Some Problems with Public Theology

 

The concern of Public Theology is that theology remain in and be for the public rather than be isolationist and distinctively ecclesial.  It is concerned that theology focus on the public character of truth, not the esoteric nature of Biblical revelation.  It requires of theologians that they be more ‘statesmen-philosophers’ than Christian teachers.[1]  The opposite of Public Theology would be H. Richard Niebuhr’s first of five possible relationships of ‘Christ’ (i.e., the Church) and culture: Christ Against Culture.[2]  

The relevance of this essay lies in the appeal of Public Theology in both the West and the Majority World.  In the West, Liberal Theology sought to universalise Christianity such that its message was not unique and esoteric.  The fundamentals of Liberal Theology were the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of mankind, and the infinite worth of the human soul.  Note the omission in this of any reference to Christ, any uniquely Christian convictions, and any reference to the Church.  Christianity is absorbed into the public discourse.  Add to this the thrust in Liberation Theology that theology should be reflection following, not preceding, social activism in the name of justice, and one has a theology considered relevant for the public while the Church disappears like the moon with the midday sun.  Outside the West, concern for relevance for the context proceeded along two trajectories.  On the one hand, the real, practical needs of society had little time for speculative, systematic theology.  Theology needed to be ‘public’ in the sense of responding to human suffering.  On the other hand, postcolonial societies seeking to find dignity in their own cultures sometimes sought contextual theologies that treated historical theology as a European (and American) product.  Consequently, both for the West and for the Majority World, a Public Theology has seemed more fitting than Biblical, Systematic, and historical theology.

This essay, however, points out several significant problems with Public Theology and argues, on the contrary, that the way for the Church to engage the public realm is for it to develop and maintain its own identity and to do so publicly.  It is to be the Church on the square, not lose its identity in the causes of the public square.  Jesus' images of the Church as salt, a city on a hill, and a light (Matthew 5.13-16) are presented within the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), a sermon outlining an ethic for the unique community of the Kingdom of God that follows Jesus in discipleship.  Precisely in adopting this distinctive identity is the Church able to make a public witness.

Public Theology can be described in terms of the audience, context, agenda, relevance, and method employed.  As such, it is a type of theology.  It is not simply a practical and relevant outworking of Christian theology for a wider (public) audience, in a political or social context, addressing a common agenda relevant to a society’s pressing needs, and employing objective, social-scientific methods of research.  That is, it does not begin with Christian theological and ethical convictions.  It is not a theology that proceeds by means of Biblical interpretation.  It is not confessional and communitarian.  It is not theology applied to ministry and missions.  In other words, Public Theology actually transforms Christian theology into something else.

Regarding the audience, Public Theology does not confine itself to the Church.  David Tracy, for example, suggests that there are three ‘publics’: society at large, the Academy, and the Church.[3]  These three publics produce three theologies, but, he argues, they can be correlated.  The correlation of the three theologies aims to produce a theology that is deemed to be accessible to the wider, pluralistic audience.  A systematic theology produced for the Church draws on uniquely Christian resources, such as the Bible.  However, a further question needing to be answered is how the Bible is to be used.  Tracy keeps the use of Christian or other religious resources as public as possible.  Thus, different religious convictions and practices develop around so-called ‘classics’, with Jesus as a primary ‘classic’ for Christianity.  Reflection on various such classics in different religions allows inter-faith dialogue.

Public theology has little interest in the Church’s history and traditions.  Its value of being relevant tends to translate into a focus on contemporary times and current context.  Like Liberation theologies, it is suspicious of theoretical reflection and emphasises urgent action.  The Biblical text, moreover, is demoted in relevance to being a tool for reflection and rhetoric, not an authoritative canon directing a community.  It is not revelatory but merely initiates dialogue.  This is quite contrary to how the Bible has been understood throughout the centuries.  Moreover, the Church exists as a contemporary community facing present-day challenges and coming up with its own solutions.  What came in the past, either in Scripture or the Church’s history and theology, provides a variety of examples the present ‘community’ (rather than Church) might consider.  Yet the community directed by a Public theology continuously orients itself to the issues and language of the public square and intentionally avoids esoteric or partisan considerations. 

In response to this approach to theology, George Lindbeck responds that ‘it is the text … which absorbs the world, rather than the world the text.’[4]  The text is its own authority, not a tool for theological expression or a collection of examples from which to draw positive and negative lessons.  In advocating a use of Biblical and Christian examples for public discourse, Bryan Massingale says,

For Catholic theologians, one does public theology by appealing to those Catholic persons, texts, and symbols that possess a classic character. I suggest that among these would be people like Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton (the latter two effectively invoked by Pope Francis in his address to Congress in the fall of 2015); the gospel parables of the Good Samaritan, the Last Judgment, and the Rich Man and Lazarus; and the image of the Kingdom (Reign) of God. These are among the persons, texts, and symbols whose transcultural resonance could ground normative discourse on matters of public concern to those who do not share Catholic faith convictions.[5]

Public theology’s theological method is also problematic.  Scripture is a canonical text, speaking a clear message to the contemporary context, not a collection of (even at times conflicting) answers from which a contemporary community might choose.  The text is the context into which the contemporary community locates itself. 

Nor is Scripture merely generative revelation, producing a new context from which a theology might be extracted by means of generalisations and abstractions, only to be reapplied as the contemporary community sees fit.  The method of theologising must not be abstracting from the Biblical context and recontextualising in the current context but contextualising the current context in the Biblical context.  As Lindbeck argues, theologising requires an intratextual approach rather than the abstracting, extratextual approaches so often promoted:

The believer, so an intratextual approach would maintain, is not told primarily to be conformed to a reconstructed Jesus of history (as Hans Küng maintains), nor to a metaphysical Christ of faith (as in much of the propositionalist tradition), nor to an abba experience of God (as for Schillebeeckx), nor to an agapeic way of being in the world (as for David Tracy), but he or she is rather to be conformed to the Jesus Christ depicted in the narrative.  An intratextual reading tries to derive the interpretive framework that designates the theologically controlling sense from the literary structure of the text itself.[6]

 By locking theology to the literary structure of the Biblical text, theology cannot become an ideology, and the mode of theological enquiry will be interpretation, not application.  However, Lindbeck’s focus on the narrative structure of the text still allows one to use Scripture in a way that sits above the specific commandments of the Bible.  The Biblical characters and authors do not stop short of understanding the Bible as God’s Word and ethics as a matter of obedience.  There is much more to the Bible—and to the Church’s historical theology—than faithful practice of a metanarrative or application of more minor narratives.

Public theology’s failure to produce an ecclesiology is the result of a theological method that promotes the public square.  Its methodology privileges the social sciences rather than theology, and theology is understood in non-confessional ways.  Inter-religious dialogue, political activity, human rights, multicultural enrichment, social justice call for sociological analyses to which theology may or may not make its contribution.

Thus, as to the agenda of Public Theology, any ecclesial or confessional identity obstructs attention to the public good, interfaith dialogue, and coexistence for multicultural and multi-faith communities.  Public values, universal principles, and common virtues are sought as the motivation for and clarification of ‘social justice’ or ‘the good’ for all society.  Faith communities bring their people and contributions to the public projects rather than stand out distinctly.

Lindbeck, on the contrary, insists that doctrine is inseparable from its cultural and linguistic understanding of life.[7]  From a Biblical perspective, Israel’s unique identity as the people of God in covenant relationship with Him, and the Church’s particular identity ‘in Christ’ produce an understanding of relationship to the public square that does not dissolve their distinct identity but enhances it.  The Church stands out as salt and light in the world (Matthew 5.13-16).  The unique narrative of God’s people produces a unique people with a unique set of convictions, practices, and devotion.

The concerns of Public Theology are important to engage.  Yet we must ask, ‘How should Biblical, orthodox, Evangelical scholars approach theology in regard to matters of audience, context, agenda, relevance, and method?’  For us, not only the content of theology but also our approach to doing theology arises from Scripture.  We might add that we also value the rich history of interpretation in the Church Fathers, the Reformers, and the Evangelical movement.  What emerges is a uniquely Christian theology.  The audience of Scripture is the people of God.  The context of theology is Scripture itself, not only with its narrative but also with its entire content as God speaks to us.  From Scripture comes the agenda for theology.  Scripture is relevant not simply because it is applicable to various contexts but especially because it is itself truth.  Thus, the method of theological enquiry is not so much application but interpretation.  The Church is itself a community of interpretation, just as the synagogue was and is for Judaism.

How, then, does the Church engage the public?  It decidedly must not engage the public by dissolving its identity in the public square, like salt in water.  This would be the case of a Public Theology that correlates theologies for society, the Academy, and the Church.  Jesus’ image of His disciples being the salt of the earth was intended to mean that they were to have a sharpness of taste (Matthew 5.13).  Tasteless salt is good for nothing.  It should be thrown out and trampled underfoot.  The Church’s public presence is not in its shared identity with the public sector but in its distinct identity.  It contributes to the public situation precisely because it is not the public’s understanding and solution.  Jesus continues to make this point with another image: being a city on a hill that stands out to the entire region (v. 14).  Or the Church is to be a light on a stand that enlightens the entire household (v. 15).  The Church is to be salt, a city on a hill, and a light in the house with its observable good works (v. 16).  The world is capable of recognising the Church’s works as good, but it is the distinctive identity of the Church as God’s own people that makes it possible to do good works.  That identity is formed by the Church’s devotion to God in worship, theology, and obedience.

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[1] So the initial description of ‘Public Theology’ by Martin E. Marty, “Reinhold Niebuhr: Public Theology and the American Experience,” Journal of Religion 54.4 (1974), pp. 332–59.

[2] H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (New York: Harper, 1951).  The other paradigms listed by Niebuhr are: Christ above culture, Christ transforming culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ of culture.  Public theology envisions ‘Christ’—the Church—so in synch with culture in social justice that disappears into the public good.

[3] E.g., David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981); David Tracy and John Cobb, Talking About God: Doing Theology in the Context of Modern Pluralism (New York: Seabury, 1983).

[4] George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (London: SPCK, 1984), p. 118.

[5] Bryan N. Massingale, ‘Theology in the Public Sphere in the Twenty-First Century,’ The Journal of the College Theology Society (8 Nov., 2016); online: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/horizons/article/theology-in-the-public-sphere-in-the-twentyfirst-century/395F1735C195F6EB368AD1AB42FC66C3 (accessed 14 October, 2024).  He is following David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1986), p. 108.

[6] George Lindbeck, ‘Christ and Postmodernity, The Nature of Doctrine: Towards a Postliberal Theology,’ in Reading in Modern Theology: Britain and America, ed. R. Gill (London: SPCK, 1995), p. 192f.

[7] George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine.