Integrative Studies Lecture - March 11, 1999 (7PM Schaller Hall)

"The Truth is Out There-But How do we Get to It? A Response to Rich Perkins"

Richard K. Eckley

Rich Perkins has given us something to think about. As I have heard him, he has called for clarity in thinking and for the removal of biases -- religious or otherwise -- from our scientific research (as much as that is possible.) Certainly this is good, and certainly there is not enough good thinking being done around here. But thinking is not the only human occupation at a liberal arts college. And thought is more than reason; it is also a speculative field that pushes consciousness toward the edges of the envelope. The dichotomy and collapse of faith and reason -- the classic divide between nature and the supernatural -- is the product of the Enlightenment, but not the end of everything. Like a scene from the X-Files we are forced to ask whether Mulder or Scully is our favorite approach to truth. At best he has argued that one can help the other analyze the data, but the question of whether “the truth is out there” is still left to the theologian.

I would like to address this dual nature of the quest for truth by speaking to the two parts of Dr. Perkins’ address: first, the epistemological; and, then, follow that with the praxological.

The Epistemological.

For two centuries, largely under the influence of Kant, the critical demand to say only what we know, and for differentiating this from what we cannot know (empirically) has dominated the academic disciplines. This is reflected in the method that has been described as “scientific.” It has had the eventual result of relegating religious knowledge to interiority and private experience. Theology, as a discipline, has undergone this same scrutiny on itself. Theology is pretty much at war between the two poles of addressing this divide: one rooted in natural theology, arguing that there is a correlation between reason and faith, and the other represented by the work of Karl Barth, rooted in the classic dogmatic approaches of the Church, attacking the very assumption that reason can lead to revelation.

This dichotomy, Rich says, calls for an integration that “means joining two distinct analytical strands together – an analysis which begins with knowing where one leaves off and where the other properly begins.” But I would wonder if this is really a solution or in fact a part of the problem of our modern context. By an over differentiation of reason in our quest to know, reason has been elevated as an egoism, the role of thumb for all measures of truth. Dr. Perkins has argued that this is one of the rules of the game – but reason has become the only game in town. [1]

When I first went to educate myself in theology, seminary catalogs were full of dual degree programs in theology and social work. For a mere extra thirty credits one could leave seminary with both an MDiv and an MSW. It was obvious that such a marriage of vocation was made in heaven. Such programs are now mostly defunct, and for good reason. A theology degree is pretty much a sociology degree these days. The same objective skepticism that dominates the social sciences has become the standard for the theological disciplines as well. Believing Christians are asked to start with a tabula rosa of skepticism, even when reflecting on their own belief systems. David Tracy, a University of Chicago theologian, writes:

In fact the modern Christian theologian cannot ethically do other than challenge the traditional self-understanding of the theologian. He no longer sees his task as a simple defense of or even as an orthodox reinterpretation of traditional belief. Rather, he finds that his ethical commitment to the morality of scientific knowledge forces him to assume a critical posture towards his own and his tradition's beliefs. . . In principle, the fundamental loyalty of the theologian qua theologian is to that morality of scientific knowledge, which he shares with his colleagues, the philosophers, historians and social sciences. No more than they can he allow his own -- or his tradition's -- beliefs to serve as warrants for his arguments. In fact, in all properly theological inquiry, the analysis should be characterized by those same ethical stances of autonomous judgment, critical judgment and properly skeptical hard-mindedness that characterizes analysis in other fields. [2]

If sociologists are asking for nothing more than a methodological naturalism (or “agnosticism” as Dr. Perkins describes it) then religion is always going to be in an antagonist role to science. In response to this method, at the beginning of the 20th century, the fundamentalist argued against the role of reason (while using reason) in discovering truth. At the same time, the modernist argued, much as Dr. Perkins’ has, that the God questions are the only questions off-limits to science. An example of conflict between the sciences and religion can be examined in the modern development of the “God of the gaps” theory… that our doctrines of God are ushered in when science and technology are no longer able to answer our questions. God fills the gaps in our knowledge. As these gaps have been gradually filled by science, religion has found little room in the game. It is obvious that this approach of “where one ends and one begins” has led to a lessening of religion’s role in truth seeking.

Post-Enlightenment theology has attempted to understand the role that the human condition—both the social and individual pole—plays in the question of God. Most theology today has moved away from a “God of the gaps” kind of thinking displayed in Dr. Perkins’ argument toward an agreement with a human starting point for our God-talk. In other words, to speak of the discoveries of the social scientist is to speak of the stuff of God. Theology does not start where sociology ends; it is found in the middle of all human questioning and discourse.

The Praxological.

In all that I have said regarding the reduction of theology to the social sciences, I have a great deal of respect for the task of the modern theologian who, since Bonhoeffer, has sought to re-examine the nature of the Church and religion in light of secularism, atheism and naturalism. [3] These are the predominant worldviews in which Christians live and have their being. I have particular interest in the project of Karl Rahner to see anthropology as the starting point for theology, a project he has called “theological anthropology.” In all, these attempts have been a recognition of the historically conditioned character of theology’s task.

On the other hand, I do not applaud a popular reductionism that has been found in the vocation of the ministry today. Many are suggesting that the best foundations for ministerial studies are undergraduate business degrees and socio-psychology programs. Many churches today have been hiring “social scientists” with the kind of detached reference that Dr. Perkins has called for to study their communities and tell them what can be done to create a “good church.” The dogmatic assumptions of the nature of the Church are set aside for the appropriate human models of interaction. These consultants have taught the modern pastor to be sensitive to these empirical truths—even down to the color of the carpet and the style of communication in the pulpit. Certainly it is true that the social sciences has taught the Church how to better do its job…. But such a quality is not always understood as “better.” I am reminded of Doestoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. The Grand Inquisitor jeers at the dying Christ, “We have corrected your ways….” The arrogance of scientific rationalism has lead to a paternalism in the sciences that trickles down even to theology itself.

Dr. Perkins has said, “Our knowledge of The Truth can be altered, influenced, and distorted by our subjective inclinations to see the world as we wish to see it, not as it actually is.” This I agree with… in fact, I would push it a bit further--of course our subjective inclinations distort our world. But just what is the world like? Can such an objective vision of the world be grasped? And whether or not it can, does it matter? This appears to be more than a paradox in Rich’s argument it is a contradiction: he agrees with Berger that the world is merely a human construct and “nothing but,” but then he wants us to have an unbiased presentation of it. Liberation theology has admitted this social context for theology and has decried… “We are all biased, and I am biased in favor of me!” It is also true that Christians are not as concerned with “origins” as some might think. Its fallen character overshadows how God has made the world. Arguments “from nature” unravel at this point. To describe the way things are, does not necessarily imply divine intent. Present theologies of hope have argued that eschatology is a dominant part of Christian thought. This world, with all of its approximations and distortions, is passing away; the Age to Come is what we are about. Let’s get busy and construct it!

The sociology of knowledge understands the world in which we live as having been socially constructed. The discovery of the human’s self-creativity has been a principle of the Enlightenment’s turn to the subject. But this process goes on. We could ask what of the Christian’s responsibility to make such changes? How do the institutions of marriage, baptism, and Eucharist form and shape this new world? Jesus proclaimed this new order of existence as the Reign of God, and Christians can speak of this formation as already happening in the community of the Resurrected Lord. Paul said that we are not to be transformed by this world, but “by the renewal of our minds.” Paul got us thinking of new ways to imagine the social divisions of Jew/Gentile, he was slowly breaking out of a patriarchalism in the male/female divide, but said little about the social institution of slave/master. In the 19th century Houghton College’s ancestors, with a new way of looking at the world, helped abolish that reality. What we observe can be changed by the consciousness of the Christian. Certainly the social sciences and theology have an opportunity for a greater conversation, and we must be careful of laying down the rules of the dialogue before we sit at the table. The language, the human condition, the methodologies have more in common as fundamental starting points than the limits of empiricism allow.

Perhaps Christian sociologists can speak of a sacred canopy behind their analysis of the social matrix of the world; Christians talk of a God that has been heard and seen and experienced as the foundation of that world. Both live in the same human condition. I would conclude with an analogy attributed to Karl Rahner. The sociologist Dr. Perkins describes is like the little boy who went to the shore to experience the ocean. He went home to tell his friends that it was wet, salty, and full of motion. He had experienced the ocean. But he was only dancing along the shore line, skipping through the waves lapping at his feet. Yes, it was the ocean he had experienced, but it pointed to something much greater – a mystery yet to be uncovered. “The truth is out there”… and both social scientists and Christians find themselves playing in the discoveries of its boundaries and edges.

NOTES

1. It is interesting to me that Dr. Perkins refers to his presentation as an “argument,” occasionally breaking into the linear design to tell us what he has argued “thus far.” Certainly, as a sociologist, he would admit that even this form is a socially constructed discourse, one that many feminist philosophers have ridiculed as a product of patriarchal ways of thinking. My own theological models have tended to use terms like “dialogue,” “conversation,” and “reflection” to describe the process of doing theology. This points to present theology’s sense of ambiguity and approximation as it enters into the discussion of truth.

2. David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury Press), 1978, p. 7.

3. We should remember that Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation Sanctorum Communio [The Communion of the Saints, trans. by R. Gregor Smith] was a “dogmatic inquiry into the sociology of the Church” (Harper and Row, 1960.)

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