Theology After Babel: On the Role of “Theological Theology” in Public Discourse

Last updated on: January 22, 2017 at 3:59 pm by Kyle Roberts

Theology After Babel: On the Role of “Theological Theology” in Public Discourse 2017-01-22T15:59:07-05:00 Kyle Roberts

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What should be the role for theology in public discourse? And, how theological should theology be? Another way to put that: How deeply and explicitly rooted in a particular religious tradition?

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “Tower of Babel,” Public Domain via WikiCommons

In Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and their Discontents, Jeffrey Stout makes an argument for the important of, shall we say, theological theology in public discourse.

He writes,

Academic theology seems to have lost its voice, its ability to command attention as a distinctive contributor to public discourse in our culture. Can theology speak persuasively to an educated public without sacrificing its own integrity as a recognizable mode of utterance?

This dilemma is by now a familiar one, much remarked up by theologians themselves. To gain a hearing in our culture, theology has often assumed a voice not its own and found itself merely repeating the bromides of secular intellectuals in transparently figurative speech.

Theologians with something distinctive to say are apt to be talking to themselves, or at best, to a few other theologians of similar breeding. Can a theologian speak faithfully for a religious tradition, articulating its ethical and political implications, without withdrawing to the margins of public discourse, essentially unheard? (pp. 163-64)

For Stout, theology will contribute something distinctive and necessarily to public discourse about morality and other questions when and if it is “recognizable theological.” This is not the same as parroting received doctrine or simply advocating an anti-intellectual piety. Rather, it seems to involve critical retrieval of the theologians religious tradition and bringing the results of those retrievals to bear on contemporary questions.

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