Philosophical Issues Undergirding Contemporary Proclamation

Theology was once a lofty discipline whose practitioners were among the brightest and best of their age.  In Luther's day candidates for the Doctor of Theology had first to receive a Masters of Arts in philosophy.  They knew the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and they had exposure to the quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music).  They understood Latin deeply and some learned Greek and Hebrew as well.   Luther knew his Aristotle well enough to realize that the Aristotle he encountered in the text was not the Aristotle that many theologians embraced in the High and Late Middle Ages.  Like in every age, Luther's era was a time in which philosophy and theology were deeply related.

Our age also is a time in which theological and philosophical matters are deeply connected.  The relationship between the two is so profound that many thinkers (often very deep theological thinkers) often overlook or miss it entirely.  But theologians today ignore philosophical issues at their own peril.  Deeply-educated in the Biblical text, its historical and social context, its history of reception, and effective homiletical techniques to proclaim it, theological thinkers often fail to examine and appreciate deeply enough the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon into which the text is preached.  In failing to grasp the differing philosophical assumptions between textual origination and reception, they overlook the presuppositional issues making it difficult for the text to be properly understood be contemporary readers and hearers. These issues, I believe, our explicitly philosophical.  They involve such traditional and meaty philosophical concerns as ontology (the study of being), epistemology (the study of knowing), and semantics (the study of meaning).

In the following series of posts I will spell out what I believe to be some of the philosophical impediments to Biblical proclamation in our time.  The first series of questions revolve around ontology.

• Is God a real being, or a projection of human being?  If a real being, then in what sense is God real? Postmodern men and women are likely to have a non-thematized understanding of God's reality that differs markedly from that of the Biblical writers and the early horizon of the Bible's textual reception.  
• Is God the kind of being that is causally related to other kinds of being?  If God is causally related, then what is the possible mechanism of this relatedness?  Postmodern mean and women are likely non-thematically to assume that God is not a causally relevant entity. 
• Is God is a real being, then what is His constitution?  Are His properties separable from His being, or is He simple?  Postmodern men and women are likely to assume non-thematically that God is personal, that He "cares" even though He seldom (if ever) concretely causally effects the distribution of worldly properties.  

The next batch of questions concern epistemology.

• Is there knowledge of God, and how is such knowledge possible?  Postmodern men and women seem tacitly to assume that their own experience is relevant to their knowing God.  
• Does knowledge of God involve facts or merely values?  Postmodern men and women unreflectively suppose that God is somehow real for those who believe it so, and not real for others -- as if our valuing God affects the factuality of God.  
• Are there norms that sort proper evidence for God from improper appeals?  Postmodern men and women assume a perspectivalism making problematic any epistemic normatively.  

The final group questions -- the most important, I believe -- concern semantics, the meaning of our assertions about God. 

• How is the meaningfulness of theological and religious language established?  Does such language state possible real states of affairs, or is it merely expressive of the self?  Postmodern men and women rather unreflectively assume the latter.  
• Does theological and religious language have determinate truth conditions, that is, are there definite claims made by the language, and is there a definite way the world is, such that these propositions are true or false, and not merely comforting, useful or salutary?  Postmodern men and women non-thematically assume that the purpose of religious and theological language is to do something other than state what is the case with respect to the divine. 
• Since the meaning of language changes over time, can it be said that a theological claim made by a particular proposition in the fourth century means the same thing as the claim made by the same proposition today?  Postmodern men and women assume that language is unstable and that reference to some non-linguistic state of affairs is problematic.  

The overall semantic question can be summed up as follows: What does (or can) the Gospel mean in an age where the horizon of understanding of the reader or listener is pluralistic, therapeutic, and anti-realistic?  What can God-talk mean to those today (particularly the young) who neither know the intellectual tradition nor are normatively determined by it?      

In the next number of posts I will be exploring some of these issues.  I invite you to think through them with me.  Comments are welcome!