “systematic theology ascertains the truth of Christian doctrine by investigation and presentation of its coherence as regards both the interrelation of the parts and the relation to other knowledge.”32 I would say, systematic theology reinforces the truth of Christian doctrine by correlating it both internally within a theological system and externally with other, nontheological knowledge and truth (which is different from saying that the truth of doctrine needs to be corroborated by non-theological knowledge and truth). Thus, to provide further rational support for particular theological propositions, and the larger theological whole that they constitute, the theologian can and should use clarificatory reasoning to relate them with propositions outside the theological system that constitute a wider base of knowledge and truth, or at least, very well-grounded truth-claims.

Theology and truly liberal learning

147

There are several prominent ways that the Christian theologian can and should do this. First, and most basically, the theologian can and should show how theological propositions that appear be inconsistent with true, or at least very well-grounded, non-theological propositions about ourselves and our world are not, in fact, inconsistent with them. Second, engaging in a more positive correlative enterprise, the theologian can and should judiciously allow true, or at least very well-grounded, non-theological propositions about ourselves and our world to inform the clarificatory reasoning that he engages in regarding theological propositions (without having to alter their substantive theological content). Third, and most importantly, the theologian can and should use theological propositions to illuminate true, or at least very wellgrounded, non-theological propositions about ourselves and our world, with the goal of setting those propositions within in a deeper – and arguably the deepest, most revealing – epistemic context. Take once again the Christian doctrine of original sin. As traditionally formulated, this doctrine refers, first, to a historical “Fall,” or willful act of rebellion against God, that the first human beings, as divine creations and image-bearers, perpetrated, and second, to the fallen nature that we possess and state that we persist in as a result of the Fall, from which we need to be redeemed. While the truth-claims of modern science about the origin and evolution of the human race may seem to contradict the traditional theological truth-claim that a historical Fall occurred, none of these claims logically entails that that Fall could not have occurred.33 It remains possible, for example, that God conferred his image on particular hominids at a certain point in evolutionary history and that these first human beings subsequently sinned and therefore forfeited the further, special divine grace that enabled them – and would have enabled all of us, as their progeny – to live in full harmony with God and one another. Moreover, since it is logically impossible for “truth to contradict truth” (or the truth of science to contradict the truth of Christian faith),34 then it is possible and even desirable for the theologian to use the true, or at least very well-grounded, insight that modern science affords about the origin and evolution of the human race to inform his clarificatory reasoning about the Fall, so that he can find a place for it within natural history. Finally, the theologian can and should show how the theological truthclaim about human fallenness, far from contradicting what we know to be true about ourselves, actually illuminates what we know to be true about ourselves. Here, even if it is not possible to establish the truth of the theological claim about human fallenness, it is still possible and desirable for the theologian to use that suitably clarified truth-claim in order to account for a broad range of other truths (or at least, very well-grounded truth-claims) about ourselves that arguably benefit from being set within the epistemic context that theology provides. For example, not only do we human beings persist in committing individual injustices but we also create and languish in unjust social and political systems, exploit the environment to suit our perceived economic needs, etc. The theological truth-claim about human

148

Theology and truly liberal learning

fallenness not only can affirm these truths but also can illuminate (arguably) the deepest of levels how and why they obtain.35 Christian theologians can, do, and should use reason in order to engage in even further apologetic tasks, thereby further enriching theology’s external orientation. Beyond responding to whatever objections members of his fellow theological community might pose to the theological truth-claims that he makes – which occur as part of the regular goings-on of intramural theological debate, as it does in any discipline – it also behooves the theologian to defend theological truth-claims against the objections raised by theological outsiders. This in turn requires responding to potential “defeaters,” reasons or evidence that diminish and even undermine the positive epistemic status of a given proposition or belief. One way for the theologian to do this, as I just suggested, is to resolve apparent inconsistencies between theological propositions and true, or very well-grounded, non-theological propositions as part of the larger clarificatory effort to elaborate on theological propositions and relate them to wider bodies of knowledge and truth (say, in the realm of the natural and social sciences). But there are other ways of responding to defeaters as well, which are more explicitly or directly defensive in nature, and which may take place independently of the clarificatory theological enterprise. For example, skeptics throughout the ages have claimed that the existence of evil undermines the existence of God or at least provides strong evidence against Christian belief in God. One way philosophers and theologians have responded to the argument from evil is by engaging in theodicy, and so offering a positive account, within the realm of natural theology and / or revealed theology, for why God allows evil or how God defeats evil through his redemptive work within not just human history but also the entire world. It is also possible, though, for the theologian to engage in a more modest defense, resolving an apparent inconsistency in the theological system (affirming that both God and evil exist) by giving a possible versus positive account for why God allows evil or how God defeats it.36 Finally, the theologian can seek to defuse the argument from evil altogether by showing how it cannot even get off the ground without assuming certain theological truth-claims about God’s existence and nature: only in a universe in which God, as the Good, and so the locus of all positive value, exists could a contravening, negative value like evil even exist. This last-named, rational move also looks like an example of what Jeffrey Stout calls “immanent criticism”: showing how the skeptic’s worldview, which posits the existence of evil against God, actually contradicts itself and leads to a conclusion about God that the skeptic does not accept.37 Stout explains immanent criticism as follows: Immanent criticism is both one of the most widely used forms of reasoning in what I would call public political discourse and one of the most effective ways of showing respect for fellow citizens who hold differing points of view. Any speaker is free to request reasons from any other. If I have access

Theology and truly liberal learning

149

to the right forum, I can tell the entire community what reasons move me to accept a given conclusion, thus showing my fellow citizens respect as requesters of my reasons. But to explain to them why they might have reasons to agree with me, given their different collateral premises, I might well have to proceed piecemeal, addressing one individual (or one type of perspective) at a time. Real respect for others takes seriously the distinctive point of view each other occupies. It is respect for individuality, for difference.38 Practicing immanent criticism is indeed a form of respect for individuals, since it requires taking seriously individual points of view that differ from one’s own (and hence, the reasons offered in their defense). But it also constitutes a form of apologetic reasoning for the theologian, or another way of defending the distinct point of view that she occupies. In addition to immanently criticizing one another, theologians also can and should immanently criticize non-theologians, who arguably should, in turn, adopt a theological point of view based on the very reasons that they possess and offer for the non-theological points of view that they occupy. Of course, theologians also can and should subject themselves to immanent criticism in order to ensure that the reasons that they offer on behalf of theological truth-claims do genuinely support those truth-claims, rather than other, non-theological conclusions that they do not accept. This discussion of reasoning in Christian theology has been purposeful. All of the representative traditions or ways of theological reasoning that I have discussed are not only learnable (and teachable) but they also are assessable, which means that tracking, evaluating, and even employing theological reasoning – if only to deepen one’s assessment of theological reasons – fosters critical thinking, and so provides a prominent way of growing as a critical thinker skilled at and disposed towards evaluating the epistemic value or merit of reasons. In the realm of natural theology, a liberal learner, whether she has theological convictions or not, can track, evaluate, and even employ the demonstrative and dialectical reasoning that natural theologians use in order to establish broad theological truths and acquire broad knowledge of God. Equally, in the realm of revealed theology, the liberal learner, regardless of whether she has theological convictions or not, can track, evaluate, and even employ the various kinds of clarificatory and apologetic reasoning that theologians engage in when they exposit, correlate, and defend various theological propositions, or immanently criticize non-theological propositions and worldviews – even if she only does so in the broader spirit of knowledge- and truth-seeking. Critical thinking in Christian theology, like critical thinking in any discipline, is therefore aimed at fostering rationality. But as I argued in the previous chapter, since the telos of critical thinking, as good thinking and reasoning, is to lead liberal learners to knowledge and truth, then critical thinking in theology, insofar as it fosters genuine rationality, also has as its goal leading liberal learners to knowledge and truth. To be clear, this does not mean everyone who thinks and reasons critically in theology must have as their immediate goal gaining

150

Theology and truly liberal learning

knowledge of theological truth; nor does it mean that everyone who thinks and reasons critically in theology will attain such knowledge. My point here, for the moment, is only that the more students of theology not only learn about but also evaluate and even practice the various ways theologians reason towards and about what they take to be true, and thereby become good critical thinkers, the more apt they are to discover legitimate rational avenues for attaining truth, whatever it may be and wherever it might be found. Thus, insofar as theology promotes the critical, rational pursuit and acquisition of knowledge and truth, it belongs in the secular university.

Theological study as growth in intellectual virtue As I argued in the previous chapter, critical thinking only is fully successful as a form of knowledge- and truth-seeking when it is wedded to the requisite dispositions that liberal learners need in order to develop as critical thinkers. I also argued that any university committed to promoting truly liberal learning should care about not just filling our minds with knowledge and truth but also forming our minds so that we are both able and willing to attain knowledge and truth, particularly of the deepest sort. My main argument in this section, then, is that studying Christian theology helps engender growth in intellectual virtue and, as such, aids the pursuit of deeper knowledge and truth by enhancing the kind of critical thinking and reasoning needed to attain deeper knowledge and truth. In the last section of the chapter, I will make and defend the further claim that it is possible and even reasonable to interpret acquiring and exercising intellectual virtue in one’s study of theology as a further, important part of genuine theological knowledge- and truth-seeking. I begin by reflecting on the intellectual virtue of open-mindedness and its place within Christian theological study. As Baehr notes, “[o]pen-mindedness appears at the top of nearly every list of intellectual virtues in the virtue epistemology literature.”39 I also suspect that it would appear at the top of nearly every list of intellectual virtues that university educators value and want liberal learners to possess. But what, exactly, does open-mindedness consist in? Baehr claims that “[a]n open-minded person is characteristically (a) willing and (within limits) able (b) to transcend a default cognitive standpoint (c) in order to take up or take seriously the merits of (d) a different cognitive standpoint.”40 The broader idea here is that an open-minded person is not only able and willing to detach himself, at least temporarily, from a “default cognitive standpoint” – typically his own – in order to explore a different cognitive standpoint. He also is able and willing to take that alternative standpoint seriously – in Baehr’s words, giving it a “fair, honest, objective” assessment – even if it differs radically from and even contradicts his own.41 Here, it is important to emphasize that being open-minded, and thus transcending one’s default cognitive standpoint, does not also require being able and willing to abandon that standpoint wholesale in the face of alternative standpoints and the reasons that drive them. Open-mindedness quickly can become a

Theology and truly liberal learning

151

vice – either uncritical acceptance of an alternative cognitive standpoint or a premature willingness to abandon one’s own reasoned standpoint – in the absence of what Roberts and Wood call intellectual “firmness.” In fact, as Roberts and Wood point out, it is very difficult to be truly open-minded, and therefore be able and willing to take seriously cognitive standpoints other than one’s own, if one is not firmly rooted in one’s own standpoint: “Because [the intellectually firm person] is well established in her own basic viewpoint, she is not afraid to understand opposing viewpoints deeply, and is even disposed to think that she can deepen her own noetic structure by gaining sympathetic insights into alien outlooks.”42 Christian theologians typically (though not comprehensively) possess and display this kind of firm open-mindedness. It is because they hold firmly to their beliefs that theologians are able and willing to take other cognitive standpoints (whether theological or not) so seriously, and engage those standpoints critically as part of the larger cognitive effort to deepen their “noetic structure,” or their understanding of what they already believe. One prominent way theologians have demonstrated this sort of firm open-mindedness is by engaging in what Kathryn Tanner calls “cultural contest.” Recall Tanner’s claim (which I discussed in chapter 2) that theologians always have been engaged in cultural contest as part of the theological enterprise: expositing and defending Christian doctrine by consciously addressing cognitive perspectives different from their own that “are either attacks, confirmations, or salutary correctives to their own.”43 Truly open-minded theologians, regardless of academic context, are able and willing to transcend their default cognitive standpoint in order to reflect on and assess alternative cognitive standpoints, with the aim of not only judging where they think that those standpoints are in error but also of enlarging and enriching their own standpoint, since it stands to be informed by whatever knowledge and truth that those alternative standpoints provide. For example, open-minded clarificatory reasoning in Christian theology has as a goal assimilating whatever non-theological knowledge and truth exists, so that it not only can further elucidate theological truth-claims but also further highlight their reasonableness as claims about what truth exists within the theological sphere. However, in order to discover such knowledge and truth, the theologian employing clarificatory reasoning must be open-minded, and so be able and willing to inhabit non-theological cognitive standpoints in or through which it is possible to view non-theological knowledge and truth – such as historical, scientific, philosophical, and psychological knowledge and truth – the most clearly. Again, this does not require the believing theologian to abandon her default cognitive standpoint wholesale, and as such relinquish her firm cognitive grip on (what she claims is) genuine theological knowledge and truth. But it does require exploring alternative cognitive standpoints, and taking up (or in) their rational merits, in order to ensure that her cognitive standpoint is properly informed by, and also fully able to account for, all veridical (or at least highly reasonable) non-theological claims to knowledge and truth.

152

Theology and truly liberal learning

Another way that Christian theologians demonstrate firm open-mindedness is by engaging in apologetic reasoning. Defending theological propositions qua truth-claims against potential defeaters consists not only of considering potential defeaters as part of the regular goings-on of cultural contest only to reject them without any serious or sustained intellectual consideration. This, instead, looks like the kind of negative dogmatism, or intellectually inordinate attachment to a given proposition or belief, that Roberts and Wood say reflects “a disposition to respond irrationally to oppositions to the belief: anomalies, objections, evidence to the contrary, counterexamples, and the like.”44 Good theologians, in contrast, display firm open-mindedness by responding rationally to oppositions to theological belief, and in particular those potential defeaters that threaten to undermine (in part or in whole) the positive epistemic status of theological belief. This is possible, I think, even if the theologian does not admit that there are any actual defeaters for theological belief, but only those defeaters or objections that fall into the category of what Aquinas says are “difficulties that can be answered.”45 Potential defeaters still can pose serious difficulties, and it takes firmly open-minded reasoning to show how they can be answered. In so doing, the theologian engages in the kind of virtuous intellectual practice whereby, as Rauser puts it, “we seek evidence for our beliefs, are not unduly deferential to them, strive for objectivity, eschew dogmatism and our own inbuilt confirmation bias” – all as part of the “rigorous pursuit of truth.”46 Practicing immanent criticism also requires possessing and exercising firm open-mindedness in addition to the “[r]eal respect for others” that Stout emphasizes. In order to show how and why persons who occupy non-theological cognitive standpoints should – based on the very reasons they offer for the positions that they occupy – adopt a theological cognitive standpoint, Christian theologians must take non-theological cognitive standpoints seriously, as possessing at least some rational merit. Beyond this, firmly open-minded theologians, even while remaining committed to the truth that they (and / or others) believe, can and should allow the proponents of non-theological worldviews to immanently criticize them, and the reasons they offer for the various theological positions that they take. In this sense, by affirming that, especially in epistemic settings like the secular university, “[a]ny speaker is free to request reasons from any other,” they also affirm, as Thomas Lewis (interpreting Stout) says, that “no claim is beyond questioning.”47 Once again, by submitting their truth-claims (and the reasons that they offer for them) to questioning and even criticism, theologians do not abandon their commitment to truth. They ensure that their thinking and reasoning are fully aligned with it. Thus, studying Christian theology in the secular university engenders firm open-mindedness not only because it requires taking seriously a cognitive standpoint, which, for many, differs (often radically) from their own, but also because it consists of tracking, evaluating, and even employing the various ways that theologians reason with firm open-mindedness, in their efforts to bring their theological cognitive standpoint into greater alignment with the truth, theological and otherwise. The more theologians do bring their cognitive standpoint into

Theology and truly liberal learning

153

greater alignment with the truth, as a result of being firmly open-minded, the more impetus they provide students of theology to bring their cognitive standpoints into greater alignment with the truth. Moreover, by displaying firm open-mindedness in their reasoning, theologians also encourage students of theology to keep an open mind about theological reasoning itself, as not simply broadly truth-conducive but also at least possibly conducive for attaining specifically theological truth. As I also discussed in the previous chapter, a further goal of liberal learning is to foster autonomy, which disposes liberal learners to be self-regulating, or independent thinkers and reasoners, in their intellectual lives. However, I also argued that we should not define autonomy over and against authority: as an intellectual virtue, autonomy is the ability and willingness to judiciously and actively rely on authority, or what Roberts and Wood call hetero-regulation, in stage-appropriate ways within our intellectual lives. “[A]utonomy is not a matter of sheer independence,” Roberts and Wood write, “but of what one does with one’s dependence.”48 Christian theologians always have recognized their inescapable dependence on epistemic authorities on which and whom they rely in order to engage truthfully in theological reasoning. For example, when, in the fourth century, Athanasius clarified and also defended orthodox Christology, he did so by incorporating his epistemic reliance on Scripture, and what he believed to be the scriptural testimony about the person of Christ (his full humanity and full divinity).49 Athanasius’ aim was not to win an argument against his opponents, the Arians (who denied the full divinity of Christ), by blindly and irrationally appealing to Scriptural authority, but rather by innovatively and skillfully appropriating Scripture, as a primary epistemic authority, as part of his overall polemic against them. In fact, it was because Athanasius so innovatively and skillfully appropriated Scripture as a hetero-regulator, and thereby engaged in virtuously autonomous clarificatory reasoning, that he was able to successfully out-argue his opponents on Scriptural grounds and thereby solidify orthodox Christian teaching about the divinity of Christ. Similarly, in the early fifth century, Augustine consistently appealed to Scripture, and Scriptural arguments, in order to show how his opponent, Pelagius (also a fellow Christian), offered a thin conception of grace that did not give God total initiative in bringing about human salvation. In a brilliant argumentative move, Augustine also showed how Pelagius made wrong use of a further epistemic authority, Saint Ambrose, whose teaching on divine grace actually supports Augustine’s position. This led Augustine to conclude that if Pelagius actually agreed with Ambrose (his actual testimony), “there will remain no further controversy between us concerning the assistance we have from the grace of God.”50 Here, we also should note that Augustine, like Athanasius, exhibits intellectual autonomy by resisting the intellectual pressure of an alien hetero-regulator: he lets Scripture and Ambrose – as established, legitimate epistemic authorities within the Church, rather than Pelagius’ (and Pelagianism’s) rising influence within the Christian Church – regulate his virtuously

154

Theology and truly liberal learning

autonomous, clarificatory reasoning about the nature of divine grace. And this, in turn, enables him to preserve the integrity of theological truth (as Augustine believed to be revealed in Scripture) and save the Church from falling into what it later officially identified, and most Christian theologians still identify, as a fundamental theological error. As I have argued throughout the book, theologians have a responsibility to offer at least some reasons for why Scripture and the Church (and those within the Church) are legitimate epistemic authorities – albeit as part of their theological activity, not as a necessary precursor for it. And here, we have another reason why: blind adherence to any epistemic authority is heteronomous, not autonomous, and certainly can derail an otherwise virtuous pursuit of knowledge and truth if the authority is unreliable as a source of and guide to knowledge and truth. Augustine readily recognizes this, which is why he offers reasons on behalf of the Church’s epistemic authority. Augustine first suggests that if God exists, and already bids us to find him via both the “outward appearance of the universe” and “some inward consciousness,” then it is also fitting to believe that God “has constituted some authority relying on which as on a sure ladder we may rise to him.”51 Second, regarding the specific authority of the (Catholic) Christian Church, Augustine appeals to the fulfillment of Scriptural prophecy concerning the historical rise of the Church; the founding of the Church on the teaching and miracles of Christ; and the unprecedented, widespread, even miraculous work of the Church in the world, not only in producing saints and martyrs (who died for the truth the Church professes) but also in bringing “about the conversion of the human race by the instrumentality of the Apostolic See and the succession of bishops.”52 Clearly, all of these reasons do not prove that the Church is a reliable epistemic authority – they are clarificatory and dialectical rather than demonstrative in nature – but they nevertheless still help Augustine to defend the Church’s authority in religious, and specifically theological, matters, and so articulate why it is not only epistemically justifiable but also epistemically advantageous for him and other Christians to rely on the Catholic Church’s authority “on which as on a sure ladder we may rise to [God].” In doing so, he also exhibits full intellectual autonomy. Obviously not all, and perhaps very few, liberal learners in the secular university will accept Christian Scripture and the Church, let alone Athanasius and Augustine, as epistemic authorities. Nevertheless, they can and should recognize the genuine autonomy that theologians like Athanasius and Augustine possess and exercise. Again, theologians freely submit to authorities like Scripture and the Church (as well as one another) not out of slavish obedience but rather because they recognize the necessity of appropriating those authorities within their epistemic lives in order to successfully gain, and especially further, their knowledge of theological truth. For them, Scripture and the Church, as divinely established epistemic authorities that are therefore the most credible (since what God teaches must be true), free their thinking so that they properly can identify theological truth and subsequently understand it better, as well as defend it from misleading and even false interpretations. Therefore, studying theology

Theology and truly liberal learning

155

provides a prime opportunity for liberal learners to acquire and grow in the intellectual virtue of autonomy, and thus become persons whose rationally appropriated intellectual dependencies make them more disposed to attain knowledge of the truth, so much of which they never could attain on their own. Accordingly, it is also impossible to study Christian theology, to any great extent, and be an epistemic egoist – or at least to have one’s epistemic egoism, as an intellectual vice, go unchallenged.53 Epistemic egoists, by definition, only rely on themselves – and specifically, their own cognitive faculties – in their efforts to attain knowledge and truth. They care more about themselves than they do about knowledge and truth: they actually are willing to sacrifice knowledge and truth out of their greater love of, and dependence on, their own cognitive faculties and their fundamental unwillingness to trust other persons’ cognitive faculties. Zagzebski rightly argues that epistemic egoism is completely unreasonable: I cannot reasonably trust my own cognitive faculties and then not trust others who possess the same cognitive faculties that I do (nor can I reasonably withhold placing trust in others “whose conscientiousness I discover when I am being conscientious” in how I exercise my cognitive faculties).54 Beyond this, as I repeatedly have argued, epistemic egoists not only ignore the pervasive role that epistemic authority plays within human life but they also fail to see that it is good that we have such epistemic authorities so that we successfully can reach and hold on to knowledge and truth. Clearly, then, the vice of epistemic egoism is opposed to the virtue of autonomy; but it also is opposed to the virtue of intellectual humility. As I define it, intellectual humility does not consist of a negative estimation of one’s intellectual, particularly rational, abilities or achievements. Instead, it consists of a positive awareness and acceptance of one’s epistemic limitations, and hence a positive dispositional ability and willingness to lean on and draw from epistemic authorities other than one’s own reason.55 Again, perhaps more than anyone, Christian theologians recognize the need for intellectual humility since they recognize that reason alone cannot legitimately claim to be the sole arbiter of all knowledge and truth, nor be the sole path to all knowledge and truth. Another way of putting this in theological terms is that theologians recognize their utter inability to “justify” themselves before the divine solely on their own intellectual terms. Not only is the theological enterprise entirely dependent on God availing God’s self to be studied by the mind, and endowing the mind with the capacity to engage in theological study, but also, the sublimity or mystery of divine truth always infinitely exceeds what the egoistic mind thinks it fully can grasp. Thus, the more that the student of theology tracks, assesses, and even employs theological reasoning, entering more deeply (even if still critically) into the purported mysteries (or truth-claims concerning them) that theologians investigate, the more comfortable he will become in submitting to theological authorities – even if only for the purposes of broader knowledge- and truthseeking – and the more aware he will become of his own and others’ inescapable reliance on epistemic authorities in leading full intellectual lives. He also will become much more aware of his own epistemic limitations, and thereby become

156

Theology and truly liberal learning

much more able and willing to overcome the epistemic egoism that prevents him from engaging in deeper epistemic pursuits in other areas of intellectual inquiry. Regarding the virtue of intellectual courage, Baehr says that “a person with the virtue of intellectual courage characteristically persists in or with an intellectually appropriate but threatening state or course of action on account of a motivational structure wherein a motivation for truth and related epistemic goods occupies an appropriately dominant position.”56 Similarly, Roberts and Wood say that “[t]he intellectually courageous person will be good at acting with aplomb in the interest of significant propositional knowledge, acquaintance [knowledge through experience], and understanding for himself and others, in the face of the perceived hazards of life,” such as receiving criticism, encountering disagreement, and even suffering harm.57 To this, I would add that the most intellectually courageous, like the most morally courageous, are those who are able and willing in their thinking and reasoning to pursue the most valuable epistemic goods that they desire – the deepest knowledge and the deepest truths – in the face of the most serious fears and threats, intellectual and otherwise. I also submit that the most intellectually courageous consist of those who, believing that they have come to possess such goods, continue to hold on to them and even seek to protect them, through decidedly intellectual means, in the face of the most serious fears and threats, intellectual and otherwise. The history of Christian theology is replete with individuals who possessed and exercised this kind of intellectual courage. Justin Martyr, an early Christian theologian who was a self-proclaimed “lover of truth,” dedicated his life to defending the Christian faith as one of the first Christian apologists and philosophers, and died at the hands of the Roman government as a result of witnessing to that faith.58 Reformation theologian Martin Luther not only protested against the Roman Catholic Church on moral grounds, because even after being condemned and outlawed he persisted in his exposition and defense of what he believed to be the fundamental Scriptural truth that human beings are justified before God by faith alone.59 And in the twentieth century, theologians such as Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as members of the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany, resolutely reasserted and defended the cardinal theological truth-claim that ultimate sovereignty and power lies with God alone, even though doing so made them opponents of Nazi ideology and hence enemies of the Nazi state.60 As such, beyond whatever moral courage these theologians possessed and exercised they also possessed and exercised the kind of intellectual courage that any liberal learner needs to possess and exercise in order to struggle against and overcome the various fears and threats that can stymie intellectual inquiry, and thus prevent her not only from obtaining the most valuable epistemic goods, but also retaining those goods in the face of ongoing dangers and threats, intellectual and otherwise. In a secular academic context, Christian theologians, and those engaging in theological study, especially need intellectual courage, even if they do not face the kind or level of harm that theologians like Justin, Luther, Barth, and

Theology and truly liberal learning

157

Bonhoeffer faced. The more widespread the disagreement about not only which knowledge and truth is worth pursuing but also what knowledge and truth actually obtain, the more one seeking knowledge and truth of all kinds and levels must possess and exercise intellectual courage in the way that one tracks, evaluates, and particularly employs reasoning that purports to lead to the knowledge and truth that one desires. It takes significant intellectual courage, then, for theologians to submit their reasoning, of whatever type, to wider intellectual scrutiny, and to continue to clarify and strengthen their reasoning (as they ought to do) in those intellectual contexts where its effectiveness as a form of knowledge- and truth-seeking is not taken for granted and often is called into question, if not dismissed entirely. For that matter, a student’s default cognitive setting may include significant, negative peer pressure to avoid more demanding and even risky (though still rational) epistemic pursuits, where the epistemic goods that the student’s intellectual study is aimed at – like knowledge of theological truth – are not widely valued, met with skepticism, or even disparaged. In addition, there is the inherent challenge of critically engaging (tracking, assessing, employing) theological reasoning, which is not only highly intellectually demanding but also highly speculative – think, for example, of the kind of reasoning that goes into clarifying the doctrine of the Trinity – and which therefore requires the ability as well as the willingness to overcome fears and various other insecurities about the value of such study, especially when there may not be immediate epistemic “payoff.” So again, without intellectual courage the student of theology will not attain the epistemic goods that he desires, in theology or in any other discipline. So far, I have discussed the role that Christian theological study can play in helping liberal learners acquire and exercise the intellectual virtues of openmindedness, autonomy, humility, and courage. But none of these virtues can be fully exercised, and thereby fully employed in pursuing especially the most valuable epistemic goods and ends, if the liberal learner does not also possess a fundamental love of knowledge. Why are Christian theologians lovers of knowledge? The traditional answer to this question is that the theologian not only believes in God but also loves God: the truth about God, which the theologian seeks to understand better, is an object of both faith and love. “I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it,” Anselm writes, “[b]ut I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand.”61 Seeking to understand better the truth about God, therefore, is an exercise of the head or intellect as well as the heart or will. In Anselm’s case, it is his love of God that fuels the demonstrative reasoning that he engages in to establish truths concerning the existence and nature of God – those truths that his heart “believes and loves.” In a broader sense, though, for traditional theologians like Anselm love of God, and so a desire to gain a deeper knowledge of the truth about God, fuels the entire theological enterprise. Theology therefore can help the secular university cultivate the love of knowledge by featuring traditions of theological

158

Theology and truly liberal learning

knowledge- and truth-seeking in its course of study that are nourished by what Ford calls the “taproot of the medieval amor scientiae,” or the love of God (and the desire to know God) for God’s own sake.62 In addition, according to this traditional theological perspective, one cannot love God, and the truth about God, without also loving all other truth as it relates to God. Put another way, just as one cannot truly love God without also loving one’s “neighbor,” or fellow human being, as a creature of God (and beloved by God), so one cannot fully love God without also loving and seeking out all knowledge of the truth, since one will recognize in such knowledge a reflection (albeit finite and imperfect) of God as the First Truth (prima veritas). In this sense, the entire clarificatory exercise of using theological truth-claims to illuminate non-theological truth, and so account for it in specifically theological terms, can be construed as an exercise of the love of knowledge. It is also a way of exercising the love of wisdom, since, as we will see shortly, theological truth-claims qua ultimate truth-claims aspire to provide the ultimate epistemic framework needed to explain, order, and unify all knowledge and truth. Of course, many (if not most) liberal learners within the secular university critically engaging this larger clarificatory enterprise will not share the theologian’s love of knowledge, or whatever theological justifications the theologian has for being a lover of knowledge. However, being a genuine lover of knowledge does not require being a lover for God, but rather coming to share in the theologian’s love of knowledge, even if that love, initially engendered by specifically theological study and specific theologians, ends up taking root in non-theological convictions and grounds. As we saw Roberts and Wood point out in the previous chapter, the true lover of knowledge discriminates which knowledge is objectively worth loving; so a main goal of education, particularly in the liberal arts, “is to produce people with a taste for what is excellent.”63 To a large extent, as I have been arguing throughout the book, there will be widespread agreement in the secular university about “what is excellent,” and so what the most valuable, humanly knowable truths are, and thus widespread agreement about what the love of knowledge needed to attain them should look like. However, there will be significant disagreement as well: in particular, secular-university citizenry will disagree fundamentally about what the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths consists in, and therefore what specific knowledge and truths the most discriminating lover of knowledge should love. Presuming these disagreements cannot be definitively resolved, then the only way for the secular university to foster growth in the most discriminating love of knowledge is to usher liberal learners through specific, viable programs of study that aim at the deepest possible knowledge, and which can inspire liberal learners to pursue such knowledge along the rational lines of inquiry that they provide. Christian theology offers one such program of study, and therefore offers rational pathways and guidance for developing a discriminating love of knowledge of the most valuable and desirable kind. At this point, it should be clear that there are good reasons for thinking that studying Christian theology, along the lines that I have outlined, engenders

Theology and truly liberal learning

159

growth in some essential intellectual virtues, which the secular university should want any liberal learner, as a knowledge- and truth-seeker, to possess. Thus, just as theology as a discipline that fosters critical thinking positively contributes to liberal learners’ quest for knowledge and truth, so theology as a discipline that fosters growth in intellectual virtue also positively contributes to liberal learners’ quest for knowledge and truth. In particular, insofar as theology engenders growth in intellectually virtuous critical thinking, it enhances the pursuit of understanding and wisdom as the most valuable epistemic goods. Insofar as we want liberal learners to acquire these goods, then we have a further reason to include theological study in the secular university and even to make it a prominent part of secular academic life.

Contemplative reasoning, theology, and the pursuit of understanding and wisdom One of the primary goals of studying any discipline is to gain discipline-specific knowledge, a goal that Christian theology shares. For example, in studying Christian theology one acquires a range of true beliefs about the Christian intellectual tradition, specific Christian theologians, and the various theological rationales or arguments that those theologians offer. Beyond this, the goal for the student of theology is to gain a new or better understanding of theology as a discipline – including the different eras in Christian intellectual history, the various theological systems that theologians construct, the diverse ways that theologians reason, and the truth-claims on behalf of or about which they reason. In fact, one could argue that achieving a proper understanding of other disciplinary subject matters requires gaining a proper understanding of theology. So, for instance, one cannot fully understand Shakespeare or Milton without understanding at least some of the Bible; one cannot fully understand the Reformation as a historical era without understanding at least some of Luther’s theology. Likewise, one cannot fully understand literature, art, history, philosophy, or political science without understanding at least some theology. There certainly is an argument one could make along these lines for including Christian theology in secular-university study. But it is not the primary argument that I want to make or will make. The understanding that I identified in the previous chapter as one of the most important epistemic and educative goods is directed on the truth about us and our world. The deeper the truth that we understand, the deeper the insight we gain into larger, broader, truthful wholes. Thus, I want to explore how engaging in Christian theological study is conducive for attaining deep understanding and the deepest understanding, wisdom. Insofar as theological study can help liberal learners acquire understanding and wisdom, then we have not just a further but also a final, decisive reason for including theology as part of the truly liberal learning that can and should occur within secular academic life. At the end of the last chapter, I claimed that in order to attain understanding and ultimately wisdom, one must learn how to think and reason under the

160

Theology and truly liberal learning

pedagogical direction of those who already possess the understanding and wisdom that one desires. It is only by subjecting oneself to this pedagogical direction that one will acquire the specific habits and eventually the full-blown virtues of mind needed to grasp deep truths, especially the deepest truths, and all other truths that are related to them. Just as there are cognitive habits and virtues that we, as educators, recognize that liberal learners need to possess in order gain understanding of fundamental truths in the various disciplinary realms, so there are cognitive habits and virtues that liberal learners need to possess if they are going to gain understanding of even deeper truths that are not discipline-specific but which pertain to all of the disciplines. These deeper truths, as properly understood, help explain, order, and unify the various other truths at which disciplinary knowledge (and understanding) aims. But this, then, raises an important question, which I only began to address at the end of the last chapter. How do those with understanding and wisdom acquire wisdom and understanding? Persons who possess and exercise understanding think and reason about the deep truths that they know and all other truths that they know in light of their knowledge of deep truths. By exercising the virtue of understanding, they grow in understanding. Persons who possess and exercise wisdom think and reason about the deepest truths, or ultimate truths, that they know and all other truths that they know in light of their knowledge of those ultimate truths. By exercising the virtue of wisdom, they grow in wisdom. This means that those who possess and exercise understanding and wisdom employ a certain kind of thinking and reasoning: contemplative reasoning. To become a person of understanding and wisdom, then, one needs to learn to think and reason like those with understanding and wisdom do – not just critically and virtuously but also contemplatively, actualizing one’s rational capacity to think and reason about the most epistemically significant subject matters, or what I also think of as epistemically deep subject matters. These subject maters are epistemically “deep” because (1) they are the most epistemically valuable, or worth knowing for their own sakes (like Baehr’s “epistemically significant subject matters”); and (2) understanding them, or the deep truths about them, affords a deep, explanatory understanding of a very wide range of other valuable truths. Now, while I will not give (or defend) a definitive list here, the sort of epistemically deep subject matters that I have in mind are those that concern (in more common parlance) the “big questions” (or “biggest questions”): the origins of the universe and human life; the nature of the human person and the most enduring features of the human condition; the goal of human life and what constitutes true human flourishing (or the “good life”); the meaning and goal of human history; the destiny of the known universe; and most importantly, the nature of ultimate reality itself – whatever or whoever we might think it to be. Thus, as I define it, contemplative reasoning is thinking and reasoning critically and virtuously about epistemically deep subject matters. To be clear, exercises of contemplative reasoning are not unconstrained flights of intellectual fancy. Contemplative reasoning is a function of the mind

Theology and truly liberal learning

161

or reason, though it does enable us to draw on what we might call the imaginative or speculative power of the mind or reason in order to deepen more mundane forms of knowledge- and truth-seeking and investigate deep realms of intellectual inquiry in which deep truths about ourselves, our world, and reality more broadly reside. What makes such reasoning contemplative, therefore, is not that it jettisons rational modes of knowledge- and truth-seeking – and in particular, exercises of critical thinking and intellectual virtue – but that it directs them on epistemically deep subject matters. Furthermore, while I certainly cannot prove that contemplative reasoning, as I have described it, is capable of affording understanding and wisdom to virtuously critical inquiring minds, that does not mean that we should doubt that it is capable of doing so or deny that there is at least some good reason for thinking that it can do so. Most notably, we should not let disagreement about what the deep subject matters and the truths concerning them are derail our confidence that there are legitimate, rational means of attaining knowledge of them. What such disagreement tells us is not that there is no possibility of attaining such knowledge – and no way of sorting out where it lies, or what its content is – but only that attaining it is difficult, and that any number of factors can intervene in preventing or derailing the proper pursuit of it. My own view, consistent with what I have argued throughout the book, is that secularist constraints on knowledge- and truth-seeking have played a large role in preventing the secular university from making the rational pursuit of deep truths, and especially ultimate truths, an important – what I consider the most important – epistemic and educative priority within secular academic life. Therefore, given the absence of any deliberate, persistent, and collective effort to engage in contemplative reasoning within and across disciplinary lines, we should not be surprised that disagreement over the deepest truths, along with epistemic skepticism concerning their accessibility, continue to persist. It is also difficult to defend the claim that contemplative reasoning is totally ineffective at leading us to deep truths when it already naturally begins to occur as part of the knowledge- and truth-seeking that occurs within secular academic life. Biologists exploring the evolutionary history of the human species inevitably confront metaphysical and not just empirical questions about who we are as human beings, and whether we differ on a metaphysical as well as moral level from other animal life. Physicists investigating cosmic origins inevitably start trafficking in metaphysical and not simply scientific speculation about why the cosmos exists and what its final destiny may be. Political theorists who reflect on the nature of just human societies and governments must also reflect on the nature of justice itself. Economists cannot fully evaluate the viability of economic systems like capitalism without also engaging in further reflection on whether such systems are good for human beings and enable our flourishing. The greatest works of literature, of whatever genre, evoke some of the deepest contemplation about the nature of the self and the human condition: human vulnerability towards suffering and death, the nature and scope of human freedom, the place of humanity in the larger cosmos, and the very purpose of human existence.

162

Theology and truly liberal learning

Short of being able to prove, then, that engaging in contemplative reasoning generates deep knowledge of deep truths, or understanding, and even the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths, or wisdom, I still think that contemplative reasoning is the best-equipped means to do so. Exercises of human rationality ultimately are conducive for attaining knowledge and truth; contemplative reasoning is the deepest exercise of human rationality; therefore, exercises of contemplative reasoning – and the specific habits as well as virtues of mind that they ultimately produce – are conducive for attaining not just deep knowledge of deep truths but also the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths. If this is true, then the most pressing epistemic and educative question before us is not if engaging in contemplative reasoning is an effective means of attaining understanding and wisdom, but how it should be fostered so that truly liberal learners who engage in it can come to possess understanding and wisdom. As I just argued, I think that contemplative reasoning can and even does begin to occur naturally within secular-university disciplines as part of the regular goings-on of secular academic life. However, while it is important to recognize this we still should wonder how often contemplative reasoning occurs, and how effectively it is employed. Educators and their students who begin to engage in contemplative reasoning, say, when investigating human origins in an evolutionary biology or anthropology course, or when reflecting on the human condition in a course on classical Greek literature, face any number of obstacles that could prevent them from carrying it out successfully – whether a lack of ability; a failure of will; or even larger, skeptical doubts, of the sort I have identified, concerning the very possibility of attaining understanding and wisdom using contemplative reasoning. Thus, insofar as it is committed to fulfilling its ultimate goal of educating for understanding and also wisdom, what the secular university needs are disciplines that are able not simply to introduce liberal learners to contemplative reasoning but also are able to habituate liberal learners in particular ways of contemplative reasoning. By undergoing this robust process of cognitive habituation, liberal learners will develop the cognitive dispositions needed to attain understanding and wisdom. Furthermore, as they develop a contemplative state of mind, liberal learners may even gain an incipient understanding and wisdom even if they do not gain full understanding and wisdom themselves. Now, one could argue that philosophy is most fully equipped to foster contemplative reasoning and hence the proper pursuit of understanding and wisdom. And I agree with this claim to a certain extent: of all the established secularuniversity disciplines, philosophy seems the most capable of engendering understanding and wisdom, or at least helping liberal learners acquire the habits of mind necessary to attain understanding and wisdom. But we must still wonder if philosophy alone is capable of doing so. Here, I do not mean to disparage philosophy, or any other discipline for that matter: the problem does not necessarily lie with philosophy but with the inherent difficulties, both epistemic and educative, in making the pursuit of the greatest epistemic goods a central part of secular-university life. If, as I think we all must admit, attaining these goods via genuine academic study in the secular university is an epistemic and

Theology and truly liberal learning

163

educative goal but not an epistemic and educative guarantee, then it behooves the secular university to buttress and thicken its academic ranks with other contemplative disciplines that, along with philosophy, can make sure that the pursuit of understanding and wisdom within the university remains not just a prominent feature of secular academic life but the most important one.64 My conclusion, then, should not be surprising: the secular university needs theology and theologians if it is going to succeed in helping liberal learners attain understanding and wisdom. And this is because theology – particularly Christian theology, as I have been arguing – not only fosters virtuously critical thinking and reasoning (which takes any number of subject matters as its object) but also virtuously critical thinking and reasoning about epistemically deep subject matters: it provides definitive ways of developing a contemplative state of mind. First and foremost, virtuously critical thinking and reasoning in Christian theology is contemplative reasoning since it takes as its object God himself, or at least, ultimate truth-claims about God. Another way of putting this is that theological study consists of virtuously critical thinking and reasoning about divine matters – what is metaphysically ultimate, or ultimately real – and thus the epistemically deepest subject matters about which one can contemplate. So, when students of theology critically and virtuously track, assess, and even employ the various demonstrative and dialectical reasons theologians use to establish truths about the existence and nature of God, or critically and virtuously track and assess the clarificatory reasons theologians use to penetrate further into what they believe is the truth about the Trinity or divine incarnation (and how these truths are rationally ordered to each other and all other truths about the divine within the Christian theological system), these students are engaging in contemplative reasoning. And the more they engage in such reasoning, even if only in a spirit of wider and deeper knowledge- and truth-seeking, the more they become habituated in thinking and reasoning contemplatively about the deepest subject matters, and the more highly they attune their minds to ultimate truths about these subject matters. Thereby, they also become more cognitively equipped to attain understanding and, especially, wisdom. Since Christian theology has both an inward and outward orientation, contemplating divine matters in theology also requires contemplating other major worldviews, and specifically propositions qua truth-claims concerning what members of those worldviews – religious and otherwise – consider to be the epistemically deepest subject matters. Fully clarifying Christian theological propositions about these subject matters requires differentiating them from nonChristian propositions concerning them, and isolating where fundamental incompatibilities lie. It also requires identifying where Christian theological propositions do not contradict non-Christian propositions concerning the epistemically deepest subject matters, and even where real compatibilities or resonances lie. Tracking, assessing, and even employing the ways Christian theologians immanently criticize non-Christian worldviews, or the other ways Christian theologians challenge non-Christian propositions about the epistemically deepest subject matters also entails further contemplating – and so becoming cognitively

164

Theology and truly liberal learning

attuned to – ultimate truths about those subject matters. It therefore entails broadening and deepening the pursuit of understanding and, especially, wisdom. Christian theological study fosters contemplative reasoning, and so the genuine pursuit of understanding and wisdom, in a second main way. It is impossible to engage in serious and sustained contemplative reasoning about divine matters in Christian theology without also engaging in serious and sustained contemplative reasoning about other epistemically deep subject matters concerning the world and ourselves on which these divine matters directly bear. For example, contemplating divine matters such as God’s relationship with the world (and so the world as an object of divine love that the Trinitarian persons share with one another) and God’s plan for the world (since God is the creator, sustainer, and consummator of all that there is) requires contemplating the origin of the cosmos, the fundamental nature of the cosmos, and the future of the cosmos – or, how and why the cosmos came to be, why it is fundamentally constituted the way that it is, and what sort of future it may have. Contemplating these divine matters also requires contemplating our own place within the cosmos: how and why we came to be who we are, and why we are constituted the way we are versus the way in which other things are. Contemplating further divine matters such as divine incarnation and atonement (redemption) requires contemplating the human condition: how and why we seem to be powerless in the face of evil, suffering, and death; how (or whether) it is possible to attain true moral and spiritual transformation, both individually and collectively; whether there is an ultimate goal for individual lives and human history, and what that goal might be. Of course, thinking and reasoning contemplatively about divine matters in Christian theology requires thinking and reasoning in a certain way about other epistemically deep subject matters. According to the epistemological scheme I developed and defended in the previous chapter, understanding at least some deep truths about an epistemically deep subject matter like human nature affords a deep knowledge of that subject matter. Understanding ultimate truths about an epistemically deep subject matter like human nature affords the deepest knowledge of that subject matter. Theological propositions about human nature – our ontological status as beings who are both divinely created and fallen, and so in need of divine restoration and redemption – purport to be ultimate (they concern the deepest epistemic subject matters). So, from a theological perspective, while theological propositions about human nature stand to be informed, and so further clarified, by true, or at least very well-grounded, non-theological propositions about human nature they also illuminate the overall truth about human nature in a way that non-theological propositions simply cannot. Understanding distinctly theological propositions affords the deepest understanding of human nature, and specifically, an explanatory, ordered, and unified understanding of all other truths concerning human nature, from the deep truths about human nature to the more mundane ones. Thus, as the student of Christian theology critically and virtuously tracks, evaluates, and even employs the clarificatory qua correlative reasoning

Theology and truly liberal learning

165

theologians use to relate theological propositions with very well-grounded, and ideally true, non-theological propositions about epistemically deep subject matters, she also critically and virtuously tracks, evaluates, and even employs the ways theologians use suitably clarified theological propositions in order to explain, order, and unify very well-grounded, and ideally true, non-theological propositions about epistemically deep subject matters. In so doing, she not only becomes further habituated in thinking and reasoning contemplatively about deep epistemic subject matters, but also further habituated in thinking and reasoning contemplatively about deep epistemic subject matters (and all of the truths concerning them) in terms of prospective, ultimate truths about the deepest epistemic subject matters. This is the most extensive kind of contemplative reasoning in which the student of theology, or any liberal learner for that matter, can engage. Really, then, engaging in contemplative reasoning within Christian theology consists of virtuously critical thinking and reasoning not just about epistemically deep subject matters but about all subject matters, or all realms of knowledge and truth, since thinking and reasoning in a theological way about epistemically deep subject matters entails thinking and reasoning in a theological way about all other subject matters on which epistemically deep subject matters bear. In this sense, as Mark McIntosh contends, “theology … does not really have a particular subject field. What differentiates it is rather that … it inquires by means of divine teaching; it inquires regarding anything and everything by holding whatever it considers up into the divine light.”65 I would say, it is because theology has a divine subject matter, and so purports to illuminate every other particular subject matter in the light of the truth concerning its divine subject matter, that it does not have a particular subject matter about which to inquire. Consequently, not only does engaging in theological study, especially within a university setting, inevitably lead one to think and reason contemplatively within and across one’s study of other disciplinary subject matters but it also inevitably leads one to think and reason contemplatively about those disciplinary subject matters, and all of the knowledge and truth that the various disciplines claim to possess, or at least aspire to attain. So that I may further bolster my claim that studying Christian theology stimulates contemplative reasoning, and so assists liberal learners in attaining understanding and wisdom, consider the following hypothetical liberal learner who is engaging in Christian theological study. Under the requisite pedagogical direction of theologians past and present, he engages in contemplative reasoning about the existence and nature of God, God’s relationship with the world and human beings, and God’s actions within the world and human history. The more that he engages in contemplative reasoning about divine matters within theology, and so the more he critically and virtuously tracks, evaluates, and even employs demonstrative, dialectical, clarificatory, and apologetic reasoning about these divine matters, the more he discovers how a reasoned Christian theological perspective (constituted by suitably established, elaborated, internally and externally correlated, and defended theological truth-claims) positively bears

166

Theology and truly liberal learning

on – and so helps him explain, order, and unify – everything else that he knows or is coming to know about the world and human beings by virtue of engaging in multidisciplinary study. Consider first how this liberal learner’s contemplative reasoning about divine matters in his study of Christian theology positively bears on what he knows, or is coming to know, about the world. The reasoned theological truth-claim that a wholly powerful, wise, and good God not only exists but also brought the universe itself into existence not only explains for him how and why the physical laws that govern the universe are conducive for the emergence of all kinds and levels of life but also why they (versus any other kinds of laws) exist in the first place. As such, drawing on the reasoned understanding he has gained of this ultimate truth-claim, this liberal learner pulls together and orders all that he knows, or is coming to know, about what the cosmos contains on a chemical and biological level in light of his knowledge of the physical laws that govern it, and his knowledge of those physical laws in light of the truth-claim that God is the creator of those laws and hence a law-governed, life-conducive, and so orderly and fecund universe. His reasoned understanding of theological truthclaims about the triune nature of God enables him to make even deeper sense of, and so further pull together and order, everything that he knows, and is coming to know, via his study of the natural sciences about the cosmos as an ordered, unified whole simultaneously constituted by wondrous diversity and plurality at all empirically investigable levels of being or life. In light of the contemplative reasoning he has engaged in about the Trinity, he also sees, from a theological perspective, why the cosmos, as a diverse but also unified whole, exists in the first place, as an ontologically distinct but also true expression not just of divine goodness but also divine love. This love not only keeps it in being but also ensures that it has a permanent future with the triune God who first created it. Consider next how this liberal learner’s contemplative reasoning about divine matters in his study of Christian theology positively bears on what he knows, or is coming to know, about human beings. His reasoned understanding of the ultimate truth-claim about human beings as divine image-bearers, created by God and for God, enables him to explain why we are and who we are, and so also pull together and order all that he knows, or is coming to know, not just about our biological origins and anthropological ancestry but also, on an even deeper level, our distinctiveness as rational and political animals who also aim and claim to live decidedly moral and religious lives. Having attained a reasoned understanding of the ultimate truth-claim about human falleness, this liberal learner also is able to make ultimate sense of, and so pull together and order, all that he knows, or is coming to know, about the human condition – deep truths about our damaged nature and condition – and then, in light of those truths, a wide range of other truths about the psychology of human behavior; the struggles and conflicts of human history; and the social, political, and economic ills that we continue to perpetrate and suffer. Finally, in light of the contemplative reasoning he has engaged in about the triune God’s redemptive work within human history and the world, this liberal learner is able to judge and order the

Theology and truly liberal learning

167

manifold ways human beings have sought to understand human existence, and find meaning and purpose in human existence, in intellectual realms such as philosophy, literature, and the arts. Beyond this, he also sees how it is possible to make ultimate sense of human existence itself: the ultimate truth of human existence is not the reality of human brokenness, and especially the realities of suffering and death, but rather the reality of lasting happiness with God, or the true fulfillment of human nature for which we were created and for which we universally long.66 At the very least, I think that this liberal learner, having engaged in significant contemplative reasoning, also has achieved some important, lofty epistemic and educative goals. Not only has he acquired the ability to pursue understanding and wisdom but he also has attained the kind of explanatory, ordered, and unified insight into the nature of reality that is characteristic of understanding and, especially, wisdom. He thereby has gained an approximate understanding and wisdom, even if, as the non-theologian may still insist, he has not attained understanding or wisdom proper. Thus, from a secular standpoint, while there may be no guarantee that Christian theology is constitutionally equipped to afford students of theology true understanding and wisdom, there still is reason to believe that theological study, by virtue of habituating liberal learners in contemplative modes of thinking and reasoning, enables liberal learners to acquire the habits, and ultimately virtues, of mind needed to attain understanding and wisdom, whatever we think that the content of that knowledge is or may be.

Theological study as oriented towards theological knowledge and truth In chapter 1, I argued that Christian theology needs to claim for itself a divine foundation if it ultimately is going to be able make a reasonable case for being a knowledge- and truth-aimed (that is, reality-aimed) discipline, able to help its practitioners gain and grow in knowledge of the truth about the divine and all other truth as related to the truth about the divine. And yet, theology is not in an epistemic position to prove that it possesses a divine foundation: that claim is epistemically basic, and so ultimately grounded in faith, whatever other justification for it the theologian can (and should) provide. In the final section of this chapter, I am not going to directly defend the claim that theology does have a divine origin and aim. Instead, I am going to defend theology’s ability to generate knowledge of theological truth from another epistemic angle. In particular, I argue that independent of whatever one might believe about theology’s divine origin and aim, it not only is possible but also (at least minimally) reasonable to view or interpret theological study – and the virtuously critical, contemplative reasoning that constitutes it – as able to generate knowledge of the truth about the divine and all other truth as related to the truth about the divine. In so doing, I also further support the claim, which I made and defended earlier in the book, that theological study is a form of apprenticeship by the divine, or a sort of “divine training” in how to think and reason truthfully about the divine and everything else as it exists in relation to the divine.

168

Theology and truly liberal learning

Let’s begin by focusing on the critical thinking that I have argued is constitutive of theological study. The critical thinker is not simply good at assessing the probative strength of reasons but also (as a result) is able to acquire those reasons that are genuine indicators of or guides to truth. Now, certainly, not all of these reasons are created equal, or are equally indicative of truth. Demonstrative reasoning, when successful, is directly and infallibly truth-indicative; dialectical reasoning, when successful, can be strongly truth-indicative, but fallibly so; and successful clarificatory reasoning need not be truth-indicative at all. But this does not mean that clarificatory or procedural reasoning plays no positive epistemic role in enabling the pursuit of truth. For example, as Helm points out, “if we can show by procedural reason … either that a given set of propositions, previously believed to be inconsistent, is consistent, or that propositions which were previously thought to be unconnected in fact form a consistent set, then we have gone some way to establishing the truth of the set, by establishing one necessary condition of its truth.”67 And MacDonald claims that performing clarificatory tasks in respect to a given theory “is in some ways a prerequisite for assessing the truth of a theory.”68 To this, I would add that engaging in clarificatory or procedural reasoning, insofar as it successful in establishing clarity and consistency, can be conducive for attaining or coming to know (and even know better) the truth of a given proposition or theory. By successfully uncovering the intelligibility or intrinsic logic of a given proposition – along with its rational connections with other true, or at least very well-grounded, propositions, and (we can add) its ability to withstand serious intellectual objections – one goes a significant way in uncovering that proposition’s positive epistemic status, and arguably even its truth. What this means is that insofar as critical thinking in Christian theological study uncovers genuine reasons for a given theological proposition or truth-claim, then it affords students of theology the real opportunity to pursue and even attain genuine knowledge of theological truth. Put another way, tracking, evaluating, and even employing theological reasoning can have a positive, accumulative epistemic effect: it enables the student of theology to take definitive steps in specifically theological knowledge- and truth-seeking. To be sure, as in any discipline, the different kinds of reasoning that go on in theology are not equally truth-conducive: while demonstrative reasoning in theology, if and where it is even employed successfully, is utterly truth-guaranteeing, dialectical reasoning and clarificatory or procedural reasoning are not. In particular, clarificatory or procedural reasoning in theology is the most indirect and fallible guide to theological truth. However, this does not mean that it cannot be employed effectively as part of a genuine quest for theological knowledge and truth. When the student of theology, employing such reasoning, uncovers the intrinsic logic or intelligibility of a given theological proposition, along with is rational connections with other propositions within the theological system and true, or at least very well-grounded, propositions outside the theological system, she goes at least some way in uncovering that proposition’s positive epistemic status and, arguably, even its truth. When she uncovers that proposition’s ability to

Theology and truly liberal learning

169

withstand serious intellectual objections – and so the ability of theologians to respond to potential defeaters for it – she goes even further in uncovering its positive epistemic status and, arguably, even its truth. Furthermore, while not all of the kinds of reasoning, and so critical thinking, that go on within Christian theology are equally truth-indicative they each play an important and mutually supportive role in assisting theologians and those who study with them in engaging in a unified effort in theological knowledge- and truthseeking. Clarificatory reasoning is a powerful tool, insofar as it helps theologians employing such reasoning – and those students tracking, evaluating, and even employing such reasoning – to uncover the intelligibility, and so reasonableness, of a given theological truth-claim within the realm of revealed theology even if that truth-claim lies beyond what it is possible to establish as true. Thus, clarificatory reasoning helps theologians and those who study with them to penetrate at least potential realms of knowledge and truth that demonstrative reasoning, as powerful as it may be, simply cannot penetrate. Similarly, the reasoning that theologians employ within the realm of natural theology, whether in its demonstrative or dialectical forms, is a powerful tool that helps theologians to do what clarificatory reasoning cannot help them to do: establish certain theological truths, as broad as they may be. In fact, the more success that theologians have in establishing, or at least working towards establishing, certain theological truths in the realm of natural theology, the more rationale that they acquire, and can offer those studying with them, for employing clarificatory reasoning as a distinct, viable form of theological knowledge and truth-seeking in the realm of revealed theology. This last point is worth reflecting on further. As Michael Sudduth argues, by affirming and showing that there is a definitive, positive role for reason to play within the realm of natural theology, the Christian theologian also gives reason to think “that reason itself can enter into the theological realm and elucidate the articles of faith,” and so engage successfully in aiding and deepening the pursuit of knowledge and truth within the realm of revealed theology.69 Sudduth continues, “There is no need to establish the existence of God within the framework of the dogmatic system, for dogmatics already presupposes the existence of God. There is a need, however, to establish the instrumental validity of reason for theology, to show that it is fit for the task of being the handmaiden of sacred doctrine.”70 Sudduth further thinks that establishing the validity of procedural or what he calls instrumental reason within revealed theology by way of engaging in natural theological reasoning is necessary for the Christian, to give him a justification for engaging in “the dogmatic elaboration of the articles of faith.”71 However, I also think that it is necessary for the non-Christian as well. The more that the non-Christian student of theology tracks, evaluates, and even employs natural theological reasoning, and discovers that such reasoning is (at least somewhat) efficacious for engaging in broader theological inquiry, the more justification or warrant he has for thinking that reason is capable of entering into more specific realms of theological inquiry, and so capable in its clarificatory or procedural mode of governing and guiding further and deeper theological knowledge- and truth-seeking.

170

Theology and truly liberal learning

To be clear, this does not mean that the Christian theologian or student of theology must first establish that God exists and possesses certain attributes in the realm of natural theology in order to be entitled to engage in those forms of reasoning that are typically employed in revealed theology. The idea here, instead, is that the more theologians engage in the project of natural theology, and at least make progress in establishing theological truth, as part of a unified effort in theological knowledge- and truth-seeking, the more reason they give particularly non-Christian students of theology reason for thinking that exercises of reason in critical thinking are capable of uncovering theological truth within the realm of revealed theology. Once more, it is the collective enterprise of tracking, evaluating, and even employing all forms of reasoning within theology that I am claiming it is reasonable to view as conducive for attaining theological knowledge and truth. Not only are there various ways of using reason in order to investigate and approach truth in theology, as in any discipline, but also using reason to establish at least some theological truths further supports and spurs using reason to pursue and ideally attain knowledge of other theological truths that lie beyond what reason can establish by its own efforts. Thus, in the end, the more theological reasons that liberal learners track, evaluate, and then acquire – as part of their unified theological knowledge- and truth-seeking – the better able we are to picture them as moving closer to knowledge of theological truth as an epistemic and educative goal, even if they do not yet know such truth and are far from making definitive judgments about it. The more nuanced claim that I have been defending since chapter 3 is that engaging in virtuously critical thinking is necessary to acquire the most valuable epistemic goods, and in particular deep knowledge of deep truths about ourselves and our world, which are very difficult if not impossible to attain for those who lack the requisite virtues. Similarly, engaging in virtuously critical thinking, rather than critical thinking simpliciter, is necessary to attain the deepest knowledge of theological truths, which, from a theological perspective, are the deepest truths that can be known. So, just as we reasonably can interpret critical thinking in Christian theology as an intellectual exercise in genuine theological knowledge- and truth-seeking, so we reasonably can interpret acquiring and exercising intellectual virtue in the study of theology as a further, important part of engaging in and successfully carrying out specifically theological knowledge- and truth-seeking. Consider the ways that I have argued Christian theologians can, do, and should engage in intellectually virtuous reasoning. Firmly open-minded theologians committed to bringing their reasoning in full alignment with the truth seek to establish rational connections between theological truth-claims and non-theological truth (or at least very well-grounded truth-claims), thereby not only resolving apparent inconsistencies but also bolstering the intelligibility of suitably informed theological truth-claims. Theologians exercising both firm open-mindedness and intellectual courage readily submit their reasoning to wider intellectual scrutiny and respond to all potential defeaters for theological truth-claims, even in the most demanding and hostile of epistemic contexts, thereby defending their

Theology and truly liberal learning

171

claim (or the claim of Christians) to possess theological knowledge and truth. Virtuously autonomous and humble theologians, renouncing epistemic egoism and recognizing their inescapable epistemic dependencies – especially their reliance on theological authorities in order to attain and deepen knowledge of theological truth – allow their thinking and reasoning to be regulated by established and credible theological authorities, including other theologians who have proven track records in the theological field of engaging successfully in the full range of theological reasoning. Theologians animated by a discriminating love of knowledge and truth engage in all forms of theological reasoning in their efforts to produce the full range of reasons for theological truth-claims. They also employ the full range of theological reasoning in order to account for all knowledge and truth, using the epistemic “light” that suitably established and clarified truth-claims provide. In fact, the more knowledge and truth that theologians successfully are able to illuminate using theological qua ultimate truth-claims, the more reasonable they show theological truth-claims to be overall.72 My main point here is that it should not be difficult to see how theological reasoning is enhanced by exercises of intellectual virtue, just like reasoning in any discipline is enhanced by exercises of intellectual virtue. So, theological reasoning enhanced by intellectual virtue is even more apt to lead those theologians engaging in it to theological knowledge and truth. What this also means, though, is that liberal learners who engage in virtuously critical reasoning in theology are more apt to attain specifically theological knowledge and truth. The firmly open-minded and intellectually courageous student of theology transcends her default cognitive standpoint and overcomes whatever fears she may have that would prohibit her from engaging in full knowledge- and truth-seeking. And by doing so, she puts herself in the best epistemic position to track, evaluate, and even employ all of the reasoning that truly open-minded and courageous theologians employ in order to bring their reasoning into full alignment with knowledge and truth, theological and otherwise. Recognizing the impossibility of attaining the deepest knowledge and truth relying solely on her individual cognitive powers, the humble and autonomous student of theology renounces epistemic egoism and readily submits to the instruction that intellectually autonomous and humble theologians with proven track records in the field provide. She thereby affords herself full access to a wide range of rational avenues to theological knowledge and truth, or a wide range of reasons for theological truth-claims that theological study provides. As a discriminating lover of knowledge, she acquires all of the theological reasons that she can, thereby more fully disposing herself to attain theological knowledge and truth, and as a result, wise understanding of all the truth that she both knows and loves. Of course, liberal learners must first acquire the intellectual virtues in order to exercise them consistently in their study of Christian theology. But this, in turn, requires engaging in critical thinking in an intellectually virtuous way: tracking, evaluating, and even employing intellectually virtuous theological reasoning, as carried out by intellectually virtuous theologians. It is only by engaging in critical thinking in an intellectually virtuous way within theology that students of

172

Theology and truly liberal learning

theology will come to possess the firmly entrenched dispositions of mind and will needed to engage in the kinds of enhanced thinking and reasoning in theology that I am claiming are the most suited to generate knowledge of theological truth. Or, more accurately, it is only by engaging in critical thinking in an intellectually virtuous way across a range of disciplines (theology included) that liberal learners will acquire the dispositions of mind and will needed to engage in the kinds of enhanced thinking and reasoning that are most suited to generate knowledge of theological truth. In this sense, the more opportunity that liberal learners have to think and reason in an intellectually virtuous way, and so the more exposure they have to intellectually virtuous educators and exemplars who think and reason in an intellectually virtuous way, the better able they will be to acquire and exercise the intellectual virtues within theology, and the better equipped they will be to obtain theological knowledge and truth. Here, I don’t mean to suggest that engaging in virtuously critical thinking and reasoning is capable on its own of yielding knowledge of the divine. According to the epistemology that I have developed and defended, while engaging in virtuously critical thinking and reasoning is necessary for attaining the deepest knowledge and truth, it is not sufficient for doing so. In order to attain the deepest knowledge and truth, liberal learners need to acquire the most important intellectual virtues. And to acquire these virtues, they need to engage in contemplative reasoning, which I have claimed that Christian theological study is especially able to foster. Theological study habituates liberal learners in contemplative modes of reasoning, or thinking and reasoning critically and virtuously about the deepest epistemic subject matters – divine matters – and hence all other subject matters as they relate to divine matters. As such, theological study is conducive for gaining understanding and, especially, wisdom. But why should we think that contemplative reasoning within theology generates a specifically theological wisdom? Since I already have shown why there is at least some reason to think that engaging in virtuously critical thinking and reasoning in Christian theology is conducive for attaining and even furthering knowledge of theological truth, then in effect, I also have shown why there is at least some reason to think that engaging in contemplative reasoning as virtuously critical thinking and reasoning in theology is conducive for gaining theological wisdom. And this is because theological truth as ultimate truth is the deepest truth that can be known: a truth that, given its ultimacy and depth, bears on every other truth that can be known. Moreover, since engaging in contemplative reasoning is necessary for acquiring the cognitive ability, or virtue, needed to know not just ultimate truth but also all other truths in the light of one’s knowledge of ultimate truth, then there also is at least some reason to think that by engaging in contemplative reasoning in theology, and so thinking and reasoning about all other truth as it relates to theological truth, one acquires the cognitive ability to know all other truths in light of the knowledge that one possesses of the ultimate truth about the divine. So that I may make this clearer, recall the hypothetical liberal learner that I discussed at the end of the previous section of the chapter. There, I claimed that

Theology and truly liberal learning

173

this liberal learner, having engaged in significant contemplative reasoning within Christian theology, attained the kind of epistemic insight that true understanding and especially wisdom provide, and even gained an approximate understanding and wisdom, even if he did not attain understanding and wisdom themselves. However, consistent with what I have been arguing in this section of the chapter, I also think that it is possible and even reasonable to interpret his epistemic and educative achievement otherwise. His serious and sustained contemplative study of divine matters in theology has led him not simply to grasp ultimate truth-claims about the existence, nature, and activity of God. It has also enabled him to gain knowledge of ultimate truth itself: as a result of her study, he not only views God aright but he also views all of the other truths that he knows aright, both in their proper relation with each other and in their proper relation to and dependence on the truth about God. Put more technically: presuming that this liberal learner now understands a properly ordered set of theological truths T with the requisite clarity and strength, and his understanding of T has become fundamental to how he thinks and reasons about (and so explains, orders, and unifies) the full range of all other truth that he knows within his significant domain of knowledge D, then it reasonable to hold that he has attained genuine theological wisdom. I suspect that if there are persons who resist embracing this conclusion, it is for one (or both) of two main reasons. First, a skeptic might claim that it is unreasonable to interpret theological study as capable of producing theological wisdom because it is unreasonable to think that any theological knowledge and truth obtains. However, for this skeptical claim to constitute a reasonable objection, it cannot function as an uninformed a priori judgment about the nonexistence of theological knowledge and truth. It must be informed by theological study, and the sort of virtuously critical, contemplative reasoning within theology that I have claimed is wisdom-aimed. In other words, the only way to put oneself in a reasonable epistemic position to deny that theological study is wisdom-aimed is to engage the very contemplative reasoning within theology that I have claimed it is reasonable to interpret as wisdom-aimed. And this puts the skeptic in an even further bind. To reasonably claim that there is no theological knowledge and truth, and therefore no reasonable possibility of gaining theological wisdom, the skeptic not only would have to have engaged in significant contemplative reasoning within theology, but she also would have to be justified in concluding that none of that reasoning is conducive for attaining theological wisdom. Since it is highly doubtful that our skeptic will be able to reach this very high epistemic bar, then wholesale skepticism concerning the existence of theological knowledge and truth remains entirely unjustified, and the real, reasonable possibility that theological study produces theological wisdom remains. Second, a skeptic might insist that there is an important and large epistemic difference between knowing what wisdom looks like from a Christian theological perspective and actually gaining wisdom from within a Christian theological perspective. While the former epistemic path is open to the non-Christian liberal learner in particular, the latter one is not. In response, what I think this

174

Theology and truly liberal learning

skeptical objection misses, or fails to acknowledge, is the possibility that the non-Christian liberal learner, in studying theology, might undergo an intellectual conversion in attaining genuine theological wisdom: a fundamental and even radical reorientation and restructuring of his intellectual life, whereby he adopts and inhabits a new intellectual worldview, from or in which he now views the whole of reality differently than he did before, in a new intellectual light. Insofar as intellectual conversions can and do occur outside of theology – often as part of the natural, non-coercive process of intellectual maturation, or growing and developing in one’s intellectual life – then there is no reason to think that they cannot and do not occur within theology. For example, philosopher Anthony Flew, formerly a staunch atheist, towards the end of his life came to believe in God, and specifically “that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence,” as a result of engaging in rational reflection on the insights of modern science as well as classical philosophical arguments (of the sort that populate natural theology) for the existence of God.73 Flew therefore calls his journey from atheism to belief in God – for Flew, what amounts to deism, not theism – “a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith,” since it was philosophical study rather than anything like a religious experience, or sustained study of a revealed religion, that brought about his “discovery of the Divine.”74 As a result of engaging in such study, it is clear that Flew underwent a fundamental change in intellectual worldview, and hence a fundamental change in intellectual orientation: as someone who rationally believed in God, he presumably looked at the whole of reality in a radically new light than he did as an atheist. Consequently, I think that it is fitting to describe Flew’s change of mind as a form of intellectual conversion, which any liberal learner also could undergo by following the same kind of rational path in her study of theology that Flew did. It also seems possible and permissible to undergo an intellectual conversion by means that are not exclusively rational. A fundamental shift can occur in how we view reality, but without that shift being occasioned solely through rational effort. Reason may have been influential, even paramount, in leading us to believe and see things anew; however, it did not, in the end, do so by itself. Instead, perhaps as a result of the positive example of an inspiring teacher; or sustained, positive interaction with persons who think and reason in a certain way; or even an encounter with the truth itself that is at once affective and rational, we find ourselves drawn to believe something to be true, which ideally is in fact true even if reason alone cannot convince us that it is true. We undergo a change of mind at the same time that we undergo a change of heart, or fundamental reorientation of the will. So it is a change of heart along with a change of mind that ultimately enables us to see things anew – and ideally, see things aright – presuming that the new worldview that we inhabit enables us to see things aright. I think we intelligibly can imagine Flew undergoing this kind of conversion, if, continuous with his study of natural theology, his study of revealed theology, coupled with a change of heart, led to him yet another “discovery of the

Theology and truly liberal learning 75

175

Divine,” and so arguably also a richer, fuller wisdom. Augustine, most notably, claimed to have experienced this kind of conversion. His search for the divine included, and was guided by, his study of classical literature (in particular, Cicero, who urged him to “‘strongly embrace wisdom itself, wherever found’”)76 and the philosophy of the Neoplatonists (who helped him “seek for immaterial truth” and finally renounce the errors of Manichaeism)77, as well as Christian Scripture, which occurred under the tutelage of Bishop Ambrose. For Augustine, clearly, these intellectual pursuits were instrumental in bringing about his discovery (or as he sometimes describes it, rediscovery) of the divine. But ultimately, Augustine’s conversion to Christianity required not more searching but rather fully surrendering or submitting to the promptings of divine grace so that he could fully embrace the Christian faith – believing it to be true – and thereby fully inhabit the Christian worldview. This fundamental change of mind, coupled with a change of heart, was effected not by Augustine, but by God, whom Augustine believed had led him all along to stand “firm upon that rule of faith” that for Augustine furnished the true knowledge of God and hence the true wisdom that he had sought from his youth.78 My point here is not that Christian theological study in the secular university should have as its goal converting liberal learners to Christianity or any other worldview, religious or otherwise. Nor is it to deny my oft-repeated claim that studying theology only requires “faith,” not being or becoming a person of faith. Rather, I am merely describing two possible, and even promising, ways for liberal learners in the secular university to attain wisdom: either by adopting a broadly theological worldview, and thereby coming to view the whole of reality (or what they know of it) in the light of more broadly theological truth, or by adopting a more specifically Christian theological worldview, and thereby coming to view the whole of reality (or what they know of it) in the light of Christian theological truth. Of course, whether Flew or Augustine finally landed on ultimate truth and came to possess a genuine theological wisdom as a result of engaging in philosophical and theological study is a matter of real debate. However, consistent with what I been arguing throughout the chapter, and really the whole book, I do not need to establish that theological study yields true wisdom in order to make a successful argument for including it within the secular university. My argument, again, is that we have a reasonable case for holding that theological study can afford liberal learners wisdom because we can offer a reasonable interpretation of theological study as conducive for attaining genuine wisdom. That there are other modes of study that one reasonably could claim are wisdom-aimed, I do not deny. But the onus is now on those who think that there are other, even better models of wisdom-seeking or ways of educating for wisdom in the secular university to articulate and defend those models. Perhaps this will include showing how and why pursuing these other courses of study excludes engaging in theological study. But in the absence of a convincing argument that concludes that theology should be ruled out of secular wisdom-seeking, then my argument that theological study provides a possible, even promising, pathway for attaining wisdom still stands.

176

Theology and truly liberal learning

Thus, in the end, the secular university is left with a choice and a challenge, which I identified with Newman at the beginning of the chapter. Either the secular university can deny that Christian theological study is able to generate wisdom or it can admit that such study has the potential to generate wisdom, even theological wisdom. If it can provide substantive reasons for making the former choice, then it does nothing irrational in excluding theological study from its program of truly liberal learning. However, if it makes the latter choice then it cannot exclude theology while justifiably claiming to promote truly liberal learning, or to teach a truly universal knowledge. I have shown that there is at least some reason to think that theological study is conducive for attaining wisdom along with all other valuable epistemic and educative goods. Consequently, it behooves the secular university committed to educating for knowledge and, especially, wisdom to include and even promote theological study along with all other modes of study that enable liberal learners within the secular university to realize their maximum epistemic and educative potential.

Notes 1 Newman, The Idea of a University, 38. 2 Newman, The Idea of a University, 34–5. Italics are in the original text. 3 See in particular ST I.2, where Aquinas claims to show (in “five ways”) that there is a God, and questions 3–11, where Aquinas derives the divine attributes that I mention here. 4 Anselm, Preface to the Proslogion (hereafter Prosl.), in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, trans. M.J. Charlesworth, eds. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998), 83. 5 Prosl. 2, 87. 6 Prosl. 5, 89. 7 Scott MacDonald, “Natural Theology,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 6, ed. Edward Craig (London, UK: Routledge, 1998), 708. 8 William Lane Craig, for example, not only argues for the existence of a first, sustaining, and necessary cause of the universe (as does Aquinas) but also for the existence of a first temporal cause of the universe (the revitalized kalam argument, borrowed from Muslim theology). For a sophisticated exposition and defense of this argument, see William Lane Craig and James D. Sinclair, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument,” The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, 101–201. One also could offer the following kind of transcendental argument in theology: since we can and do engage in rational thought about a rationally penetrable world, and God (as the source of all reason, or Reason itself) is a necessary condition for rational thought, then God exists. Notably, a transcendental argument possesses deductive force since its conclusion stipulates that certain enabling conditions are necessary for the existence of a given phenomenon, like rational thought. However, it is possible to downgrade it so that it functions more like an argument to the best explanation of some phenomenon. 9 MacDonald, “Natural Theology,” 708. 10 MacDonald, “Natural Theology,” 708. 11 Richard Swinburne, for example, argues that the traditional natural theological arguments are constituted by premises that give probable but not definitive support for their conclusions. As such, Swinburne employs inductive reasoning – and more narrowly, inference to the best explanation – throughout his natural theological

Theology and truly liberal learning

12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30

177

project. See in particular Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, second edn. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004). MacDonald, “Natural Theology,” 709. Jonathan Edwards, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended 1.1.2, A Jonathan Edwards Reader, eds. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 228. As part of his defense of the traditional doctrine of original sin, Edwards goes on to explain what it means to possess a fallen nature: a nature that lacks something that it once possessed, “divine principles” properly governing our “natural principles,” or natural appetites and self-love. See in particular Original Sin 4.2. For Edwards’s Scriptural defense of original sin, see in particular Original Sin 2. MacDonald, “Natural Theology,” 711. Oliver D. Crisp, “On Analytic Theology,” Analytic Theology, 41. Paul Helm, Faith and Understanding (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), Google Books edn., 6. Oliver D. Crisp, God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology (London, UK: T&T Clark, 2009), 2. Here, Crisp reiterates his commitment to a procedural use of reason, “where the deliverances of reason are subordinate to, and in the service of, a particular theological end” (ibid.). Gregory of Nyssa, On the Difference between Ousia and Hypostasis 1–4, ed. and trans. Y. Courtonne, Documents in Early Christian Thought, eds. Maurice Wiles and Mark Santer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 31–5. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Difference between Ousia and Hypostasis 1–4, 35. See ST I.27. See ST I.28. Gilles Emery, “The Doctrine of the Trinity in St. Thomas Aquinas,” Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction, eds. Thomas Weinandy, Daniel Keating and John Yocum (London, UK: T&T Clark, 2004), 48. Italics are in the original text. Thomas H. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), in particular chapter 5. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 175; quoted in McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 159. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 170. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 173. Anselm famously argues that divine incarnation was necessary to make satisfaction for human sin, given the divine will to save. Later theologians like Aquinas, however, claim that it was fitting for God to become incarnate because it was the most convenient or expedient way for God to bring about human salvation, even though there were other ways open to God to do so. Employing the philosophical principle (which he borrows from Pseudo-Dionysisus) that “it belongs to the essence of goodness to communicate itself to others,” Aquinas claims that “it belongs to the essence of the highest good to communicate itself in the highest manner to the creature,” to join created nature to itself. “Hence it is manifest that it was fitting that God should become incarnate” (ST III.1.1). On the basis of similar reasoning, other theologians have argued that God would have become incarnate anyway, even independent of the advent and effects of human sin. For more on the role of fitting reasons in theology, see David Brown, “‘Necessary’ and ‘Fitting’ Reasons in Christian Theology,” The Rationality of Religious Belief, eds. W.J. Abraham and S.W. Holtzer (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1987), 211–30. While recognizing their obvious limitations in providing singular justification for theological beliefs, like belief in the atonement, Brown still says that fitting reasons or arguments retain an important place in theological reflection on such beliefs. “As the case of the Atonement illustrates, ‘fitting’ reasons can take the place of necessary ones, and,

178

31 32 33

34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50

51 52

Theology and truly liberal learning though their strength may be hard to estimate, they do offer an explanation both of why it might be appropriate for God to become incarnate and why likewise it might be appropriate for us to respond when that life takes a particular form” (229). For a recent use of fitting reasons to help explain and defend the traditional Christian belief in the virgin birth of Christ, see Crisp, God Incarnate, 77–102. John Webster, “Introduction: Systematic Theology,” The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, eds. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 21–2. Quoted in Webster, “Introduction: Systematic Theology,” 7. For more on reconciling traditional Christian claims about a historical Fall (and other Christian claims about creation) with the scientific claims of evolutionary science, see Thomas H. McCall, An Introduction to Analytic Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 124–50, and in particular 144–50. See Pope John Paul II, “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth,” address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 22 October 1996, available online at http://www.newadvent. org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm (accessed 30 August 2016). I should note that it is also possible for the natural theologian to engage in this kind of clarificatory exercise, independently of aiming to establish that God exists. For example, John Polkinghorne defends what he calls a “theology of nature,” which, unlike traditional natural theology, does not aim to prove the existence of God but rather “posit[s] the existence of God from the start of the argument and see[s] it as the source from which flows a satisfying understanding of the scientifically discerned character of the world” (John Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011], 76). For more on the technical distinction between a “theodicy” and a “defense,” see Peter van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7. I derive the particular phrasing that I am using here from Thomas Lewis, “On the Role of Normativity in Religious Studies,” The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, 179–80. Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 73. Baehr, The Inquiring Mind, 140. Baehr, The Inquiring Mind, 152. Baehr, The Inquiring Mind, 151. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 212. Tanner, “Theology and Cultural Contest in the University,” 208. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 195. Italics are in the original text. ST I.1.8. Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 276. Lewis, “On the Role of Normativity in Religious Studies,” 180. Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 266. Italics are in the original text. See in particular, Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos IV, translated as Four Discourses Against the Arians by John Henry Newman, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, vol. 4, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1892; reprinted, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994). Augustine, De gratia Christi, translated as On the Grace of Christ by Peter Homes and Robert Ernest Wallis, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, first series, vol. 5, ed. Philip Schaff (1887; reprinted, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 235. De util. cred. 16.34, 319 in the Burleigh translation. De util. cred. 17.35, 321. See also Augustine’s defense of the Church’s authority in De fide rerum invisibilium 3.5–7.10.

Theology and truly liberal learning

179

53 I am borrowing the term “epistemic egoism” from Zagzebski, but as she notes, Richard Foley uses it as well in Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 54 Zagzebski, Epistemic Authority, 57. Zagzebski therefore claims that both “extreme epistemic egoism” and “standard epistemic egoism” are false. For more on the distinction, see 52–5. 55 We also could define intellectual humility negatively, in the following sense: it consists of a lack of epistemic egoism, or a lack of the vicious disposition to think too highly about one one’s own reason as well as think too lowly of other epistemic agents besides oneself as legitimate epistemic authorities. Roberts and Wood also choose to define intellectual humility negatively: see, in particular, 255–6 in Intellectual Virtues. 56 Baehr, The Inquiring Mind, 179. 57 Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 219. 58 For more on Justin Martyr as a self-proclaimed lover of truth, see Eric Osborn, “Justin Martyr,” The First Christian Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Church, ed. G.R. Evans (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 115–20. Robert Wilken notes that Justin, who was condemned in 165 CE and beheaded for refusing to worship the gods of Rome, “received the name Justin Martyr, Justin the Witness, for by his death he bore witness to the truth of Christ” (Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003], 8). 59 I am not suggesting that Luther’s intellectual courage may not also have been tinged with intellectual vice, or that Luther’s exercise of intellectual courage was truthconducive in this particular case: while many Christians believe that Luther hit on, or at least reformulated, a cardinal theological truth about salvation, Roman Catholics do not. That said, Lutherans and Catholics now have claimed to achieve a “shared understanding” of the traditionally Church-dividing doctrine of justification, which I think reflects a shared convergence in understanding concerning the actual theological truth about justification. It also seems reasonable to hold that Lutherans and Catholics both exercised intellectual virtues like open-mindedness, autonomy, and humility in reaching their shared understanding. See The Lutheran World Federation and The Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, English-language ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), in particular 15. 60 We may be inclined to interpret members of the Confessing Church like Barth and, particularly, Bonhoeffer as exerting more moral than intellectual courage. However, even if the members of the Confessing Church exhibited moral courage, which I think they did, I also think that they exhibited intellectual courage as well, insofar as they promoted and protected a particular theological truth as an epistemic good. 61 Prosl. 1, 87. 62 Ford, Christian Wisdom, 349. 63 Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 160. 64 Although I will not press the point here, what the secular university really needs is what John Paul II calls “a philosophy of genuinely metaphysical range, capable, that is, of transcending empirical data in order to attain something absolute, ultimate and foundational in its search for truth” (Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship between Faith and Reason, Vatican trans. [Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media, 1998], §83, 104). Italics are in the original text. In other words, the secular university seeking to educate for wisdom needs a philosophy that directs its activity and practitioners towards knowledge of what I am calling ultimate truths. Of course, I also think that the secular university needs a theology of “genuinely metaphysical range,” and it is this type of theology that I defend here and throughout the book. 65 Mark A. McIntosh, Divine Teaching: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 28.

180

Theology and truly liberal learning

66 I am borrowing this idea from McIntosh: “if we start from the reality of salvation, it would mean that the most troubling aspects of human existence … would now be seen not as things we must simply accept but as dimensions of existence that are in the process of being transformed, as things that are not the ultimate truth of human existence at all” (Divine Teaching, 65). 67 Helm, Faith and Understanding, 8. 68 MacDonald, “Natural Theology,” 712. 69 Michael Sudduth, “The Contribution of Religious Experience to Dogmatic Theology,” Analytic Theology, 219. 70 Sudduth, “The Contribution of Religious Experience to Dogmatic Theology,” 220. 71 Sudduth, “The Contribution of Religious Experience to Dogmatic Theology,” 220. 72 Cf. Lindbeck, who claims that “the reasonableness of a religion is largely a function of its assimilative powers, of its ability to provide an intelligible interpretation in its own terms of the varied situations and realities adherents encounter” (The Nature of Doctrine, 131). 73 Antony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2007), 88. 74 Flew, There is a God, 93. 75 Flew seemed genuinely open to this possibility: he says that “that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true” (There is a God, 185). However, Flew also realizes (rightly, I think) that forming a judgment about the truth of Christian teaching – for example, the claim that “God was incarnate in Jesus Christ” – ultimately requires “believing or not believing. I cannot quite see that there are general principles to guide you in this” (ibid., 187). 76 Augustine, Confessiones (hereafter Conf.) 3.4.8, 39 in the Chadwick translation. 77 Conf. 7.20.26, 129. 78 Conf. 8.12.30, 154. The image of Augustine standing on the “rule of faith” originally appears in Book 3: Augustine’s Christian mother Monica envisioned Augustine standing with her on “a rule made of wood” (3.11.19, 49). At the time, Augustine was a Manichee, not a Christian.

Bibliography Anselm. Proslogion. Translated by M.J. Charlesworth. In Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited by Brian Davies and G.R. Evans. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa theologiae I and III. Translated as Summa Theologica by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Vols. 1 and 4. New York, NY: Benziger Bros., 1948. Reprint, Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981. Athanasius. Orationes contra Arianos IV. Translated as Four Discourses Against the Arians by John Henry Newman. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, vol. 4, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. 1892. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994. Augustine. Confessiones. Translated as Confessions by Henry Chadwick. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. Augustine. De fide rerum invisibilium. Translated as “Faith in the Unseen” by Michael G. Campbell in Boniface Ramsey, ed., On Christian Belief, vol. I.8, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2005.

Theology and truly liberal learning

181

Augustine. De gratia Christi. Translated as On the Grace of Christ by Peter Homes and Robert Ernest Wallis. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, first series, vol. 5, edited by Philip Schaff. 1887. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994. Augustine. De utilitate credendi. Translated as The Usefulness of Belief by John H.S. Burleigh. In Augustine: Earlier Writings, edited by John H.S. Burleigh. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1953. Baehr, Jason. The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011. Brown, David. “‘Necessary’ and ‘Fitting’ Reasons in Christian Theology.” In The Rationality of Religious Belief, edited by W.J. Abraham and S.W. Holtzer, 211–30. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1987. Craig, William Lane and James D. Sinclair. “The Kalam Cosmological Argument.” In The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, 101–201. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009. Crisp, Oliver D. God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology. London, UK: T&T Clark, 2009. Crisp, Oliver D. “On Analytic Theology.” In Crisp and Rea, Analytic Theology, 33–53. Crisp, Oliver D. and Michael C. Rea, eds. Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. Edwards, Jonathan. The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended. In A Jonathan Edwards Reader, edited by John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Emery, Gilles. “The Doctrine of the Trinity in St. Thomas Aquinas.” In Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction, edited by Thomas Weinandy, Daniel Keating and John Yocum, 45–65. London, UK: T&T Clark, 2004. Flew, Anthony. There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2007. Foley, Richard. Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Ford, David F. Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Gregory of Nyssa. On the Difference between Ousia and Hypostasis 1–4. Edited and translated by Y. Courtonne. In Documents in Early Christian Thought, edited by Maurice Wiles and Mark Santer, 31–35. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Helm, Paul. Faith and Understanding. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. Google Books edn. Pope John Paul II. “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth,” address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. 22 October 1996. Available online at http://www. newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm (accessed 30 August 2016). Pope John Paul II. Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship between Faith and Reason. Vatican translation. Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media, 1998. Lewis, Thomas A. “On the Role of Normativity in Religious Studies.” In The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, edited by Robert A. Orsi, 168–85. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Lindbeck, George A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1984. The Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church. Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, English-language edn. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.

182

Theology and truly liberal learning

MacDonald, Scott. “Natural Theology.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 6, edited by Edward Craig, 707–13. London, UK: Routledge, 1998. McCall, Thomas H. Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. McCall, Thomas H. An Introduction to Analytic Christian Theology. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015. McIntosh, Mark A. Divine Teaching: An Introduction to Christian Theology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008. Moltmann, Jürgen. The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993. Newman, John Henry. The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated. Edited by I.T. Ker. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1976. Osborn, Eric. “Justin Martyr.” In The First Christian Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Church, edited by G.R. Evans, 115–20. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991. Polkinghorne, John. Science and Religion in Quest of Truth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Rauser, Randal. Theology in Search of Foundations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009. Roberts, Robert C., and W. Jay Wood. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Sudduth, Michael. “The Contribution of Religious Experience to Dogmatic Theology.” In Crisp and Rea, Analytic Theology, 214–32. Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God. Second edn. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004. Tanner, Kathryn. “Theology and Cultural Contest in the University.” In Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain, edited by Linell E. Cady and Delwin Brown, 199–212. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. van Inwagen, Peter. The Problem of Evil. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Webster, John. “Introduction: Systematic Theology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, edited by John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, 1–15. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. Wilken, Robert Louis. The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. New York, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012.

5

Theology and moral education in the secular university

So far, I have argued that engaging in Christian theological study is conducive for attaining the highest epistemic and educative ends, or the greatest epistemic and educative goods. However, I have not said much about how theology can help the secular university and its citizenry attain broader but still important (and arguably, also essential) educative ends. Even if we recognize that the primary goal of engaging in truly liberal learning within the secular university is to gain knowledge in all of its variety and depth, isn’t it also important for the secular university to help promote its citizenry’s moral growth, and beyond this, the larger social, political, and even global good? And if so, shouldn’t theology’s full admission to secular university life be based on its being able and willing to help the secular university attain these goals, and thus enable those whom it educates and influences to flourish not only in the life of the mind but also in the moral life? I do think that the secular university can and should promote the moral growth of its citizenry through its educative efforts, and I also think that Christian theology can and should play a pivotal role in helping the secular university carry out these efforts. My main argument in this chapter, then, goes as follows. To live the moral life successfully, one must know how to live the moral life, and this entails knowing the truth about how to live the moral life successfully. But this sort of truth, as I understand it, concerns what is good for human beings: it tells us what an objectively good human life looks like. Ultimately, then, to attain knowledge of how to live the moral life successfully one must attain knowledge of what the “good life” is – and this, in turn, requires attaining knowledge of “the Good,” or those ultimate truths concerning the good life for human beings. But knowledge of the Good is an essential component of wisdom. Consequently, by educating for wisdom, and specifically helping the secular university educate for wisdom, theology enables liberal learners to acquire the knowledge that they need in order to live good lives and help others to do the same. Thus, even though studying theology in the secular university does not bring about direct moral change, or growth in moral character, it provides rational avenues for attaining the knowledge that liberal learners need in order to live out the good life, and so the moral life, successfully.

184

Theology and moral education

The chapter will unfold as follows. In the first section, I consider some different ways to think about the possibility and purpose of moral education in the secular university, and begin to defend the claim that educating for moral knowledge is part of the secular university’s truly liberal educative enterprise. In the second main section of the chapter, I discuss the nature of that knowledge, as an important dimension of wisdom, in more detail. In section three, I argue that since studying Christian theology fosters the pursuit of wisdom, it also fosters the pursuit of the knowledge of those ultimate truths that secular-university citizenry need in order to deeply understand the good life and how it ought to be led. I conclude the chapter by discussing how the secular university serves the common good by educating for wisdom, and so how theological study in the secular university, by virtue of fostering wisdom, serves the common good, or the good of those communities of which secular-university citizenry are and will become a part.

Moral education and the secular university That the secular university (or really, any university) should be contributing to, or even care about, morally educating its citizenry is by no means an uncontroversial claim.1 Stanley Fish, for example, argues that university educators should refrain from engaging in any kind of moral or civic formation, which includes refraining from engaging in any debates about matters of ethical and political concern unless those controversial topics can be “academicized” and therefore analyzed from a purely academic, argumentative, and analytical perspective.2 As Fish describes it, the “academicized” classroom in which educators carry out these restrictive tasks is not necessarily devoid of passion or, even more importantly, value: the overarching goal and ideal of all intellectual inquiry is to arrive at truth, a “pre-eminent academic value” and the objective goal towards which all intellectual inquiry should strive.3 However, the goal of academic study in the university, beyond inculcating intellectual virtues conducive for attaining the truth, remains valueless in the following sense: the goal of becoming knowledgeable, or gaining truth, is completely separate from the goal of becoming good. While you may be able to make good researchers out of your students, and should certainly inculcate them in certain bodies of knowledge, “[y]ou can’t make them into good people, and you shouldn’t try.”4 Fish’s move to eradicate moral and civic education as a goal of higher education is based not only in what he takes to be the proper and preeminent academic goals of higher education. It is also based (and primarily so for him) in a decidedly pragmatic argument: “my main objection to moral and civic education in our colleges and universities is not that it is a bad idea (which it surely is), but that it’s an unworkable idea.”5 For Fish, “[t]here are just too many intervening variables, too many uncontrolled factors that mediate the relationship between what goes on in a classroom or even in a succession of classrooms and the shape of what is finally a life.”6 Fish does not clearly specify what all of those “intervening variables” and “uncontrolled factors” are, but he does cite as

Theology and moral education 185 evidence for his claim his own experience at a prestigious secular university educating students who failed to develop a high sense of moral or civic responsibility and pursued career ambitions unrelated to furthering the moral or social good. The idea here, I take it, is that if students are not already leading the moral life when they begin their university careers, they will be unlikely to begin leading that life or pursuing it while at the university. Add to this Fish’s further claim that university educators cannot be held responsible for the effects of their teaching, so many of which are totally out their control as well as outside their specified academic purview, and it becomes much harder to defend the claim that the secular university (and arguably, any university) not only should but on an even more basic level can engage in the moral and civic education of its citizenry. I am with Fish here to a certain degree. I think (and will soon argue) that the secular university needs to recognize the limits of what it can do to effect real, positive, enduring moral change in the characters and lives of its citizenry. However, I also think it is far too pessimistic to claim that the secular university can play no role in morally educating its citizenry. Most notably, this presupposes that the knowledge students gain by engaging in intellectual inquiry has no bearing on their moral lives, or, as Fish says, on their being “good people.” Can we really divorce the knowledge- and truth-seeking that occurs within and across the secular university, which Fish celebrates, from pursuing and ultimately addressing deep questions regarding how we ought to live, both as individuals and as members of larger, social, and political wholes? Are those questions not legitimately “academic,” and if so, why? Put more pointedly: why should anything Fish says lead us to believe that the academic pursuit of truth, if it is truly free and open-ended, will not generate meaningful, substantive, and ideally truth-aimed rational dialogue and debate regarding the very central ethical and sociopolitical issues that Fish wants to “academicize”? In response to some recent criticism of his position, Fish does state that ethics is a viable academic subject matter, and that the same kind of truth-aimed dialogue and debate that he celebrates in his own literature classes can and should occur in the ethics classroom. However, it is not clear where Fish thinks that such truth-aimed argumentation can and should lead. On the one hand, he states that in all of his classes (and the classroom generally), “What I strive to determine, in the company and with the cooperation of my students, is which of the competing accounts of a matter is the right one and which are wrong and the reasons why.”7 Here, Fish once again eschews relativism and reiterates “that truth, and the seeking of truth, must always be defended.”8 On the other hand, he states that in his envisioned class on ethics, “the point would be to analyze the debates and controversies over ethical issues rather to decide that one of the positions in those debates is the right one, the one we should ourselves adopt.”9 It sounds here as if Fish thinks that ethical analysis in the classroom still should stop short of determining the truth about ethical matters, or sorting out which of the various ethical positions on any number of ethical matters represent genuine moral truth (and so are “right”) and which do not. But if this is the

186

Theology and moral education

case, we need to ask, why should such analysis stop short of determining (or at least aspiring to determine) where moral truth lies? On what grounds can we justifiably hold our students back from using rational inquiry in the classroom in order to arrive at moral truth, especially insofar as it tells them how they and others ought to live? It is precisely here that a deeper sort of skepticism – and hence a further objection to educating for morality in the secular university – arises. Both morality and politics are realms marked by widespread disagreement: not only are there varying positions that one can take on any number of moral and political issues but there are also varying and often contradicting ways to answer deep questions about how the moral life ought to be led – all of which, one could argue, are equally valid. So, one could argue further, morality is rooted not in real, objective truth about what the moral life consists in but rather in varying outlooks on the moral life, none of which can claim to be better or truer than any other. As a result, the secular university cannot educate for morality because morality is not the kind of thing about which one can be educated, or gain genuine knowledge. Moreover, if the secular university were to seek to educate for morality it would inevitably end up imposing a particular moral outlook on its constituents, which not all of its constituents share. Better, then, for the secular university to refrain from educating for morality, and let fundamental questions about the moral life be left unaddressed or addressed by its citizenry and the varying moral communities of which they are a part. In response to this deeper skepticism, I first need to point out why it would be glaringly inconsistent for the secular university to adopt a relativistic view of morality, one which denies that genuine or objective knowledge about the moral life can be found. Once the secular university categorically denies that morality is objective, it undercuts what I have been arguing should be its explicit epistemic and educative goal of pursuing any and all truth, whatever it might be and wherever it might be found. Epistemological pluralism in particular demands the free, open inquiry into truth, including the realm of moral truth, however large (thickly populated) or small (sparsely populated) that realm of truth may be. Relatedly, if the secular university were to stipulate that all moral outlooks are valid in order to justify its policy of non-interference in the moral education and lives of its citizenry, it would in fact take up a particular stance on morality – namely, that all morality is relative – which it in turn would impose imperialistically on its citizenry. Accordingly, moral relativism does not afford the secular university any coherent ground (or excuse) on the basis of which it can claim to forsake morally educating its citizenry. Second, even it were able to evade the charge of inconsistency, by embracing the view that any and all moral outlooks are valid, the secular university effectively circumscribes rational dialogue and debate about pressing moral questions that many of us ask. Perhaps not everyone in the secular university, like moral relativists committed to the moral equality (or at least reasonableness) of all moral worldviews, will think that there are rational ways of engaging in such dialogue and debate, and thus rational ways of adjudicating between the

Theology and moral education 187 different moral beliefs that we hold and claims that we make. But surely, the secular university would fail in its epistemic and educative mission if it ruled out any and all efforts of by its citizenry to employ the very epistemic tools it provides in order to analyze and assess the rational merits of varying moral beliefs and claims – say, about the presence (or lack) of distributive justice in a given society, the morality of war, or (on the largest of scales) the nature of human dignity and the ultimate causes of human moral failure. Once the secular university sets its constituents on the rational path towards knowledge and truth, it must allow and even encourage its constituents to follow that path wherever it may be lead them, including knowledge of the truth about how to live morally, whatever the actual content of that knowledge may, upon discovery, turn out to be.10 But perhaps I am arguing (or assuming) too much. Recall Rorty’s problem with making knowledge and truth the chief goals of intellectual inquiry: “[t]he trouble with aiming at truth is that you would not know when you had reached it, even if you had in fact reached it.”11 However, “you can aim at ever more justification, the assuagement of ever more doubt.”12 Analogously, in the moral realm, Rorty claims, “you cannot aim at ‘doing what is right’, because you will never know whether you have hit the mark …. But you can aim at ever more sensitivity to pain, and ever greater satisfaction of ever more various needs.”13 From Rorty’s pragmatic perspective, we should measure moral progress not in terms of “getting closer to the True or the Good or the Right” but rather in terms of “increasing responsiveness to the needs of a larger and larger variety of peoples and things.”14 Therefore, following Rorty, we could conceive of moral education in the secular university as aiming not at definitive knowledge of moral truth (since this is not something at which we can or should aim) but rather at an increased, more inclusive moral sympathy. Setting aside the live question of whether the secular university, through its educative efforts, is even capable of augmenting its constituents’ moral sympathies, we need to question on an even deeper level whether a Rortian program of moral education and the idea of moral progress on which it is based are even coherent.15 First of all, far from divorcing moral progress from the pursuit of the Good, Rorty’s pragmatist morality seems to assume and be driven by a certain vision of what the Good is for human beings – namely, the satisfaction of everincreasing human (and non-human) needs. Without this foundational, authoritative commitment to the Good in place, it is simply not possible to measure genuine moral progress (what is good or right) against any moral regress (what is bad or wrong). Second, it seems that knowledge of the Good is essential to bring about moral progress as Rorty conceives it: we need this knowledge not only in order to determine what our needs truly are, but also how best to satisfy those needs, and thereby also alleviate our suffering. To this, a Rortian could reiterate that striving to attain knowledge of the Good is doomed to fail because none of us ever will (or could) know whether we had attained that knowledge. This claim is rooted in Rorty’s deeper skepticism concerning our ability to know whether we had reached truth even if we had, in

188

Theology and moral education

fact, reached it. However, the fact that we often (or perhaps even always) fail to know that we know should not undermine our confidence that we do know what we claim to know: there is no reason to think, for example, that knowledge of the empirical world should be accompanied by a further knowledge that our empirical beliefs and judgments are veridical. Similarly, there is no reason to think that in coming to possess knowledge of real moral truth that we necessarily also would come to know that we had attained such knowledge. In the absence of being able to know that we know, we still can confidently claim to possess moral truth (like any other kind of truth), especially if we have reason to think we have arrived at it through truth-conducive means, including the very social practice Rorty commends: justifying our moral beliefs to as wide an intellectual audience as possible. There is, then, a deep incoherence that afflicts a Rortian view of moral education. On one level, were the secular university to embrace and implement this program, it would deny any and all of its constituents the right to pursue knowledge and truth, including knowledge of the Good, so taken as objective ends of inquiry, and therefore also engage in any rational dialogue about what good human living actually consists in. On another level, since Rorty’s moral program in fact remains tethered to and enlivened by a particular, pragmatized conception of the Good that not everyone within the secular university shares, by embracing and implementing Rorty’s moral program the secular university would end up impinging on what should be the free, democratic pursuit of knowledge of the Good and hence what constitutes good or right human living.16 If Rorty’s moral worldview has a place within the secular university, then, it is not as a comprehensive frame that dictates how all secular-university citizenry should be morally educated but rather as one voice among many able and willing to contribute to the larger, rational, and thus knowledge- and truthaimed dialogue that I am claiming is an essential part of what moral education in the secular university can and should be. At this point, we need to reflect more deliberately and fully on the question, which Fish raises in a pointed way, about whether and how the secular university is capable of effecting real moral growth or positive change in the characters of its citizenry through its educative efforts. At work here, for me, is a deep philosophical concern: how can educating for knowledge also yield or bring about a corresponding change in character, on a specifically moral level? For example, a liberal learner may come to know that a certain form of government or particular social practice is unjust based on her study of philosophy, political science, and history – and yet, it is not at all clear how acquiring such knowledge also will enable her to acquire the disposition needed to act on and implement that knowledge within the context of the moral life. We as educators may want to instill both the ability to recognize genuine instances of injustice and the disposition to eradicate injustice. But again, it seems our educative efforts can extend only so far: while it remains our central calling to educate for knowledge – including, as I will continue to argue, moral knowledge, broadly construed – we cannot through our own educative efforts effect real, positive, and enduring behavioral change on a moral level in those we educate.

Theology and moral education 189 But what about educating for intellectual virtue? Doesn’t this also help our students grow in moral virtue and hence live better, moral lives? I already have argued that acquiring and exercising intellectual virtues (especially of the sort that virtue epistemologists identify) is conducive for attaining deeper knowledge and truth – including, I think, the realm of moral knowledge and truth. And in this sense, I think that intellectual virtues can play a pivotal role in helping us determine how we ought to live on a specifically moral level. However, given that intellectual virtues have a distinctly epistemic purpose (as Zagzebski says, “they are all based in the motivation for knowledge [my emphasis]”), I am dubious that acquiring and exercising them makes a comparable imprint on how we conduct ourselves morally, especially in wider spheres of human interaction.17 As Gregory Reichberg, commenting on Aquinas, rightly points out, “No one will advance very far in learning a new language, acquire expertise in mathematics, or compose a novel without some degree of studious perseverance, for example. Yet this perseverance need not reach into all areas of one’s life, and in fact may be sorely lacking in matters that are of grave moral significance.”18 Perhaps, though, there are other ways to help our students grow in moral virtue besides helping them grow in intellectual virtue. For example, one could argue that if we really want our students to care about eliminating human suffering in the world then we should send them into communities where they not only are exposed to real human suffering but also are given the opportunity to help alleviate such suffering. However, without denying the importance of such firsthand, “service-learning” endeavors, I think we once again need to think more deeply about what they legitimately can (and cannot) accomplish, and what we as educators are (and are not) accomplishing through them. First, it seems that the primary educative purpose of service-learning is to engender growth in experiential, service-based knowledge of genuine human problems, including the knowledge of how best to address those problems. Whether the students who participate in service-learning endeavors also will come to possess a stronger disposition to address the human problem(s) about which they are gaining experiential knowledge is not as clear. This depends both on whether the requisite disposition already is in place (at least in a rudimentary way), and how much the students who possess it are able and willing to exercise it. Achieving substantive growth in moral character requires exercising moral virtue repeatedly over time well beyond the specific, narrow contexts in which service-learning takes place. Second, it is not clear what we as educators, in requiring students to engage in service-learning, are doing to bring about the desired moral change in them. While we certainly can and should give our students the knowledge, including the theoretical frameworks or tools, that in turn make possible first-hand learning “in the field” (so to speak), we – or the university we represent – do not seem to contribute in any direct, significant way to the growth in character that may result from implementing that knowledge and acquiring further experiential knowledge that is based on it. Once more, we exert our primary moral influence by helping our students acquire the knowledge that they need not only to carry out particular service-learning opportunities successfully but

190

Theology and moral education

also to carry out the moral life successfully. Service-learning is valuable, then, not because it contributes significantly to growth in moral character (even if it contributes to some growth in moral character), but rather because it affords students the opportunity to grow in moral knowledge and begin to implement that knowledge on a decidedly practical level. I suppose at this point one could argue that there is a way that we educators within the secular university can exert direct moral influence over those whom we educate: by living genuinely moral lives. In response, I do agree that it is both possible and desirable to exert this kind of influence. But even granting this, we must remind ourselves that insofar as we as educators put our moral lives on display for those within the secular university to imitate, any moral influence we exert is not principally as educators but rather as people.19 Moreover, to exert this moral influence as people and not simply as educators, we will need to have repeated contact with those whom we educate outside of the educational settings we typically occupy together, since the classroom presents limited opportunities for displaying and practicing moral virtue as well as performing morally good acts more generally. In fact, it seems that if the secular university really wants to exert the kind of moral influence that will help bring about direct moral growth in the characters and lives of its citizenry, it will need to enlist all of its constituents in leadership positions in all parts of the secular university life in order to do so. Perhaps some secular universities will find such a proposal attractive and work towards implementing it. But before doing so, or at least as they do so, these universities still will have to sift through and answer fundamental intellectual questions about what the moral life consists of in order to ensure that their moral programmatic efforts are founded on genuine moral knowledge. To be clear, then, I am not denying that the secular university should engage in moral education. It should engage in moral education, albeit in accordance with its primary, stated epistemic and educative ends. So, rather than abandoning any and all efforts to engage in moral education (on the one hand), or engaging in the difficult task of effecting deep, positive, and enduring moral change in the characters and lives of its citizenry (on the other hand), the secular university simply needs to carry out its already adopted, truly liberal educative and epistemic program to its logical conclusion. It is the moral knowledge constitutive of wisdom that secular-university citizens need if they are going to live fully good, moral lives and help others to do the same.

Wisdom and moral education in the secular university So far, I have not defended the claim that there is genuine moral knowledge to be had or found. Certainly, if one still thinks that there is no such thing as moral knowledge, then there is no reason for the secular university to strive to attain it. For example, if it is the case, as moral relativists hold, that moral beliefs are justified and true only relative to certain schemes, and that there is no objective moral truth to be known, then while the secular university can

Theology and moral education 191 teach its citizenry about the various moral systems that exist it cannot help its citizenry evaluate those systems in order to arrive at genuine moral knowledge about whether they are true or false, or good and bad representations of real morality. Similarly, if it is the case, as non-cognitivists in ethics hold, that our moral beliefs do not have a truth-value (in the sense that they can conform or fail to conform to the way things are) but merely express our attitudes towards the world (which we in turn impose on the world), then it seems that educating for moral knowledge, or even sorting out reasonable from unreasonable moral beliefs, is also doomed from the start. So once again: given the doubts that many in the secular university will harbor about the possibility of attaining moral knowledge, why should the secular university make any effort to help its constituents acquire it? I already have argued that moral relativism unfairly stymies what should be the secular university’s free, wide-ranging intellectual inquiry into all realms of knowledge and truth, including the realm of moral truth, whatever it may or may not contain. And I would argue that non-cognitivists, who blankly exclude moral truth from the realm of the knowable, do the same. However, there is still more that I can and should say in order to counter the kind of moral skepticism that drives both moral relativism and non-cognitivism and seeks to undermine the secular university’s efforts to educate for moral knowledge. Rather than offering a new argument, however, in defense of the secular university’s moral educative efforts, I will build on the argument I have been making since the third chapter of the book. Here is my main argument: the secular university committed to promoting truly liberal learning can and should educate for wisdom; wisdom includes knowledge of what the good life is and how to live that life; therefore, the secular university committed to promoting truly liberal learning can and should seek to help its citizenry attain knowledge of what the good life is and how to live that life – that is, an objectively good, and hence moral human life. I already have defended the first premise in previous chapters; but what can I now say in defense of the second premise and the kind of knowledge of which it speaks? Is this kind of knowledge an essential component of wisdom, and if so, what does it look like? To start, consider the following argument, which I am adapting from Dennis Whitcomb.20 Two persons, A and B, possess equal amounts of the kind of wisdom that I have been discussing and defending in this book: theoretical wisdom, which is the deepest knowledge that any liberal learner can attain. Whitcomb calls this kind of knowledge “the best non-practical knowledge.” Now say that A possesses knowledge of how to live well – what Whitcomb calls “the best practical knowledge” – but B does not. (Or perhaps B possesses very little of this knowledge, or much less of it than A). Is A wiser than B? Perhaps we would be inclined to say that A is not really wiser than B, since both already possess theoretical wisdom: the best kind of knowledge there is, period. However, A still has premium knowledge – indeed, the best practical knowledge – that B does not, which we must take into account in evaluating their respective epistemic standings. Thus, we could say the following: while A is not wiser than B in

192

Theology and moral education

respect to the theoretical wisdom both possess, A is wiser than B absolutely speaking, since A possesses knowledge of how to live well while B does not. Consequently, the truly wise person who is wise in all respects possesses both theoretical and practical wisdom. While I think that this argument gives us reason for assigning wisdom a practical and not just theoretical dimension, I think that it can be further strengthened as follows. If persons A and B both possess theoretical wisdom, which furnishes knowledge of ultimate truths, then both A and B know the truth about how to live well. Or, using Whitcomb’s terminology, any person who possesses the best theoretical knowledge also possesses the best practical knowledge. This does not just mean that if there is a truth about how to live well, then the wise person knows it. I am claiming instead that if there is such a thing as wisdom, which affords knowledge of ultimate truths, then it includes knowledge of how to live well. Put another way: one cannot be wise, in the fullest and truest sense, and fail to know how to live well. Consequently, insofar as wisdom obtains (and I have argued that it does obtain), then knowledge of how to live well also obtains. Here, I am not just stipulating that the wise person knows how to live well. I am drawing this conclusion based on the defensible claim that wisdom consists of knowledge of ultimate truths, or that realm of truth which we also have strong reason to think includes truths concerning how to live well. Let me explain. I think that there is strong reason (at least strong prima facie reason) to hold that the subject matter of the well-lived life – which I think of as the good life – is what I identified in the previous chapter as an epistemically deep subject matter. It is one of those subject matters that is the most worth knowing about for its own sake – and understanding deep truths about it also affords a deep explanatory understanding of a very wide range of valuable truths about ourselves, all of which concern or are related to living well or to living the good life. Understanding the deepest truths, or ultimate truths, concerning the well-lived life affords the deepest explanatory understanding of all truths (both deep truths and other truths as explained by deep truths) concerning the well-lived life. Wisdom, then, consists of knowledge of ultimate truths about the well-lived life – truths that not only possess supreme epistemic importance, worth knowing for their own sake, but also supreme explanatory power, since they concern the well-lived taken as a whole. Here, I should be clear about how my account of wisdom, or “the best practical knowledge,” differs from Whitcomb’s. While Whitcomb holds that there are two parts to wisdom, a theoretical and a practical part, he understands them differently from each other. Wisdom, he says, “is a twofold phenomenon concerning, on the one hand, knowledge of how to live well and, on the other hand, explanatory knowledge of the fundamental truths in a domain.”21 However, I view practical wisdom (in the current context) as a part of theoretical wisdom: the wise person knows how to live well because he has deep explanatory knowledge of fundamental or (what I call) deep truths in that domain of knowledge that concerns the well-lived life. (In this sense, what I mean here by

Theology and moral education 193 practical wisdom also differs from that virtue that Aristotle and Aquinas call prudence).22 The truly wise person, who possesses wisdom in its fullest sense, possesses the deepest knowledge of the deepest truths concerning the well-lived life, which as such affords him explanatory, ordered, and unified insight into the nature of the well-lived life as a whole. And it is because he possesses this unique, penetrating insight into the nature of the well-lived life that he knows how to live it (for how else would he know how to live well if he did not also possess a deep knowledge of what the well-lived is, taken as a whole?). As should now be apparent, the account of wisdom I am discussing and beginning to defend here closely resembles the account of wisdom that I developed and defended in previous chapters. In what follows, I will develop and defend this account even further, so that I fully can defend my claim that educating for wisdom consists of educating for moral knowledge – in fact, the best kind of moral knowledge. Let’s begin by reflecting on the kind of knowledge that the wise person possesses. Whitcomb denies that what he calls practical wisdom consists of “those beliefs and understandings that are essential to living well” on the grounds that “plausibly, there are multiple sets of beliefs (or understandings etc.) such that possessing any of one of those sets of beliefs (or understandings etc.) is sufficient for living well, given that all of the extra-doxastic conditions for living well are also met.”23 So while Whitcomb remains agnostic about whether wisdom consists of beliefs or understandings (or both), he also thinks of living well as being broad enough in scope to include multiple sets of beliefs and / or understandings about living well. I claim the following: while the wise person has insight into what living well consists in, the unwise person does not. And I use the word “insight” here intentionally: insofar as the knowledge that the wise person possesses bears on the whole of his life, as well as the whole of any human life, then it seems that the wise person’s knowledge cannot be reduced to an aggregate of true beliefs. Therefore, even if the wise person possesses true beliefs about what the well-lived life consists in, he also will understand how the truth of his beliefs bears on or relates to actually living well. And this, in turn, requires that he understand what he believes: the clearer and stronger the apprehension he has of what living well objectively consists in, the clearer and stronger the apprehension he will have of not just how to live well, but also how to live the best kind of human life. What, then, is the content of the knowledge that the wise person possesses? According to Whitcomb, “[i]f one knows how to live well, then, one thereby knows both (a) of at least some of the sets of ends the fulfilling of which is sufficient for living well, that the fulfilling of those sets of ends is sufficient for living well, and (b) of at least some of the means sufficient for bringing about those sets of ends, that those means are sufficient for bringing about those sets of ends.”24 However, we need to ask: which sets of ends do we need to attain in order to live well, and which means are sufficient for bringing about those sets of ends? If, as Whitcomb says, “there is no set of beliefs (or understandings, etc.) that is essential to living the best life,” does that entail that any and all sets

194

Theology and moral education

are equally valid?25 Whitcomb seems to deny this, or at least should deny this: it is very difficult if not impossible to separate a conception of living well from a conception of living a good life, both individually and communally, unless one makes this separation arbitrarily. A well-lived life, therefore, cannot take just any shape but must have certain, objective contours; put another way, a welllived life conforms to an objective or truthful standard for what living well consists in, while a life that is not well-lived fails to conform to that standard. Now, while it may seem difficult to determine what this standard is, in fact, it is not when we reflect on the fact that it is an objective standard that therefore applies to all of us – the “all” here picking out not what is unique to us as individuals but rather what is common to us as human beings. I contend, then, that a person who knows how to live well also possesses knowledge of what the good life as an objectively good human life is, or those truths (if there are more than one) that illuminate for us how to live genuinely good lives as human beings. “Good” is, of course, a value term or concept that I think not only expresses a favorable attitude towards those things that we deem “good,” but actually refers to things that we typically observe meeting a particular standard of flourishing or success. Granted, there are other ways to define “goodness,” and yet thinking of it in this way, as denoting a standard of flourishing or success, not only is intelligible but also leaves room for further reflection on, as well as debate about, what flourishing or success amounts to for the kinds of things or actions we deem good. Accordingly, I hold that those truths that the wise person knows include any truths that specify or help specify what it takes for a human being to flourish or succeed qua human being, both in terms of his own person and as someone who exists in relation to his fellow human beings. In this sense, the wise person also knows those truths, or at least a wide range of truths, that tell us what it takes for human beings to flourish or succeed not just as individuals but also as members of a community, including the human community writ large. The deepest truths, or ultimate truths, that the truly wise person knows specify on the deepest level what it takes for human beings to flourish or succeed both on an individual and communal level. In short, they specify (or at least help specify) what is ultimately good for human beings. Surely, then, the wise person who knows what is ultimately good for human beings knows moral truths, since in my mind (and the minds of my main philosophical influences) morality is most broadly concerned with what the good life is for human beings, and so consists of doing the good that brings about flourishing or success for ourselves and others qua human beings. But to be truly wise, he also will need to possess knowledge of those ultimate truths, moral and otherwise, that most deeply illuminate the nature of the good life: truths concerning human nature, the human condition, the meaning and purpose of human existence, and even the nature of ultimate reality itself, insofar as knowledge of ultimate reality most deeply illuminates the nature of the good life. It is by virtue of wisely understanding these ultimate truths that he wisely understands the complex subject matter that they most deeply illuminate: the

Theology and moral education 195 good life itself, properly understood not as a disparate collection of parts but rather as an ordered, unified whole. Thus, extending the conception of wisdom that I developed and defended in previous chapters, I am arguing that the truly wise person knows the truth – or we could say, the Truth – about the good life. And it is by virtue of knowing the Truth about the good life that the wise person also understands how that life can and should be lived, both within the context of his own life and the lives of others. As it turns out, then, the person who has wise insight into the nature of reality as a whole also will have wise insight into the nature of the good life as a whole: his knowledge of the True also gives him knowledge of the Good. But what is “the Good”? In its primary sense, the Good is the Truth, or set of ultimate truths, the knowledge of which most deeply illuminates for us what the good life is and how to live such a life. But since those truths concern what is ultimately good for us as human beings, in a secondary and broader sense, the Good also serves as a goal at which we aim the whole of our lives, so that we can live genuinely good lives. This is, of course, a generic description of the Good. On a more specific level, how one conceives of the Good will vary depending on one’s intellectual worldview. Perhaps most obviously (given the role of the Good in Plato’s thought), the Good may be a Platonic Form, or transcendent source of value – even a transcendent God.26 In this sense, knowledge of the Good consists of knowledge of ultimate truths about what is ultimately good, in a distinctly metaphysical sense; and is by knowing the Good that the wise person also knows the good life in the fullest and deepest way as reflective of the Good. For a metaphysical naturalist, on the other hand, who denies the existence of any immaterial or transcendent reality, the Good may consist of ultimate truths about how we should live that are in turn informed or determined by further, ultimate truths about our human nature, or distinctly human needs and interests.27 Within either framework one could further argue, as we saw Rorty argue above on pragmatic, utilitarian grounds, that the Good consists of meeting ever-increasing human needs and alleviating ever-increasing human suffering. Or, one could argue along Kantian lines that realizing the Good consists of safeguarding and promoting the Humanity (human dignity) in ourselves and in others, which in turn requires fulfilling some important moral duties to ourselves and others.28 Regardless, knowledge of the Good, whatever the Good may be, gives us explanatory, ordered, and unified insight into the nature of the good life as a whole and the direction that we need in order to live that life. We are now in a position to draw what I think is a reasonable conclusion about the secular university’s truly liberal wisdom-seeking efforts. Without embracing any one conception of the Good, the secular university committed to educating for wisdom can and should educate for knowledge of the Good, or the knowledge of those ultimate truths that not are only are worth knowing for their own sakes but which secular-university constituents also need in order to understand the good life as a whole. It is by understanding the good life as a whole that these constituents will be the most fully equipped to live objectively good lives, and help others to do the same. And the main way the secular

196

Theology and moral education

university educates for knowledge of the Good is by providing a plurality of viable epistemic and educative avenues for its citizenry to traverse in order to attain knowledge of the Good. The more of these avenues that it provides, the more the secular university increases its ability to furnish that knowledge. And the more it increases its ability to furnish that knowledge, the more positively, directly, and fully the secular university morally educates its citizenry. Although this conclusion should strike us as reasonable, given what I have been arguing in this chapter, I imagine that it may still strike some as inconsistent, or at least odd. First, in order to pursue knowledge of the Good, doesn’t the secular university have to commit itself to the existence of the Good, whatever its actual identity may be? And if so, isn’t the secular university taking a definitive stance on the existence of certain truths about the good life for human beings that at least some (perhaps many) within the secular university will contend simply do not exist? To be sure, by committing to educate for wisdom in all of its dimensions, the secular university also commits itself to educating for knowledge of the Good, since (based on what I have been arguing in this section) knowledge of the Good is an essential component of wisdom. And it is impossible for the secular university to pursue such knowledge without also holding that there is at least some ultimate truth about the good life that can be known, however minimal that truth (and the knowledge of it) may be. However, holding that there is at least some knowable truth about the good life is fully compatible with taking as broad and inclusive an epistemic and educative stance on the nature of the Good as possible – a stance that the secular university in fact must take, not only so that it does not unjustifiably exclude any viable perspectives on the nature of the Good but also so that it provides its citizenry all viable, rational means for inquiring about, and ideally gaining knowledge of, the Good. In fact, even those within the secular university who continue to doubt or deny that there is any knowledge of the Good, or who doubt or deny that wisdom affords any knowledge of the Good, implicitly hold to at least one ultimate truth: that there is no Good, or that it is empty of any objective, truthful content concerning the good life for human beings. These constituents certainly remain free to argue for their negative conception of the Good – and what human living ought to look like in light of it – as part of the secular university’s broader wisdom-seeking efforts. But it would be unfair, and moreover unreasonable, for these constituents to prevent the secular university from supporting and even encouraging wisdom-seeking efforts dedicated to exploring and ideally attaining a fuller, richer knowledge of the Good. Were the secular university not to explore a fuller, richer knowledge Good, then it would fail to carry out its primary epistemic and educative mission of helping all of its citizenry attain wisdom. There is a second main objection that one could advance against my conclusion that the secular university should be invested in pursuing knowledge of the Good. While engaging in multifaceted intellectual inquiry within secular academic life is efficacious for gaining and growing in knowledge of the True, one could

Theology and moral education 197 argue that it is not efficacious for gaining and growing in knowledge of the Good. How does engaging in the study of physics, or biology, or economics, or history afford any insight into the nature of the Good or the good life? In addition, one could argue, aren’t basic moral truths about what is good for human beings either immediately cognitively accessible or at least cognitively accessible after some minimal reflection on human nature and experience?29 And doesn’t gaining knowledge of the good life require actually living life, or accruing sufficient life experience, rather than engaging in academic study? If so, why should we think that engaging in sustained academic study is at all necessary for attaining such wisdom? I’ll address the latter set of questions first. While I fully admit that one does not need an academic education in order to gain moral knowledge, and that one’s knowledge of how to live well is in fact deepened and strengthened by actually living life – or accruing significant, informative life experiences – I do think that engaging in specifically academic study is conducive for attaining the deepest moral knowledge or knowledge of the good life that wisdom affords. There is an obvious and large epistemic difference, for example, between knowing that it is wrong to torture and knowing why it is wrong to torture, and moreover, knowing how and why torture is a violation of justice, let alone what kinds of justice there are or even what justice itself is, as well as how and why living justly fits into a larger picture of human flourishing. While someone certainly could come to possess the former kind of knowledge (that torture is wrong) without engaging in any serious, sustained academic study, gaining the latter kind of knowledge (how and why torture is an injustice, how to prevent injustices like torture and live a just human life overall, etc.) does require engaging in more serious and sustained academic study, and specifically serious, sustained intellectual inquiry directed on a profounder understanding of the Good. Granted, having gained that understanding – say, having gained a proper understanding of justice and what a just human life as a flourishing human life is – one still needs to go out and live that life, and living that life, as well as observing how others live that life, will afford one experiential knowledge that one otherwise lacked before living it or observing others live it. However, one still needs the wisdom one has gained through study to understand the import of those life experiences for a just, good life and how those experiences, as properly understood, contribute to (or as the case may be, fail to contribute to) the justice, and hence goodness, of one’s life as a whole and others’ lives taken as a whole. Concerning the first main question: while I will not discuss the role that specific disciplines play in affording knowledge of the Good, and hence the good life, I will comment briefly, as a way of segueing into the next section of the chapter, on why liberal intellectual inquiry of the sort that occurs within the secular university is – or more pointedly, should be – directed on affording such knowledge. Knowing the Good consists of knowing ultimate truths that can illuminate, in the deepest way, who we human beings are so that we in turn can discern what it means to live an objectively good human life. Thus, the deeper the understanding that I have of ultimate truths concerning human nature, the

198

Theology and moral education

human condition, human flourishing, etc., the deeper the understanding that I have of what it means for me and others to live life in objectively good and fulfilling ways. But it is precisely this deep understanding of ultimate truths that a truly liberal course of academic study should aim to engender, and, given all of the epistemic and educative resources at its disposal, is most equipped to engender. Moreover, knowledge of the Good bears on all of the knowledgeand truth-seeking that goes on within the disciplines. Once liberal learners have gained significant knowledge of the truth about ourselves and our world by engaging in multidisciplinary study, they still need knowledge of the Good in order to know how and why to use that knowledge in living an objectively good life, and more broadly know how and why that knowledge relates to living an objectively good human life. To be sure, not every discipline within the secular university will contribute equally to generating knowledge of the Good (though all disciplines certainly benefit from possessing it); and, as I will argue shortly, it behooves the secular university committed to moral education to include and even promote disciplines like Christian theology that are especially adept at generating it. Nevertheless, given the overarching epistemic and educative importance of gaining knowledge of the Good, and how comprehensive such knowledge is, then every discipline within the secular university has at least some part to play in helping secular-university citizenry acquire it.

Theology, wisdom, and moral education in the secular university My argument so far is that the primary way for the secular university to morally educate its citizenry is by educating for wisdom and the knowledge of the Good that wisdom provides. Or, as I also have been saying, by educating for the deepest knowledge of the True, the secular university also educates for the deepest knowledge of the Good. What this also means, as I argued in previous chapters, is that the secular university needs to offer academic programs, or viable lines of intellectual inquiry, that are specifically conducive for helping secular-university citizenry, especially liberal learners within it, acquire knowledge of the True and the Good. And this, in turn, requires offering programs of study that are specifically geared towards cultivating what I identified in previous chapters as the contemplative dimension of reason: the capacity to reason critically and virtuously about deep truths and the deep epistemic subject matters that those truths concern. It is by reasoning contemplatively about the Good as well as the True that liberal learners within the secular university will develop (or at least have the best chance of developing) the intellectual habits and ultimately the virtuous disposition mind – the virtue of wisdom itself – needed to understand the Good, and hence the nature of the good life as reflective of the Good. Also, in the last chapter, I argued that independent of whatever one might believe about Christian theology’s divine origin and aim, it not only is possible but also (at least minimally) reasonable to view Christian theological study, and the virtuously critical, contemplative reasoning that constitutes it as able to

Theology and moral education 199 generate knowledge of the truth about the divine (or divine matters, as the epistemically deepest subject matters) and all other truth as related to the truth about the divine. Consequently, it is also reasonable to view theological study as capable of generating a genuine theological wisdom. Since, as I have argued in this chapter, wisdom consists of knowledge of the Good as well as the True, then it is also reasonable to view theological study as capable of generating knowledge of the Good. In what follows, then, I unpack how theological study can generate knowledge of the Good for liberal learners engaging in virtuously critical, contemplative reasoning about God as the Good. Consistent with what I argued in the last chapter, I do not lay out a definitive pathway within theology that leads ineluctably towards knowledge of the Good, but rather the kind of pathway within theology that is available for liberal learners to take as they pursue knowledge of the Good. So in the end, even if one still thinks that engaging in theological study is not conducive for attaining wisdom concerning the Good, at the very least one can and should see how theological study facilitates the pursuit of this dimension of wisdom, whatever one thinks its actual content is or may be. To start, studying Christian theology as an exercise in wisdom-seeking consists of critically and virtuously tracking, evaluating, and even employing various kinds of demonstrative and dialectical reasoning that theologians, working from broader epistemic starting points, use in the realm of natural theology in order to establish the truth about God’s existence as the Good, or the highest and supreme good, in both a metaphysical and moral sense. Aquinas, for example, argues that since there is a gradation of value found in finite things (some things are more or less “good, true, noble, and the like”) then there must be “something which is truest, something best, something noblest, and, consequently, something which is uttermost being” that is the source and cause of value in those things.30 In a similar vein, Frederick Copleston (in his famous debate with Bertrand Russell) claimed “that the perception of values and the consciousness of moral law and obligation are best explained through the hypothesis of a transcendent ground of value and of an author of the moral law.”31 Here, Copleston uses dialectical reasoning to argue for the existence of “a transcendent ground of value” and “an author of the moral law,” but it is also possible (though of course much more difficult) to employ demonstrative reasoning to argue that God is a necessary condition for the existence of phenomena like the perception of values and the consciousness of moral law: since these phenomena exist, then God also must exist (a transcendental argument). In either of these cases, making a successful argument for the existence of a moral God given the existence of phenomena like the perception of values and consciousness of moral law (and even more strongly, the existence of values and a moral law) requires explaining how God is a necessary condition for, or the best explanation of, their existence – which in turn requires showing how competing metaphysical alternatives, like naturalism, have an impossible, or at least difficult, time explaining how purely contingent and valueless natural processes could produce or sustain a world in which they exist.

200

Theology and moral education

Although it obviously goes well beyond what I can do here to analyze moral arguments for God’s existence in any significant detail, I still think that there is significant epistemic value in engaging in the type of reasoning needed to generate arguments for God’s existence as the Good (demonstrative and dialectical reasoning), which in turn also means that there is significant epistemic value in critically and virtuously tracking, evaluating, and even employing that reasoning as an integral part of theological wisdom-seeking. In fact, the more of these arguments that liberal learners critically and virtuously engage, the more likely they are to discover real, substantive reasons for thinking that God as the Good exists (or at least, that it is reasonable to believe that God as the Good exists). Of course, in order to acquire further reasons for thinking that God as the Good exists, they also will need to critically and virtuously track, evaluate, and even employ the reasoning that theologians use both to defend these moral arguments and respond to potential defeaters (like the existence of evil in the world) for the conclusion that they claim to generate. However, insofar as they do acquire at least some of these reasons, then they make definitive progress in gaining knowledge of God as the Good. Moreover, insofar as they discover the efficacy of engaging in reasoning about God’s existence as the Good, they obtain a further rationale for pursuing other kinds of reasoning, in the realms of both natural and revealed theology, which theologians claim are conducive for further elucidating who God is as the Good and how it is possible to live genuinely good lives in relation to God as the Good. Consider, then, some of the ways that are open to liberal learners to track, evaluate, and even employ clarificatory reasoning about God’s nature as the Good in Christian theology. According to Anselm, since God is “whatever it is better to be than not to be,” then God not only must be perfectly powerful and wise but also perfectly just and merciful.32 However, in his Proslogion, Anselm engages in the further, necessary theological exercise of not only showing that God is good, just, and merciful but also showing how God is good, just, and merciful.33 So, for example, Anselm argues that God’s perfect goodness requires that God punish those who commit evil (which corrupts being and goodness) just as he rewards those for doing good; however, perfect goodness also requires sparing or saving (justly and mercifully) those who do evil in order to make them good. “For he who is good to both good and wicked,” Anselm writes, “is better than he who is good only to the good. And he who is good to the wicked by both punishing and sparing them is better than he who is good to the wicked only by punishing them.”34 Anselm also appeals to the nature of divine justice itself in order to show that there is no ultimate conflict between divine justice and mercy: by sparing the wicked, God is just or true to his own nature “as the supreme good.”35 Barth also engages in clarificatory reasoning about the God as the Good, though as an exercise in revealed theology. He argues that since we cannot divorce God’s being from God’s doing (self-revelation), then God’s being cannot be separated from God’s loving in perfect freedom, both within God’s self as a Trinity of persons and towards human beings: “God is not, therefore,

Theology and moral education 201 the Good first, and then the One who loves,” Barth writes, “because He does not keep this Good to Himself but communicates it to others. God is the One who loves, and as such the Good and the sum of all good things.”36 In enumerating the “perfections” of divine love, Barth discusses three dialectically paired sets of attributes (reflecting God’s full nature as loving and free):37 (1) divine grace (“the very essence of the being of God” by which God freely “seeks and creates fellowship between Himself and us”)38 and holiness (by which God judges and overcomes sinful resistance to God);39 (2) mercy (which “lies in His readiness to share in sympathy the distress of another”)40 and righteousness (by which God “wills and expresses and establishes what corresponds to His own worth”);41 and (3) patience (God’s will to allow another to exist and develop in freedom) and wisdom (by which God measures out his loving activity with “correctness and completeness, so that it is an intelligent and to that extent a reliable and liberating activity”).42 Like Anselm, Barth not only enumerates these attributes but also aims to show how they are mutually entailing, since they all subsist together “in the plenitude of [God’s] being.”43 Specifically, Barth says that by adhering to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ (and thus letting God teach us about himself), “specific relations gradually emerge between His perfections, not in spite of the fact that in each of them He is no less wholly Himself than in all the others, but just because of it.”44 I claim that the kind of clarificatory reasoning that Anselm and Barth engage in here also has a definitive, positive epistemic value. On a most basic level, any true conception of the Good must be internally consistent, and so theologians can and should show how theological propositions about God’s good nature – which of course, cannot possibly reveal the inexhaustible reality of divine goodness – nevertheless are not only intelligible taken by themselves but also constitute a consistent set, and, more than that, mutually inform and support one another. On another level, the more success theologians have in clarifying theological propositions about God’s nature as the Good, the better able they are to elucidate the kind of goodness that is supposed to characterize the good life, and the so the better able they are to make sense of the good life as a moral life that instantiates real values such as love, justice, mercy, and holiness, which have their ultimate ontological basis in God’s own nature. Thus, the more students of theology uncover clarificatory reasons supporting theological truth-claims about God’s nature as the Good, and so the good life as reflective of God’s nature as the Good, the more we intelligibly can interpret them as making positive steps in theological wisdom-seeking. Of course, taking these positive epistemic steps will require correctly determining that theologians like Anselm and Barth have, in fact, individually or jointly clarified theological propositions concerning the divine nature. It also will require comparing their clarificatory work with that of other theologians in order to determine where the most successful or penetrating clarificatory reasoning within theology about God’s good nature, or the full array of divine moral attributes, lies. Recall that a further part aspect of clarificatory reasoning within Christian theology consists of showing how theological propositions not only are

202

Theology and moral education

consistent with true, or at least very well-grounded, non-theological propositions, and stand to be informed by them, but also how they illuminate true, or at least very well-grounded, non-theological propositions. A central part of wisdomseeking in the study of theology therefore consists of critically and virtuously tracking, evaluating, and even employing the ways that theologians employ clarificatory reasoning in order to illuminate true, or at least very well-grounded, propositions about the moral realm. Insofar as theological study in the realms of both natural and revealed theology genuinely illuminates, and so accounts for, discernible and desirable features of the good life as a moral life, and so helps wisdom-thinkers better understand the good life as a moral life on the basis of specifically theological principles, then it further assists the liberal learner’s efforts to gain knowledge of the Good, and so also further supports interpreting the liberal learner’s wisdom-seeking efforts within theology as conducive for attaining knowledge of the Good. Take, for example, the true, or at least very well-grounded (and widely endorsed) proposition that there are inherent human rights. Ultimately, explaining how and why there are inherent human rights requires explaining how and why human beings have the high dignity or worth in which those rights inhere. Classically, theologians have claimed that the theological and more narrowly biblical truth-claim that human beings are divine image-bearers, who therefore share in a finite way in God’s own nature and goodness (and so God’s infinite value), best accounts for high human dignity or worth.45 But there are other ways of doing so as well. Wolterstorff argues that it is because human beings bear the property of being loved by God (with what Wolterstorff calls “attachment” love, or a love that bonds one to loved objects and persons) that all human beings possess a high dignity and worth (bestowed by God’s loving us) in which natural human rights in turn inhere.46 And it is because we all have natural human rights – what Wolterstorff defines as “normative bonds between oneself and the other”47 – that we in turn are bound to secure for one another the various goods to which we have rights, all of which contribute to the wellbeing or “well-going” (flourishing) of our lives.48 Importantly, Wolterstorff also argues that if human beings do not possess the property of being loved by God then there must be some other property (or achievement, or relationship) on which the level of worth needed to sustain human rights supervenes. For Wolterstorff, most non-theistic accounts inevitably fail at specifying that property – at best, they pick out some non-universal capacity (like reason) on which worth supervenes – and as such, they are unable to account for a worth possessed by all human beings and so also truly universal human rights. In addition to illuminating more readily discernible and desirable features of the good life, a viable conception of the Good may very well reveal to us the deepest features of the good life, or the deepest truths concerning the good life, which we would not be able to recognize on our own. After all, we should expect the knowledge of the Good that the wise person possesses to make ultimate sense of the good life. But making ultimate sense of the good life for human beings requires making ultimate sense of human existence, and making ultimate

Theology and moral education 203 sense of human existence is not something that we would expect even the most ardent wisdom-seeker necessarily to be able to accomplish by herself, relying solely on her own cognitive powers and epistemic resources. She will need to rely on the help of others, especially those who claim to possess wisdom, even if they inhabit worldviews different from her own. For the true wisdom-seeker, then, making ultimate sense of human existence, and so the good life for human beings, requires exploring particular metaphysical and moral frameworks, including religious ones, and so critically and virtuously tracking, evaluating, and even employing the various lines of rational inquiry concerning the Good that they claim to provide. Recall that from a Christian theological perspective, the ultimate truth about human existence is not the reality of sin, suffering, and death – though, of course, that these phenomena exist is a truth theology readily professes and traditionally has sought to explain in light of the ultimate truth about our fallen condition. The ultimate truth about human existence is the reality of the triune God’s saving goodness and love, which redeems human beings from sin, suffering, and death and so enables them to attain a lasting happiness with God. So, from a theological perspective, clarifying this ultimate truth-claim – which we never could establish on our own, and so come to know or discover on our own – is essential to gaining the deepest understanding of the good life as a God-aimed life. Thus, in addition to all of the other reasons that are at least potentially available for the wisdom-seeker to acquire as she engages in theological study, she also has a distinct reason for critically and virtuously tracking, evaluating, and even employing the full range of reasoning that theologians use to gain full knowledge of the Good, and the good life as a life fully directed on God as the Good. It is by engaging in this reasoning that she puts herself in the best epistemic position to understand the good life in the light that her clarified understanding of the full range of theological truth-claims provides. Like all forms of Christian theological reasoning, clarificatory theological reasoning about God’s salvific work can and does take various forms. For example, Athanasius claims that the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, became incarnate both in order to overcome the power of death, along with physical corruption, which has beset the human race since the Fall, and infuse human nature itself with divinizing power and goodness so that human beings might live a resurrected, everlasting life with God. In short: God “assumed humanity that we might become God.”49 For Aquinas, it is out of goodness that God unites human nature to himself in order to communicate his goodness to the human creature to the highest possible degree.50 Thus, all of Christ’s life, culminating in his passion, death, and resurrection, serves this end, even though Christ’s suffering and dying play an indispensable role (as they do for Anselm) in freeing human beings from sin and also meriting for us the grace, or divine aid, we need to attain the supernatural blessedness, eternal life with God, for which God created us.51 In modern theology, Tillich reinterprets classical Christian claims about the incarnation and atonement (as well as sin and the Fall) in order to address what he diagnoses as the most fundamental problem

204

Theology and moral education

with the human condition: estrangement from God. According to Tillich, Christ is the bearer of “New Being” who overcame existential estrangement in his own life so that we too can participate in the power of New Being and thereby reunite with those from whom we are estranged: not only God but also others, and even ourselves (insofar as we experience estrangement from our essential selves). In this sense, Tillich says, salvation or existential healing (reuniting with God, others, and ourselves) brings about what other theologians historically have argued it brings about: “above all, the fulfillment of the ultimate meaning of one’s existence.”52 For the liberal learner critically and virtuously engaging such clarificatory reasoning, advancing towards (what Christians claim is) the ultimate truth about the fully redeemed and so fully good life therefore requires correctly determining whether theologians like Athanasius, Aquinas, and Tillich have, in fact, afforded a clear conception of it. And this, in turn, requires comparing their clarificatory work with each other and that of other theologians in order to determine where the most successful or penetrating clarificatory reasoning about divine incarnation and atonement lies. This does not necessarily require renouncing any of the clarificatory insights that particular theologians provide or disavowing that it is possible to view these divine matters, characterized by what McIntosh calls an inescapable “depth and mysteriousness,” from multiple, overlapping theological angles, which are not only consistent with one another but also mutually supportive and informative.53 Salvation can consist of both divinization and existential healing, for example (the latter being caused by and following from the former). However, it is difficult to make full sense of salvation if, as Tillich suggests, it is a theological reality that we only can symbolize but not actually describe. It also seems difficult to make full sense of salvation as reconciliation with God if it is not also something that Christ as God actually carried out on our behalf – something that Tillich denies. Thus, critically and virtuously engaging these various forms of clarificatory reasoning, especially insofar as they purport to elucidate the deepest truth about the fully good life as a God-redeemed life, also requires employing clarificatory reasoning for corrective purposes: determining where lingering ambiguities, inconsistencies, and even errors in a theologian’s clarificatory reasoning about the “depth and mysteriousness” of God’s salvific work lies, so as better to determine where the clearest conception (or conceptions) of the ultimate truth-claim about divine salvation actually lies. While Christian theological reasoning, like any reasoning about the Good, is speculative, especially insofar as it aims to make ultimate sense of the good life as a whole, it also seeks to make sense of what the good life as a God-aimed life looks like and so how it ought to unfold on a practical level. Theological study as rational inquiry into the nature of the good life as reflective of the Good consists of critically and virtuously tracking, evaluating, and even employing the various ways that theologians seek to clarify the topography of not just the moral life but also what we might call the spiritual life, or the life of grace – the God-aimed life – especially in light of ultimate truth-claims about

Theology and moral education 205 God and our relationship to God. For example, Aquinas, and those who follow Aquinas (particularly within the Roman Catholic tradition), develop and defend a moral theology or theological ethics in light of the ultimate truth-claim that human beings have a “final end”: the beatitude (beatitudo) or perfect happiness – knowing and loving God for all eternity in heaven – that is “the ultimate good of the person,” and at which the entirety of the moral and spiritual life, as a life redeemed by God, is aimed.54 For Aquinas, persons who live this life possess and exercise not only the full range of moral virtues, and especially prudence, justice, courage, and temperance, but also the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love – the last-named of which, as the “form” of all the virtues, organizes and directs the whole of the moral and spiritual life.55 The good life is also a life governed and guided by both the moral law (or “natural law”) and divine law, and especially the “new law,” or the law of the gospel, which consists chiefly in the grace of the Spirit of Christ that human beings need in order to live and act, above all in love, in right relation to God and to one another. As is the case with any moral philosophical system, determining whether a moral theological system like Aquinas’s accurately lays out the topography of the good life, and so affords a true understanding of the good life, is no easy task. However, any viable system, theological or otherwise, which purports to disclose the truth about the good life, in addition to possessing internal clarity and consistency, and an ability to account for discernible and desirable features of the good life as a moral life, should be practically borne out by those who live by its principles. This does not mean that a true conception of the good life is straightforwardly verified by those who follow its principles, because of course, there are many bad moral systems (like Nazism) that have, and have had, many followers. However, it seems reasonable to think that a true conception of the good life is practicable, and as such would be visible in the lives of those who, across space and time, and so in a comprehensive and enduring way, aim to live by its principles and do so successfully, albeit imperfectly. Or, put another way, it seems reasonable to expect that a true conception of the good life will not just exist in theory but also be sustained by those who, having discovered it, practice it in the fullest possible way, in a visible moral community. As Stanley Hauerwas argues, the best moral life, or at least the “fuller account of the moral life” that he says “[m]any philosophers and theologians are calling for,” cannot be sustained merely by individuals because “moral geniuses are never sufficient to sustain our best moral convictions.”56 Instead, “[for] such sustenance we need a community to direct attention toward, and sustain the insights of, those who have become more nearly good.”57 And so, “[to] say more about morality requires not simply a conception of the good, but a tradition that carries the virtues necessary for training in movement towards the good.”58 From a Christian theological perspective, it is in the moral and spiritual community called the Church that God communicates the grace of Christ (for many Christians, above all in the sacramental rites of the Church) so that the members of the Church, healed of sin and empowered by divine grace, can move towards the Good and so live the good life to the hilt (as far as is possible

206

Theology and moral education

in this life) – a life lived in loving communion with God and with each other. Consequently, a “thick” theological conception of the good life will be buttressed by the sort of clarificatory reasoning that both illuminates and is illuminated by Christian practice within the Church, especially when Christian practice enriches theological understanding about how the good life not only ought to be lived but actually can be lived, has been lived, and is being lived as it ought to be. There is, then, a further kind of clarificatory reasoning that wisdom-seekers in theology can and should employ in testing the viability of a moral theological system: critically and virtuously tracking, evaluating, and even employing the ways theologians correlate theological propositions about the good life with true, or at least well-grounded, propositions about the practices of the Christian Church and the lives of those who claim to be living the good life within the Church. In so doing, wisdom-seekers open themselves to acquiring further reasons in support of the Christian theological conception of the good life, or at the very least, reasons for thinking that living the good life requires inhabiting (in Hauerwas’s words) “a tradition that carries the virtues necessary for training in movement towards the good.” At this point, it is worth taking stock of what I have been arguing in this section of the chapter. I have lain out, at least in outline (and in brief), the kind of pathway that the student of Christian theology in the secular university can take in pursuing knowledge of the Good. Specifically, there are definitive rational routes within theology for (1) establishing the existence of God as the Good; (2) elucidating theological truth-claims about God’s nature as the Good; (3) illuminating discernible and desirable features of the good life as the moral life in light of theological truth-claims about both God’s nature as the Good and our relationship to God as the Good; (4) making ultimate sense of the good life as a God-aimed and God-directed life in the light of clarified theological truthclaims about God’s salvific work; and finally (5) gaining full insight into the nature of the good life as a God-aimed and God-directed life, both as it ought to lived and (ideally) is being lived out within God’s Church on a practical level. Now, I have made no claim about whether these rational routes actually lead to knowledge of the Good, or a theological wisdom concerning the good life. However, since I already have argued that it is reasonable to view the virtuously critical, contemplative reasoning about the True that goes on within theology as conducive for attaining theological knowledge and truth, then it is reasonable to view the virtuously critical, contemplative reasoning about the Good that goes on within theology as conducive for attaining theological knowledge and truth. The more that the student of theology critically and virtuously tracks, evaluates, and even employs all of this reasoning as part of a unified effort in wisdomseeking concerning the Good, the more apt he will be to acquire genuine reasons for thinking that the theological conception of the Good and so the good life is true, and the better able we will be to picture him as acquiring knowledge of the Good. Consider once again, then, a hypothetical liberal learner who has engaged in significant contemplative reasoning about the Good within Christian theology,

Theology and moral education 207 under the pedagogical direction of theologians past and present. The reasoned theological truth-claim that God is the ultimate source of all goodness and value (love, justice, mercy, etc.) along with the moral law that she finds herself under, explains for her how and why there is the value that she perceives in the universe, how and why the good life instantiates those values, and how and why she and others ought to live that life, as ruled and measured by God’s good law for it. She also understands why human beings possess a high dignity or worth, and how they have come to possesses it; and so also how and why living the good life (and so being loving, just, and merciful, etc.) requires protecting and promoting human dignity, in herself and others. In light of her reasoned understanding of the truth-claim about the triune God’s salvific work in human history, she also sees how to make ultimate sense of the good life as a meaningful and purposeful life, which God has redeemed from sin, suffering, and even death, and which in turn affords those who live it an ultimate, lasting happiness. Having critically and virtuously engaged moral theological reasoning, and acquired a reasoned understanding of theological truth-claims about the topography of the moral and spiritual life as a God-aimed life, she also possesses a concrete understanding of how to live that life, both individually and communally, alongside those who are moving (however slowly) towards God as the Good and thereby becoming fully good. In the end, then, as a result of engaging in significant contemplative reasoning about the Good within Christian theology, she possesses the deep understanding of the good life characteristic of wisdom and so also a deep understanding of how to live that life. As a result, she also possesses the virtue of wisdom: that good disposition of mind that enables her to understand the good life and how to live in light of those ultimate truths about the good life that she also understands with the requisite clarity and strength. Now, one could argue that this liberal learner at best has gained an understanding of the good life, or how the good life can be understood from a Christian theological perspective. However, we also should be careful about underselling the epistemic and educative achievement that she has made. Presuming that this liberal learner has, at minimum, gained the kind of deep understanding of the good life that the truly wise person possesses, then there is at least some rational basis for making the stronger claim that she has, in fact, gained this understanding and not just something that approximates to it. In other words, at minimum, we should expect wise insight into the nature of the Good and so the good life to look something like the kind of explanatory, ordered, and unified insight that this liberal learner has acquired. And, since it is reasonable to interpret the contemplative theological reasoning about the Good that this liberal learner has engaged in as conducive for attaining knowledge of the Good, then it actually becomes unreasonable to claim that she could not have gained anything more than an understanding of the good life from a Christian theological perspective. Arguably, she has attained genuine wisdom concerning the good life from within a Christian theological perspective.

208

Theology and moral education

Of course, I am not suggesting that the path to attaining wisdom concerning the good life from within a Christian theological perspective is straightforward or seamless. Especially in a secular academic setting, where there are multiple and competing conceptions of the Good at play, pursuing and attaining wisdom concerning the good life most likely would and should entail engaging in contemplative reasoning about the Good using the rational resources of other philosophical and religious traditions. Moreover, coming to embrace wisdom concerning the good from within a distinctly Christian theological perspective (presuming that one does not inhabit that perspective already) would require critically and virtuously tracking, evaluating, and even employing the various ways that theologians both defend their conception of the Good (or at least central features of their conception of the Good) against potential defeaters and immanently criticize non-theological conceptions of the Good. In a secularuniversity setting, this process could play out in any number of ways; regardless, to the degree that theologians are successful in accomplishing these apologetic tasks (say, by showing how members of a wide range of non-theological worldviews all make some substantive claims about the Good that require theological justification) then they provide further rational routes for students of theology to pursue in their quest for wisdom. Finally, I don’t mean to suggest that attaining wisdom concerning the good life from within a Christian theological perspective is a once-and-for-all epistemic and educative achievement. Having undergone an intellectual conversion (which I argued in the previous chapter is an intelligible intellectual process), and so now actively understanding the good life from within a Christian theological perspective, a liberal learner like the one I just described certainly stands to grow in wisdom. I claimed above that she has come to possess the deep understanding of the good life characteristic of wisdom, which suggests both that she has gained enough depth of understanding to qualify as someone who wisely understands the good life, and that she has more room to grow in wisdom, especially since, as I have claimed throughout the book, wisdom in its fullest and truest sense affords the deepest understanding of deep epistemic subject matters like the good life. The more that this liberal learner grows in wisdom – presuming that she actively exercises this virtue – the more she not only will understand the good life in light of her ever-increasing understanding of divine truths concerning it, but she also will understand how the good life ought to be lived in ever-increasing detail. Are there other ways of reasoning towards and about the Good that, on a certain, reasonable interpretation, are productive of knowledge of the Good? I have no reason to deny that there are. My claim is not that there are no other viable ways of reasoning towards and about the Good, but only that Christian theology offers a viable way of reasoning towards and about the Good. Until someone shows otherwise, then, my conclusion still stands: Christian theological study should play an important and even prominent role in furthering the secular university’s efforts to help its constituents attain the knowledge that they need in order to live not just objectively good human lives but also the best human lives.

Theology and moral education 209

Theology, the secular university, and the common good One of my principal claims in this book is that the primary mission of the secular university is to help liberal learners attain true intellectual, and thus specifically human, flourishing. As such, the secular university’s primary task is to bring about the good of its own citizenry. But now we should ask: doesn’t the secular university also have a responsibility to further not just the good of its citizenry but also the good of the wider society (and world) in which it subsists – that is, the common good?59 And if the secular university does have specifically social responsibilities, isn’t it necessary to show how Christian theological study, once made a part of truly liberal learning within the secular university, can help the secular university fulfill those responsibilities? Perhaps it is too much to ask of any discipline that it show how it enhances the welfare both of its own practitioners and society at large. Nevertheless, I still think that it is possible for Christian theology to do this, and hence possible for Christian theology to even further justify its full inclusion within secular academic life. To start, we need to think about the role that the secular university can and should play in serving the common good. One could argue, as British theologian Mike Higton does in his book, A Theology of Higher Education, that all of the learning and specifically intellectual formation that goes on within the secular university ultimately serves and ought to serve the common good, so construed, as Higton defines it, as the “peaceable and flourishing life together.”60 Higton defends this claim on distinctly theological grounds, since he thinks that “[i]ntellectual formation is always ordered to a higher end: the formation of the peaceable eschatological unity of the Body of Christ, and the fulfillment of all creatures in it.”61 Nevertheless, Higton does not seek to establish this theological truth-claim (nor should he). He uses it instead in order to clarify or make sense of the ways in which he sees the intellectual formation that goes on in the secular university serving the common good. In particular, Higton argues that growth in intellectual virtue and participation in what he calls “intellectually sociable practices,” or virtuous forms of communal intellectual exchange, which the secular university should aim to foster, are always ordered to the common good. But fostering this kind of intellectual formation requires doing much more than simply equipping and sending out intellectually virtuous and sociable individuals to become agents of good for the world. Rather, Higton says that the secular university must participate directly in helping to “sustain, develop, and advocate virtuous and sociable intellectual practice wherever it can” within the wider society.62 While there are multifarious ways that members of the secular university can and should do this (by authoring unofficial blogs, participating in professional associations, engaging in larger forums of public debate about pressing social issues, etc.), a main way is by promoting “serious, open, inclusive, and critical argument about the good,” both within the secular university’s own walls and in the wider society (where Higton claims that virtuous and sociable intellectual engagements also ought to take place).63 Thus, he says that the secular university needs persons like

210

Theology and moral education

philosophers and theologians who not only address questions about the good as part of their disciplinary work but who also are “trained in articulating the major religious and secular traditions of thinking about the good that are ‘in play’ in our society, and who are trained in arguing together.”64 Therefore, on Higton’s view, it seems that the best way for the secular university to help realize the common good is by orienting itself towards wisdom, which Higton defines not as knowledge of the good but rather as “argument about the common good or creaturely flourishing”: the kind of argument that should occupy a central place in the secular university’s social and intellectual life.65 In response, I should say (and thus remind the reader) that I agree with Higton that intellectual formation in the secular university, including argument about the Good, should be socially and intellectually inclusive, and thus informed and even guided by Christian theological argument. Moreover, I agree that such formation is ordered to a further end: what I have identified throughout the book as knowledge, and specifically wisdom, which is knowledge in its deepest form. The question, then, becomes one of whether my claim that knowledge is an end in itself is fundamentally at odds with Higton’s claim that the common good (especially as he understands it), not knowledge (or intellectual formation), is an end in itself. It is true that knowing the Good is not the same as realizing the Good within human societies. And yet, this does not entail that knowing the Good is ordered to realizing the Good as an end beyond itself. On the contrary, I contend that knowing the Good and realizing the Good are both fulfilling for us as human beings. Or, put another way, flourishing intellectually as individual human beings and flourishing well together as human beings living in community are both constitutive of human flourishing. Since we are intellectual creatures, then attaining knowledge of the Good is intrinsically fulfilling for us. But since we are also social creatures, then realizing the Good within human society is also intrinsically fulfilling for us. Consequently, by educating for wisdom the secular university contributes directly to human flourishing, even if the knowledge that it affords does not contribute to the whole of what human flourishing is and can be. I also disagree with Higton that educating liberal learners for knowledge is somehow inferior to the direct role that the secular university and disciplines like theology can and should play in promoting the common good. Higton claims that promoting inclusive argument about the common good is the chief way that the secular university actually orients itself (and the larger society) towards the common good. As I see it, argument about the Good should occur at all levels of the secular university’s intellectual life. In fact, since in my view rational argument about the Good is ultimately ordered to knowledge of the Good, then it should be a central part of the secular university’s program of truly liberal learning, in which both educators and those whom they educate participate. The final goal here for the secular university is not merely to produce “students who have become habituated to participation in socially inclusive debate about the common good”66 but also to produce wise persons who, both individually and collectively, can help steer human communities towards the common good, or

Theology and moral education 211 the “peaceable and flourishing life together” that Higton rightly celebrates.67 What greater way is there for the secular university to promote the common good than by producing liberal learners who, in the various professional and social roles they ultimately will come to occupy, are knowledgeable about what realizing the good in human society truly requires? Therefore, I disagree with the claim that the secular university’s role in furthering the individual good of its citizenry is somehow divorced from, or merely a small part of, the larger role that it plays in furthering the common good. While it may be tempting to divorce the secular university’s educative efforts from its efforts to promote the common good, and thereby also to emphasize the ways that the secular university promotes the common good through other, non-educative means (like funding individual research programs that have some quantifiable social utility), in fact, we must instead affirm that the secular university principally (though, not exclusively) serves the common good through its educative efforts. In particular, it is by offering a truly liberal program of study that the secular university best serves the common good because that best equips those whom it educates to serve the common good. In other words, if the secular university really wants to fulfill what I do think is its responsibility to contribute to and advance the common good, then it should pour the bulk of its energy and resources into educating liberal learners in the knowledge that they need in order to advance the common good. Here again, then, we have another argument that supports the secular university’s efforts to educate its citizenry in that part of wisdom that affords knowledge of the Good. The truly wise person, by virtue of knowing the Good, knows what the good life is for human beings, who are not only individuals but also members of larger, social wholes. Accordingly, if one possesses a true understanding of the Good one also will possess a true understanding of the common good: what it is, why it is morally necessary but also difficult to achieve, as well as how to bring it about, both through one’s own moral efforts and in conjunction with the moral efforts of others. Thus, we should hope that a liberal learner armed with a true understanding of the Good will know, for example, what just human communities ought to look like, why certain communities meet (or fail to meet) what justice requires, and why the common good of any human community cannot be realized in the absence of justice. In light of this illuminating theoretical knowledge, the wise liberal learner also will know, at least to some extent, how to bring about justice within human communities, and therefore also combat the kinds of social and political conditions that work against maintaining the requisite moral standard that just human communities ought to meet. Therefore, through its educative efforts, the secular university serves the common good by enabling its citizens to acquire knowledge of what the good life is and how to live it in its specifically communal or social dimension. Now, one could argue that there still are better ways for the secular university to promote the common good – namely, forming liberal learners so that they become disposed to realize the common good concretely in the various communities of which they are and will become a part. In other words, one could

212

Theology and moral education

argue that however necessary knowledge of the common good is – because without it learners will be unable to realize the common good effectively – it is useless if it is not connected with an underlying desire or will to bring about the common good. Thus, to some, while it might seem that I rightly have emphasized the role that the secular university can and should play in educating for knowledge of the Good, I have left entirely unanswered the more important question of how the secular university also can and should instill the desire or will to put that knowledge into concrete social, political, and even global action. In response, I must remind the reader that on one level I already have answered this question: in the first section of this chapter, I claimed that the secular university cannot through its main educative efforts impart the virtues of character, or overall goodness of will, necessary to live out the moral life. And in this context, I will repeat the same claim. Educating for knowledge of the Good is a distinctly intellectual task that engenders distinctly intellectual growth. Thus, those who gain knowledge of the Good, and so the good life in its communal or social dimension, do not thereby also acquire the firm disposition of will needed to live the good life in its communal or social dimension. For that, they do need a good will that even the best education cannot provide. As such, the secular university must recognize what it cannot do in promoting the common good while still rightly celebrating what it can do: offering programs of intellectual study like Christian theology that can help liberal leaners obtain the wisdom that they need in order to promote the common good. However, there is more that I can and should say in response to the objection. First, while knowing the Good is not the same as doing the good – in the sense that such knowledge does not necessarily translate into social or political action – knowing the Good is still a part of doing the good. No human society can realize the common good if it is not genuinely aimed at the common good – and no human society can be aimed at the common good if none of its members know what the common good is and what realizing it genuinely requires. Consequently, it seems that the first step in realizing the common good, or promoting it more fully (since no human community flourishes to the fullest degree possible), requires knowing not only the truth about what the common good is but also other important truths about how best to promote it, in the various kinds and levels of human society where it is only partially realized or even altogether absent. By obtaining and then imparting this knowledge to others, secular-university citizens not only put in place the epistemic conditions needed to realize the common good. They also actually begin to realize (or more fully realize) the common good itself. Second, there is reason to think that knowing the Good still offers motivation for realizing the Good within the context of human communities.68 Here’s how I think that this works. The concept “good” denotes something that we find or recognize as desirable. In fact, we label these things “good” because we desire them. This does not mean (once again) that “good” is a feature we impose on things, based on what we desire, but it does mean that our concept of goodness is inextricably linked with and even follows from desirability, based on the fact

Theology and moral education 213 that genuinely good things are, as such, desirable. Aquinas, following the broader Augustinian tradition, says that a thing is good insofar as it is desirable, and it is desirable insofar as it is actual, or is the kind of thing that it ought to be (and so is replete with being).69 In a similar vein, Robert Adams argues that a thing is desirable insofar as it is intrinsically excellent, or has intrinsic value. Thus, he claims that “to the extent that anything is good, in the sense of ‘excellent’, it is good for us to love it, admire it, and want to be related to it, whether we do in fact or not.”70 What this means, then, is that insofar as the wise person knows the Good, he will want to realize the Good; and the better he knows the Good, the more he will want to realize the Good. Or, put another way, the better the wise person knows the Good, the more he will desire to do what the Good requires of him and those with whom he lives in community. Now, this may sound strange, given my original definition of the Good as those ultimate truths concerning the nature of the good life and how to live the good life that the wise person knows. But one does not have to conceive of these truths in personalist terms – say, as concerning a personal God – in order to appreciate that they have an intrinsic value, even the highest intrinsic value, and as such, are desirable not only to know but also to bring about, insofar as they collectively illuminate for us what is ultimately good for human beings, both individually and communally. Furthermore, those truths stipulate what the Good looks like as a goal to be brought about, or the aim to be achieved through our actions, so that we individually and collectively can live good lives. In this sense, ultimate truths about the good life are good for us to admire, love, and desire to relate to not merely as an ultimate source and guide for living the good life but also as the ultimate end that those living the good life should seek to attain. Consequently, by educating for wisdom the secular university helps liberal learners to attain the knowledge and at least initial desire that they need in order to realize the Good in their own lives and in the lives of those with whom they live, in the various communities of which they are or will become a part. This desire to realize the Good, once more, provides a volitional basis for doing the Good; accordingly, those who come to know the Good through truly liberal academic study, and hence study inclusive of theology, may very well choose to pursue the Good fully (especially if they already are well-formed in virtue, or have the requisite dispositions of will that the desire for the Good augments). But of course, they may not. As such, this desire, taken by itself, is not a full-blown virtue but the very beginning of virtue: an initial disposition to do the Good, which, as properly nourished and acted upon, will become an ingrained disposition for doing the Good. Therefore, for those who do choose to act on that desire, knowing the Good is conducive for becoming the kinds of persons who live their lives in accordance with the Good and help their fellow human beings to do the same. I am now finally in a position to make and defend the claim that Christian theological study within the secular university can help promote the common good. This conclusion follows immediately from what I have been arguing in

214

Theology and moral education

the second half of the book: the secular university promotes the common good by educating for wisdom; the secular university needs theology if it is going to educate for wisdom; consequently, the secular university needs theology if it is going to be able to promote the common good. Or, I could put the argument this way: theology helps engender knowledge of the Good; knowledge of the Good affords liberal learners the knowledge that they need to promote the common good; therefore, theology also helps engender the knowledge that liberal learners need to promote the common good. As such, it belongs in the secular university. Since I already have offered an extensive argument in defense of the claim that theology engenders knowledge of the Good in the previous section of the chapter, I am going to say just a little more here in conclusion regarding how theology can help engender that dimension of knowledge of the Good that pertains to promoting the common good. Consider the following argument that former Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) makes in his encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. Following in the footsteps of Pope Paul VI, Benedict claims, “the whole Church, in all her being and acting – when she proclaims, when she celebrates, when she performs works of charity – is engaged in promoting integral human development,” or the development of “the whole of the person in every single dimension.”71 Thus, for Benedict, promoting the common good requires promoting integral or comprehensive human development. And this, in turn, not only requires securing the demands of justice but also fulfilling the specifically divine vocation – which the Catholic, and more broadly Christian, Church seeks to carry out – to create and sustain social, political, and economic systems governed by love: what Benedict calls “love in truth,” or love founded on the truth about what is good for human beings. It is the logic of love, the “principle of gratuitousness” or “the logic of gift”72 – free and superabundant self-giving – that alone can stymie human selfishness and pride and therefore also enable human beings to create and sustain the “internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust” needed for human institutions like the market economy, for example, to function properly, so that all persons who participate in the market economy can fully flourish.73 Benedict further says that it is both naive and dangerous to think that we can attain integral human development solely through our own moral efforts. Love not only is fundamentally characterized by giving but “[t]ruth and the love which it reveals … only can be received as a gift …. That which is prior to us and constitutes us – subsistent Love and Truth – shows us what goodness is and in what our true happiness consists. It shows us the road to true development.”74 Importantly, this claim is both ontological and epistemological: God is Love and Truth and as a result is able to reveal what “the road to true development,” and hence what goodness and true happiness, is. In particular, it is because God as a Trinity is essentially constituted by loving relations that God is able to reveal how to attain true development, and hence true goodness and happiness. “The Trinity is absolute unity,” Benedict writes, “insofar as the three divine Persons are pure relationality …. [So] in the light of the revealed mystery of the Trinity, we understand that true openness means, not loss of

Theology and moral education 215 individual identity, but profound interpenetration.”75 Thus, it is the theological doctrine of the Trinity that ultimately reveals, on the deepest of levels, what the human community, as “a single family working together in true communion,” can and should be.76 I highlight this theological argument (as a form of clarificatory reasoning) in order to show how it yields at least the kind of insight that we should expect the wise person to know about what the common good is and how to realize it. Arguably, Benedict is right in this regard: in order to maintain the lasting solidarity and mutual trust that human communities need in order to fully flourish, the persons who inhabit those communities need not only the virtue of justice but also the virtue of love. A wise person would know this, in large part because he also knows that the common good is always threatened by the competing forces of human wrongdoing or sin (pride and injustice, hatred and violence) wherever and however human beings seek to realize it. But what kind of love is necessary to create and sustain communities that preserve and protect the common good, and how can human beings come to possess and exercise it? Christian teaching offers this deeply illuminating insight: the deepest kind of love is the love that God shares within God’s self. As Thomas McCall puts it, the Trinitarian persons “indwell one another in the eternal divine communion of love,” a love that binds them together not just in unity of will but also unity of substance.77 We human beings have been created to know, enjoy, and share in that love. Moreover, as Benedict suggests, given our divine source and end, we also have been created to enjoy and share that love with one another, as a divine gift. Unlike the Trinitarian persons, however, we are not “pure relationality.” Or, as Miroslav Volf puts it, human “[p]ersons cannot be translated fully into relations.”78 However, in our own actions and relations with one another, we can create, enjoy and share a love that is, like divine love, self-giving, superabundant, and free. And it is precisely this love that the person with theological wisdom knows we human beings need in order to realize the common good to the fullest degree possible, in the various communities of which we are a part. Of course, the wise person who possesses theological wisdom, on the interpretation I am offering (following Benedict’s lead), also will know, at least in principle and to some degree, how to help create and sustain flourishing human communities, based on his deep understanding of this ultimate truth about divine love and human love as modeled on and fueled by divine love. In particular, her deep understanding of this truth will both illuminate and be illuminated by the actions of the Church, and the ways in which those within the Church perform genuine works of love in the other communities of which they are a part, or in which they are working to help promote the common good. Moreover, insofar as this wise person deeply understands the ultimate truth about divine love, and so the deepest truth about God as the Good, she also will desire, in at least an incipient way, to realize that truth in her own life and in the lives of others. In other words, she will possess at least an incipient desire to realize the common good, even if she has not yet fully acquired the virtues – especially the virtue of love – needed to realize it in full.

216

Theology and moral education

The theological interpretation I am offering here concerning the content of the knowledge that the wise person possesses is, of course, disputable. But here, it is once again worth reminding ourselves, especially as I bring this chapter to an end, that an inclusively secular university that promotes truly liberal learning, and so seeks to educate for wisdom, needs persons like Christian theologians who are, in Higton’s words, “trained in articulating the major religious and secular traditions of thinking about the good that are ‘in play’ in our society, and who are trained in arguing together.”79 Thus, the kind of argument that I have claimed Benedict offers is precisely the kind of “argument about the common good or creaturely flourishing” that liberal learners engaging in wisdom-seeking ought to track, evaluate, and even incorporate into their own thinking and reasoning about the common good.80 By doing so, they will take a positive step towards gaining wisdom – even theological wisdom.

Notes 1 For a good summary of the current debate on moral education, see Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben, “Debating Moral Education: An Introduction,” Debating Moral Education: Rethinking the Role of the Modern University, eds. Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 3–26. 2 See in particular Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008). It is important to note that Fish is not alone. Roche reports that, according to a fairly recent, regularly recurring national survey (the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement) in the U.S., while above 90 percent of faculty teaching at arts and sciences undergraduate institutions place an emphasis on helping students think critically and analytically, only between 50 and 60 percent place an emphasis on helping students develop their own code of values and ethics. (See Why Choose the Liberal Arts?, 103). 3 Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time, 38 (italics in original). Fish makes his academic commitment to truth absolutely clear: “If you’re not in the pursuit-of-truth business, you should not be in the university” (ibid., 20). As such, Fish’s injunction to university educators is simply to “do your job,” and more specifically, “to (1) introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry that they didn’t know much about before; and (2) equip those same students with the analytical skills that will enable them to move confidently within those traditions and to engage in independent research should they choose to do so” (ibid., 18). 4 Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time, 59. 5 Stanley Fish, “Aim Low,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (16 May 2003), available online at http://chronicle.com/article/Aim-Low/45210 (accessed 12 September 2016). 6 Fish, “Aim Low.” 7 Stanley Fish, “I Know It When I See It: A Reply to Kiss and Euben,” Debating Moral Education, 88. Fish is responding to Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben, “Aim High: A Response to Stanley Fish,” Debating Moral Education, 57–75. 8 Fish, “I Know It When I See It,” 88. 9 Fish, “I Know It When I See It,” 79. 10 For a detailed story about how the Good became separated from the True (and therefore how intellectual inquiry into moral questions became marginalized) within the American university, particularly in the twentieth century, see Julie A. Reuben, The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996). In a related article, Reuben poses

Theology and moral education 217

11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18

19

20 21 22

several open-ended questions about how to relate moral concerns with the intellectual life of the university that “are essential to explore if we don’t want to accept that the Good and the True are inevitably sundered” (Julie A. Reuben, “The University and its Discontents,” The Hedgehog Review 2.3 [2000]: 91). One of those questions – “Can intellectual inquiry move moral considerations beyond the subjective?” (ibid.) – is one that I am explicitly aiming to answer (in the affirmative) in this chapter. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 82. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 82. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 82. Italics are in the original text. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 87 and 81. In “The Moral Purposes of the University: An Exchange,” The Hedgehog Review 2.3 (2000): 106–19, Rorty (in dialogue with Julie Reuben, cited above, and George Marsden) identifies three different senses of “moral.” The first kind of morality every human being demonstrates: even the Nazis were honest and decent towards those they considered moral equals. The second kind concerns private choices (most notably, concerning sexual behavior) about which the university should have nothing to say. (Rorty also hopes that this sense of “moral” will disappear). Finally, there is Rorty’s own preferred kind of morality, utilitarian morality, which is principally concerned with alleviating human suffering. I find it odd that Rorty says very little about what educators within the university can and should do to form students in this kind of morality, not only because Rorty endorses it but also because he thinks that American universities in particular have been the vanguards of morality of this type, at least since the twentieth century. I am drawing on Wolterstorff’s critique of Rorty in “An Engagement with Rorty,” 137–9. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 167. Gregory Reichberg, “The Intellectual Virtues,” The Ethics of Aquinas, 143. In this context, Reichberg identifies perseverance as a moral trait, but his claim still holds even if we identify it as an intellectual virtue in Zagzebski’s sense. Also, I do not deny that acquiring and exercising intellectual virtues yields positive, personal growth. In this sense, I agree with James Murphy that an education in the intellectual virtues, as a broader kind of moral education, can be “deeply transformative” (James Bernard Murphy, “Against Civic Education in Schools,” Debating Moral Education, 172). We just cannot take it for granted that educating for a virtue like perseverance in the intellectual realm is going to yield comparable growth in perseverance in the moral realm: educating for intellectual virtue has definite moral limits. Matthew Rose, summarizing the Thomistic position on these matters, and thus highlighting the difference between educating for moral knowledge and training in moral virtue, puts it nicely: “Aquinas instructs us … that a pedagogue’s moral influence will not be primarily through precept or demonstration. It will more likely be found where the ancients and early Christian thinkers always insisted it would be found – in the exemplary character of a teacher’s life” (“Can Virtue Be Taught?” The Thomist 77.2 [2013]: 259–60). For the original argument that Whitcomb advances to show that wisdom cannot be practical knowledge alone but also must include the best non-practical knowledge, see “Wisdom,” 99. Whitcomb, “Wisdom,” 102. Theoretical wisdom in its practical dimension principally is directed on ultimate truths rather than specific truths about what is to be done, in a practical sense, here and now. Moreover, it is a decidedly intellectual virtue, not a moral one. As such, it is misleading to deem the practical knowledge that I am discussing here (and will continue to discuss), practical wisdom, or what Aristotle and Aquinas call prudence. As Jay Wood puts it, “speculative wisdom … is concerned solely with truth, not production of goods, or right action …. [A] person can acquire the fruit of speculative

218

23 24 25 26

27

28

29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37

38 39

Theology and moral education wisdom and understanding, without having the overall praiseworthy character of a prudent person. Prudence, unlike speculative wisdom, qualifies the whole person, mind, will, and action” (W. Jay Wood, “Prudence,” Virtues and Their Vices, 41). Whitcomb, “Wisdom,” 98. Italics are in the original text. Whitcomb, “Wisdom,” 101. Whitcomb, “Wisdom,” 98. Italics are in the original text. Robert Adams bases his theistic ethics on a concept of God as the transcendent Good who is “the supreme Good, and excellent without qualification,” around whom the realm of value is organized. See Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), in particular 28. The meta-ethical question about what grounds morality, is, of course, a live one, and is especially debated by theists and non-theists. For a good summary of and dialogue about the varying positions one can take on the God and morality question, see God and Morality: Four Views, ed. R. Keith Loftin (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012). The view that I have identified here (in the main text of the chapter) is what Evan Fales, in his contribution to the dialogue, calls “Naturalist Moral Realism” (see 13–34). Here, I am drawing on Robert Johnson’s reading of Kant: Humanity is an end in both a negative sense, insofar as it limits what I can do to myself and others, and a positive sense, insofar it is something I ought to help realize or cultivate in myself and others. See Robert Johnson, “Kant’s Moral Philosophy,”The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 edn.), ed. Edward N. Zalta, available online at http://plato. stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#HumFor (accessed 12 September 2016). For moral realists in particular, how such truths are cognitively accessible remains a matter of philosophical debate, which I won’t enter into (and really don’t need to enter into) here. See ST I.2.3. Bertrand Russell and F.C. Copleston, “A Debate on the Existence of God,” The Existence of God, ed. John Hick (New York, Macmillan, 1964), 185. Prosl. 5, 89. Thomas Williams says that in Anselm’s view “the philosopher can trace the conceptual relations among goodness, justice, and mercy, and show that God not only can but must have all three.” See Thomas Williams, “Saint Anselm,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 edn.), ed. Edward N. Zalta, available online at http://pla to.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/anselm (accessed 12 September 2016). Independently of showing that God exists, it also remains open to the philosopher and the theologian to use clarificatory reasoning to show how God, presuming that he exists, must have all three attributes – or even less ambitiously, how it is possible for God, if he exists, to possess all three attributes. Prosl. 9, 91. Prosl. 10, 93. CD II.1, §28, 276. Italics are in the original text. As Robert Price puts it, Barth pairs the divine attributes in a love–freedom dialectic in order “to keep as securely as possible before his readers the fully reality of the being of God by constantly pointing to yet other aspects of this being” (Robert B. Price, Letters of the Divine Word: The Perfections of God in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics [London, UK: T&T Clark, 2011], 50). CD II.1, §30, 356 and 357. Cf. Rudolf Otto, who, reflecting on divine holiness, claims that God is experienced by human beings as a mystery both utterly terrifying (mysterium tremendum) and fascinating (mysterium fascinans). It is important to note that for Otto, while the concept of holiness is not reducible to moral goodness, it nevertheless applies to God because God, or the numinous, possesses “supreme worth or value,” and hence is truly worthy of awe and respect. See Otto’s The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into

Theology and moral education 219

40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48

49 50 51

52 53 54

55

56 57 58

the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational, 2nd edn., trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1950), in particular 52. Italics are in the original text. CD II.1, §30, 369. CD II.1, §30, 377. CD II.1, §30, 425–6. CD II.1, §30, 375. CD II.1, §30, 376. Barth discusses “the perfections of divine freedom” in CD II.1, §31. Although I am emphasizing here the role that clarificatory reasoning can play in accounting for human dignity or worth, it is also possible to mount a moral argument for God’s existence based on human dignity or worth. For a good summary of this argument, see C. Stephen Evans, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 edn.), ed. Edward N. Zalta, available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/moral-argum ents-god (accessed 7 September 2016). Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), in particular 189–90. Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, 4. Interestingly (and I think, controversially), Wolterstorff denies that a eudaimonistic conception of the good life, which equates the good life with the happy life and the well-lived life, can serve as a framework for a theory of rights, since “[t]here is no room in this scheme for the worth of persons and human beings, and hence none for one’s right against others to their treating one a certain way on account of one’s worth” (Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, 179). Instead, he thinks of wellbeing in terms of well-going, which can be affected positively or negatively by the actions of others (by respecting or failing to respect my rights). Thus, Wolterstorff aligns himself with what he takes to be the biblical moral vision of the good life, which he deems eirenéism (Gr. eirenē, Heb. shalom, “flourishing”). Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei §54, translated as On the Incarnation by a Religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), 93. See ST III.1.1. See in particular ST III.46.3: “Christ by His Passion not only delivered man from sin, but also merited justifying grace for him and the glory of bliss.” In ST III.48, Aquinas argues that Christ also brought about human salvation by way of atonement (satisfaction), sacrifice, redemption, and the instrumental cause of his human nature. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), 166. McIntosh, Divine Teaching, 65. Cessario writes, “Roman Catholic moral theology particularly concerns itself with what alone constitutes perfect happiness for all men and women, the ultimate good of the person” (Romanus Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001], 34). According to Aquinas, although performing moral actions is conducive for attaining particular goods constitutive of the human good (like the welfare of the state, see ST II-II.23.7) those actions cannot be directed on our final and perfect good without love. “[I]t is charity which directs the acts of all other virtues to the last end, and which, consequently, also gives the form to all other acts of virtue: and it is precisely in this sense that charity is called the form of the virtues, for these are called virtues in relation to ‘informed’ acts” (ST II-II.23.8). Stanley Hauerwas, “On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological,” The Hauerwas Reader, eds. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 73. Hauerwas, “On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological,” 73. Hauerwas, “On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological,” 72–3.

220

Theology and moral education

59 Thus, the common good is not simply the aggregation of individual goods but rather the good that all members of a society or community contribute to, aim to bring about, and share in together. Moreover, just as it is impossible to divorce an individual’s good from his or her moral good, so it is impossible to divorce the common good from the moral good, or a society’s moral health. In this sense, the common good, or “the good of all people and of the whole person,” is also “the social and community dimension of the moral good” (The Roman Catholic Church, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church §165 and §164, available online at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ponti fical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dottsoc_en.html [accessed 14 September 2016]). Italics are in the original text. 60 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 215. 61 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 215. Here, Higton explicitly rejects Newman’s claim that knowledge is its own end. More specifically, Higton claims that Newman holds to a nature–grace dichotomy, since (on Higton’s reading) Newman distinguishes between “a purely educational ideal pertaining to the intellectual aspect of human nature, and a religious ideal pertaining to the moral aspect of human nature” (105). In contrast, Higton claims “that there are no natural ends to education, but that the only proper end for all education is (in a specific sense) supernatural” (ibid., 105). I will not enter into this dispute here, other than to say that if God is the fount of all knowledge and truth (as I’m sure Higton agrees), then all knowledge of the truth, whatever it may be, is aimed at or related to a supernatural end – God himself – even if the possessor of that knowledge never acknowledges or reaches that end. I hope (and suspect) Newman would agree. 62 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 223. 63 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 227. Italics are in the original text. 64 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 233. 65 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 237. 66 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 236. 67 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 215. 68 Thanks to Adam Pelser for suggesting the kind of argument that I exposit here. 69 See ST I.5.1. Thus, for Aquinas, “it is clear that goodness and being are the same really. But goodness presents the aspect of desirableness, which being does not present” (ST I.5.1). 70 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 20. Italics are in the original text. 71 Pope Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate) §11, Vatican trans. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2009; San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2009), 21 and 22. Italics are in the original text (and all subsequent citations of the text). 72 Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth, §36, 73. 73 Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth, §35, 70. 74 Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth, §52, 108–9. 75 Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth, §54, 113–14. 76 Benedict XVI, Charity in Truth, §53, 111. 77 McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 170. 78 Miroslav Volf, “‘The Trinity is Our Social Programme’: The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement,” The Doctrine of God and Theological Ethics, eds. Alan J. Torrance and Michael Banner (London, UK: T&T Clark, 2006), 111. 79 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 233. 80 Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, 237.

Bibliography Adams, Robert Merrihew. Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Theology and moral education 221 Anselm. Proslogion. Translated by M.J. Charlesworth. In Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited by Brian Davies and G.R. Evans. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa theologiae I, II-II, and III. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province as Summa Theologica. Vols. 1, 3, and 4. New York, NY: Benziger Bros., 1948. Reprint, Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981. Athanasius. De Incarnatione Verbi Dei. Translated as On the Incarnation by a Religious of C.S.M.V. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993. Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, Volume II: The Doctrine of God, Part 1. Translated by T.H.L. Parker, W.B. Johnston, Harold Knight, and J.L.M. Haire. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. Edinburgh, UK: T& T Clark, 1957. Pope Benedict XVI. Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate). Vatican translation. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2009; San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2009. Cessario, Romanus. Introduction to Moral Theology. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001. Evans, C. Stephen. “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer 2014 edn. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/moral-arguments-god (accessed 7 September 2016). Fales, Evan. “Naturalist Moral Realism.” In Loftin, God and Morality: Four Views, 13–34. Fish, Stanley. “Aim Low.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 May 2003. Available online at http://chronicle.com/article/Aim-Low/45210 (accessed 12 September 2016). Fish, Stanley. Save the World on Your Own Time. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Fish, Stanley. “I Know It When I See It: A Response to Kiss and Euben.” In Kiss and Euben, Debating Moral Education, 76–91. Hauerwas, Stanley. “On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological.” In The Hauerwas Reader, edited by John Berkman and Michael Cartwright, 51–74. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Higton, Mike. A Theology of Higher Education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. Johnson, Robert. “Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer 2014 edn. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Available online at http:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/kant-moral (accessed 12 September 2016). Kiss, Elizabeth, and J. Peter Euben. “Debating Moral Education: An Introduction.” In Kiss and Euben, Debating Moral Education, 3–26. Kiss, Elizabeth, and J. Peter Euben. “Aim High: A Response to Stanley Fish.” In Kiss and Euben, Debating Moral Education, 57–75. Kiss, Elizabeth, and J. Peter Euben, eds. Debating Moral Education: Rethinking the Role of the Modern University. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Loftin, R. Keith, ed. God and Morality: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012. McCall, Thomas H. Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. McIntosh, Mark A. Divine Teaching: An Introduction to Christian Theology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008. Murphy, James Bernard. “Against Civic Education in Schools.” In Kiss and Euben, Debating Moral Education, 162–85.

222

Theology and moral education

Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational. Second edn. Translated by John W. Harvey. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1950. Price, Robert P. Letters of the Divine Word: The Perfections of God in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. London, UK: T&T Clark, 2011. Reichberg, Gregory M. “The Intellectual Virtues (Ia IIae, qq. 57–58).” In The Ethics of Aquinas, edited by Stephen J. Pope, 131–50. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002. Reuben, Julie A. The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Reuben, Julie A. “The University and its Discontents.” The Hedgehog Review 2.3 (2000): 72–91. The Roman Catholic Church. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Vatican translation, 2004. Available online at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_ councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_ en.html (accessed 14 September 2016). Roche, Mark William. Why Choose the Liberal Arts? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope. New York, NY: Penguin, 1999. Rorty, Richard, Julie A. Rueben, and George Marsden. “The Moral Purposes of the University: An Exchange.” The Hedgehog Review 2.3 (2000): 106–19. Rose, Matthew. “Can Virtue Be Taught?” The Thomist 77.2 (2013): 229–60. Russell, Bertrand and F.C. Copleston. “A Debate on the Existence of God.” In The Existence of God, edited by John Hick, 167–91. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1964. Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Vol. 2. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1957. Volf, Miroslav. “‘The Trinity is Our Social Programme’: The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement.” In The Doctrine of God and Theological Ethics, edited by Alan J. Torrance and Michael Banner, 105–24. London, UK: T&T Clark, 2006. Whitcomb, Dennis. “Wisdom.” In The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, edited by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard, 95–105. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011. Williams, Thomas. “Saint Anselm.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2016 edn. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/a rchives/spr2016/entries/anselm (accessed 12 September 2016). Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “An Engagement with Rorty.” Journal of Religious Ethics 31.1 (2003): 129–39. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Wood, W. Jay. “Prudence.” In Virtues and Their Vices, edited by Kevin Timpe and Craig A. Boyd, 37–58. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Conclusion

Having mounted a book-length argument for making Christian theological study an important and enduring contributor to twenty-first-century secular academic life, I think that it is fitting to ask, “so where do we go from here?” Not everyone who has read this book may be convinced that theology does belong in the secular university, but I am hoping that there are many who are (or have become) convinced, and who therefore will be wondering where my argument, on a more practical level, leads. Thus, in conclusion, I am going to offer a few suggestions for how I think that the secular university can and should go about implementing or (as the case may be) retaining theological study within its educative and broader intellectual life. I do this, however, recognizing that the ways that secular institutions will follow these suggestions will vary, depending on each institution’s unique history, identity, constituency, and resources. I also recognize that the suggestions themselves are worthy of further discussion and even debate. (1) Secular universities and colleges should evaluate themselves in order to discover how they are non-inclusively secularist and how they are (or can become) more inclusively secular. It is essential for secular institutions to identify the ways in which they are secularist, so that they in turn can aim to eradicate secularist encroachments on the diverse and deep knowledge- and truth-seeking that they rightly should celebrate. Most notably, faculty and administrators at secular institutions should consider whether they, or other key figures in their institution’s history, have excluded or kept at bay valid forms of knowledge- and truth-seeking, especially theological ones, which they think cannot neatly be aligned with the “secular perspective” on what valid knowledge- and truth-seeking should look like and how it should proceed. More broadly, they should reflect on how the “secular perspective” has governed and guided their collective intellectual lives – the way that secular citizenry reason or discourse together – even if they never formally claimed to be operating from within that perspective. Put another way, and even more pointedly, faculty and administrators should ask themselves whether they wrongly have assumed that the “immanent frame” in which the secular university operates is closed off to the divine, and hence prohibits reasoning or discoursing about the divine.

224

Conclusion

On the other hand, many secular universities and colleges may already view themselves as inclusively secular, or at least recognize my model of inclusive secularity as something that they think that they will be able to implement with relative ease, given their existing commitment to epistemologically pluralist knowledge- and truth-seeking. The question that these institutions and their members should ask themselves, then, is how far does our commitment to inclusive secularity actually extend? It behooves institutions that already are inclusively secular, or that are committed to being inclusively secular, to ensure that they are not paying mere lip service to inclusive secularity but actually are realizing it to the fullest extent possible. And again, this requires not just being open to including Christian theological study but also taking concrete steps to implement it or ensure that it remains a part of secular academic life. (2) Secular universities and colleges should continue to defend the traditional purpose and aim of a truly liberal education, which is to pursue, gain, and further knowledge of the truth for its own sake. In this book, I have given a largely philosophical rather than specifically theological defense of a traditional liberal-arts education, which members of secular universities and colleges, regardless of their specific theological (or non-theological) orientation, can and should understand and appreciate. And this argument (like all arguments in the book), although largely theoretical in nature, is meant to be used. In fact, by not only continuing to make this argument but also expanding on it, members of secular universities and colleges, particularly faculty and administrators, will be able to defend the intrinsic value of a liberal-arts education in the face of mounting pressures to instrumentalize it or subsume it completely within the vocational (or pre-professional and professional) programs that the secular university also provides in many cases. I recognize that it will be easier for some universities and colleges, particularly elite institutions with high endowments and other financial resources, to make and expand on this argument than others. I also recognize that each university and college has varying intellectual resources, which can make implementing the epistemology of liberal learning that I have developed and defended here more challenging. Nevertheless, faculty and administrators do have the power (and the duty), using the resources at their disposal, (a) to construct and maintain a curriculum in which truly liberal learning can and will take place; and relatedly (b) to hire and promote personnel, like theologians, who will help ensure that truly liberal learning, especially at the curricular level, can and will take place. (3) Secular universities and colleges should decide whether Christian theology belongs within religious studies or beside it, either as a standalone department or as part of another department. My main argument in this book places theology in the secular university, but it does not specify where, exactly, it belongs within the secular university. Ideally, I think that secular institutions should create theology departments that exist alongside other departments in the secular university, including religious studies. Certainly, based on what I have argued in this book, Christian theology belongs in such a department. But other tradition-based forms of theology arguably have a place there as well,

Conclusion

225

insofar as their practitioners can give the secular university reasons for thinking that non-Christian theological study can make a distinct, positive contribution to secular academic life. It is also possible and – given the current make-up of many secular universities and colleges – sensible to include theology within religious studies, or even feature theological study within a combined theology and religious studies department (of the sort that exists, for example, at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford in the UK). At the very least, secular institutions that already have established religious studies departments have a strong reason to include Christian theology in those departments. I also would urge secular institutions to think about including Christian theology within philosophy rather than religious studies (presuming that they are unable or unwilling to create a theology program or department). This is not because I think that Christian theology is a species of philosophy. I argued against transforming theology into a broader, generic form of philosophical inquiry in the second chapter of the book. Nevertheless, theology traditionally has viewed philosophy as a close ally. By helping theology clarify and strengthen its reasoning about divine matters, philosophy also helps theology accomplish its stated epistemic and educative end of furnishing, and even increasing, knowledge of divine matters. And although I have not emphasized this, philosophy also helps to mediate theology’s relationship with the other disciplines, and to open up rational pathways for theology to communicate more effectively with the other disciplines about the divine matters that it seeks to know better. For its part, theology provides philosophy more specific and arguably more contemplative rational pathways for pursuing knowledge of truths that both theologians and philosophers traditionally have aimed to know: ultimate truths about God, human beings, and the world that I also have claimed that the wise person knows. Theology, then, could flourish much more easily in philosophy than in religious studies – and so the secular university has reason to put it there. (4) Secular universities and colleges should include and even feature Christian theological study that possesses the traditional purpose and aim of gaining and furthering knowledge of the divine. In the book, I have argued that it not only behooves Christian theology to claim for itself a divine origin and aim if it is going to retain its ability to inquire into – and help those who study it to inquire into – its proper, divine subject matter. It also behooves the secular university to include this kind of Christian theology, so that it truly can diversify and deepen the multifarious knowledge- and truth-seeking that it rightly should house and promote. Accordingly, as I began to argue above, it is not enough for the secular university to include just any form of theological study. Truly abandoning any lingering commitment to secularism and antipathy towards engendering truly liberal learning requires affording theologians and their students the full epistemic and educative room – and so full access to the epistemic resources or authorities – that they need in order to pursue traditional theological epistemic and educative ends, also in service to the secular university’s larger epistemic and educative ends. Abandoning this commitment does not necessarily require the secular university to exclude other forms of

226

Conclusion

Christian theological study, with different epistemic and educative ends, even though I have given the secular university fair warning about including forms of theological study with skeptical proclivities. Nor does it require excluding forms of theological study that are fully (or mostly) methodologically and epistemologically aligned with other secular-university disciplines. But it does require ensuring that traditional Christian theological study has a distinct place in the secular university and is allowed to unfold there in its most robust form. I realize that these suggestions can be fleshed out in much more detail. I also realize that there are many more practical matters for secular institutions and their constituents to consider as they reflect on how to include traditional theological study in secular academic life. However, discussing all of these practical considerations would require writing another book in addition to the one that I have written here. It also would require doing the work that I believe and hope secular institutions and their constituents ultimately need to carry out on their own. I have laid all of the main argumentative groundwork that the secular university needs for making Christian theology a permanent and positive contributor to secular academic life. Now it is time for others to take the next step, and begin to make Christian theological study in the secular university – at their secular university – a concrete reality.

Index

Adler, Jonathan E. 106 Alston, William P. 13, 44n20, 101 Anselm 12, 23, 142, 146, 157, 177n29, 200–1, 203, 218n33 anti-realism 19, 46n50, 105, 135n76; see also anti-realist non-foundationalism anti-realist non-foundationalism 11, 15–20, 28 apologetics see reasoning, apologetic Aquinas, Thomas: on demonstrating God’s existence 12, 45n32, 142, 176n3, 176n8, 199; on goodness 213, 220n69; on the incarnation and atonement 177n29, 203–4, 219n51; on theology 21–3, 45n40, 78, 152; on the Trinity 144; on truth 103; on virtue 114, 134n55, 189, 193, 205, 217n19, 217n22, 219n55; on wisdom 78, 126, 128–9, 131, 135n92 Aristotle 21, 45n40, 63, 75, 103, 107, 114, 121, 124, 126, 128, 135n92, 144, 193, 217n22 Athanasius 153–4, 203 atheism 2, 29–30, 34, 46n54, 77, 174 atonement 164, 177n30, 203–4, 219n51; see also incarnation Augustine 2, 11, 82–6, 93n116, 93n120, 144, 153–4, 175, 180n78 authority: divine 21, 24, 33; epistemic 3, 5, 21, 25, 81–6, 93n113, 93n121, 117–18, 131, 144–5, 153–5, 179n55, 225; human 33, 106; religious 64, 66–8, 93n112; theological 40, 64, 76, 153–4, 171, 178n52 autonomy: human 36; intellectual virtue of 117–18, 130–1, 153–5, 157, 179n59; moral and political 31; of the university’s disciplines 79

Baehr, Jason 114–15, 117, 124–8, 134n49, 134n58, 135n92, 150, 156, 160 Barth, Karl 21–3, 45n34, 45n40, 45n46, 146, 156, 179n60, 200–1, 218n37, 219n44 Benedict XVI, Pope 214–16 Bible 12, 22, 29, 78, 159; see also Scripture Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 156–7, 179n60 Brown, Delwin 63–6, 90n45 Burnyeat, M.F. 131 Byrne, Peter 27, 46n52 Caputo, John D. 64, 66–8, 90n58 certainty: epistemic, 13–14, 23, 25; metaphysical 23 Church 21–2, 75–6, 78, 80–2, 153–4, 178n52, 205–6, 214–15; Confessing 179n60; Roman Catholic 76, 132n1, 154, 156, 179n59, 214 clarificatory reasoning see reasoning, clarificatory classical foundationalism see foundationalism, classical Cliteur, Paul 30, 34–5, 40, 47n79 Clouser, Roy 2 common good 7, 69, 184, 209–16, 220n59 contemplative reasoning see reasoning, contemplative conversion 80, 154; intellectual 174–5, 208 courage 114, 116–17, 129, 130–1, 156–7, 170–1, 179n59, 179n60, 205 Crisp, Oliver D. 143–4, 177n19, 178n30 critical thinking 98, 108–13, 119, 130–2, 161; in theology 6, 140–50, 159, 163–5, 167–72 Cupitt, Don 16–17, 25 Davaney, Sheila Greeve 64–5, 67 D’Costa, Gavin 55, 75–80, 92n94, 92n103

228

Index

defeaters 148, 152, 169–70, 200, 208 democracy 29, 37, 39, 42, 46n58, 48n97, 71, 85 demonstrative reasoning see reasoning, demonstrative / deductive dialectical reasoning see reasoning, dialectical / inductive dialogic pluralism see pluralism, dialogic doctrine: sacred (sacra doctrina) 21, 45n40, 78, 169; secular 30–1; theological 26–7, 46n50, 46n51, 54, 143–7, 151, 157, 177n14, 179n59, 215 dogma 21–3, 54, 67–8, 169 dogmatism 34, 65, 67, 116, 152 doubt 12–14, 18, 23, 30, 47n63, 112, 115, 124, 140, 142, 161–2, 187, 191, 196 Dworkin, Ronald 2

faith seeking understanding; traditions of 71–2; virtue of 78, 205 “faith” seeking understanding see theology, as “faith” seeking understanding Fall, the 147, 178n33, 203 fallenness 143, 147–8, 164, 166, 177n14, 203 fideism 65, 67, 79 Fish, Stanley 184–6, 188, 216n3 fitting reasons 146, 154, 177n29, 177n30 Flew, Anthony 174–5, 180n75 Ford, David F. 69–70, 73–4, 77, 80, 90n64, 91n65, 91n92, 158 foundationalism: classical 11–16, 19–20, 22, 56, 58; moderate 20, 45n31 freedom 31, 34, 37, 40, 49n101, 161, 201; divine 200, 218n37, 219n44

Edwards, Jonathan 143, 177n14 Emery, Gilles 144 Enlightenment 1, 12, 29, 55, 75, 90n46, 109, 117 epistemic authority see authority, epistemic epistemic egoism 155–6, 171, 179n54, 179n55 epistemically deep subject matters 160–5, 192, 199 epistemological pluralism see pluralism, epistemological epistemology 6, 12, 23, 28, 45n31, 56, 78, 86, 100, 88n13; see also virtue epistemology ethics 30, 32, 34, 40, 69, 114, 184–5, 191, 205, 216n2, 218n26, 218n27 Evans, C. Stephen 129, 219n45 evidence 12, 14, 22, 24, 56, 64–8, 105–6, 110–11, 148, 152; see also justification; warrant evil 103, 143, 164, 200; problem of 61–3, 148, 200; see also theodicy experience: human 2, 19, 24–6, 54, 58–60, 63–4, 68, 93n113, 104, 156, 197; modern 17, 25; religious 14–16, 31, 40, 47n63, 174–5, 218n39 experiential-expressivism see theology, experiential-expressive approach to

God: belief in 31–3, 48n91, 157, 174; existence of 2, 12, 15, 36, 56, 71, 84, 141–3, 148, 157, 163, 165–6, 169, 173–4, 176n8, 178n35, 199–200, 219n45; experience of see experience, religious; as the Good 148, 195, 199–208; 214–16, 218n26, 218n27, 218n33; nature of 2, 14, 18, 56, 64, 76, 84, 129, 141–3, 146, 148, 156, 165–66, 170, 173, 176n3, 200–1, 218n33, 218n37; as the subject matter of theology 2–3, 10–11, 19–28, 73, 75–7, 82, 91n92, 163–5, 167–74; symbols of 15–19, 26, 204; as triune see Trinity Goldman, Alvin I. 44n20, 105, 109 Good, the 7, 124, 129, 183, 187–8, 195–8, 216n10; theological conception of 198–208, 214–16; and the common good 210–13; see also God, as the Good good life, the 7, 124, 160, 183–4, 191–2, 194–8, 201–8, 211–13, 219n48 grace 147, 153–4, 175, 201, 203–5, 219n51, 220n61 Greco, John 113, 121–2, 134n49, 135n75 Gregory of Nyssa 144 Griffin, David Ray 73–4 Griffiths, Paul J. 55, 76, 80–1, 89n29, 93n112

faith 38, 41, 82–5, 93n120; Christian 3, 20–21, 23, 68, 76–7, 80, 83, 144–5, 147, 156–7, 167, 169, 174–5; epistemology of 45n31; and reason 76, 82–4, 173; religious 5, 46n54; seeking understanding see theology, as

habits 6, 90n64, 108, 112–19, 127–8, 130–1, 160, 162, 167, 198; see also intellectual virtue; virtue habituation 10, 20, 78, 131, 140, 162–3, 165, 167, 172, 210 Harris, Sam 29, 37, 46n54

Index Hart, David B. 76, 78–9, 92n99 Hart, William D. 64–7, 87n10 Hauerwas, Stanley 92n99, 205–6 Heidegger, Martin 26 Helm, Paul 143–4, 168 hetero-regulation 117–18, 153 Higton, Mike 132n1, 209–11, 216, 220n61 Holy Spirit 78, 144 hope, virtue of 205 humanities 2, 8n2, 67, 75, 108, 135n77 humility 67, 114, 116–17, 130–1, 155–7, 179n55, 179n59 idolatry 26–7, 76, 80 immanent criticism 148–9, 152, 163, 208 immanent frame 32–3, 35–7, 41, 66, 223 incarnation 146, 163–4, 177n29, 203–4; see also atonement inclusive sectarianism 5, 81, 93n112 inclusively secular university see secularity, inclusive inclusivists: secular 5, 53–4, 63–8; theological 5, 53–4, 68–74 intellectual virtue 78, 98, 108, 113–18, 125, 127–8, 130, 134n48, 134n49, 134n55, 134n65; and the common good, 209; contemplative reasoning and 160–2; educating for 118–19, 131–2, 184, 189, 217n18; and theological study 6, 140, 150–9, 167, 170–72, 179n59; see also understanding, virtue of; wisdom, virtue of James, William 104 Jenkins, John I. 131 Jesus Christ 22, 153, 180n75, 201 justification: epistemic 16, 19, 70, 84, 94n122, 104, 106–7, 109–11, 146, 167, 169, 177n30; 187; theological doctrine of 156, 179n59; see also evidence; warrant Justin Martyr 156, 179n58 Kant, Immanuel 46n50, 110, 117, 195, 218n28 Kaufman, Gordon D. 16–18, 26, 104 Kitcher, Philip 30, 34–5, 40, 47n63 knowledge: moral 7, 184, 188–93, 197, 217n19; as its own end 99–108; as rational true belief 111, 116–20, 142; theology as 20–28; as true belief 98–9, 101–2, 105–6, 108–11, 113–18, 120–1, 130, 132, 142, 159, 193; unity of 99–100; see also understanding; wisdom Kvanig, Jonathan L. 120

229

Lewis, Thomas A. 94n122, 152, 178n37 liberal arts 2–3, 6, 8n2, 98, 107–8, 116–20, 158, 224 Lindbeck, George A. 14, 17–19, 27, 180n72 Loughlin, Gerald 100 love: and the common good 215; divine 144–6, 164, 166, 201–3, 207, 214–15, 218n37; of God 75, 78, 157–8, 205; of knowledge and truth 70, 91n65, 117–19, 125, 128, 130–1, 156–8, 171, 179n58; of neighbor 158, 205, 215; of self 123, 177n14; virtue of 205, 215, 219n55 Luther, Martin 156, 159, 179n59 MacDonald, Scott 142–3, 168 Martin, Luther 55 McCall, Thomas H. 145–6, 178n33, 215 McCutcheon, Russell T. 59–63, 89n23, 89n29, 93n112 McFague, Sallie 16–18, 26 McIntosh, Mark 165, 180n66, 204 metaphor 16–19, 26, 57 metaphysics: commitments in 30, 89n29, 129; and human nature 88n15, 161, 203; and knowledge 62–3, 68, 107, 135n92, 195; and philosophy 107, 179n64; and religious studies 55–6, 60; and theology 24, 56, 74, 91n92, 144, 163, 179n64, 199; truths concerning 36, 66, 116, 135n92; see also certainty, metaphysical; realism, metaphysical Milbank, John 1, 77–9, 92n103 modernity 10, 12, 14–17, 22–3, 25, 31–3, 36, 47n79, 66, 76, 121, 141 Moltmann, Jürgen 145–6 moral knowledge see knowledge, moral moral theology see theology, moral naturalism 30, 32, 34, 40, 55–7, 60, 195, 199, 218n27 natural theology see theology, natural Newman, John Henry 98–101, 103–4, 107, 122, 127–8, 132n1, 135n79, 139–40, 176, 220n61 non-cognitivism 191 non-foundationalism see anti-realist non-foundationalism objectivity: concerning goodness or flourishing 112–13, 183, 191, 193–8, 208; concerning knowledge and truth 5, 19, 25, 57–8, 81, 86, 88n15, 99, 103–4, 106–8, 110, 122, 135n76, 152, 158, 184,

230

Index

186, 188, 190; and reality 6, 17, 61; in religious studies 55, 73, 75, 87n7; in theology 14–15, 19, 22–3, 27 onto-theology 26, 46n49, 46n50 open-mindedness 112–13, 116–17, 119, 130–1, 150–3, 170–1, 179n59 original sin 143, 147, 177n14, 177n15; see also Fall, the; fallenness Peirce, Charles Sanders 105 perichoresis 145 philosophy 7, 26, 63, 114, 159, 162–3, 167, 175, 179n64, 188; analytic 7, 100; of education 86, 109–13; in Newman 127–8, 135n79; of science, 135n76; and theology 7, 63, 65, 68, 71–2, 76–7, 79, 175, 225 Plantinga, Alvin 13, 44n7, 45n31 Plato 121, 129, 133n18, 195 pluralism: dialogic 42–3, 49n102; epistemological 4–5, 11, 29, 42, 68, 72, 81, 84–87, 98, 130, 186, 196, 224; methodological 65, 68; religious 1–2, 4, 22, 29; and truth 17–18 postmodernity 10, 16–17, 23, 25–6, 64–6, 109 postsecular 4, 9n8, 64, 68 problem of evil see evil, problem of proper basicality 24, 45n31 prudence 193, 205, 217n22 Putnam, Hilary 105 Rauser, Randal 12–13, 15–16, 20, 44n2, 44n7, 45n31, 46n51, 105, 133n23, 152 realism 16–19, 46n50, 104, 135n76, 135n77, 218n27, 218n29; see also theology, as a realist discipline reason 30, 47n79, 56, 82, 85, 88n13, 125, 127, 134n49, 143, 155, 161,179n55, 202; and theology 2, 11, 23–4, 65, 76, 83–4, 140–4, 148, 169–70, 174, 176n8; procedural 143, 168–9, 177n19 reasoning: apologetic 146, 148–9, 152, 165, 208; clarificatory 143–9, 151, 153–4, 157–8, 163–5, 168–9, 171, 178n35, 200–4, 206, 215, 218n33, 219n45; contemplative 6, 131, 140, 159–67, 172–3, 198–9, 206–8, 225; demonstrative / deductive 12, 45n40, 142–3, 149, 154, 157, 163, 165, 168–9, 199–200; dialectical / inductive 142–3, 149, 154, 163, 165, 168–9, 176n11, 199–200 relativism 105, 110, 185–6, 190–1

Religionswissenschaft 55–6 religious studies 2, 4–5, 53–7, 59–61, 63–5, 69–70, 73, 75, 77, 87n7, 90n59, 91n92, 92n94, 224–5 revealed theology see theology, revealed Reichberg, Gregory M. 134n55, 189, 217n18 Riggs, Wayne D. 121 Robbins, Jeffrey W. 64, 66, 68 Roberts, Robert C. 114, 117, 121, 134n48, 151–3, 156, 158, 179n55 Rogers, Eugene F., Jr. 45n40, 78 Rorty, Richard 29–30, 35, 37–9, 46n58, 54, 63, 88n15, 106–7, 110, 187–8, 195, 217n15 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 14, 91n65 Schmidt, Erik W. 108 Schöwbel, Christoph 23 science 18, 25, 32–3, 56–7, 67, 75–6, 87n10, 99–100, 106, 108, 147, 174; Aristotelian 21, 45n40; cognitive 60; evolutionary 178n33; natural 13, 54, 66, 114,124, 148, 166; social 9n8, 64, 75, 124, 148; see also Wissenschaft; theology, as a science; theology, as “queen of the sciences” Scripture 22, 26, 63, 82,143–4, 153–4, 175; see also Bible, the sectarian institutions 3, 5, 34, 42–3, 64–5, 76, 92n103, 139 sectarianism 4–5, 53–4, 75–81, 83–4, 87n1, 92n99; inclusive 5, 81, 93n112 secular humanism 30, 35, 40 secular perspective 5, 54, 57–63, 65, 68, 72, 79, 81, 88n13, 223 secularism 5, 29–31, 33, 35–6, 40, 47n63, 66, 69; in religious studies and theology 4–5, 53–5, 64–8, 73, 75, 77, 81, 87n1 92n94, 93n112; and the university 4–5, 11, 28, 33–42, 53, 81, 87n1, 161, 223, 225; see also secular perspective secularity 4, 28–37, 41–42; inclusive 4–5, 11, 37–43, 216, 223–4 secularization 1, 9n8, 32, 36, 48n79, 76; thesis 32, 47n79 service-learning 189–90 Shakespeare, William 123, 159 Siegel, Harvey 109–12 sin 60–1, 177n29, 201, 203, 205, 207, 215, 219n51; see also original sin skepticism 13, 20, 23, 85, 105–7, 110, 124, 161, 187; moral 186–7, 191; theological 10–11, 15–16, 19, 28, 157 , 161, 173

Index sophia see wisdom, theoretical Stout, Jeffrey 29, 37–8, 48n95, 148–9, 152 Stump, Eleonore 129 subjectivity 15–17, 19, 22–3, 25, 36, 57–8, 104, 107, 112, 217n10 Sudduth, Michael 169 Surin, Kenneth 24 Tanner, Kathryn 71–2, 151 Taylor, Charles 30–6, 41, 47n76, 48n91, 66 theodicy 61–3, 148, 178n36; see also evil, problem of theology: academic 63–5, 68, 70, 77; analytic 7; constructive 71, 145; constructivist 16–17, 26; definition of 2, 11; experiential-expressive approach to 14–16; as faith seeking understanding 21, 23, 82–3; as “faith” seeking understanding 5, 78, 81–7, 141, 175; natural 24, 45n46, 56, 84, 141–3, 148–9, 169–70, 174, 176n8, 176n11, 178n35, 199–200; moral 205–7, 219n54; public 70–1, 77; as queen of the sciences 1, 76–80, 92n103; as a realist discipline 3, 20–8, 45n31, 46n52, 81, 167, 225; revealed 24, 84, 141–9, 169–70, 174, 200; as a science 10, 21–3; secular 64, 66, 68, 90n46, 90n58; systematic 146–9 Tillich, Paul 14–15, 26, 203–4 Tracy, David 14 Trinity 144–5, 157, 163–4, 166, 200, 203, 214–15 truth: anti-realist views of 16–19, 104–7; correspondence theory of 16–20, 44n20, 104; deep see understanding, wisdom; see also metaphysics, and truth; ultimate truth Turner, Denys 70–3 ultimate reality 17, 84, 160, 163, 194 ultimate truth 6–7, 55–6, 59, 99, 127–31, 135n92, 160–5, 167, 179n64, 217n22, 225; concerning the Good and the good life 183–4, 192, 194–8, 207, 213; in theology 139, 158, 163, 166, 171–3, 175, 180n66, 203–5, 215; see also wisdom, as knowledge of the True, or ultimate truth understanding: as an epistemic end and good 6, 98, 107, 114, 116–24, 128, 130–32, 135n75, 135n77, 135n78; faith

231

seeking see theology, as faith seeking understanding; “faith” seeking see theology, as “faith” seeking understanding; theological 68, 83, 173; and theological study 163–7, 172–3; virtue of 119, 128, 131, 160, 167, 172 virtue: intellectual see intellectual virtue; moral 113–14, 189–90, 193, 205–6, 212–13, 215, 217n19; theological 75, 78, 205–6, 215, 219n55 virtue epistemology 113–19, 134n48, 134n49, 150, 189; see also intellectual virtue Volf, Miroslav 215 warrant 54, 67, 72, 104, 106, 110, 117, 169; see also evidence; justification Webster, John 146 Westphal, Merold 26, 46n50 Whitcomb, Dennis 126, 191–4, 217n20 Wiebe, Donald 54–7, 59–60, 87n7, 87n10, 89n23, 90n59, 92n94, 93n112 wisdom: and the common good 69, 184, 210–16; intellectual pursuit of 70, 73–4, 80, 130–2, 160–7, 179n64; as knowledge of the Good 7, 183–4, 194–8; as knowledge of ultimate truth, or the True 6–7, 98–9, 118, 126–30, 139, 162–7, 172–3, 183–4, 192–5; love of 118, 158; practical 7, 190–94, 217n20; theological 7, 74–5, 78, 80, 84, 140, 172–6, 206–8, 215–16; and theological study 140, 159–67, 198–206; theoretical 116, 120, 124–6, 135n79, 135n92, 136n104, 191–2, 217n22; virtue of 98, 119, 125, 128, 131, 160, 167, 198, 207–8 Wissenschaft 54–6, 69, 75, 87n12, 91n65; see also Religionswissenschaft Wolterstorff, Nicholas 12, 39–40, 42–3, 48n97, 49n101, 49n102, 56, 87n12, 202, 217n16, 219n48 Wood, W. Jay 114, 117, 121, 134n48, 151–3, 156, 158, 217n22 Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus 16, 93n121, 113–14, 118–19, 121, 124, 134n58, 134n65, 155, 179n53, 179n54, 189, 217n18

Taylor & Francis eBooks Helping you to choose the right eBooks for your Library Add Routledge titles to your library's digital collection today. Taylor and Francis ebooks contains over 50,000 titles in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Behavioural Sciences, Built Environment and Law. Choose from a range of subject packages or create your own! Benefits for you

Benefits for your user

Free MARC records COUNTER-compliant usage statistics Flexible purchase and pricing options All titles DRM-free.

df b k b k b kb k b bk k

Free Trials Available We offer free trials to qualifying

academic, corporate and government customers.

Off-site, anytime access via Athens or referring URL Print or copy pages or chapters Full content search Bookmark, highlight and annotate text Access to thousands of pages of quality research at the click of a button.

eCollections - Choose from over 30 subject eColiections, including: Archaeology

Language Learning

Architecture

Law

ASian Studies

Literature

Business I:< Management

Media I:< CommUnication

Classical Studies Construction

Middle East Studies

Creative I:< Media Arts

Philosophy

Criminology I:< Criminal Justice

Planning

Economics

Politics

MusIc

Education

Psychology I:< Mental Health

Energy

Religion

Engineering English Language I:< Linguistics

Security

Environment I:< Sustalnabllity

Sociology

Social Work

Geography

Sport

Health Studies

Theatre I:< Performance

History

TOUrism, Hospitality I:< Events

For more information, pricing enquiries or to order a free trial, please contact your local sales team: www.tandfebooks.com/page/sales Routledge T,yloc&F"omGwup

The home of I Routiedge books

www.taneoos.com