C. Clark Triplett, Ph.D.

With the dissolution of foundationalism, the question is left open about the possibility of finding a moral, intellectual, or social critique of contemporary ideologies that have led to what Max Horkheimer and Theodore W. Adorno call the “pathologies of modernity” (3). Concerns about the use of knowledge for power have precipitated new and radical critiques of discourse found particularly in the works of postmodern writers like Michel Foucault who call into question all privileged intellectual positions that he considers are vestiges of a totalitarian Enlightenment epistemology. Such privileged views lead to intellectual, political, and moral “blackmail” that “blinds us from asking new kinds of questions about the genesis of social practices that are always shaping us and historically what we are” (Bernstein, New 153). Yet the term critique seems to imply some sort of criteria or standard for evaluating what is true or false, moral, or immoral. As Stanley Cavell emphasizes, in discussing Ludwig Wittgenstein’s understanding of the concept criteria, “The judge has a more or less clear area of discretion in the application of standards, but none whatsoever over the set of criteria he is obliged to apply” (12). The concern of many critics is, how is critique possible without a normative standard? The concern about the pathologies of modernity seems obvious after the Nazi death camps and the Bosnian mass gravesites. However, without some kind of, at least quasi-transcendental or cross-cultural, critique, the specter of “radical evil” looms ever more ominously over modern society. As Richard J. Bernstein stresses, “The repertoire of evil has never been richer. Yet never have our responses been so weak” (Radical 1). While the idea of critique seems to assume a transcendental frame to establish its validity, there continues to be skepticism about the possibility of such critique that escapes particular historical and ethical-political interests.

In the previous article, “Postmodern Approaches to Knowledge: Finding a Starting Place for Faith and Learning after Foundationalism,” the author discussed the pluralism of postmodern approaches to knowledge after foundationalism. The impact of the “shift towards hermeneutics” and the “linguistic turn” of philosophy makes any universal claims to knowledge doubtful. The hermeneutical situation and the socially conventional uses of language severely limit theories of knowledge that attempt to view the world from beyond any particular cultural horizon. How is it then possible to develop a critique of particular intellectual, social, and moral contexts which are considered oppressive and even violent when there is no meta-critical framework for evaluating the underlying interests of cultures of power that seek to extinguish the voices of the marginalized and extort the truth concerning radical evil? While the discussions of these issues are often quite lofty, they have significant practical implications for the everyday life of those who are least able to speak for themselves.

The purpose of this article is to review the work of several contemporary writers who recognize the fallibility of knowledge and yet attempt to offer a trans-contextual critique of culture with universal implications. These thinkers attempt to provide a via media between a number of polarities in contemporary thought including debates concerning foundationalism / contextualism, objectivism / relativism, epistemology / hermeneutics, and universalism / particularism. This discussion will consider, in particular, the socio-critical work of social theorist Jürgen Habermas, who grounds his critique in universal pragmatics and the process of communicative action, and the writings of theologian Wolfhardt Pannenberg, whose meta-critical framework attempts to link a hermeneutic of universal history to the scientific status of theology. This inquiry will also consider the interesting approach of James E. Loder and W. Jim Neidhardt, who use the model of the Mobius Band as a heuristic device to attempt to weave the multiple threads of contemporary thought into a unified framework. All of these writers recognize the fundamental role of hermeneutics and the limitations of modern epistemology and yet stress the necessity for, at least, a quasi-transcendental critique of the discourse of modern culture.

This article will also explore the possibility of a critical methodology for Christian thinking that offers a means of considering the credibility and integrity of the evangelical theological task. As Wentzel van Huysteen argues, the Christian faith has its own integrity which is unique, but if valid it must be able “to integrate the divergent dimensions of our modern experience, to give it the maximum degree of meaning and significance” (Theology x). While evangelical Christianity is uniquely particular in its truth claims, it still makes universal claims about the relationship of all things under God. The question is whether the explanatory models of Habermas, Pannenberg, and others provide relevant models for articulating the Christian faith in a credible and vital way in contemporary culture while still retaining a commitment to its singular message. Do they contribute a means for evaluating and affirming a message that both engages the world and embraces the infinite “beyond” of the world?

The Debate over the Distinction between Explanation and Understanding

An important place to begin this discussion is the distinction that Wilhelm Dilthey made between the Natural Sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the Human (Social) or Moral Sciences (Geisteswissenshaften). According to Dilthey, each of these areas of study requires a different model for interpreting the respective phenomena it studies. The natural sciences demand a method of “explanation” that considers descriptions of reality using causal categories which brackets reference to the human experience. The human sciences, however, require a different model that takes into account lived experience itself, the socio-historical world of shared experience. For Dilthey, the contrast is not a matter of different kinds of objects or perceptions, but the context within which objects of study are understood: “The same object and the same fact can contain different systems of relationship; the human studies should take the object or fact and use it in new, nonscientific ‘categories’ derived from life itself” (Palmer 104). Understanding is a better word for the human sciences because they must consider the inner, interpretive experience of humans.

Dilthey’s distinction would have a revolutionary impact on the study of the social sciences and the use of the hermeneutical method for understanding human behavior. The use of hermeneutics in the social sciences really began with Max Weber and his use of the term understanding (Verstehen), borrowed from early hermeneutics, to interpret actors, interactions, and human history (Ritzer 116). Dilthey extends understanding to include the way in which one mind understands another mind; that is, comprehending human experience from within.

Interestingly, from the beginning, the social sciences emphasized an empirical approach and modeled the emerging discipline after the successful biological and physical sciences. Auguste Comte, the originator of positivism, developed his social physics in reaction to the social disorder of the French Revolution. While positivism reacted against certain individualistic aspects of the Enlightenment, it espoused the intellectual aspects to an extreme. This positivistic element has continued to play a role throughout the history of the social sciences. Ernest Nagel, for example, was an exemplar of this type of empirical explanation emphasized in social scientific inquiry. He attempted to establish a body of general laws in the social sciences similar to that in the “hard sciences” (Bernstein, Restructuring 33). This emphasis has led to a tension in the field between those who accentuate scientific social research and those who understand the social sciences as a matter of moral and political reform. Those who stress the latter often argue that there is no way to extricate the study of social phenomena from the values, language, and interests of a particular socio-political community. The purposive (means-ends) rationality that Weber discussed often leads ineluctably to an oppressive “iron cage” which necessitates an emancipatory critique to overcome the interests of the dominating rationality of a particular culture. So, in one sense, Dilthey’s distinction between explanation and interpretation is reflected in these divergent trends within the social sciences.

Beginning in the 1960s a number of controversies occurred in the social sciences that reflected the radical changes that became manifest in several disparate disciplines. These changes would have a significant impact on the accepted paradigms in most of the sciences as well as the relationship between science and theology. During this time three seminal works were published that would have a profound effect on the acceptance of the “received model” of scientific method used as an exemplar in many disciplines: Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Peter Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy; and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method (Bernstein, Beyond 20-44). These three treatises would have a revolutionary impact on discussions concerning the nature and scope of rationality. Controversies emerged from several areas of study that would question the nature of scientific inquiry in both the natural and social sciences. Kuhn would seriously question the way in which new scientific paradigms develop and whether they are commensurable with the “received tradition.” Winch, who based his analysis of the social sciences on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, would insist that the social sciences cannot appeal to the same kind of justification as the natural sciences and that alien cultures demand rational criteria that are specific to that culture. Gadamer would argue that “traditional” methods of inquiry are just another form of prejudice which fails to recognize it as such and without this awareness the interpreter will inevitably impose his own understanding on the “text” of the other rather than recognizing the distance between the two horizons—the horizon of the text and the horizon of the reader. According to Gadamer, “Hermeneutic work is based on a polarity of familiarity and strangeness…between being a historically intended, distanciated object and belonging to a tradition. The true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (Bernstein, Beyond 295). These alternative responses to the debate over the relationship between explanation and understanding would touch off great controversy concerning the possibility of a universal rationality that is cross-disciplinary or trans-contextual.

Although the theories of Kuhn, Winch, and Gadamer emphasize different issues in the discussion of human rationality, they commonly criticize a unified, fixed framework of knowledge and a view of truth that subsumes all intellectual inquiry under a single methodology. The seminal works of these writers have opened the conversation about the legitimacy of other forms of knowledge and the importance of the life-situated, cultural community where all intellectual discourse occurs. At the same time, other concerns are raised about the possibility of critique across cultures or paradigms. Without some formal means of assessment similar to the empirical-analytic method of the natural sciences, how is it possible to justify or legitimize the truth claims of any particular paradigm? How is it possible to escape relativism without a trans-contextual framework that provides a means for critiquing pathological and self-deceptive rational systems that would offer the possibility for the rediscovery of truth? A number of contemporary philosophers and theologians have attempted to address these issues and to provide models of knowledge which take a via media path that tries to avoid absolute contextualist or foundationalist epistemologies. They recognize that there is no single “theory of everything” (Trigg 180), but at the same time they insist on the necessity of rational conversation beyond any particular community or culture (van Huysteen, Essays 4). While all of them stress the importance of the hermeneutic situation, they also accept the fact that critique must come from some place other than hermeneutics (Ricoeur, Hermeneutics 96). As Trigg stresses, “Without the ability to appeal to something that transcends time and space, we are all imprisoned by the assumptions and prejudices of one time and place” (49). The remainder of this discussion will consider writers who have attempted a via media position, who advocate more of a dialectic relationship between contextualist and foundationalist epistemologies, and whether their arguments provide a more balanced approach to rationality.

Jürgen Habermas’s Hermeneutics of Socio-Critical Theory

The writings of Jürgen Habermas are an extension of the critical social theory developed by the Frankfurt School represented by the work of Theodore W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. The task and central theme of the Frankfurt School, including the work of Habermas, has been to espouse a reconstructed social theory based on the critical theory of Karl Marx. Unlike Marx, however, their critique has been aimed at modern rationality rather than at the political and economic targets of Marx, although their critique certainly has ramifications for these areas of study. Russell Keat indicates that critical theory can best be understood by “outlining their attitude towards the positivist and hermeneutic alternatives” (1). The problem with positivism, according to critical theorists, is that rather than being neutral about scientific knowledge, it has specific social and political consequences:

Positivism thus reinforces the reified and alienated character of (especially capitalist) social structures. Its conception of the relationship between theory and practice makes scientific knowledge necessarily manipulative, the ideal basis for a system of social control exercised by a dominant class, which can present itself as making political decisions in a purely rational, scientific manner. (Keat 2)

The Frankfurt School is equally critical of a hermeneutical social theory which is more interested in the interpretation of meanings of particular social phenomena rather than the explanation and prediction of observable phenomena. Hermeneutics fails to recognize the importance of the unconscious determinants of reified social structures which exert powerful “interests” of dominance and control over social agents. The aim of critical theory is to unmask these powerful ideologies and provide the possibility of emancipation from such control.

Although Habermas was a student of Adorno, his work extends and reconstructs the ideas of the early Frankfurt school. Habermas’s work is prolific, and understanding his philosophy is a formidable undertaking. As Thomas McCarthy has emphasized, an intelligent reception of his work is further hindered by “problems of style, and convoluted formulations that often seem impenetrable, problems exacerbated at times by inept translations that make what is already difficult impossible” (Critical x). He prodigiously interacted with a wide range of other traditions such as American pragmatism, analytic philosophy, theories of psychological and moral development, linguistics, and classical social theory. He also has responded critically to many of the most cogent representatives of modern/postmodern culture, including Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidigger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Richard Rorty. According to Richard Bernstein, the most impressive aspect of Habermas’s body of knowledge is the way in which he is able to weave everything into a coherent whole:

There is a unity of vision that informs his work. A systematic impulse is evident in his earliest writings. Through the various pathways he has followed, he has sought to develop a powerful, comprehensive, critical understanding of social and cultural modernity, which clarifies our history, present horizon, and future prospects. (“Introduction” 3)

The beginnings of Habermas’s “reconstructive rationality” is found in his early comprehensive work Knowledge and Human Interests. The primary intention of this work is identified in the preface:

I am undertaking a historically oriented attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of modern positivism with the systematic intention of analyzing the connections between knowledge and human interests. In following the process of the dissolution of epistemology, which has left the philosophy of science in place, one makes one’s way over abandoned stages of reflection. Retreading this path from a perspective that looks back toward the point of departure may help to recover the forgotten experience of reflection. That we disavow reflection is positivism. (Knowledge vii)

While Habermas accepts the criticisms of his predecessors in the Frankfurt School concerning the strategic or instrumental rationality emphasized by the positivists, he is not willing to completely give up on the Enlightenment project. He believes strongly that the turn to the “negative dialectics” of Adorno led to a pessimistic approach to the possibility of emancipation. Negative dialectics threatened the positive explanatory function of Critical Theory. Rather, Habermas hopes to “justify the possibility of a viable critical theory of society, nothing less was required than rethinking the question of rationality and rationalization process” (Bernstein, “Introduction” 7).

In his Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas identifies three primary cognitive interests: the empirical-analytic (technical), the historical-hermeneutical (practical), and the critical (emancipation). Each of these has its place, but each is also only one mode of knowledge. None of these interests is to be taken as the canonical standard for all forms of knowledge (Berstein, “Introduction” 9). When this totalization occurs, there is a tendency towards “ideologically frozen” positions that lead to constraint and control rather than freedom of inquiry. In particular, empirical-analytic and historical-hermeneutic interests may emerge in time as ideologies which are represented as disinterested forms of knowledge concealing “an interest under the guise of a rationalization, in a sense similar to Freud’s” (Ricoeur, Hermeneutics 80). The ideological form or interest of the empirical analytic sciences is positivism. “Positivism stands and falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures” (Habermas, Knowledge 67). With positivism, the empirical-analytic sciences and their technical interest take on a transcendental quality that aims at the objectivication of all knowledge.

The historical-hermeneutic sciences with its practical interest are a counterpart to the empirical-analytic sciences. As Habermas argues, “The intersubjectivity of the frame of reference within which we objectivate nature as something to be controlled according to laws is bought at the cost of neutralizing broadly complex, biographically determined and historically shaped sensibility. That is, the entire spectrum of prescientific experiences in daily life is excluded” (Knowledge 143). This points out, as will be discussed later, the importance of the “intersubjective frame of reference” in Habermas’s critical theory. The interest of the historical-hermeneutic sciences is intersubjective or interpersonal understanding or practical interest in contrast to technical interests. While he accepts this domain of cognitive interest as legitimate, he rejects Gadamer’s claim of the universal, ontological nature of hermeneutics and its tendency towards historicism—which uncritically accepts certain forms of life without considering its own validity claims. There is the danger of ethnocentrism without some rational criteria for particular social and political ideologies.

This brings us to Habermas’s third cognitive interest, a metacritical dimension, that has the goal of social emancipation. In one sense, the critical domain stands above or transcendent to the other two for it is critical by constitution (Ricoeur, Hermeneutic 82). Through critical self-reflection (Selbstandigkeit) it is possible to understand the emancipatory interest of both empirical-analytic and hermeneutical interests because self-reflection recognizes in both an interest in the full development of reason. This is only realized when, through self-reflection, the “distorted communication” of objectivism in the empirical analytic sciences and the reified institutionalism of the historical-hermeneutic sciences is identified. Habermas does recognize the need for “regularities” in rational endeavors but critical theory must go beyond this:

A critical social science will not remain satisfied with this. It is concerned with going beyond this goal to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social actions as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.... Thus the level of (non-reflective) consciousness which one of the initial conditions of such laws, can be transformed. Of course, to this end, a critically mediated knowledge of laws cannot through reflection alone render a law itself inoperative but can render it inapplicable.

The methodological framework that determines the meaning of the validity of critical propositions of this category is established by the concept of self-reflection. The latter releases the subject from dependence on hypostatized powers. Self-reflection is determined by an emancipatory cognitive interest. (Knowledge 310)

In his later writings, Habermas places considerable emphasis on the ideal speech situation in which unconstrained and nondistorted communication is most likely to occur. It is in the realm of the practical reason that Habermas discovers the context for emancipatory discourse as reflected in his concept of “communicative action.” It is at this time that the work of Habermas and his colleague Karl-Otto Apel took a turn in new direction “by shifting his center of theoretical attention away from epistemology to the theory of language and action” (White 27). Borrowing from the philosophy of J. L. Austin and John Searle, Habermas emphasizes the importance of speech-acts in social interaction. Speech-act theory posits that illocutionary utterances not only say something but also do something (Austin 6). Perhaps, more importantly for this discussion, Habermas claims that there is a set of criteria or rules with which speech-acts must comply; these criteria or rules are based on certain universal validity claims: “Every action oriented to reaching understanding can be conceived as part of a cooperative process of interpretation aiming at situation definitions that are intersubjectively recognized” (Habermas, Theory, Vol. 1, 69-70). There are three domains of validity claims in the intersubjective process of reaching understanding: propositional truth (assertoric), normative rightness (moral), and sincerity (authenticy) (Habermas, Theory, Vol. 1, 137). While the process of reaching understanding occurs within the context of the everyday life-world (historical, cultural situation), validity claims must be rooted in a broader context, the system, if the speaker expects to convince hearers that the claims are rational.

The universal criteria inherent in the ideal speech situation are based on formal pragmatics. Following Stephen Toulmin’s work The Uses of Argument, Habermas develops a theory of argumentation in which he is not so much concerned about the content of speech-acts as concerned about the rational process of argumentation and the competencies required for arriving at intersubjective agreement. He introduces the “principle of universalization” (U) as a rule of argumentation that makes agreement in practical discourses possible (Habermas, Moral 66). Of course, justification for each of the domains is different, but it should be publicly defendable and non-coercive. Communicative actions serve to settle conflicts related to truth or morality by consensual means (Habermas, Moral 67). This is, in a sense, the promise of any speech act and is based on the universal criteria of the ideal speech situation.

Habermas’s approach to universal rational argumentation is not an empirical-analytic approach. Rather, it is based on the quasi-objective structural theories of Noam Chomsky, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Talcott Parsons. The cognitive developmental theories of Chomsky, Piaget, and Kohlberg in particular provide a universal structural model for cognitive-rational development in human beings. As children grow, they develop specific formal competencies in cognition that lead to higher levels of thinking and reasoning. Stephen K. White summarizes these levels of mastery for “raising and redeeming the different types of validity claims”:

1. "Cognitive competence": mastery of the rules of formal, logical operations (Piaget).
2. "Speech competence" (Sprachkompetenz): mastery of the linguistic rules for producing situations of possible understanding:
   1. mastery of the rules for producing well-formed utterances
      (Chomsky’s “linguistic competence”),
   2. mastery of the rules for producing well-formed utterances
      (universal or formal pragmatics),
3. "Interactive competence" or "role competence": mastery of the rules for taking part in increasingly complex forms of interaction. (29)

Habermas’s use of a structural model does provide some level of distanciation which attempts to ground rationality in a broader framework of language systems and universal cognitive structures. His reconstructive rational model has attempted to provide a via media between a number of polarities in the ongoing debate including relativism vs. objectivism, life-world vs. system, and particularism vs. universalism. Unfortunately, this is also the area in which he receives the most criticism. These criticisms come from several different directions, but only two will be mentioned. Mary Hesse, for instance, questions whether Chomsky’s structural linguistics and Piaget’s developmental psychology are universally accepted or validated and, most importantly, whether they escape the norms, presuppositions, and prejudices of their own culture (Hesse 113). In a similar vein, John B. Thompson lauds Habermas’s link between truth and justification but is seriously critical of his consensus theory of truth. Since, according to Habermas, assertions are validated through rational consensus among all who enter into the ideal speech situation, his analysis does not adequately elucidate what he calls truth’s “evidential dimension.” As Thompson elaborates, “[Without] a more explicit explanation of the relation between truth and objective experience, Habermas’s analysis of these issues must be regarded as crucially incomplete” (Critical 200). Phillip Clayton addresses the same concern when he criticizes Habermas for placing primary emphasis on the process of argumentation and only secondarily on the product or propositional content of the speech-act (80). This raises questions about the real explanatory substance of his communicative rationality. While Habermas is to be commended for extending the scope of rationality beyond formal or abstract models, there is a concern about whether he has provided a legitimate critical theory or succeeded in bridging the gap between contextualist and foundationalist approaches to truth.

Despite these criticisms, Habermas has certainly contributed to the discussion of the postfoundationalist reconstruction of knowledge. There are, of course, other models which are equally fruitful, including the work of German theologian Wolfhardt Pannenberg whose dialogue with the various scientific disciplines addresses critical questions concerning the foundations of knowledge in which “hermeneutical understanding and scientific explanation go together” (Thistleton, New 331). Like Habermas, he attempts to find middle ground between a position that recognizes the importance of the particular, historical situation and one that transcends this position and considers problems of knowledge from a metacritical level.

Wolfhardt Pannenberg’s Metacritical Theology

Pannenberg has developed a type of daring, critical rationalism which not only exposes other disciplines such as sciences to the claims of theology but also insists that the Christian faith should not be insulated from the questions raised by those same disciplines. The new task of theology “forces us to a concept of theology as the science of God” (Theology 263). In relation to the natural sciences, for instance, Pannenberg believes that the concept of creation means that theology must take an interest in the way the natural sciences view the world. It also suggests that the natural sciences must be reconciled with an understanding of the world that is implicit in the doctrine of creation. “Theology can do justice to Christianity only if it is not a science of Christianity but a science of God. As a science of God its subject matter is reality as a whole, even though as yet uncompleted whole of the semantic network of experience” (Theology 265). By being concerned with God as a “problem,” it is able to break free of contemporary reductionistic views of rationality and challenge deliberately untheological views of reality.

While Pannenberg’s aim is to confirm the faithfulness of God in the revelation of Jesus Christ as witnessed in Scripture, he does not believe this is where the science of theology can begin. He rejects those fideistic theologies that begin with confession because they assume a privileged position in relation to the critical rationality of science and philosophy. “The contemporary situation of doing theology is characterized by the fact that in the world of secular culture the word ‘God’ is not taken for granted, or if so, it is taken as a token for religious language, valid only within the enclave of religious discourse. The world is not self-evident as pointing to the ultimate reality that embraces, governs, judges, and explains everything else” (Pannenberg, Introduction 22). If theologians are to engage the broader scholarly community, they must begin with a wider critical theology.

Although everything in theology finds its foundation in sub ratione Dei (the point of view of everything in relation to God), the process for understanding this must come “from below.” This is why a discussion of the problem of God begins with human experience and its life in the world: the temporal and historical life of man. Paradoxically, therefore, Pannenberg’s theological enterprise begins with a discussion of anthropology. As F. LeRon Shults states, “For Pannenberg, anthropology is precisely the arena for epistemological and hermeneutical debate, and as such cannot be ignored by theology” (14). Anthropology is used in a broad sense by Pannenberg to include those disciplines that describe human behavior—such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history—because they are concerned about human reasoning. “Because theology, as an attempt to obtain knowledge, seeks intersubjectivity, it too must direct its attention to this indirect way in which the divine reality is co-given, to the ‘traces’ of the divine mystery in the things of the world and in our own lives” (Theology 301). The aim of this anthropological starting point, however, is to provide confirmation and affirmation that God is the all-determining reality of all objects of human experience which would be unintelligible without this viewpoint.

While all human experiences in relation to reality attest indirectly to God as creator, the verification or testing of theological statements is done in the context of the history of religions. The statements of religious tradition determine whether believers experience reality in an integrated and meaningful way as a result of their belief. According to Wentzel van Huysteen, by using this approach Pannenberg “sought to develop a problem field within which theological statements might be evaluated (hence the so-called context of justification)” (Theology 88). While theology, like science, begins with certain presuppositions, it also implies the readiness to question and test all presuppositions. This is why the science of God cannot begin with the “positive theology” of the Christian tradition; rather, its inquiry must be set within a broader context. “The question of the truth of Christianity can be discussed only within the framework of a science whose study includes not merely Christianity, but also the reality of God on which the Christian faith rests” (Pannenberg, Theology 298). Theology must be willing to be criticized from the perspective of critical rationalism which demands more than a simple “credulous dogmatism.” According to Pannenberg, contemporary rationalism forces us towards a concept of theology as the science of God. Van Huysteen summarizes this complicated and often misunderstood theology:

1. Theology can be a science of God only indirectly, through people’s experiences of God and of religion in the light of reality as a whole.
2. Total reality, however, does not yet exist in its final form; it is still an incomplete process and therefore accessible only through the subjectivity of humankind’s religious experience as an anticipation of that totality.
3. The anticipatory character of religious experiences can ultimately be recognized as a manifestation of divine reality. Individual religious experiences, however, must always be seen in relation to the historical religions and are relevant only in terms of that intersubjective relationship.
4. In its first phase, therefore, theology as the science of God is possible only as a science of historical religions.
5. Christian theology becomes possible only in the next phase, as the science of Christian religion or of Christianity. (Theology 89)

It is through this laborious process that the science of God ultimately becomes the science of Christianity. He argues strongly against the “ghettoization” of Christian theological statements which must be open to critical discussion.

Pannenberg sets theology within the horizon of a universal history or history as a whole. While he agrees with Gadamer’s insistence on placing the interpretive process within a historical setting, he sides with Emilio Betti who persistantly argues for objectivity in historical interpretation. This does not mean a complete separation of the interpretation from the interpreter, but only that “for every such position the thing to be interpreted must be distinguishable from the subjectivity of the interpreter” (Pannenberg, Theology 167). In this sense, he is similar to Habermas whose critical hermeneutic requires trans-contextual distance in order to “look behind the text,” to use Paul Ricoeur’s terminology, for ideological interests. Pannenberg argues that the particular historical context has to be related to or measured against the whole of history. For him, reality is essentially historical, and hermeneutics is concerned with the interrelation of wholes and parts (Thistleton, New 332).

The metacritical theology of Pannenberg is aimed at antagonistic interpretive positions: a certain kind of positivism found in historical criticism “that excludes all transcendent reality as matter of course” and the “conception of redemptive history severed from ordinary history” which turns redemptive history into a ghetto (Basic 39-41). Pannenberg argues, “All theological questions and answers are meaningful only within the framework of the history which God has with humanity and through humanity with his whole creation—the history moving toward a future still hidden from the world but already revealed in Jesus Christ” (Basic 15).

He insists on linking value and fact, meaning and event, within the “universal correlative connections” of a human history moving toward a future that is contingent and open. While there is a fixed point in history found in the Incarnation, this event points to the creative and imaginative possibilities of understanding rooted in the horizon of the future where “the meaning of the entirety of history is anticipated” (Tupper 121).

Despite his emphasis on the whole of history found in the eschatological anticipation of the future, Pannenberg still attempts to preserve the particularity and historical relativity of specific events. This particularity is uniquely expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. While there was a clear eschatalogical horizon in the ministry of Jesus, it is only in the particular historical context that the whole becomes meaningful. “It is possible to find in the history of Jesus an answer to the question of the ‘the whole’ of reality and its meaning which can be conceived without compromising the provisionality and historical relativity of all thought, as well as openness to the future on the part of the thinker who knows himself to be only on the way and not yet at the goal” (Basic 180).

In his theology, Pannenberg tries to hold together the part and the whole, the broader metacritical framework of theology and the particular, hermeneutic moment of everyday human experience. F. LeRon Shults argues that Pannenberg is trying to find a middle way between the dogmatism of theological foundationalism and the relativism of many forms of nonfoundationalism or contextualism (17-18). Pannenberg accepts the reality of the empirical and situational limitations of finite, human experience but also insists on the need for a wider, critical frame. In his discussion of Karl R. Popper’s moderate positivism or critical rationalism, he questions Popper’s rejection of metaphysical statements since their rigorous demands of verification exclude metaphysics not only from the realm of meaning but also from all scientific theories (Pannenberg, Theology 38). Interestingly, in his work The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Popper states that in the search for scientific truth, “We do not know: we can only guess. And our guesses are guided by the unscientific, the metaphysical (though biologically explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover—discover” (278). He describes these theoretical models or pictures as “conjectures” or “anticipations” of truth. This is why Pannenberg firmly attempts to hold on to a via media which recognizes the mutual relationship between the scientific theology and the historically embedded nature of the human situation. The two positions are mutually conditioned. This is the central thesis of Shults’s impressive work on Pannenberg. He believes that Pannenberg’s model may be critically appropriated for the postfoundationalist task of theology, which is:

to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue within our postmodern culture while both maintaining a commitment to intersubjective, transcommunal theological argumentation for the truth of Christian faith, and recognizing the provisionality of our historically embedded understandings and culturally conditioned explanations of the Christian tradition and religious experience. (Shults 18)

Pannenberg proposes a starting place for a model of critical theology that opens up a conversation with other disciplines and yet continues to maintain the central tenets of the Christian faith.

Emerging Models of Critical Theological Rationality

Both Habermas and Pannenberg suggest critical models that attempt to relate divergent epistemological and hermeneutical approaches to knowledge. They accept the relational nature of knowledge and find ways to bring together polar concepts of truth such as foundationalism and contextualism, fact and value, particularism and universalism, meaning and event, and epistemology and hermeneutics. While both have been accused of being foundationalist, they recognize the fallibility of human knowledge measured against some normative framework. There is a different transcontextual emphasis in each of these approaches. Habermas stresses the importance of universal pragmatics in social theory, and Pannenberg insists on a sub ratione Dei foundation for knowledge, but both acknowledge truth as “anticipatory” rather than “fixed” once and for all. This leaves open the discussion so that any particular argument for truth is always subject to critique. This means that truth is articulated along the lines that Susan Haack has argued in the explicandum: “A is more/less justified, at time t, in believing that p, depending on…” (72). This asserts that belief is personal and justification comes in degrees so that all arguments are not of the same value. For Christians, this leaves open the possibility of an absolute truth beyond our particular situation, but it should also lead to great caution about any one person or group having a corner on it. It also necessitates the justification of theological claims in a way that is as rigorous as other claims although the domains of knowledge may be different.

This relational and critical approach to knowledge emphasized by Habermas and Pannenberg has led to emerging models of rationality. Shults discusses the change of emphasis in philosophy in recent history: “Much of philosophical thought in the last two centuries has been aimed at critiquing ‘substance’ metaphysics, and disclosing the inherently relational nature of being, knowing, and doing” (21). He cites, as examples of this emphasis on differentiated relational unity, Michael Polanyi’s description of tacit and focal knowledge and Jean Piaget’s interactionist model of accomodation and assimilation in the adaptation of the developing person. In particular, he focuses on a new model of thinking about relationality advanced by James E. Loder and W. Jim Neidhardt in their interesting book The Knight’s Move: The Relational Logic of the Spirit in Theology and Science, who use the Mobius Band as a heuristic picture of the way in which science and theology, the human and the Divine, and the knower and the known are linked in a relational unity. This model not only provides a fruitful model for explaining reality but offers an important bridge for conversations between theology and other disciplines.

Before briefly discussing Loder and Neidhardt’s “strange loop” concept, it may be of some value to discuss the nature of models. Scientists use models to explain sometimes very complex systems of facts, relationships, and concepts although, as Karl R. Popper emphasizes, they are “marvelously imaginative and bold conjectures and 'anticipations’ of ours…carefully and soberly controlled by systematic tests” (Logic 279). As Max Black argues, however, to speak of models in relation to scientific theory “already smacks of the metaphorical” (219). This is not to question the validity of models or metaphors for the purpose of description as though they were simply some form of fiction or allegory unrelated to reality. Models and metaphors are used because it is difficult sometimes, for one reason or another, to completely describe reality in normal language. As Max Black stresses, the use of models and metaphors is invaluable in science and other disciplines:

Those who see a model as a mere crutch are like those who consider metaphor a mere decoration or ornament. But there are powerful and irreplaceable uses of metaphor not adequately described by the old formula of "saying one thing and meaning another.". A memorable metaphor has the power to bring two separate domains into cognitive and emotional relation by using language directly appropriate to the one as a lens for seeing the other; the implications, suggestions, and supporting values entwined with the literal use of the metaphorical expression enable us to see new subject matter a new way. (236-37)

Models and metaphors are powerful explanatory devices for bringing separate ways of thinking into alignment. This is very important for theology because as a discipline at times it has been extremely unimaginative in its explanatory methods and models. Wentzel van Huysteen makes a strong case for the use of metaphor in theology. He argues that Scripture, in particular, is rich in metaphor in all of its literary forms. This is necessary because attempts to explain the mysterious relationship between God and his creation in human language is always circumscribed: it is a limit-language, “ a language consisting of limit-questions and limit-answers about the crucial limit-situations of life” (Theology 133). Contrary to common thought, Biblical language is not primarily about other-worldly experience but about God’s relation to this world and its experience. Van Huysteen suggests that this points to the most essential characteristic of religious language, “that it never has a merely expressive function but rather a relational, reality-depicting, or referential character” (Theology 133). Metaphors and models open up the possibility of new frontiers of explanations, and they create possible ways of seeing or understanding the world and human life. This is why models used by Christian writers like David Benner, who uses the theological concept of Incarnation to describe psychotherapy, and Charles V. Gerkin, who uses the metaphor of the “text” to describe human interaction as a living human document, can be invaluable in explaining processes that are often difficult to express in normal language. The value of models and metaphors is that they bring new insight to an old reality. The greatest danger in using metaphors is not whether or not it refers to reality but that the habit of our usage will triumph over novelty. As Sally McFague puts it, “The greatest danger is assimilation—the shocking, powerful metaphor becomes trite….Jesus said, ‘This is my body,’ and instead of surprise, joy, or disbelief, we do not even hear the metaphor” (41).

In their monumental work The Knight’s Move, Loder and Neidhardt draw on several unique metaphors to attempt to explain the complex matrix of unity and diversity that has emerged across disciplines in the recent history of thought. Even the title of the book opens the door to the possibility of a coherent discussion of the vastly diverse opinions on the nature of knowledge in contemporary thought. The knight’s move in the game of chess is unique because it is the only one that moves around corners. As theologian-scientist Thomas F. Torrance comments, this work combines

the dynamic continuity of a set sequence with the discontinuity of an unpredictable turn in the middle, reminiscent of the use of the mathematical “curl” in Clerk Maxwell’s epoch-making equations as well as Niels Bohr’s concept of complementarity, but also of Adam Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand” that evidently gave rise to the feedback mechanism operating at all levels in scientific investigation and construction. (“Forward” xi)

The metaphors used by Loder and Neidhardt provide an exceptional “conceptual bridge" across the divide of many of the rational polarities discussed in this article and opens the door to cogent and fruitful conversations across many disciplines.

The authors begin their argument with the theology of the Holy Spirit and Calvin’s awareness of the Spirit as the unifier of God’s self-revelation to believers. One of the reasons why knowledge has become so fragmented in culture is that it has become what Danish theologian Sören Kierkegaard called a “spiritless generation.” This results from the loss of an emphasis on the self-relational nature of God which the Holy Spirit reveals to the human spirit. Without the web of shared assumptions that belief in God once gave, culture is left to make sense of things in a vast meaningless universe. It has led to numerous cosmic and epistemological dualisms that create a persistent paradox between sinful humanity and convicting Spirit so that, in Luther’s classic phrase, the Christian is always simul justus et peccator (“at the same time justified and sinner”). This paradox has carried over into attempts to justify knowledge and to provide a framework that is comprehensive and yet takes into account discontinuous events and times. What is needed in this “spiritless generation,” according to Loder and Neidhardt, is the ability to

reclaim God’s self-involvement with the created order and at the same time the contingent interdependence of that order within and upon God’s grace by the power of God’s Spirit. Thus, spiritual coherence in Christ may be envisioned as a Chalcedon-like union of the Divine Spirit with the human spirit, giving evidence that the human is heir of the renewal by God of all creation. (32-33)

The concept “contingency” comes from the work of Thomas F. Torrance who spent a lifetime developing a unified theory for relating theology and science. Contingency makes sense by seeing it from two sides. On the one hand, contingency is the realization, in scientific inquiry, that order in the universe is not self-explanatory, self-sufficient, or necessary; instead, it depends on an ultimate rational ground beyond itself. On the other hand, the universe is other than God and so is open-structured in a way that although scientific inquiry may reject it through reductionism, its order makes sense by looking beyond itself (Christian 29-32). This dependent but open-structured picture of the universe helps explain how levels of “above” are related to levels “below,” and vice versa. No level of explanation (whether biological or physical) can be understood reductionistically merely in terms of the levels below it. The organization at each level of contingent reality is incomplete and is consistent “only through cross-level reference to a higher and richer level of intelligible reality” (Christian 61).

Loder and Neidhardt refer to the intriguing book of Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, to help explain the perplexing paradoxes contemporary philosophical thought, most of which focus on the problem of self-reflection. His work centers on the “strange loops” created in the mind as a result of its self-relationality occuring in the context of the mind’s interaction with the unequivocal nature of reality. For example, in the work of Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher, many of his drawings seem to have their origin in illusion and paradox. While many mathematicians have admired Escher’s work because it is based on mathematical principles, Hofstadter believes that there is more to Escher’s drawings than just symmetry and pattern; “there is often an underlying idea, realized in artistic form” (11). Rather than literally representing reality, Escher’s drawings create a mirror image of the various levels of perception that trigger strange loops in the brain because of what seem to be incompatible images.

Perhaps the most fascinating work that Loder and Neidhardt refer to is the work of Wilder Penfield in which he observes “the mind’s I” (43-44). His brain research with epileptic patients led to a number of interesting discoveries concerning the nature of consciousness. He attempted to locate the functional aspects of consciousness in various neuronal structures of the brain. Interestingly, when Penfield would touch various parts of the cortex causing the patient to move a body part or hear music, the conscious patient would say, “You did that, I didn’t.” With all of his effort, Penfield was unable to locate the “I,” leading him to posit two essences, the brain and its structures and the “I” who was able to create new programs in the brain and redirect previously programmed behavior. The work of Penfield highlights the important relationship between the observer and the observed that has often been ignored by many scientists with positivist tendencies. But this research, says Loder and Neidhardt, seems to point to what Michael Polanyi describes as the “marginal control” exercised by consciousness in the interaction between tacit knowledge (informal) and focal knowledge (formal). There is a mutual and interactional dependency that leads to discovery which comes as a result of our “knowing more than we can tell” (41-42). The relationship between the knower and the known has raised many questions in scientific and philosophical thought, but recent research seems to indicate that both are essential to understanding the nature of reality.

Loder and Neidhardt appropriate the Mobius Band as a topological model and heuristic device to explain these higher and lower operations of the mind, what they call an “asymmetric bipolar relational unity.” This model was discovered by the grandfather of Paul J. Mobius to explain the mind-body relationship. According to Loder and Neidhardt, the Mobius strip was “his model of the uniform interconnectedness of neurological and psychological reality” (40). Hofstadter uses it to describe

emergent phenomena in our brains—for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness, and free will—[which are] based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reached back down toward the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level. In other words a self-reinforcing “resonance” between different levels…. The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself. (qtd. in Loder and Neidhardt 40)

It is also used in a much broader and “asymmetrical” fashion by Loder and Neidhardt to explain wider noetic paradigms such as the relationship between foundationalist and contextualist epistemologies. F. LeRon Shults describes this method in the work of Wolfhardt Pannenberg as “mutual conditioning ‘from below’ and ‘from above’” as a means to relate theological statements to other disciplines (166). Loder and Neidhardt apply the Mobius model to a number of diverse fields of thinking, including the work of Sören Kierkegaard, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Michael Polanyi, Jean Piaget, and Thomas Torrance.

For Loder and Neidhardt, as well as a number of other contemporary theologians, there is an irreducible relationality in the search for truth regardless of the discipline. It begins with the self-relational capacity of the human spirit to transcend the object of study. At the same time, rationality is conditioned by a “bi-polar differentiated unity.” This relationship between the knower and the known is inherent in the thing observed. To limit the search only to human perception leads to a never-ending game of the endless perceptual dualisms that have plagued human thought from the beginning. The self-relational knowing of human beings points beyond itself to an open-structured universe which reaches beyond itself. According to Thomas F. Torrance, this is the essence of faith: “[In] perception we rely more on ourselves as observers, but in faith we rely more on the reality beyond ourselves” (“Framework” 11). Scientific inquiry places its trust in the innate intelligibility of the universe. Otherwise, it would not expect to discover the regularities and relationships that make the universe meaningful. This expectation, however, is rooted in a metaphysical Grundprinzip which is self-relational in nature. Theologian Colin Gunton finds this ground principle in the doctrine of the Trinity which is the Idea Idearum, “the Idea out of which all other ideas evolve” (144). The Trinity is the source of the unity-in-diversity that is expressed in all of reality. It is not a unity that lies behind the Father, Son, and Spirit but is expressed in the perichoretic interaction of the persons of the Trinity. It is this idea that generates what Gunton calls open transcendentals, a notion “basic to the human thinking process, which empowers a continuing and in principle unfinished exploration of the universal marks of being” (142). It is open because human knowledge never arrives at the truth, but seeks to deepen and enrich itself through exploration and inquiry. As Torrance argues, belief is always “stretched out toward the truth and can only have a provisional form until its outcome” (Belief 15). Yet it is a construct, a model that transcends the absolute opposition of foundationalism and contextualism, objectivism and subjectivism, as well as idealism and realism. Rather, it is more like Hilary Putnam’s “realism with a human face” or Richard J. Bernstein’s interest to go beyond objectivism and relativism (Gunton 146). It recognizes the limitations of human knowledge but believes with a universal intent.

This discussion began with a question of whether it is possible to develop a critical framework for knowledge with the loss of foundationalism. An emphasis on the hermeneutical situation and an insistence on conventional rules and forms of life for the use of language have led to the prevalence of pluralistic notions of truth. Divergent trends in the methodologies of both the social sciences and natural sciences have resulted in considerable controversy about the relationship between scientific methods of justification and nonscientific categories embedded in the experiences of life. In recent years this discussion has moved more in the direction of contextualism in both sciences. Several contemporary theorists have attempted to find a via media between these two extremes by both acknowledging the contextual nature of human experience and suggesting a transcontextual explanation that points beyond the local community or group towards an interdisciplinary critical discourse.

Social philosopher Jürgen Habermas has suggested a “reconstructive rationality” which considers the value of both instrumental reason and the historical-interpretive context of human experience. Yet both of these have underlying interests that may become “frozen ideologies” that attempt to constrain and control inquiry. This demands a critical method that is inherent in the process of communicative action offering a context for social consensus without constraint or compulsion. While there are some elements in Habermas’s view of validity claims that are problematic, he has opened the conversation for a broader interdisciplinary discussion.

Theologian Wolfhardt Pannenberg has brought theology back to the table for discussion on an equal footing with science. He insists, however, that theology must be justified in a manner similar to the natural sciences although the domain of knowledge is different for theology than for science. In order to engage other disciplines, theology must begin “from below” with a discussion of anthropology (in a broad sense) which is the center stage of contemporary debate concerning issues of epistemology and hermeneutics. At the same time, Pannenberg insists that his discussion always occurs within the unifying principle of sub ratione Dei, that all things are understood in relation to God. Pannenberg made it clear that theology takes place between two tendencies: the faithfulness of theology to its origin and how this relates to all truth (Shults 10).

A number of new models of this via media, which emphasize the “primacy of relation” in the search for truth, have emerged. James E. Loder and W. Jim Neidhardt, in particular, use the Mobius Band as a relational model of explanation for new research in a number of fields including theology, physics, brain research, developmental psychology, philosophy, and mathematics. They emphasize the importance of the work of the Holy Spirit in the rational process of relating the human to the Divine. It is the irreducible nature of relationality at all levels of reality that provides the possibility for a unifying matrix that will move beyond the cultural and cosmic dualities that are efforts to understand the world without the acknowledgement of a Creator-God.

It seems clear from this discussion that there are unique opportunities for Christians to engage in a critical conversation with contemporary culture based on a number of intriguing new models of explanation which incorporate divergent trends in the relationship between explanation and understanding. Christians may find a strange receptivity to their explanations of truth, but only if they are willing to be sincerely responsive to the critical questions addressed to them. This means a willingness to reject a privileged status in the process of argumentation and an acceptance of the limitations of their own knowledge. Only then will it be possible to present a conception of truth that is objective and has universal implications while acknowledging that it is the work of fallible human minds.

Works Cited

Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975.

Benner, David. G. “The Incarnation as a Metaphor for Psychotherapy.” Journal of Psychology and Theology 11 (1993): 287-94.

Bernstein, Richard J. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1983.

---. Introduction. Habermas and Modernity. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985. 1-31.

---. Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.

---. The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.

---. The Restructuring of Social and Political Thought. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1995.

Black, Max. Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1962.

Cavell, Stanley. The Claims of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979.

Clayton, Phillip. Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989.

Gerkin, Charles V. The Living Human Document: Revisioning Pastoral Counseling in a Hermeneutical Mode. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991.

Gunton, Colin. The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Haack, Susan. Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

Habermas, Jürgen. Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.

---. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry W. Nicholson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

---. The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Vol. 1. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.

Hesse, Mary. “Science and Objectivity.” Eds. John B. Thompson and David Held. Habermas: Critical Debates. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982. 98-115.

Hofstadter, Douglas R. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books, 1979.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodore W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2000.

Keat, Russell. The Politics of Social Theory: Habermas, Freud, and the Critique of Positivism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1970.

Loder, James E., and W. Jim Neidhardt. The Knight’s Move: The Relational Logic of the Spirit in Theology and Science. Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1992.

McCarthy, Thomas. The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.

McFague, Sally. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982.

Palmer, Richard E. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidigger, and Gadamer. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1969.

Pannenberg, Wolfhardt. An Introduction to Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991.

---. Basic Questions in Theology. Trans. George H. Kehm. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970.

---. Theology and the Philosophy of Science. Trans. F. McDonagh. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976.

Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974.

Popper, Karl R. “Normal Science and Its Dangers.” Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Eds. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave. Cambridge: Cambridge UP< 1970. 51-58.

---. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books, 1961.

Putnam, Hilary. Realism with a Human Face. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.

Ricoeur, Paul. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Trans. John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.

Ritzer, George. Sociological Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992.

Shults, F. LeRon. The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhardt Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.

Thistleton, Anthony C. New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992.

Thompson, John B. Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.

Thompson, John B., and David Held, eds. Habermas: Critical Debates. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982.

Torrance, Thomas F., ed. Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998.

---. The Christian Frame of Mind: Reason, Order, and Openness in Theology and Natural Science. Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard Publishers, 1989.

---. “Forward.” The Knight’s Move: The Relational Logic of the Spirit in Theology and Science. Eds. James E. Loder and W. Jim Neidhardt. Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1992. xi-xii.

---. “The Framework of Belief.” Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998. 1-27.

Toulmin, Stephen. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.

Trigg, Roger. Rationality & Science: Can Science Explain Everything? Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.

Triplett, C. Clark. “Postmodern Approaches to Knowledge: Finding a Starting Place for Faith and Learning after Foundationalism.” Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal 1 (2002): 20-37.

Tupper, E. Frank. The Theology of Wolfhardt Pannenberg. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973.

Van Huysteen, Wentzel. Essays in Postfoundationalist Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997.

---. Theology and the Justification of Faith: Constructing Theories in Systematic Theology. Trans. F. J. Snijders. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989.

White, Stephen K. The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas: Reason, Justice & Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.

Winch, Peter. The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan, 1958.

C. CLARK TRIPLETT <triplett@mobap.edu> is Executive Dean of Graduate Studies & External Compliance and Professor of Psychology & Human Services at Missouri Baptist University. He earned an A.A. from Hannibal-LaGrange College, a B.A. from Southwest Baptist College, an M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary, an M.S.Ed. from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and a Ph.D. from Saint Louis University. He also studied at Concordia Theological Seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary, the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and the Harvard Institutes.

© 2003 Missouri Baptist University.  All rights reserved.