Christian theology, then, is “the science of faith,” thus understood. It is “the science of
faith insofar as it not only makes faith its object and is motivated by faith, but because
this objectification of faith itself properly has no other purpose than to help cultivate
faithfulness itself” (12).
The difference between theology, thus understood, and ontotheology is too obvious to
need comment. Christian theology does not arrive at God by pressing the quest for
explanation to its ultimate consequence; it arrives at God by attending to faith in the
crucified God. Faith is not the property of the intelligentsia; it inhabits all those to whom
God is revealed in Christ. As such, it's OK as it is. It can use the ministrations of
Christian theology. But it doesn't need to be rationally grounded to make it acceptable.
NOTES
1.Where I have “presentation” in brackets in my quotation of the passage, the translator
has “representation.” The German is darstellung. There seems to me no doubt that
darstellung here means presentation, not re-presentation.
2.The clear exception to the analysis of religious language generally as nonreferential,
including theistically religious language, was O. K. Bouwsma (1984); Bouwsma held that
the word “God” is typically used to refer to God. Whether he was also of the view that
some primary religious language is assertoric in function is less clear. What he constantly
emphasized was the nonassertoric function of religious language; the religious person
addresses God in prayer, issues encouragement and warnings to his fellows, and so on.
3.In the analytic tradition, the most influential article mounting objections to this
understanding is Wilfrid Sellars, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (1963).
4.It was reading the opening chapter in Merold Westphal's recently published
Overcoming Onto-Theology (2001) that first brought this affinity to mind.
end p.269
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