Compilation Theology in University

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THEOLOGY IN

UNIVERSITY

* Connection without control: theology and

interconnectedness in university

* Why theology can and should be taught at secular

universities: Lonergan on intellectual conversion

* Religious Studies in Christian universities in

contemporary Asia: its relationship to Christian theology

* Newman’s aesthetic vision: Theology and the education

of the whole person

* Practical theology and postmodern religious education


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Christian Higher Education, 6:143–159

Copyright C 2007 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1536-3759 print / 1539-4107 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15363750600932908

CONNECTION WITHOUT CONTROL: THEOLOGY AND

INTERCONNECTEDNESS IN THE UNIVERSITY

JOHN SULLIVAN

Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, England

Three questions are addressed here. First, why should theologians promote interconnectedness in the Christian university? Interconnectedness is here understood as the promotion of dialogue between subject areas. Second, why is the promotion of interconnectedness problematical? Third, how might we conceive of this being done, in particular with what kind of tone, style and intention? Theology cannot dictate without damaging either the educational process or the cooperative culture and community in the university. Thus I argue for theology to be a source of connection in the university, but without control.

Introduction

A Christian university should be able to prompt its members tosee the connectedness of the many forms of knowing. Faith andlearning should be envisaged as allies rather than as opponents.The critical thinking developed across the disciplines, and thediverse perspectives on reality these disciplines offer, should beseen as capable of being harmonized with the kind of commit-ments that flow from Christian faith. However, any integrated view of human understanding faces complexities and challenges,both in principle and in implementation, not least one that istheocentric. In the university, disciplines become fragmented;scholars become more and more specialized; modularization of courses encourages a consumerist attitude toward knowledge

rather than a cumulative and long-term development by students,inhibiting even a sense of the wholeness of the particular subject they are studying, rendering it a loose collection of bits andpieces. Surely the meaning to be gleaned from any segment of knowledge is dependent on and enriched by a sense of a largerMeaning that the segments draw upon and feed into. A Christian

Address correspondence to Professor John Sullivan, Liverpool Hope University,

Liverpool L16 9JD, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]

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university should be able offer students the opportunity for aholistic education.

How can we provide students with a coherent curriculum?Should coherence be left to students to construct or shouldfaculty seek to build coherence into the curriculum? How can any attempt to offer coherence avoid imposing controls that inhibit freedom of thought, student choice or the autonomy of thedisciplines? What is the role of theology in fostering coherenceand connectedness in the university in the contemporary context?I take it that any university should aim to develop in students somecombination of comprehensiveness of view, coherence between

the parts of their thinking, together with open-mindedness, whichentails recognition of our limitations, our partial vision, andambiguity in our experience of self and world, while avoidingover-prescribed modes of thinking that are too tidy and too self-assured. A Christian university should seek to be a place that goesbeyond building community, providing care, promoting worship,and serving those in need (Wood, 2003, pp. 91–93, 107). It shouldalso draw on the Christian intellectual tradition to facilitate the

development of Christian thinking, about all aspects of reality.In this paper, three questions are addressed. First, why shouldtheologians promote interconnectedness in the university? Sec-ond, why is this problematical? Third, how might we conceiveof this being done, in particular with what kind of tone, style,and intention? Why do these questions matter? It is important,if students are to reach any adequate level of understanding andto have the possibility of developing an integrated worldview, that bridges are built, not only within the ecology of concepts andpractices at work in any particular discipline, but also betweendifferent areas of the curriculum. Some of the obstacles to suchintegration and to the role of theology in fostering intercon-nectedness can be attributed to the wider culture, some to the working practices and operating principles of modern universitiesand some are brought about through the misguided strategiesof theologians themselves. Theology cannot dictate or dominate without damaging either the educational process or the coopera-

tive culture and community in the university. Interconnectednesscan be neither imposed nor guaranteed. Thus I argue for theology to be a source of connection in the university, but without control.I suggest that a variety of connections should be promoted,


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Connection Without Control 145

without advocating any particular model. It should be noted that seeking connectedness is something much less systematic anddeveloped than attempts at a more full-blown integration.

I believe this more modest effort is more likely to be ef-fective in facilitating dialogue in the contemporary context of universities. One outcome we might hope for from such effortsat interconnectedness is a more integral vision, a greater sense of coherence and a heightened (and better informed) commitment to the common good (Nichols, 2000, p. 242).

Need for Interconnectedness

One reason why theologians should press for interconnectednessin the curriculum flows from a belief in the unity of all truth.Ralph Wood (2003, p. 89) reminds us of the Protestant refrain“All truth is from God” and the Catholic equivalent, that weshould seek to “find God in all things.” This suggests that Chris-tians should expect to find an essential harmony and coherencebetween the different kinds of truth they encounter, though, of

course, this may not be immediately apparent and may requireimmense work before we can come to appreciate this unity.Theology is about how all things relate to God. Thus, in

a sense, a Christian cannot rule out any area of knowledge asirrelevant to our appreciation of God, even though, for practicalpurposes, she may restrict her attention to a particular area, whilealways being conscious that such an area is only ever a part of amuch larger whole and needs to be related to and incorporatedinto a bigger picture. In Matthew 22:37, we read “You shall lovethe Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,and with all your mind.” This reminds Christians that they havea duty, as disciples, to deploy all the capacities of their intellectualendowment, alongside their other human capacities and gifts, inservice of the gospel. While the intellect is not everything, it ispart of who they are, what they have been given, equipment to beappreciated, developed, and deployed. In 1 Corinthians 12:4–6 weread, “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are

varieties of service, but the same Lord. There are many forms of work, but all of them, in all men, are the work of the same God.” And in James 1:17, we are told “Every good thing bestowed andevery good gift is from above, coming down from the Father of


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lights.” For the purposes of this paper, these quotations remindus that, though we might need to specialize in our research,scholarship, and teaching, in order to achieve any penetrationin our personal learning and so that we can offer somethingoriginal, reliable, and credible to the stock of knowledge, we must always be keenly aware that God is also operating outside ourown specialisms, in other people and through other disciplines.Thus, it is fitting that we enter into dialogue with scholars workingoutside our own niche in the academic marketplace, in order to widen our appreciation of God’s ways, purposes, nature, and call.

Second, there is an essential open-endedness in each of

the disciplines and fields of inquiry. They are incomplete, un-finished, on the way, constantly developing, encountering new questions and problems. We can acknowledge this even as wefeel committed to their key values, insights, concepts, methods,and structure. Without a degree of open-endedness, they wouldrapidly become fossilized, repetitive, inward-looking, closed, in-creasingly irrelevant and ultimately moribund. The categories andconcepts we deploy can be useful in demarcating part of the

world as a focus for our attention, but they can obscure as wellas clarify. This happens as they help us to attend to this aspect, while neglecting another aspect, of what we study. One aspect becomes so bathed in light for us that other aspects are hiddenin shadow. We can only see so much at a time. But these conceptsand categories can be reconfigured when put into another, widercontext, when we engage in interdisciplinary dialogue. Dialoguebetween the disciplines can help to ensure a balance of continuity and openness. There cannot be any real dialogue if people do not bring to the table something definite that is theirs to share. Norcan there be any real dialogue if people are not prepared to listenand heed what they hear. There is a parallel here with ecumenism.This too depends upon people bringing something definite to thetable, but also a willingness to be vulnerable to critique, to haveone’s position enriched and modified through the reception it receives from others.

Third, central to a Christian’s self-understanding is the belief

that we are finite and fallen. We are limited through endowment,circumstances, opportunities and through choices that makeus one kind of person rather than another, choices that haveconsequences for our future options, closing some down, even as


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others are opened up. This is one good reason for theologians to wish to go beyond their own discipline and to encourage othersto do the same—as part of an effort to transcend our limitations.Other disciplines help us to note the parameters of our finitenessand fallenness. In addition, it may be claimed that theology helps other disciplines by providing an explicit awareness of and vocabulary for these features of our existence, features that canbe easily missed or misdescribed. Recognition of our limitationsshould induce in us greater realism, humility, and openness toother perspectives, nudging us to collaborate with others in ourexplorations.

Fourth, there is our communal nature, as social beings. Weneed a plausibility structure (Berger, 1980); that is, we need ourbeliefs to be reinforced by the consciousness that others sharethem. The strength of a university rests as much on its quality as a community of scholars, fostering and developing a collective wisdom, as on the quality of individual scholars. Interdisciplinary endeavors can be an important element in countering excessiveindividualism and also in undermining the tribalism of some

forms of intradisciplinary debates.Fifth, our belief that all human beings are made in the imageand likeness of God is a powerful motive for taking very seriously what other people think and value, how they perceive, evaluate,and respond to the world. If there is something of God in them,it behooves us to attend carefully to their investigations, findings,and judgments.

In Cady and Brown’s (2002) book devoted to theology and religious studies in the university there is only one ref-erence in the index to interdisciplinary dialogue, directing usto an essay by Kathryn Tanner. She unpacks some of the rea-sons for not remaining enclosed within the confines of singledisciplinary thinking and the abstractions from the bigger picturethis entails.

Global capitalism, the media reach, an ecological sensibility in biology,

systems analysis in the social sciences, the stress in the physical sciences onthe complex statistical interplay of multiple forces, interdependent pro-cesses, complex configurations of possible events, all suggest an expansivecognitive model attentive to contextual relationality rather than abstract analysis. . . . Disciplines that isolate attention on de-contextualized bits of


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the world of human experience cannot hold off for long consideration of the concrete fullness of that experience, but are forced by the intellectualclimate of the times to put their own concerns back into the larger picture.

(Tanner, 2002, pp. 204–205)

I take her argument to point towards the incompletenessand inadequacy of working only within disciplinary boundaries,even if for much of the time this is necessary. We must be ready to place our limited inquiries within the wider setting of the work of other disciplines, though there will be multiple ways of so doing, with no particular one way being privileged. Tanner

here is stressing the essential complexity that will be missed if we concentrate solely within a single discipline, however sophisti-cated its methods. Making connections with other disciplines willhelp to enhance our appreciation of this complexity and inter-relatedness of phenomena. At the moment, as Michael Lawlercomments, “there is too little convergence, too little contact among the various faculties, too little mutual challenge and re-sponse among them, leaving them all diminished” (Lawler, 1998,

p. 1).Connectedness is also stressed by Kim Phipps. She says,“Scholarship is rooted in connectedness—in mutual assistance,conversation, encouragement, support, and evaluation. Schol-arship proceeds by building on what others have done, andit makes sense only in the context of what others are doing”(Phipps, 2004, p. 172). Basically, we need others, not only withinour disciplines of inquiry, but also beyond them, in order toappreciate fully the data we come across and to make sense of our world. Scholarly life, even if often carried out in isolationfor long periods, is essentially one of interdependence. Suchinterdependence is stressed by Alasdair MacIntyre in his 1999book Dependent Rational Animals . MacIntyre draws our attentionto the goods that come our way through vulnerability and the virtues of acknowledged dependence on others. However, whenPhipps emphasizes connectedness as essential for scholars, sherefers to more than merely a focus on findings and the concepts

used in analyzing these findings. She also alerts us to the needto pay attention to the personal stories from which the findingsemerge, for scholarship is embedded in lives that have otherdimensions that impinge upon their academic work. “Scholarship


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that precludes consideration of the autobiographical perspectivesof individual scholars will be severely limited, lacking creativeimagination and insights into human nature” (Phipps, 2004,p. 177). Of course in paying attention to the personal stories toldby scholars we need to beware unilateral forms of testimony that engage insufficiently with critical questioning and that seek toimpose their authority on listeners, seeking surrender, rather thanthose which invite free responses in a spirit of humility, seekingcorrection and completion.

Failure to tap into the faith dimension latent in studentsand subject matter can be countered by attention to curriculum

connectedness. Often there is a tendency to ignore what many students bring to the classroom across the disciplines in terms of their faith affiliation—or allergies to faith. Yet to advert to the reli-gious implications of what is being learned might be an additional way for teachers to create inclusive and hospitable spaces forlearning, by tapping into where students are coming from. I amthinking here as much of student resentments and rejections of religion as of their positive convictions and affiliations. Teachers

should acknowledge this aspect of student identity, allow it toenter into the classroom and into educational assignments. Of course, not only is faith (in something) part of the being of thestudents; it is also integral to some aspects of the realities beinginvestigated in many disciplines. Referring to psychology, sociol-ogy, history, anthropology and literature, Jacobsen and Jacobsen(2004, p. 161) says, “Since faith is part of the reality that thosedisciplines seek to study, matters of faith ought not to be bannedfrom the academic dimensions of these subjects.” One might addthat, even though faith might be less evidently part of some otherdisciplines, in terms of what they are studying, it will certainly bepart of the life of students and scholars in, for example, science,medicine, business, engineering, and education, and thereforean element in the operating factors that affect their perception,thinking, and evaluating.

I believe that universities should be places where faculty andstudents raise key questions about the disciplines. What are the

philosophical assumptions that underpin them? How is powerexercised within them? Who sets the agenda and on what basis? Whose voices are heard, suppressed, or ignored? What are theboundaries that separate out one discipline from others? What


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ethical issues arise out of deploying the key concepts and centralmethods of that discipline? It is difficult to see how these questionscan be adequately addressed without looking over the gardenfence, giving at least some consideration to neighboring disci-plines. Theology has always had to do this, for, as Kathryn Tannersays “specifically Christian sources and norms have never been suf-ficient for theological instruction” (Tanner, 2002, p. 209). Therehas always been engagement with concepts and cultures externalto the faith. “The very meaning of even the most fundamentaltheological claims is determined by what theologians do withthe notions and affirmations of other intellectual and cultural

areas” (Tanner, 2002, p. 210). One draws upon the intellectualterminology or currency available at the time even if one “buys”something different with it. Tanner claims that “One cannot bea constructive theologian for the present day without familiarity with the currency of the other intellectual or cultural fields of theday, and it is through the assessment of how other theologians of the past and present have dealt with comparable material of theirown times and places that one develops a sense for what needs to

be done now” (p. 210). John E. Hull provides two additional reasons for theologiansto engage in interdisciplinary dialogue. First, they cannot becountercultural in the university context if they remain withintheir own field of study and accept the reigning rules of theacademic environment. If they “submit to the ‘wisdom’ of theincumbent paradigm” they “relinquish [the] right to pose the cen-tral questions, redefine limits, set priorities, or offer alternativeanswers to society’s questions of ultimate concern” (Hull, 2002, p.216). Second, if they abdicate responsibility for engaging othersin dialogue about scholarly questions, methods, findings, andtheir practical implications, they run the risk that the Christianperspective will function simply like “bookends—God talk willappear [at the best] at the beginning and end of lessons, units,courses and years, but what lies in between will remain largely unaffected” (Hull, 2002, pp. 222–223).

Obstacles

There are many different kinds of obstacles to the establishment of connection between the disciplines. Among some Christians


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there has been a marked anti-intellectualism, as if a faith sepa-rated from scholarly and academic concerns was somehow morepure, more trusting, less reliant on human achievement, moreopen to God’s revelation. Faith alone or Scripture alone is re-quired by the disciple. Academic learning clouds the vision, reliestoo heavily on anti-Christian assumptions, invites pride, and leavesless room for God in one’s life. Fideism, however, undermines thecredibility of Christian faith in the long run and refuses to use oneof God’s great gifts, rationality.

Among other Christians who seek connections between the-ology and other disciplines, sometimes the kind of relationship

sought invites suspicion. This might be because the relationshipbeing pursued seems too unilateral, with theology influencingthe other discipline but not in turn allowing itself to be influ-enced, as if theology is already complete while the other partneris deficient. Nicholas Wolterstorff refers to Abraham Kuyper’s“one-directional, non-interactionist view of the relation betweenreligion and the practice of scholarship” (Hull, 2002, p. 213). Or,suspicion might be aroused by fears that the academic agenda of a

discipline, and following from this, the distribution of power andopportunities, might be altered by a dominant religious group,thereby rendering second-class academic citizens those scholars who are not members of the faith or denomination in question.This fear certainly prevails in some Catholic universities (Langan,1998, p. 96).

Jacobsen and Jacobsen (2004, pp. 15–31) bring out twoimportant limitations of earlier integration models. They claim, with some justice, that those models often depend rather closely on a Reformed, Calvinist view of Christian scholarship and fit much less easily with other Christian emphases, among which hementions Catholic, Wesleyan, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Baptist, andOrthodox approaches. Some of these give less emphasis to theintellectual dimension and more to other dimensions of Christianlife, for example, the liturgical, sacramental, communal, practical,political, and aesthetic. Jacobsen and Jacobsen also point out that typical models of integrating faith and learning fit better areas

of study that by their nature are more philosophical or theory-based, for example sociology, rather than chemistry, or literary criticism rather than engineering. Partly because of the cogency of these points, I am advocating in this paper, not a full-blooded


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integration, but a much looser and less systematic exercise inestablishing connections, without seeking to specify the expectedoutcomes or nature of these connections.

Such lack of clarity, however, about what is being aimed forin interdisciplinary dialogue, can itself be an obstacle. This might be related to lack of realism about what can be expected, how open people are prepared to be, how much time they can devoteto dialogue beyond their discipline, and how many resources canbe allocated for this kind of activity. It might also be linked to anattempt to seek too tidy an approach to interdisicplinary dialogueand projects, perhaps importing a monistic attitude, envisaging a

strategy that is insufficiently pluralistic or flexible. Too systematican approach can be both threatening and narrowing. Disciplinary affiliations among faculty can lead to connections with theirinternational colleagues in the same field being prioritized overthose with their colleagues from other disciplines in their owninstitution. Then there are defensive mechanisms and territorialsensitivities that operate, for example, in protecting budgets, inpreserving a curriculum into which one has invested much time

and effort, in the drive towards empire-building, combined with amixture of both excessive confidence in a discipline and a fear of the unknown. In the collaborative project management of peopledrawn from different disciplines attention has to be paid to theidentity, security, and motivation of those involved. Ways have tobe found to balance the risk-taking required for interdisciplinary endeavors with the familiarity and stability provided by the home-base discipline.

Lyon and Beaty succinctly indicate three considerationsthat can inhibit interconnectedness between theology and otherdisciplines in a university setting. First, some claim that, withregard to their particular discipline, religious perspectives areeither nonexistent or simply irrelevant. Second, which versionand whose definition of Christian is to be used, since theresimply does not exist one unified version which can be labeled“the” Christian one? Third, some take the view that teaching aChristian perspective presents a biased view that is unfair to other

religious (and nonreligious) perspectives (Lyon & Beaty, 1999,p. 85).

With regard to the first of these points, judgment as to whether theology has anything to offer should be withheld until


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after some interdisciplinary discussion has taken place. My guessis that it is a combination of three factors that leads to a prema-ture judgment of irrelevance. Many theologians have simply not considered the implications of their work for other disciplines.Similarly, many theologians have failed to listen carefully to what scholars in other disciplines are up to and are thus unawareof how theology and other studies might be linked. Likewise,scholars in other disciplines rarely consider the potential relevance of theology, remaining largely in ignorance of its potentialcontribution to their work.

As for the second consideration, the sheer multiplicity of

Christian voices, I do not think this should be especially prob-lematical, (given the multiplicity of voices often clamoring forattention in other disciplines) so long as the particularities of thetradition being represented by a theologian are specified, witha humble acknowledgement of the limited degree of authority these hold for other Christians and so long as the theologiandisplays a willingness to learn from Christians of a different persuasion, as well as an openness to other disciplines. As for

the third possible objection to theology being brought to bearin interdisciplinary dialogue, that inviting the Christian voiceinto the academy is unjust to nonreligious and non-Christian views, this is specious reasoning. It presupposes that the Chris-tian speaks without respect for others, without knowledge that there are other points of view and that others are not allowedto speak for themselves. None of these conditions need ap-ply when Christian theologians contribute to interdisciplinary dialogue.

It might be thought counterintuitive to assume that theacademy is ready for theology to make a constructive contributionto cross-disciplinary dialogue. There are intellectual trends that seem to count against such an undertaking. These include:

1. The hermeneutics of suspicion (all is power-play and theexpression of vested interests)

2. A strong sense of the situation-specific nature of all claims

(relativism)3. Resistance to metanarratives4. The discrediting of authority 5. Individualism


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6. Autonomy (rather than interdependence) as a major value7. The privatization of religion and its relegation to a marginal

and merely optional activity 8. The tendency to believe that we can develop the “software” of

skills and competencies without the “hardware” of character;in other words the assumption that what we learn in class issomething quite disconnected from (and thus uninfluencedby) the company we keep, what else we are learning, the kindof life we live and the persons we are becoming.

Marcia Bunge identifies both a negative and a positive feature

in the modern academy. “On the one hand, many students andfaculty seem to hold onto the very modern assumption that faithand learning are separate realms and that religion is personaland private and therefore irrelevant to academic life. On theother hand, there appears to be a growing openness to religiousperspectives among scholars in several fields that some attribute tothe postmodern critique of objectivity and emphasis on pluralism”(Bunge, 2002, p. 249).

Such openness to the religious voice as one among many contending for our attention in the marketplace of ideas is very different from the position of religion in a religiously affiliateduniversity. It is plausible to argue that theologians in Christianuniversities are in some way sponsored by their institution, per-haps considered as spokespersons for it, guardians of orthodoxy,in a privileged position vis-à-vis other disciplines. When they speak, they can be heard by faculty from other disciplines asif they are speaking with more than just their own voice, withan institutional mandate. Of course, this is often not the caseat all, for many Christian universities in practice give far toolittle support to the position and healthy functioning of theology,thereby undercutting the capacity of the institution to articulateits identity and to communicate intelligently its raison d’être.Secularization has frequently deeply permeated even religiously affiliated universities, influencing their operating assumptionsand practices. Secularization occurs for many reasons. We want

to widen the field and improve the quality of our staff; reducingthe focus on religious affiliation and commitment allows us to widen the net in recruiting the best staff. We want to avoid heavy-handedness and compulsion in imposing a religious ethos and so


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step back from many of the kinds of requirement—in curriculumand in student life—that once might have been normal. We needto maximize our recruitment of students, of all kinds, includingthe brightest, in order to compete and to remain viable; thus we minimize the religious character of our institution in ourpromotion of it, lest this should put them off coming to us. It is not surprising that cumulatively the obstacles indicated in thissection lead some colleagues to see the religious and the academicmission of Christian universities as existing in tension. Whileacknowledging this, I believe the tension can be a creative one.

Prompting Connections

Theology should not be considered as a competitor against otherdisciplines, but their partner. Although there is, in my view, aplace for both apologetics, a defense of the faith we hold, and forcritique, exposing the false assumptions, misguided priorities, anddistorted values of some worldviews and ideological contendersin the university, the primary role of theology, in the context of

interdisciplinary inquiry, is as humble contributor to the debatesand investigations. All knowledge involves interpretation. And thisemerges from our worldview fed by prior inclinations, judgments,commitments, and aversions. Neutrality might be often claimedbut is rarely displayed in practice in the academy (Clouser, 1991).Theologians should ask their colleagues what view of persons,society, knowledge, and learning underlies their current practicesand proposals—be ready to be questioned in turn on thesepoints. They should open up for their colleagues the possibility of seeing all of reality as the theater of God’s work. As Harry Lee Poe puts it, “faith intersects an academic discipline at thepoint where it asks its fundamental questions . . . appropriatesits most fundamental assumptions . . . [and] establishes its core values” (Poe, 2004, p.138). Poe provides a useful set of questionsthat can facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue:

Ĺ With what is your discipline concerned?Ĺ What characterizes the methodology of your discipline?Ĺ On what other disciplines does your discipline build? To what

other disciplines does your discipline contribute?


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Ĺ What are the values on which your discipline is based? At what point do these values come into conflict with other disciplines?

Ĺ Over what values within your discipline do members of yourdiscipline disagree?

Ĺ What is the philosophical basis for your discipline’s values? (Poe,2004, pp. 138–139).

He also provides examples of questions for particular disciplines,from which I select just five as examples:

Ĺ

For Biology: To what extent, if any, should genetic engineeringbe used to enhance human beings?Ĺ For English: What are the similarities and differences in inter-

preting biblical texts and other literature?Ĺ For Political Science: What is the role of forgiveness in interna-

tional relations?Ĺ For Fine Arts: What are the limits, if any, on the freedom for

human creative expression?Ĺ For Economics: What is the relationship of the quest for prof-

itability and the Christian call for compassion and justice? (Poe,2004, p.159).

These kinds of questions facilitate the development of a wisdom that transcends mere knowledge (Maxwell, 1987). At the same time theologians must show that they are open to thepossibility that faith can be illuminated, engaged, interrogated,and challenged by the findings of other disciplines, so that it istested, purified, clarified, and kept humble. The tone of engage-ment between the disciplines fostered, facilitated, and supportedby theologians should be dialogical rather than conflictual. My assumption here is that a Christian university will function morelike an umbrella than something more systemic, to use theterminology of Duane Litfin. An umbrella organization “seeks tohouse a variety of perspectives without sacrificing its sponsoringperspective . . . to create an environment congenial to Christian

thinking, but without expecting it of everyone” (Litfin, 2004, pp.17–18). Such an idea has implications for the kind of hospitality Christians display, the tone of voice they adopt and the quality of listening they exhibit.


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There are various ways that theology can contribute to inter-connectedness in the university. Tanner (2002, p. 206) argues that theology can help to focus the university’s attention on the most pressing problems and challenges of contemporary life. This view is echoed by Wood, who believes that a Christian university shouldhelp faculty and students to discern “how the Gospel impingesupon all humanistic and scientific questions,” such as: “What constitutes the human person, the quality of the good life, thepurpose of social existence, the nature of the physical universe,the structure of political and social order” (Wood, 2003, p. 120).In this way theology can influence the way other subjects are

taught, ensuring that they address the big questions about life andthe world. Joseph Komonchak powerfully brings out the potentialrelevance of theology for the wider curriculum in the following way:

Whether or not the human person is reducible to the dumb play of material forces, whether or not he has a destiny beyond the grave, whetheror not he can attain truth, whether or not there is a God, whether or not this God has a redemptive care for us, surely have consequences for the

way in which we conceive not only our private lives but our social lives as well, for the fashion in which we deal with one another, for the criteria by which we measure success or failure, for the means we consider whereby torender human life, not just our own, not just our nation’s, but the whole

world’s life, less unworthy even of the human, never mind the divine.”(Komonchak, 1998, p. 82)

Attention to their apophatic tradition should make Chris-tians ready to acknowledge the limitations of their language andits reach—its match with and adequacy to reality. This shouldprompt them to take pains to avoid being overdogmatic indialogue. However, the openness and flexibility suggested by suchawareness of the limitations of language does not imply that Christian theologians should be unprepared to bring to the tablesomething stable and substantial. Being open-minded does not mean being empty-headed. For, as Tanner says, “Theologians onthe basis in great part of distinctively Christian sources and norms

purport to say something important about the nature of humanflourishing” (Tanner, 2002, p. 207).

What will be needed if the kind of interconnectedness I haveadvocated is to occur? Among a number of recommendations,


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Gasper includes the following three: there should be researchgroups that deliberately include faculty from different disciplines;(at least some) professors should serve two departments; researchstudents should follow a minor subject, in addition to and from adifferent discipline than their major area of investigation (Gasper,2001, p. 17). The encouragement of collegiality—which implies joint collaboration in service of a cause that is bigger than any single individual or discipline—for the Christian community,subscribing to the kingdom of God, can be a great incentive togreater academic interconnectedness. Theology, through its cleardistinguishing of what is ultimate and what is penultimate, has a

role in questioning modes of university management and aspectsof academic culture that can slide into forms of totalitarianismand idolatry that colonize our life-world.

Interestingly, Gasper suggests that, “Interdisciplinarity will work more readily when people act not as representatives of disciplines but represent themselves, their experiences, valuesand insights” (Gasper, 2001, p. 15). When his insight is applied totheologians in the Christian university, I would add that they have

an opportunity to help colleagues in other disciplines to see that their work could be interpreted as a vocation, a cooperation withGod’s grace in a particular, positive if limited way, in preparingfor the kingdom. Thus understood, when speaking for themselvesthey would do so with an enhanced sense of responsibility, not only for the subject area they represent, not only with their fellow academics, but also with a deep sense of who they are (a child of God with a particular calling) and responsive to the source andgoal of all knowledge, God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.This kind of thinking will require ongoing staff development formission, gradually building up confidence in the relevance andapplicability of Christian language and lifestyle to the academic world.

The kind of role in promoting connections across the cur-riculum that I have described for theology avoids the extremes of either abdication or domination, of silence or shouting. It links with the Christian university’s raison d’être. It accepts theology’s

role in showing how all things relate to God. It draws uponand displays the relevance for academic inquiry of the Christianintellectual tradition. It questions the fundamental assumptions at work in the academy. It invites others into dialogue and it listens


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respectfully and humbly to what they have to add and shows itself willing to learn from them. Thus it makes possible connection without control.

References

Berger, Peter. (1980). The heretical imperative . London: Collins.Bunge, Marcia. (2002). Religion and the curriculum at church-related colleges

and universities. In S. Haynes (Ed.), Professing in the postmodern academy . Waco,TX: Baylor University Press.

Cady, L. E., and Brown, D. (Eds.) (2002). Religious studies, theology, and the university . New York: State University of New York Press.

Clouser, R. (1991). The myth of religious neutrality . Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Gasper, D. (2001). Interdisciplinarity . The Hague: Institute of Social Studies.Hull, J. E. (2002). Aiming for Christian education, settling for Christians

educating: The Christian school’s replication of a public school paradigm.Christian Scholars Review , 13, 203–223.

Jacobsen, D., and Jacobsen, R. (2004). Scholarship & Christian faith . New York:Oxford University Press.

Komonchak, J. (1998). Redemptive identity and mission of a Catholic university.In V. Shaddy (Ed.), Catholic Theology in the University: Source of Wholeness .

Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press (pp. 73–89).Langan, J. (1998). Catholic presence in the disciplines. In Shaddy (Ed.),

Catholic Theology in the University: Source of Wholeness . Milwaukee, WI: MarquetteUniversity Press (pp. 91–101).

Lawler, M. (1998). Introduction. In V. Shaddy (Ed.), Catholic theology in the University: Source of Wholeness . Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.

Litfin, D. (2004). Conceiving the Christian college . Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.Lyon, L., and Beaty, M. (1999). Integration, secularization, and the two-spheres

view at religious colleges. Christian Scholars Review , 23(1), 73–112.MacIntyre, A. (1999). Dependent rational animals . London: Duckworth.

Maxwell, N. (1987). From knowledge to wisdom . Oxford: Blackwell.Nichols, T. (2000). Theology and the integration of knowledge. In J. Wilcox

and I. King (Eds.), Enhancing Religious Identity.. Washington, DC: GeorgetownUniversity Press (pp. 241–249).

Phipps, K. (2004). Epilogue: Campus climate and Christian scholarship. In Jacobsen and Jacobsen (Eds.), Scholarship & Christian faith . New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 171–183.

Poe, H. L. (2004). Christianity in the academy . Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.Shaddy, V. (Ed.) (1998) Catholic theology in the university: Source of wholeness.

Marquette, WI: Marquette University Press.Tanner, K. (2002). Theology and cultural contest in the university. In L. E. Cady

and D. Brown (Eds.), Religious studies, theology, and the university.. New York:State University of New York Press.

Wood, R. (2003). Contending for the faith . Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.


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Why Theology Can and Should be Taught

at Secular Universities: Lonergan on

Intellectual Conversion

PATRICK GIDDY

Drawing on Bernard Lonergan’s Method in Theology (1972) I argue that theology can be taught because personalknowledge, of which it is an instance, is at the heart of academic inquiry; and it should be taught because criticalengagement with basic ways of taking one’s life as a whole(religion in a broad sense) furnishes a critique of the typicaloversights of contemporary culture. The appropriation of one’s subjectivity entails an awareness of an existentialdialectic that pushes towards a decisive option for affirmingthe possibility and worth of growth in one’s powers of self-determination and self-transcendence. Thus conversion—

precisely defined in terms of this dialectic—has moral and

intellectual dimensions whose promotion goes to the heart of the academic enterprise. By separating out those disciplines(systematics, for example) which are mediated by theexistential stance taken by the scholar, Lonergan allowstheology to be seen as one world view among others.

I

The ghost of the apartheid-aligned ‘Christian National Education’

governmental policy continues to haunt debates on religion in educationin South Africa today. There is a residual fear of any one cultural groupimposing their ideas and beliefs on other groups. At universities—formany years zones of liberation from nationalist religious ideology—it iseasy, for reasons I want to make apparent, to ignore the huge role in theStruggle played by religious bodies, very often themselves apartheid-resistant zones, and to view with academic suspicion the religion,Christianity, associated with the past regime.1 In line with the constitution,the 2003 government policy on Religion in Education speaks of ‘parity of esteem’ towards religions and world-views. This could very easily beassumed to rule out the kind of reflection which in the classic definition of

theology presupposes faith. It could be thought that it entails an implicitmethodological atheism. And indeed at my own university campus this

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might at first glance seem to go without saying. Take a walk along theDurban beaches on any Sunday morning and a smorgasbord of culturesand religious traditions will unfold before your eyes—while the sun-bakedsurfers out on the backline would be hard put to give you the day of the

week, and the fully clothed Moslem ladies keep to the shallow breakers,the presence of either group is ignored by the semi-circle of white-robedZionists (African Initiated Church) further along accompanying withchants and drumming a full immersion baptism; and nearby alongside apier a Hindu family might be offering a sacrifice for their son’s graduationwith candles and saffron streamers.

At the university, its tower visible from the beachfront, the presumptionof methodological atheism in the School of Religion and Theology wouldseem an unquestionable, academic integrity requiring lectures be deliveredin a context that does not favour any one group of students by sharing theirprejudgments.2 The argument would be that one cannot presuppose anyparticular religious claim to be true. While this seems rather to implymethodological agnosticism, unless one is going to privilege atheistbeliefs, the upshot is the same. Either way, it seems difficult to see howtheology properly speaking could be taught at university, since the properunderstanding of the meaning of the doctrines would seem to presuppose alarge measure of prior openness to considering those beliefs in some waytrue, revealing a real dimension of the universe. A constant theme inreligious traditions (in particular one can think of Islam and Christianity)is that of conversion—whereas an atheist or agnostic is seen as arriving athis or her position without any such change of heart. After all, how would

you test conversion, in an exam? From this point of view, if you subtractfrom religious beliefs, what you arrive at is the general set of ‘normal’beliefs, which themselves need little or no particular or special or personal justification—they are what is obvious, the domain of public reason. Theycan be objectively tested in an exam.

It is the omission of the personal dimension of knowledge andunderstanding that I want to challenge and therefore also the presumeddifficulty in offering theology modules at a secular, or multiculturaluniversity. In this paper I draw attention to the cognitional theory of Bernard Lonergan in addressing the philosophical difficulties with ‘the

personal dimension of knowledge’ and the import of this for theology as adiscipline. In particular I will unpack his grounding notions of dialectic,self-appropriation, and decisive reorientation or ‘conversion’.3 Thisamounts to a critique of the idea that knowledge properly speaking islimited to what can be verified in the sciences (‘scientism’). There are of course many such critiques but I am not concerned with those nor am Ireally competent to place Lonergan’s approach within these others andtheir consequent view of how the specifically theological domain isconceptualized.4 I surmise and hope that the debate can benefit fromLonergan’s way of dealing with a cultural situation where belief is onepossible option among others, by pointing to everyone’s implicit or

explicit options in confronting the need for engagement at the strictlypersonal level (the ‘existential dialectic’ at the heart of the knowing

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process), thus putting the focus on each individual’s creative way throughthis. One can note here the probability that a similar difficulty is to someextent faced by other disciplines in the Humanities; an intelligent study of English literature, for example, entailing the uncovering of meaning that is

at the same time an exploration of the student’s understanding of thesignificance of his or her own lives and relationships.

Let us take the religious dimension of life to refer to ways in which onecomes to terms with one’s life as a whole, the capacity of our humannature Feuerbach referred to as one’s ‘species-being’.5 Theology then isthe study of one such articulation of this capacity which involves faith inGod, which we can for our purposes leave further unspecified, except topoint out it would be misunderstood if the volitional and emotional aspectsof the faith were omitted.

II

Support for my suggestion comes from Charles Taylor (2004, p. 18). Heargues that it is a mistaken although widespread opinion that ‘modernity’is a world-view which is arrived at simply by subtracting from thepremodern view an invented layer of ‘mattering things’ (things to do withreligion, for example) so as to get to the natural residue underneath. On thecontrary, he argues, we can see the change from premodern to modern as ashift in what matters at a personal level. A more adequate account wouldrun something like this: In the premodern world order persons were, in

Taylor’s terms, ontically and hierarchically embedded (in other wordsboth in terms of what they believed about their ‘place’—above the beasts,below God—and in terms of how, practically, social order ranked them).And once we get rid of those old ways of placing individuals within theprior community what remains is the residue: disembedded individualsconcerned primarily with mutual benefit. Or the same idea in reverse:modernity as the breakdown of community and thus the problem is seen ashow to force individuals to conform (the prisoners’ dilemma6). Those oldtraditions stressed the linking of moral virtue with hierarchy, while themodern stress the capacity of individuals to be agents, and links moral

virtue with this. In both cases there is a certain way of developing (adirection) and a certain way of being-together. So in each case there is inpoint of fact a personal dimension; in other words modern culture cannotbe properly understood without appreciating its shared ideals of living andseeing these (not uncritically) as of value, involving desirable virtues.

If Taylor is correct than the dominant understanding of standards of academic integrity (involving the subtraction idea) is less than fullycoherent. I want to argue that a more plausible account would seeacademic standards as part and parcel of an appropriation of humansubjectivity that has deep roots in religious traditions. Taylor points tothe paradigm shift (the so-called axial age7 of religions) in the way the

self-understanding of the major religious traditions, towards greateremphasis on individual, subjectively authentic appropriation of the faith.

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Contemporary philosophy however struggles to find any way through toknowledge properly speaking of matters to do with ‘subjectivity’, and Iwill situate the problem of theology at a secular university as a subset of amore general problem in contemporary philosophy of thinking of

knowledge simply as what the sciences produce, ‘scientism’.8

To describe our society as ‘secular’ can, as Taylor points out (2007, p.3) be taken simply to indicate the falling off of religious beliefs andpractices. Equally frequently, and often for the purposes of political ethics,and pertinent for our topic, it is taken to refer to the separation of churchand state. Public institutions are set up to operate autonomously of religion, which is taken as a ‘private’ matter. I want however to focus onTaylor’s third meaning of ‘secular’, namely a change in the conditions of belief which accompanies changes in social and cultural factors, such thatin contrast to past situations where belief was ‘obvious’, it is now ‘onehuman possibility among others’.

The reason for concentrating on the third sense lies in the contestednature of in what ways the public space is autonomous of religious beliefs,i.e. ‘secular’ in the second sense. We are interested here in the publicuniversity. In the modern period academic disciplines, beginning with thenatural sciences, freed themselves from theological oversight. Howeverthe autonomy of these sciences, it must be noted, is not an absolute one.There are in each case certain procedures and methods which are not justified experimentally within the science. The exact formulation of theseprocedures is a matter of tradition but debated properly in philosophy, inparticular epistemology. The point we are putting forward about theology

is a point about this debate. The model for academic inquiry has by andlarge been influenced by the natural sciences and by an accompanyingmetaphysical view of reality which methodologically excludes subjectiveor phenomenological factors (what it’s like to me, in Nagel’s words9). The(in some places) hegemony of cognitive science in the philosophy of mindis simply the most recent evidence of this trend. Of course there arecounter-examples, the appreciation of the verstehen approach in socialanthropology for example, but the onus seems to be on those who want toshow why the dominant model is not appropriate. This throws suspicionon all personal and interpersonal knowledge of the kind we have in

theology (and also, traditional or pre-scientific world-views).

10

III

For Lonergan, the low status of theology in the academy, which in his judgment obtains at present, is a result of its failure to clarify its method inresponse to the situation we have pointed to above.11 The personal aspectis indeed part and parcel of theology: openness to take on board beliefswhich are life-changing and not at all simply ‘out there’ to be noted. Ourown social situation (illustrated above with a local example) seems to

make this a difficulty—which was not appreciated when culture wasmonolithic or ‘normative’ (as the pre-modern European culture was,

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inheriting the Greek view of their own normative culture, other culturesbeing pejoratively ‘barbarian’) and beliefs could be thought of as ‘outthere’, objectively true in a sense which did not challenge the individual’ssense of their self—in spite of the prophets, biblical and Protestant, who

sought to internalize people’s beliefs.In the view we are challenging, a university module will address the

intellect of the student; whereas religious faith would seem to be foundedon an act of will and embedded in social groupings with distinct andopposing basic tenets. These are not in any obvious way accessible topublic reason.

To tackle this problem we can begin by questioning the way in whichthis dichotomy between reason and will is characterized. Modern thoughthas moved away from a metaphysical psychology which isolates thefaculty of reason from that of will. Rather the focus is on the subject’soriginal presence to self, whether in knowing or choosing, and making thisthematic, as we have done. This means nothing more than in under-standing the person we start from the individual’s self-awareness, andpoint out that knowing what knowing is, is not like studying some distantplanet of which we have had no direct experience. Rather, it is a matter of the fuller appropriation (through growing understanding) of a capacity wealready have but do not exercise to its full extent. This approach, discussedearlier by thinkers such as Kierkegaard in terms of ‘self-appropriation’,Lonergan calls in general that of ‘intentionality analysis’. Howevercontemporary culture, oriented toward and valuing technological control,has, as we will try to show, ironically a blind spot towards this

foundational subjectivity and agency. This in turn pushes out religion andthe expressivist dimension of human living to the detriment both of thereligious traditions, which are open to fundamentalist anti-intellectualism,and the sciences which fail to connect with the larger world of values.

In this way I hope to show (a) how the conversion aspect of religiousfaith is to be understood so as not to threaten the academic integrity of thedisciplines and the norms for any community of scholars. And (b) how thesuggested way of conceptualizing theological understanding does notbetray the tenets of any authentic religious tradition.

In general conversion has to do with the fact that apart from the creative

dimension of human living, our capacity for self-determination, there isalso, because of the fact of a kind of impasse, a moral impotence, the needfor a healing, restoring, dimension. This therapeutic dimension couldperhaps be illustrated through the reorientation marking different kinds of being in love, and through a phenomenology of romantic love, as Doran(1990, pp. 30–33) suggests. The structure we are trying to indicate here ispointed to in the classic text about ‘the love of God’: that it concerns nothow we love him but that he loved us first. The restorative element inother words highlights a response rather than a creative and constructiveproject as such of human persons (although a constructive element inreligion is always present, as Karen Armstrong (1994) sympathetically

argues in her A History of God ). From this the distinctively religiousnature of this integral dimension of human history should be clear.12


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With this background we can get a first idea of what Lonergan’sintention is in introducing the unusual idea of an intellectual conversion. Iwant in this paper to focus in particular on this, abstracting from thebroader background. Basically, and anticipating a proper explanation of

the terms used here, Lonergan’s starting point is our awareness of senseexperience and also our experiences of insight and inquiry and reflectionon our insights and conceptualisations. How we react to this awarenessthrows up a dialectic. And a dialectic calls for a response; it suggests aresolution which we want to describe as conversion, a moment of growth,a personal narrative. Theology in its phase of mediating the religioustradition (before its more constructive and future-oriented task) can bebased on methodological agnosticism and on the consequent struggle of the learner confronting the dialectic.

I now need to explain these terms, dialectic and conversion. We canpoint here, as Lonergan does (2001, p. 298), to Heidegger’s phenomen-ological category of subject and his horizon. Heidegger argues that thefundamental horizon of the existential subject, framing his or her field of intentionality, is properly characterized as ‘care’ or ‘concern’. Therewould be a different horizon framing the intentionality of the naturalsciences and this horizon can change and develop as the disciplinesdevelop without having any effect on the subject’s concrete living. Incontrast, a change in the subject is called for in the case of a change inphilosophical or existential horizon. We are talking about how we seeourselves. And this is a question of personal growth. As Ogilvie (2001, p.125) comments, conversion is ‘an ongoing movement from one viewpoint

to a new conscious decision about new horizons within which a subjectwill view, judge, evaluate and relate with his or her world.’ Moreforcefully, Lonergan describes conversion as ‘not merely a change or evena development; rather it is a radical transformation . . . What hitherto wasunnoticed becomes vivid and present. What had been of no concernbecomes a matter of high import . . . [The convert] apprehends differently,values differently, relates differently because he has become different’ (inDoran, 1993, p. 218).

We can see a similar point about a growth moment in intellectualinquiry being made by Plato in his justly celebrated cave metaphor. So the

idea is not new. Our approach is to unpack this moment of growth viaLonergan’s framing dialectic and his precisely defined notion of conversion. Dialectic names two opposing but linked principles whoseinteraction issues in a dynamic process. Lonergan identifies on theintellectual level opposing principles on the questions of what is knowing,what is reality, and what is objectivity. All three questions are bound toarise, because of the duality of human knowing, which is a given.

Lonergan’s own description of this duality (1957/1992, p. 276) is useful.He takes the instance of a kitten, and notes the role of the kitten’sconsciousness as a technique for attaining biological ends. What does hemean by this? The consciousness is extroverted. ‘The kitten’s conscious-

ness is directed outwards towards possible opportunities to satisfyappetites. This extroversion is spatial: as it is by the spatial manoeuvres

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of moving its head and limbs that the kitten deals with means to its end, sothe means also must be spatial, for otherwise spatial manoeuvres would beinept and useless. The extroversion is also temporal . . . Finally, theextroversion is concerned with the ‘‘real’’‘. A realistic painting of a saucer

of milk might attract the kitten’s attention but it cannot lead to the catlapping, in other words to the successful achievement of its biologicalneeds. The painting is not ‘real’.

This is the world of immediacy that is the whole of the new-borninfant’s world. With the acquisition of language we, however, also live ina world mediated by meaning. We can live not simply by being orientedby the pressing demands of our biological needs for their satisfaction butalso by our responses to values. We can think, because we can, unlike thepre-linguistic toddler, grasp things ‘in the mind’ without grasping themwith the fingers or the mouth. By invoking their names we can simply holdthem in mind without them being present. We can also question whetheror not what I have experienced is in point of fact what I have supposed it to be. Our intention here is not circumscribed by the needs of thebiological organism: will it or will it not meet those needs? Rather, it isopen-ended, aims at what is true, is a response to what one must admit issimply a natural desire to know.

Philosophy, for Lonergan, has for its task showing how this constitutes asource of confusion and how one would break the duality of one’s knowing.For both have their point, and elementary knowing is not mere appearancewhile the other reaches reality. Elementary knowing proves its point bysurvival, while any attempt to dispute the validity of intellectual knowing

involves the use of that knowing. It must go beyond the realm of experienceto the realm of asking questions about our experience, whether or not we doknow in this non-biological sense, and it involves further reflectivequestioning about our answers in order to press towards some judgment.

IV

When a non-interiorly differentiated human person (non-converted)philosophizes about what is real, he is likely to think of it in terms of

some or other ‘body’, the already out there now. We think of it assomehow what it is to us, ‘out there’ resisting to some or other extent oursubjective approach. In the view we are opposing, the real is thought to bethat which one can somehow imagine, whereas from the point of view of intellectual knowing one’s imagination is used to throw up a variety of possible interpretations of the data, and what is real is whatever we cometo critically judge actually is the case, on the basis of all availableevidence. This will include what is ‘out there’, of course, tables and chairsand so on, but can also accommodate things such as atoms (which wenever see) or ‘myself’, which Hume, for example, struggled to find anyverification for.

If what is real is somehow linked to how we see things, or our seeinghow things are is the final criterion for their reality, then what is real must


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be some kind of body, and its spatial contours will be in part definitive of it (it is there). And that means that we can envisage bodies within bodies,within the cell there are molecules and the molecules are made up of atoms, and so on. And so we are pushed towards the obvious corollary: it’s

the analysis in terms of the basic parts that is the more basic analysis orexplanation: reductionism. This however does not obtain when we takeseeing not to be the criterion of what is real, but rather reflectiveconsiderations to do with whether or not or to what extent our ideas do infact account for the data, in other words, judging.

Lonergan (1972, pp. 238–9) explains it well:

Intellectual conversion is a radical clarification of an exceedinglystubborn and misleading myth concerning reality, objectivity, and humanknowledge. The myth is that knowing is like looking, that objectivity isseeing what is there to be seen and not seeing what is not there, and that

the real is what is out there now to be looked at.But this myth overlooks the difference between the world of

immediacy (the world of the senses, experienced by the infant) and thereality of everything we experience through its meaning. The world of theinfant is but a tiny fragment of the world mediated by meaning. So wecannot just ‘look’ at reality; we need to learn how to be a critical adult,thinking about the evidence, judging our understanding critically.Knowing is not just seeing. Nor is objectivity reached through seeingalone (but through seeing, understanding and judging). And the real is not just what we can touch and see: it is what we aim at getting to knowthrough being attentive, being intelligent, and being reasonable in our

judgments.13

We can clarify what is meant here by these remarks on objectivity. We cantake David Hume as the arch empiricist, whose ideas about whatknowledge properly speaking should be like were hugely influenced by themethods of the relatively new natural sciences. Hume (1740/1969) thoughtthat we reach an objective account of things by linking our ideas to theirverification in our sense experience. That seems sensible enough, at firstglance. But it seems less than sensible when one considers that for Humewe get to know ourselves as subjects and agents in the same way: by

observation. As the subtitle of Hume’s Treatise

explains (‘An attempt tointroduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects’) he istrying to apply the method of empirical science to understand humanpersons. So what our beliefs are, we can only know through scientificobservation, which seems a bit peculiar. The subject and agent, in otherwords, disappear: all the evidence we have from being conscious of whatwe are doing when we come to a belief is discounted in the Humeanapproach as mere ‘folk psychology’, an uncritical account in terms merelyof how it appears to me. And no headway is made by claiming, as dualismdoes, that alongside the external point of view there is some immediatelyaccessible and certain knowledge of one’s self by the subject.

A further problem for the Humean outlook arises when one considershow one can be sure that what is in one’s mind corresponds to what is out

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there, that one’s images are accurate. For checking one’s image involveshaving an image of it, equally questionable as to its accuracy, and soimploding the integrity of the checking process. From this problem of infinite regress one concludes to a scepticism about knowledge, as Hume

did.In the received modern philosophical history, lined up against the

Scottish empiricist Hume we have the German rationalist Kant. For Kantthe senses don’t give you reality—your mind actively shapes yourknowledge. Nevertheless the connection with reality is secured by the factthat we have in our sense experience (merely) the appearance of reality. Itis clear that he is still thinking of reality as what is ‘out there’, and what isout there is the lodestone for objectivity, it secures objectivity so far as anyobjectivity is possible for human beings.14

In contrast to both these traditions Lonergan says, forget extroversion asthe model for securing objectivity. The ‘realism’ of the animal withextroverted consciousness secures its own proper objectivity. But this isnot the way rational consciousness reaches objectivity. ‘For rationalaffirmation is not an instance of extroversion, and so it cannot be objectivein the manner proper to the ‘‘already out there now’’’ (1972, p. 439). Thisis not a reason to despair of realism. The senses do not give you theappearances of things but furnish data for our inquiring mind. Two peoplecan agree on the objective truth of the matter even they have differentperspectives (how things seem to them), because both see that the oneinterpretation and not the other is the more reasonable, covers all theevidence.

So objectivity is properly understood as precisely a quality of ourreasonableness: it is the achievement of our intellectual capacities, it ismoving to a new level, from simply sense experiencing to being intelligentto reflective judgment of the probably accuracy of our ideas. And thesetransitions are growth moments. This kind of discrimination in one’scapacity for intelligence is perhaps quite rare. More’s the pity. To be sure,what we are talking about here, intellectual conversion, finds its place on aspectrum with analogous growth moments on the level of ethics, which isthe fuller context, the more important awakening to the attractiveness of living by values, of finding the response in one’s set of desires not just to

what will satisfy but to what is simply good.At any rate it is in this sense that existentialists pointed out that modernphilosophy had forgotten the subject. Kierkegaard begins to formulate thecategories of interiority, the ‘subjective’ way to the truth. It involves apersonal journey, he emphasizes. And this should have huge implicationsfor how academic inquiry is understood at universities. How could therebe this journey unless it was specifically catered for?

Science then is properly seen as an achievement of our faculties of self-transcendence, the systematic critical questioning of our beliefs. Perhapsthis idea should not be too difficult to appropriate but it is. For theimplications are that if we can self-transcend in this way then we can take

up an attitude to the universe as a whole, understand it, and also value it.We make meaning out of it, we are not fully immersed in or stuck in our


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perspective without remainder: that’s the point of intellectual conversion,it liberates our minds.15 We can take up an attitude to our lives as a whole,not being immersed simply in each segment, parcelled out withoutperspective. More, we are able to evaluate the adequacy of our religious/

cosmic attitudes: we can develop our understanding of this, as the Biblicalprophets did, for example, and as Charles Taylor argues is happening in themodern period through secularisation. The human capacity for transcen-dence does not have to be tied into a pre-secular world-view, andintellectual conversion sees objectivity as not tied into any absolute time andspace framework (as Newton thought it must be) but rather to our capacityfor reasonable judgment which is part and parcel of a natural universe, notapart from it. But how would one explain this capacity, this power, if not byone or other of these forces? And is not the idea that one can live by values,an illusion? The rise of modern science, the new realisation of our powers of observation as the path to knowledge, has obscured the need for this kind of processing. Science and technology have been accompanied by a mythabout what is real, about what the real should look like. This phenomenoncan be summed up in the idea of the vanishing subject and agent.

The myth accompanying modern science has it that we precisely arethus stuck, lacking transcendence. Reality (and this includes our humanreality) is nothing but the bits making it up. We have argued rather thatreality is whatever we tend to know through insight and judgment—itcan’t be specified by some idea of what it ‘looks like’, or how it feels. Butthis does not imply the demise of the subjective perspective, asphilosophical naturalism would have it. It simply says that perspective

is part of our lived world, to which we always refer back but with theawareness that such perspectival view is now intelligently differentiatedfrom how things are judged to be in themselves.

The difficulties associated with understanding this self-transcendence,uncovered by our analysis, means that without structuring in a systematictreatment of the issues raised here in the academy and in culture ingeneral, simplistic answers are likely, uncritical picture-thinking inreligions and in the human sciences a dismissal with sarcasm of theclaim to an autonomous religious dimension of life.16

V

I want now to link the admittedly abstract notion of conversion as we haveexplained more explicitly with religion, and with appropriating one’ssubjectivity, and bring in the fuller context of the reality of the person whois the university student and the persons who make up the community of scholars.

The distinction Lonergan makes in theological studies is that betweenthose disciplines in which the foundational conversion is implicit, andthose in which it is explicit.17 The first deals with research into religious

texts (scripture and tradition are not foundational, just data), interpretationof those texts, historical understanding of the religious tradition.

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Still it is doctrine and its explanation in systematics that brings to a headthe issues we have raised. By resituating the heart of theology, its pivot, inthe existential subject, the foundational pressure is taken off dogmatics,now free to be pursued as a proper discipline. The point is that Lonergan’s

intentionality analysis allows for systematic theology to use psychologicalrather than metaphysical categories (Lonergan, 1972, p. 343). And hereexplicit mention of the structures of self-actualization we have mentionedare needed and form the basis for discriminating between aspects of religious traditions that are authentic and other aspects that are lessauthentic. This is bound to be controversial in the current understanding of basic values of our culture. For being unable, in the dominant paradigm of knowledge properly speaking, to thematize our subjectivity and agency,any foundation for ethical values seems to some extent arbitrary. Theupshot is a list of basic individual human rights which is admittedlyculturally founded, and linked to the values of tolerance and equality. Thisis an ethical approach that struggles to pronounce judgment on particularcultural and religious traditions, discriminating between their more helpfuland less helpful aspects. In our understanding the problem lies with theunconverted scholar, not coming to terms with the dialectic we havepointed to and which, when faced down, yields a non-arbitrary foundationfor ethics in the normative structure of the self-appropriating subject andagent. The university has a role to play in challenging the dominant butunhelpful view of ‘knowledge’, and in this way facilitating religions intheir task of getting the best out of their traditions.

By the foundational reality of theology we are talking of the theologian

who can study the religion, its foundational texts, their interpretation andhistory, but who must also pronounce on which doctrines are true, howthey should be re-expressed perhaps so as to indicate their critical importin contemporary culture and not remain dead words. The foundation of theology is conversion, religious, moral and intellectual. And conversionin every case is a kind of self-transcendence.

Perhaps this seems terribly subjective. Not so. Conversion as we havedescribed it is a deliberate decision about oneself. But we have tounderstand that we are not talking about an arbitrary act of will. Thatmight suggest itself if one is thinking of the self in terms of ‘faculty

psychology’. Lonergan rejects this analysis of the human person in termsof a faculty of the intellect and a faculty of the will. Instead he sees thehuman person as operating on different levels, less full and fuller levels of being human, of actualizing the powers of one’s personhood—dreaming,conscious and experiencing, inquiring intelligently, being reasonable inone’s reflections on one’s ideas, and of course discovering a dynamism inoneself towards the truth of things, and valuing this—and so moving torealize one must appropriate one’s deliberations.

It is at the fuller level of deliberation that conversion has its place. It is awide-eyed commitment, intelligent (turning from complacency), reason-able (turning from an irrational ‘leap’), and responsible (so putting a stop

to simply drifting). It is (a) not arbitrary, but selects the true horizon fortheological truth, rather than any less than adequate one; (b) not an act of


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will but rather a consent to one’s inner dynamism; (c) an achievement notto be taken lightly because as Lonergan says, ‘for the most part peoplemerely drift into some contemporary horizon’; (d) personal but notprivate, because it is only with social groups are horizons fixed, so one can

actually choose them (1972, pp. 268–9).Foundations are in our own case not a set of basic propositions from

which all others can be deduced. Such an idea gives rise to obvious criticalquestions about how such basic beliefs are themselves grounded, and incontrast suggests (this is Sosa’s classic metaphor) perhaps that knowledgeis less like a pyramid and more like a raft which has no ‘basic’ bits to it(Sosa, 1980). Lonergan (1972, p. 270) mocks the first as basicallyunintelligent: ‘One must believe and accept whatever the bible or truechurch or both believe and accept. But X is the bible or true church orboth. Therefore, one must believe and accept whatever X believes andaccepts. Moreover, X believes and accepts a, b, c, d . . . Therefore, onemust believe and accept a, b, c, d . . .’. And this clearly unreasonableconception of the foundations of our set of beliefs might lead to despair atany relatively systematic or methodical exposition of how beliefs coherewith one another, the ‘raft’ idea.

‘Foundations’ refers rather to a method which is justified transculturallybecause the drive towards self-appropriation is transcultural. What needsto be founded are not propositions but the process of putting forward ideasand judging them so as to furnish the ongoing development of doctrineand its authentic re-expression in new contexts. What is needed is controlof the process, reversing the incoherent ideas on knowing, reality and

objectivity, by accepting the coherent one which includes the subject andagent and invites ever fuller appropriation of one’s capacities for getting tothe truth of things and for self-determination. This control is secured in theideal case by investigators who are intellectually and morally converted.

Much more needs to be developed if this radical shift in doing theologyis to be carried through. I have not spoken much of the essence of religion,the healing element of grace—’a charged field of love and meaning . . .ever unobtrusive, hidden, inviting each of us to join’. Our action here is inthe nature of a response, a different but equally vital complement to theactive structures of self-appropriation. ‘And join we must if we are to

perceive it, for our perceiving is through our own loving’ (1972, p. 290).Religious conversion is ‘a fated acceptance of a vocation to holiness’(1972, p. 240). With this eye of love and being loved one sees values intheir splendour, and is able to realize them in one’s choices, and one of those values is the value of truth, believing the truths of the tradition, infact, and here we have the seeds of intellectual conversion, for these kindsof truths are not had through observation but the whole personresponding.18

Because it is through religions that the explicit reference to thestructures of conversion in their full existential reality is to be found, thestudy of theology at university could contribute to a more authentic

reworking of the disciplines, and allow the university to have a liberatingpotential in the society as a whole. Hugo Meynell’s proposal for the study

538 P. Giddy

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of theology within a religious studies department is to create a newcategory (call it ‘X’) which corresponds to the second, mediated, phase of Lonergan’s theological studies.19 We have identified an inevitabledialectical moment in academic study consequent upon the duality in

our knowing and the existential demand for a response founding anysubsequent inquiry (in Lonergan’s terms, a need to ‘break’ the duality).This can now be used to frame a mediated religious method for the studyof any religion or quasi-religion such as Marxism: we can assume itsexpressions will be able to be encompassed by the structure of thesubject’s self-appropriation. This would legitimate the study of theology(faith in God seeking understanding) as a subdivision of X. What Xteaches is ‘religion’ as the expression (in ideas, acts, and feelings, andinstitutionalized in social forms) of a natural human desire to make senseof one’s life as a whole. Mediated religious studies or X makes conversionexplicit. By distinguishing the latter from dialectics, Lonergan makespossible a proper integration of theology in a university curriculum:dialectics is thrown up by questioning in accordance with methodologicalagnosticism—our starting point at the university; different responses arepossible and different formulations suggested and among these is foundmediated theology—of whatever religious tradition—with its particularformulation of conversion expressed in historically specific symbols,whether the cross or the crescent, or the spirits of the ancestors, andalongside of which is to be found for example mediated Marxism takennot strictly speaking as a science but as an existentially significantphilosophy or ethic.20

VI

In summary, I have argued that theology can be taught within theparameters set by university academic standards properly understood,because personal knowledge, of which it is an instance, is at the heart of academic inquiry. And it should be taught because critical engagementwith basic ways of taking one’s life as a whole furnishes a critique of thoseaspects of contemporary culture (its one-dimensionality) which hamper

personal growth and the development of more convivial social arrange-ments. I have presented Lonergan’s idea that the basic appropriation of one’s subjectivity (and intellectual powers) entails an awareness of anexistential dialectic which pushes towards a decisive option for affirmingan intelligibility of the universe and also motivates a commitment to theefficacy of living by values. Because of this, conversion—preciselydefined in terms of this dialectic—has not only a religious but alsoimportantly moral and intellectual dimensions and its promotion goes tothe heart of the academic enterprise. Nevertheless the full articulation of this personal reality foundational for the integrity of the pursuit of knowledge is to be found in the humanities and particularly in theology

but contemporary culture to a large extent works with a model of knowledge which disinherits these intellectual traditions, which leaves the


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university impotent to challenge social structures which fail to enhance

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Compilation Theology in University

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