From Division to Dialogue: A Working Relationship for Theology and Philosophy

Abstract

From its esteemed place as the queen of the sciences in the medieval period, theology has suffered in the public eye in comparison to philosophy. While philosophy came to be more esteemed, especially in early modernity, theology was relegated to private, secondary status. In the modernist paradigm, theology was seen as too biased to be objective and fully rational. While theology and philosophy had worked hand in hand in the medieval period, in the modern period, they essentially went through a divorce. They became separated in terms of disciplines, methods, ethos, and even schools. The relationship often became hostile. The cracking of the modern framework in the last century, however, has reshaped both. New possibilities have emerged, yet not without continued strain, not unlike fractured families who continue to have ties that draw them together. Given that these two disciplines are foremost in the quest for truth and meaning, these new possibilities of an amicable relationship are what I would like to explore.

1. Introduction

During the medieval period, theology was often seen as queen of the sciences and philosophy the handmaiden. With the rise of modernity, a divorce ensued, and the relationship often became bitter and hostile. The enormous influence of modernity upon both did not help but rather hindered an amicable relationship. Especially at the beginning of modernity, before the rapid ascent of modern science, these were the two areas most considered for truth and meaning. Differences already arose, however, in their approaches, such as one can see in the sharp division that Thomas Aquinas made between them, between the unaided reason and revelation in theology.1 In the modern period, these differences became more distinct and often led to rivalry. With the cracking of the modern framework in the last century, which has reshaped both, new possibilities have emerged, yet not without continued strain, not unlike fractured families who continue to have ties that draw them together. Those new possibilities are what I would like to explore.

2. Modernity: A Fractured Relationship

In the modern period, theology and philosophy actually became “disciplines,” which actually took some centuries to harden and crystallize. Even for philosophy, it took time for the sciences to separate from philosophy. The institutionalization of disciplines in university departments and schools with great “silo” effects for almost all disciplines more firmly drew the lines and diminished the scope. This narrowing of philosophy’s sphere became so intense that it has raised the question even of the validity of philosophy, whether its value has been replaced by the hard and soft sciences or even, according to Richard Rorty’s suggestion, literature (see Rorty 1981).2 For instance, in 1986, the book After Philosophy explored what role, if any, that philosophy could play (Baynes et al. 1986).

In the United States, with the separation of church and state, the boundaries became even more deeply etched between religion or theology and philosophy. Philosophy was in a sense a secular discipline that belonged in any university, such as a state university. Theology, however, was a different matter. A state university was not required to have a religion department at all, much less have a confessional theology department, as is common in some European universities with state churches, such as a Protestant and Catholic faculty. This sociological division has had enormous impact, then, with professional philosophers and theologians getting trained in different schools, with different emphases, different sources, and different attitudes. The ethos is markedly different. Of course, many private colleges and universities in the United States are religious and denominationally based and have confessional departments of religion and theology. The point, though, is that such a confessional stance is quite different than the general stance of philosophy, of someone trained in philosophy, perhaps at a state university.

Besides these sociological forces, philosophical forces furthered the cracks, or to stay with the relationship metaphor, increased the estrangement of the two earlier partners. The “quest for certainty” in modernity, as John Dewey put it, drove a wedge between philosophy and theology (Dewey 1929). As many have noted, with Rene Descartes as the putative father of modernity, a foundationalist paradigm came to prevail.3 It prioritized strong or even absolute certainty about foundations and in addition a rigorous methodology based on these certain foundations, but it was a particular kind of certainty. Theologians, like the earlier Aquinas, might claim a certainty stemming from revelation, but that appeal to certainty would not count in the wider, modernist philosophical framework. The certainty had to arise from reason and logic, available to all. Richard Bernstein called this combination of certain foundations coupled with a rigorous method “objectivism.” As he put it, “By ‘objectivism,’ I mean the basic conviction that there is or must be some permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, reality, goodness, or rightness.” (Bernstein 1985, p. 8). In the broadly rationalist tradition, often identified as continental rationalism, the certainty, as in Descartes, could arise from rational, indubitable insight, from an airtight argument. In the broadly empiricist tradition, often seen now in terms of Anglo-American empiricist or analytic philosophy, the certainty lay more in evident sense experience, often then conjoined with logic. The development of symbolic logic in the nineteenth century as a powerful tool heightened this reliance upon reason, especially for analytic philosophers.

The implication for a faith-based discipline such as theology was largely negative, edging it further and further from the public sphere. From the objectivist perspective, theology as a rational enterprise was doomed from the start. To take Descartes as a famous example, he had to doubt everything, to put everything aside, and start from scratch, so to speak, with no prior commitments in order to be rational. In other words, one had to be unbiased to be objective and hence highly rational. Claims to prior commitments of faith and certainly to special sources of revelation outside of such an objective approach were immediately highly suspect if not ruled out of court. They were not respectable in the public sphere and actually did not belong. They did not have the requisite objectivity and lack of bias. This was a far cry from Aquinas’ view that theology, precisely because it was based on divine revelation, was more certain than the deliverances of reason, about which one can be mistaken. Such a modern objectivist approach was based on an assumption that one could actually put aside one’s biases and be presuppositionless. As John Greco observes, “Questions about our knowledge of God were more or less off the table.” (cited in Abraham and Aquino 2017, p. 9).

As we will see, that assumption fell apart in the twentieth century, but over the previous three centuries, such a stance remained at least as a common goal to approach as closely as possible.

Such a picture is in reality too simple. The objectivist paradigm was influential but not always adhered to by all. In some ways, it grew and then waned. The Romantic movement and the nascent existentialist movement in the nineteenth century raised questions about such a rationalist, logical approach being the sine qua non of truth and meaning. More significantly, theology continued to be very significant for many because religion, especially Christianity, continued to play a large role in society, even if it was suspect from a philosophical perspective. State churches in Europe continued even though their influence was gradually declining. In the United States, the separation of church and state on the one hand led to religion being placed in the private sphere but on the other led to its flourishing and growth, attaining the allegiance of large parts of the population. It was easier in theory than in practice to keep the public and private spheres apart, as seen in the religious changes to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance (“one nation, under God”) and a national motto, “In God We Trust,” as late as the 1950s at the dawn of what many saw as the rise of secularism4. The role of religion, a certain form of it that one could broadly designate as fundamentalism or evangelicalism, has come back with a vengeance in recent years in the United States, with Christian nationalism becoming an ascendant movement.5 Conservative Christian groups railed against modernity and did not accept the philosophical strictures, as exemplified in the Modernist debates and the rise of Fundamentalism in the early twentieth century (see Marsden 2006). In many ways theology was marginalized in the modernist paradigm, but in other ways, it was prized and further developed. The relationship between the two, however, was strained.

Two major philosophical movements early in the twentieth century represented something of a last gasp of modernity upon philosophy. One was Logical Positivism, where at times philosophy was seen as valid perhaps in the sense of a philosophy of science or as language about language, virtually removed from significance in terms of affirmations of truth. An affirmation of God’s existence was dramatically seen not as just wrong or mistaken but as a nonsense statement since it could not be verified from sense experience (see Ayer 2021, p. 34). It could not even be posed as a valid question. To their credit, adherents pursued the craze of certainty so far as to find that their prized Verification Principle was itself incoherent. The other movement, the phenomenological movement based on the thought of Edmund Husserl, began with the requirement of being able to bracket and perform a reduction that puts aside claims to reality in order to move to a presuppositionless stance, to a rigorous science, as Husserl called it (Husserl 1965). Similarly to Logical Positivism, as the phenomenological movement continued and grew, many moved away from such a foundationalist approach, in a sense, turning phenomenology against itself. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty put it, “The most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction.” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. xiv). Hermeneutical philosophy itself that is based on the assumption that “it is interpretation all the way down” arose out of phenomenology, from careful observation and description of the experience of perception and knowing. These criticisms and others such as from the philosophy of science in the latter part of the twentieth century ultimately led to the breakdown of the modernist paradigm that had prevailed for about three centuries by the end of the twentieth century.

3. Reframing Philosophy

The dismantling and loss of confidence in the modernist paradigm, which has been called postmodernity, postcritical philosophy, or just a new paradigm waiting to be born has opened the door for a reinvigorated relationship between philosophy and theology, with both promise and peril. One of the seismic shifts occurred in epistemology, the province of arriving at truth and meaning and central to the discipline of philosophy, where the kind of certainty and objectivism dreamed of in modernity is now not seen as possible. For example, William Abraham and Frederick Aquino, editors of a handbook on theological epistemology, note, “The whole field of epistemology has been revolutionized over the last fifty years.” (Abraham and Aquino 2017, p. 2). This does not mean, as some have taken it, that there is no place for reason, arguments, and evidence but that at the presuppositional level, they underdetermine the conclusions, which tend to be more holistic and related to many factors. One of the major cracks in modernity actually lay in the most prized area, namely, in science. Philosophy of science came to affirm that science itself is not purely objective, whose justification at the foundational level cannot be proven. Thomas Kuhn famously compared the shift from one scientific paradigm to another in actuality as like a conversion, one where the change is likely only possible due to an older generation dying off6. The sociology of science points to the way background assumptions that are not strictly proven and even where one goes to school have enormous influence. With all of this, science admirably is global and often self-correcting, at its best, but there is plenty of evidence that it does not always work that way.

The gap, therefore, between philosophy and theology has been lessened. Besides Kuhn, another philosopher of science, Mary Hesse, pointed out that the characteristics at one time given to religion or theology had in her day become characteristics of science, even the hard sciences (Hesse 1980, pp. 171–72). Especially when one looks to the soft sciences and to the humanities, the margins between them have been considerably diminished. An aspect of this is that the public arena is not per se as closed off as it was. An important insight from hermeneutical philosophy is that everyone comes with deep presuppositions that can be credible but which again are unprovable in the modernist, Cartesian sense. These deep presuppositions have deep influences. So it is not as though some have biases but some do not, as in the entrenched opposition between philosophy and the sciences versus religion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now it is generally seen that all have biases. Hans-Georg Gadamer provocatively put it in his influential magnum opus as an Enlightenment prejudice against prejudice (Gadamer 1991, p. 270). Hermeneutical philosophy, as in the major figures of Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, see that it is hermeneutics, or interpretation, all the way down7. An aspect of the modernist paradigm was an assumption that one could rise above time and history to have an unbiased, “Gods-eye-point-of-view.” Hermeneutical philosophers situate one deeply and inescapably within history, within one’s context, and within one’s body. The upshot for truth and meaning is that truth is accessible only through the mediation of meaning, and meaning is always hermeneutical or interpreted. Since meaning is always perspectival in this sense, so is truth. This understanding underscores the importance of openness to diverse viewpoints in order to gain a wider perspective.

It is important to see, again, that there still can be a solid place for reason and arguments, but that kind of inferential thinking does not have the absolute pride of place that it had before. The issue is not whether there are biases but more significant is how aware one is of them. In addition, as mentioned, when there is agreement on the presuppositions, which Kuhn called “normal science,” there can be a great deal of rigor and certainty, as in mathematics where there is almost universal agreement about basic assumptions. This can happen even in theology, where one’s assumptions can lead to logical conclusions, as in the way strong Calvinism logically concluded double predestination and limited atonement, the only logical conclusions possible with their assumptions about divine power and sovereignty.

One way to see this change is to look at Aristotle. Aristotle put pride of place on theoretical reason, which could not be otherwise, with mathematics as the model. His astuteness, however, led him to posit another kind of reason, practical wisdom in the area of ethics, where such certainty was not possible. This kind of practical wisdom did not lead to knowledge in the highest sense for him but relied on holistic insight by people whose character was formed to make difficult judgments, which themselves could not be coercively proven. One could see someone like Gadamer, then, as turning Aristotle on his head, that is, that all areas of thought rely on something like practical wisdom for the foundations or assumptions. With agreement on the basic foundations, one can then often turn to rigorous method and logic.

Such a radical shift in an epistemology that reigned not just in modernity but in broad terms goes back to the beginnings of Western thought and the beginnings of Christianity calls for major rethinking and even imagination for the nature of philosophy, for the nature of theology, and for their relationship. The pursuit of truth and meaning has been constant; the understanding of the way to attain them has changed, even dramatically. Immanuel Kant in the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason famously called his shift in these matters a “Copernican revolution.” Since his time over two centuries ago, the revolution has continued.

4. Reframing Theology

What does this paradigmatic shift mean for theology? Ironically, it allows one to see theology as more rational than in modernity and, as mentioned, even in pre-modernity. Aquinas is often pictured as a foundationalist in epistemology, and while Aquinas is complex, he does represent a classic division between philosophy (reason) and theology. In his eyes, philosophy can prove many things by the unaided reason, such as his Five Ways of proving the existence of God. Some things, though, philosophy cannot prove but must look to revelation, which is received by faith, not by logical argument. He did think, though, that theology can be logically demonstrated, given the caveat that some of the propositions with which one must work are received by revelation. This kind of bifurcation between an objective reason, presumably convincing to anyone’s reason, and theology (which for him was based on revelation that one could grasp with certainty, at least aspects of it) is no longer tenable. This is partly because revelation is not seen, generally, as pristine as Aquinas thought, where it was unquestionably from God, without any mediation. Even revelation is hermeneutical; in other words, revelation in terms of the Christian Scriptures has to be interpreted and is now seen as much more located in its context, in movement through history, and in terms of the whole. This is not to mention the long tradition of reflection on it afterwards, whose influence is deep, just to look at major differing assumptions between the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions—and also the great differences within those traditions. They all assert that they are strictly following Scripture. And they all can give reasons, sometimes highly technical argumentation, for their respective stances. But it is obvious, as Gadamer would attest, that their traditions or prejudices, what they bring to the text, shape what they take out of the text. As Gadamer would also say, it is not just that we have to interpret an ancient text in its context and Scripture in its developing, historical context, but we bring our horizon as well, so that every encounter with Scripture is a fusion of horizons. As he ways, “We understand in a different way, if we understand at all.” (Gadamer 1991, p. 297)

These realizations point to the same emphasis that the various liberation theologies make, namely, that there is no one theology for all that says everything that can be said once and for all. It is not that there is no basic center that is common or deeply overlapping, but that center is variously expressed in different perspectives. Nancey Murphy expresses this point as the difference between a foundational metaphor and a web metaphor, where the relationships do not go just one way, from the bottom to the top, but interweave. Peripheral beliefs or insights from the edges of the web can reverberate back to the center, contrary to the foundational metaphor.8 Each expression tends to bring out different accents and notes. The Bible is seen largely as composed of documents from the margins and underside of history, and it is not always easy for those on the upside of history even to understand it. In fact, the Bible has often been appropriated in favor of the privileged, supporting their privilege. The task of interpretation for those more privileged is therefore in some ways more difficult; it takes more work and often details are missed. Though not all would agree with these changes, I see that there is no one theology but only theologies—and we are the richer for it.

Perhaps something like this could be said of philosophy as well, namely, that there are only philosophies rather than one single philosophy, which at best supplement and enrich each other but also allow for some commonalities on reality (metaphysics) and humanity (epistemology). There is an interplay between universality, or universal intent, as Michael Polanyi, the philosopher of science, put it and particularity. Any relationship or dialogue, then, between theology and philosophy must take into consideration the multiplicity of relationships that are involved between many theologies and many philosophies. Any such relationship involves many dialogues and is inevitably particular and limited while having at the same time universal intent, that is, attempting to say something that is at least partially true for all, depending on one’s presuppositions (Polanyi 1962, pp. 37, 145).

A way to reconceive theology in such a way that it can be true to itself and yet relate to the intellectual philosophical enterprise is to set it within the framework of Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy. In addition, this exemplifies a fruitful relationship between philosophy, with Ricoeur’s major philosophical work, and theology. This is a creative application in that Ricoeur himself did not address theology in this way, and in fact did not relate to theology very much at all, even though he did make major contributions to biblical studies and to philosophy of religion. Ricoeur is, however, particularly helpful at this point with his noted hermeneutical arc in highlighting a critical dimension of hermeneutics that allows for various critical methods to serve as a curb on biases, while also acknowledging their limits.9 In other words, openness to varying perspectives, in philosophy or theology, does not mean being uncritical or accepting of everything. He stresses the role of practical wisdom in adjudicating the results of criticism and moving beyond “the desert of criticism” and an overwhelming skepticism, which can be paralyzing (Ricoeur 1967, p. 349). In Ricoeur’s hermeneutic arc, or spiral, he points to the dynamic of a first understanding of something, such as a text or an experience, which recognizes the role of presuppositions. As such, he represents a position “after modernity” in recognizing that there is no neutral or totally objective starting point. He indicates that we start too late to arrive at such a point.

He then calls for a second critical stage that allows for methodological scrutiny and analysis of biases that provides a check and also a deepening of understanding of the first naivete. In this connection, he is also known as requiring a hermeneutic of suspicion (Ricoeur 1970, pp. 26–27). While such critical analysis is prevalent in philosophy, it is not always the case in theology. This actually is a place where theology can draw upon philosophy and other approaches as tests of its views10. Ricoeur also notes how interpreters have to be critical not only of their ideologies but of the often-hidden assumptions of critical methods, namely, that one has to be able to critique the critique. He strikingly says in connection with Sigmund Freud’s hermeneutic of suspicion, “Guile will be met with double guile.” (Ricoeur 1970, p. 34).

And in a third stage of the arc, the appropriation, or as he also indicates, a second or postcritical naivete (Ricoeur 1970, p. 28), one must make a holistic judgment, arrive at a second understanding, which takes into account all of the criticism. It is a place where one pushes beyond enervating skepticism, which may occur in the stage of critical analysis. In the end, though, there is often not a clear cut, easily demonstrated conclusion, even with all of these checks on interpretation, but one’s judgment is one of practical wisdom that is a risk. He compares such a judgment to a testimony in a trial that has to withstand cross-examination. He holds together the role of critique but not to the detriment of conviction, as in the title of some interviews with him, Critique and Conviction (Ricoeur 1998). Interpretations thus need to be tested, but they can still be made. In Oneself as Another, he noted this balance between extremes in saying of such a judgment: “Attestation defines the sort of certainty that hermeneutics may claim, not only with respect to the epistemic exaltation of the cogito in Descartes, but also with respect to its humiliation in Nietzsche and its successors.” (Ricoeur 1992, p. 21).

In this light, systematic theology can function as part of the critical stage, where beliefs, perhaps based on interpretation of Scripture or of a moving religious experience, or both, can be examined. The various primary sources of religious belief can be constructively and systematically integrated11. Yet the goal is not the intellectual formulation in itself but as a pointer and support for the main thing, the practical appropriation and living of faith12. This reflective and constructive role for systematic theology, however, provides a point of contact for the reflective and constructive role of philosophy.

5. A Working Relationship

With this change in mind, how can philosophy and theology forge a working relationship? If not a full-scale reconciliation, can they have a non-hostile, amicable working environment? In light of the changed landscapes in philosophy and theology where the sharp lines that have often divided them have been blurred, my proposal is that there are epistemological grounds to find various places of similarity in difference between them.

A first facet of the relationship, which accounts for much of the rivalry, is that both are unusual and distinctive in relating to all of reality, to truth and meaning in general, expressing universal truths or at least truths with universal intent, not just for some people or culture but for all. They are not the same in that theology is always relating everything to God or to Ultimate Reality in some specific tradition, but claims about creation, providence, salvation, and the goal of history, even the nature of human beings, relate in principle to everyone. Philosophy is more explicitly directed towards truth and reality for all, without assuming the existence of God. Many philosophies, of course, have concluded that there is some kind of transcendent reality. Their metaphysics or epistemology, however, is intended to be true for all. As mentioned above, this universal intent inevitably fails in any pure form because it is always colored by context and culture. Moreover, philosophies are shaped by their particular contexts and their ethos, which actually varies.

One can identify four broad ways in which the disciplines vary. One is that they have different primary publics or audiences. Philosophy aims to speak in principle to everyone and in a way to speak for everyone about reality and truth. Christian theology, in particular, speaks primarily to the church. It is from and to the church, although it intends truths for everyone, if one could be convinced or converted to their faith. For example, a Christian theologian’s affirmation that God exists and is characterized in certain ways is not just intended to be true for Christians but for everyone. Nevertheless, the theologian has as a primary aim to express the beliefs of the Christian church. And this is largely true for any religion.

Secondly, they have different primary sources. Philosophy looks to general experience and reason as criteria. The results may vary widely, but the appeal is to evidence and reasoning in principle available to anyone. Christian theology, again, as a particular representative example, also looks to experience and reason but also usually to Scripture and sometimes to particular creeds and confessions as criteria. Commonly theologians will provide warrant for their view of God and even of humanity with appeal to Scripture as well as to reason and experience. Philosophers cannot begin by appeal to some Scripture as warrant, although they may offer an argument for doing so and then proceed, but that would be rare. They cannot just assume it; a Christian theologian can.

Thirdly, and perhaps more questionably, philosophy is more theoretically inclined while theology is practically inclined. This is not always the case. In its first years, and even throughout history, philosophy was often seen as a philosophy for living in a practical way, for meaning, as one can see in ancient Stoicism or Epicureanism. In the modern context, philosophy rarely has that very practical flavor but offers more along the line of understanding than of a direct call to action. As explained above, theology is best seen as a step towards action and a support for action, as support for following a way of life. Some approaches have seen theology virtually as the end and be all, but theology is usually seen as conducive to living a religious, say, a Christian life.

Fourthly, one can add the sociological differences that occurs from training within the discipline in universities or seminaries. The professors typically go to different schools, or areas within schools, and receive different degrees. Their training is significantly different in terms of what they read and how they present arguments. Their very language and jargon are different. It is not difficult to imagine, as with any specialized discipline, such as medicine or law, how the training shapes even the personality and demeanor by the end. This does not mean a cookie cutter sameness, but observers can be quick to note the subtle differences. These sociological factors are of course also at play even within philosophy and theology. One can note the sharp differences between the presentation of an analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy. Or one can note the differences between presentations from a strong Calvinist and a pentecostal theologian.

These differences can and have led to the strife between them, but they can also be seen as providing advantages to each other. Theology notoriously has borrowed from philosophy, from broadly Platonic thought in the first millennium of the church to the dramatic shift to Aristotle in the thirteenth century with the rediscovery of much of his work and the genius of Thomas Aquinas in rethinking Christian theology in light of what he simply referred to as “the Philosopher.” It is not difficult to see, likewise, how deeply religious views have shaped the philosophical tradition, with even modern philosophers easily speaking of God with Christian resonance, from Descartes to Kant to Hegel.

With these differences in mind, after modernity, how can one envisage a productive relationship? Despite the way that philosophy has influenced theology, some theologians have been very suspicious and resistant, openly disallowing such influence. Karl Barth in his earlier years famously separated theology from philosophy, even rewriting the first volume of his Dogmatics to do so, though himself being quite acquainted and perhaps unconsciously influenced by Kantian philosophy.

An interesting and instructive example is the debate between the so-called Yale and Chicago schools of theology in the U.S. in the 80s and 90s. While the sharp differences later came to be seen as overdrawn, the relationship between theology and philosophy was front and center.13 The Yale School with Hans Frei and George Lindbeck as major figures—although not entirely the same—resisted the domination of theology by philosophy, with Barth as a heavy influence.14 In Lindbeck’s metaphor, the biblical world is to absorb the modern world, not the other way around, yet that is what they feared, especially in liberal theology, thus their view was called postliberal theology. They saw the Chicago School, with David Tracy and Paul Ricoeur, as falling into this trap. Frei’s The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative attempted to show how, from the liberal and even also to the conservative perspectives, in the modern period, the biblical narrative had been overshadowed by concern for the world behind the text (Frei 1974). For the liberal side, this was often an amalgamation of theology to an overarching philosophy, for example, Immanuel Kant or Georg Hegel. In a later five-fold typology developed by Frei, this view of assimilation represents one end of the spectrum, with theology falling into a subclass of philosophy, essentially dominated by philosophy. The other end of the spectrum is the extreme of an essential fideism, where theology stands in its own world resistant virtually to any other influence. One might have thought that Frei would place himself at this other extreme point, but he actually preferred his options three and four, where three involves a strong correlation between the two, which is more the later position of Tracy, or an “ad hoc” relationship as position four.15 Ricoeur interestingly more likely fits the latter, as does Lindbeck. In fact, Tracy’s “mutually critical correlation” does not imply a tight correlation but a critical, dialogical one, so he is quite close to the number four type. Again, the irony is that the two schools were actually fairly close together. Lindbeck, for example, drew strongly on Ludwig Wittgenstein and the sociologist Clifford Geertz. Frei also advocated dialogue with sociology.

From his philosophical epistemological perspective outlined above, Ricoeur expressed well a dialogical relationship where theology has its own integrity, cannot be subsumed under philosophy, and can actually make contributions to philosophy, which has been the case historically. Conversely, philosophy has its own integrity and can influence, without dominating, theology. Ricoeur argued in a way similar to Frei that philosophy should not dictate the specific nuances of a “regional hermeneutic” such as theology. In terms of hermeneutics, one can allow that theology is textual and cannot avoid common dynamics of textuality or hermeneutics, but it is in turn unique. It reacts back upon and subordinates philosophical hermeneutics (Stiver 2012, p. 87; Ricoeur 1976b). The ad hoc nature of the relationship, moreover, is that one cannot predict beforehand the influence and which way it might go. This also means no one theology or philosophy are obvious partners. Lindbeck related Barth and the later Wittgenstein, but he also looked to sociology. Psychology and the sciences in general have been dialogue partners, with efforts to relate theology to evolution and chance in chaos theory. Science has been informative at least in questioning literalist interpretations of Scripture such as Genesis 1, not undermining Scripture but actually pointing to a better hermeneutic that should have prevailed at the beginning; Galileo himself actually had a viable compatible hermeneutic. Process philosophy and Process theology, drawing upon a common elaborate metaphysical view, have grown together over the last century, both drawing heavily upon each other and science. The example of Process thought suggests that various metaphysical views can be a source of relating philosophy and theology. While the idea of a grand Enlightenment “meta-narrative” has been called into question in philosophy and theology, famously by Jean-François Lyotard, some continue to look at “mega-narratives,” in the words of the philosopher Merold Westphal, to unite philosophy and theology. In terms of particular philosophers (Lyotard 1984; Westphal 2001, p. xiii). Fergus Kerr wrote a book entitled Theology after Wittgenstein (Kerr 1986). I followed with Theology after Ricoeur (Stiver 2001). I think both are in the spirit of a dialogical but not dominating approach. These examples point to the fact that one need not think of one singular way of relating philosophy and theology. The relationships, as in all relationships, must be worked out in light of particularities.

The upshot is that theology can freely latch on to contemporary currents while not baptizing anything and while remaining true to itself. The advantage of such ad hoc philosophizing is to clarify one’s theology, not to found it or determine it. This understanding and relationship may only become clear in retrospect on one’s substantive theological work. And the same might be said of a philosophy influenced by theological currents, from one religion or another. The relationship can be ad hoc in both ways.

An interesting analogy offering similarity in difference inspired by Nancey Murphy is to take the approach of Imre Lakatos in philosophy of science and apply it to theology. Lakatos struggled with the way major scientific perspectives came to be seen as confirmed, which was much more vexed than the early use of the Verification Principle proposed (Lakatos and Musgrave 1974). Often it is an unpredictable process, even with evidence against a major theory, or what Lakatos called anomalies. Usually, Lakatos saw, the older theory is not rejected until a strong new one is available, with an example being the continuing use of the geocentric model in astronomy for centuries, with all of its problems, in the earlier years of modern science. Kuhn famously looked at the persistence of the Newtonian model with significant anomalies until the Einsteinian model emerged. So Lakatos posited that there are “research programs” that represent large theories. He thought that adherents tended to protect a “hard core” even with anomalies. In those cases, he thought that the core was protected by a belt of auxiliary hypotheses to help deal with the anomalies. When a research program predicts further supportive evidence, it offers more confirmation. When there are too many anomalies, along with a better alternative, a program might be abandoned. The judgment at the end, one could say, is more one of practical wisdom than one of rigorous science. Murphy suggested that one could apply this to various research programs in Christianity such as a strict Reformed or Arminian theology (see Murphy 1996, pp. 100–3; Murphy 1990). In this case, a theology might draw on a philosophy or other disciplinary research programs to provide support and even further confirmation. The philosophy does not become the core but supports the core. Murphy’s point is that in a broad sense, science, philosophy, and theology can all be seen working somewhat similarly as rational enterprises seeking confirmation, making allowances for their respective kinds of evidence and warrant. To support the significance of this proposal, this relationship where there is similarity in difference in the epistemologies of philosophy and theology, akin to the point that Abraham and Aquino make about Aristotle, has yet to be fully explored, as they point out, “Surprisingly—given the attention directed to theological claims and the wealth of materials in both theology and philosophy—this [Aristotelian] principle has not been systematically explored in the case of theology.” (Abraham and Aquino 2017, p. 1).

An important corollary, or protective hypothesis, for my view is that theology is essentially a critical and developing enterprise in the spirit of the Augustinian faith seeking understanding and the Reformation principle of ecclesia semper reformanda, the church continually being reformed. To give a biblical basis, one can appeal to the Apostle Paul exhorting to “test everything” while at the same time not quenching the Spirit, a delicate balance. (1 Thess 5:19–21) Such an approach allows for reform and suggests a willingness to consider other views and options such as philosophy. What one hopes is that such a relationship between theology and philosophy can be fruitful and not full of strife, leading to enhancement of both.

The benefit of this proposal is that the age-old search for truth and meaning is supported by all of the available resources. Rather than a fractured relationship where neither wants anything to do with the other, the relationship can be one of partners who contribute what they can, even perhaps resulting in a synergy where the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Truth and meaning are thus not casualties of the relationship, but beneficiaries.