PAUL JANZ
As philosophical theologian concerned centrally with the epistemological integrity and intellectual rigor of theological questioning and discourse, I’m somewhat reluctant to speak of transformation theology in terms of any sort of ‘movement’, and prefer to see it instead as designating most basically a certain set of orientations and dispositions of attentiveness to the revealed reality of God in the world—or to what theology calls ‘revelation’. There are several fronts along which this can be developed (see my essay ‘What is “Transformation Theology”?’ in the American Theological Inquiry, Vol. 2 No. 2 , 2009 at http://atijournal.org/Vol2No2.htm for a fuller treatment), but let me recapitulate just one here.
In its initial formulation in the coauthored book of the same name (Davies, Janz, Sedmak), the primary motivation for writing what came to be titled Transformation Theology (2007) was a perceived disconnect between the life of faith itself on the one hand—where God is known and experienced as a present and living reality, active with dynamic transforming power at the center of embodied human life—and what has frequently become a standard procedure in academic theology on the other, which often confines its endeavors fundamentally to the conceptually self-sustaining securities of textual and doctrinal theory, grammar and interpretation. What can be detected in this disconnect are two quite different orientations to questions of truth and meaning, which transformation theology seeks to address as follows.
In its questioning about the meaning, intelligibility and truth of theology’s distinctive ‘subject matter’ and terminology, transformation theology prioritizes meaning and truth in embodied life over meaning and truth in grammar and doctrinal theory.
Questions of truth and meaning are fundamentally different in the former sense than in the latter. To use a common example of the latter sense, when we say that the term ‘bachelor’ by virtue of its definition means ‘unmarried man’, and that on the basis of this meaning the statement ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’ is true: the truth recognized here is a ‘truth by definition’ which is thus ‘necessarily true’ on the basis of the presupposed defined meaning. Or in other words, it is thereby also ‘analytically’ true, since the sentence’s predicate ‘married man’ is already contained within the grammatical definition or presupposed meaning of the sentence’s subject, ‘bachelor’, such that the truth of the statement, ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’, is self-evident from a conceptual or semantic ‘analysis’ of the term ‘bachelor’ alone. We might say therefore that truth and meaning in these grammatical domains is essentially recognized as a truth and meaning that ‘is’, indefeasibly and self-guaranteeingly, a truth that ‘is’, according to the accurate definitions and fully resolutional logical relations of linguistic terms in the grammatical structures of subject and predicate.
Meaning and truth in embodied life, however, is not a meaning and truth that ‘is’ in any such constant and linguistically self-securing way. It is rather a meaning and truth that ‘happens’ in the spatio-temporal motion of the reality in which we find ourselves alive; and with respect to action it is a truth that is ‘done’ in the corporeally enacted free decisions of embodied life. To be sure, the meaning and truth here does not carry with it the same kind of necessary or self-securing certainty as that achievable in linguistic and conceptual domains. It carries with it instead a somewhat strange and precarious kind of certainty which is not that of a logical indefeasibility in the grammatically necessary domains of subject and predicate, but rather the certainty of a temporal irreversibility in the dynamically contingent and often non-resolutional domain of corporeal cause and effect. What is once done is in its temporal irreversibility no less fully certain, despite its contingency, than the full certainty of an analytical or logical necessity.
We can amplify this distinction through an example. It is true and meaningful—true and meaningful especially for the lives of those directly involved in it—that there is currently, as we speak, an armed conflict going on in Afghanistan. But the truth and meaning in life here, as a truth that ‘happens’ and is ‘done’ in the causal nexus of motion and action in space, in no way depends on, nor indeed at its origin has anything to do with, the linguistic meanings of the terms ‘warfare’, ‘refugee’, ‘casualty’, military ‘valor’ or ‘heroism’, including what can be truly or falsely predicated of these terms with the assurance of an analytical accuracy based on their definitions. Or in other words, the lived reality of these events do not for their truth and meaning need to wait on a conceptual thematization in language to be known and experienced as true and meaningful. The refugee mother carrying her malnourished infant knows full well the truth and meaning of her plight in the act of running from the terror and taking refuge, quite apart from whether the linguistic meaning of ‘refugee’ has ever been contemplated. The truth of the reality of a mortal wound inflicted through a roadside bomb comes unannounced and does its damage quite apart from whether the wounded and now perhaps unconscious person is able to place this causal event within a conceptually determinative structure of cognitive meaning.
But why, it might be asked, go to these lengths to make a distinction that to the common healthy human understanding will seem fully obvious or that most people would not question? Because it is exactly this distinction—between the fully accurate and self-guaranteeing truth and meaning that ‘is’ within language and doctrinal theory on the one hand, and the truth and meaning that ‘happens’ or is done in the contingent reality of embodied life on the other—that theology today has often overlooked, and that transformation theology seeks to recover as an orientation. What we are saying here agrees with what the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig recognized already in the late 1920s, especially in the exchanges then occurring between Barth and Harnack. In Rosenzweig’s words: ‘What the people discover, the theologians forget. And the more they do so, the better theologians they are. The most accurate theology is the most dangerous. After a long drought, we have today a theology, mostly Protestant, that [is faultless] as to its accuracy’ (Philosophical and Theological Writings, Hackett, 2000, 89).
But the basic and overriding summary point in all of this is that what the people of faith know and what theology tends to forget, what the people are interested in from theology and what theology today often fails to provide, is not merely how theological terminology—revelation, transcendence, incarnation, kenosis, cross, resurrection—can be shown to be intelligibly ‘meaningful’ or analytically ‘coherent’ within itself on the basis of the conceptually presupposed ‘truth’ of the definitions of terms in doctrinal theory. What the people themselves discover and know is that God is presently real in revelation at the center of embodied life today, and what they seek from theology is assistance in bringing to a clearer understanding the truth and meaning of this encountered reality in life now. Transformation theology seeks in various ways to respond to this.
In its initial formulation in the coauthored book of the same name (Davies, Janz, Sedmak), the primary motivation for writing what came to be titled Transformation Theology (2007) was a perceived disconnect between the life of faith itself on the one hand—where God is known and experienced as a present and living reality, active with dynamic transforming power at the center of embodied human life—and what has frequently become a standard procedure in academic theology on the other, which often confines its endeavors fundamentally to the conceptually self-sustaining securities of textual and doctrinal theory, grammar and interpretation. What can be detected in this disconnect are two quite different orientations to questions of truth and meaning, which transformation theology seeks to address as follows.
In its questioning about the meaning, intelligibility and truth of theology’s distinctive ‘subject matter’ and terminology, transformation theology prioritizes meaning and truth in embodied life over meaning and truth in grammar and doctrinal theory.
Questions of truth and meaning are fundamentally different in the former sense than in the latter. To use a common example of the latter sense, when we say that the term ‘bachelor’ by virtue of its definition means ‘unmarried man’, and that on the basis of this meaning the statement ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’ is true: the truth recognized here is a ‘truth by definition’ which is thus ‘necessarily true’ on the basis of the presupposed defined meaning. Or in other words, it is thereby also ‘analytically’ true, since the sentence’s predicate ‘married man’ is already contained within the grammatical definition or presupposed meaning of the sentence’s subject, ‘bachelor’, such that the truth of the statement, ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’, is self-evident from a conceptual or semantic ‘analysis’ of the term ‘bachelor’ alone. We might say therefore that truth and meaning in these grammatical domains is essentially recognized as a truth and meaning that ‘is’, indefeasibly and self-guaranteeingly, a truth that ‘is’, according to the accurate definitions and fully resolutional logical relations of linguistic terms in the grammatical structures of subject and predicate.
Meaning and truth in embodied life, however, is not a meaning and truth that ‘is’ in any such constant and linguistically self-securing way. It is rather a meaning and truth that ‘happens’ in the spatio-temporal motion of the reality in which we find ourselves alive; and with respect to action it is a truth that is ‘done’ in the corporeally enacted free decisions of embodied life. To be sure, the meaning and truth here does not carry with it the same kind of necessary or self-securing certainty as that achievable in linguistic and conceptual domains. It carries with it instead a somewhat strange and precarious kind of certainty which is not that of a logical indefeasibility in the grammatically necessary domains of subject and predicate, but rather the certainty of a temporal irreversibility in the dynamically contingent and often non-resolutional domain of corporeal cause and effect. What is once done is in its temporal irreversibility no less fully certain, despite its contingency, than the full certainty of an analytical or logical necessity.
We can amplify this distinction through an example. It is true and meaningful—true and meaningful especially for the lives of those directly involved in it—that there is currently, as we speak, an armed conflict going on in Afghanistan. But the truth and meaning in life here, as a truth that ‘happens’ and is ‘done’ in the causal nexus of motion and action in space, in no way depends on, nor indeed at its origin has anything to do with, the linguistic meanings of the terms ‘warfare’, ‘refugee’, ‘casualty’, military ‘valor’ or ‘heroism’, including what can be truly or falsely predicated of these terms with the assurance of an analytical accuracy based on their definitions. Or in other words, the lived reality of these events do not for their truth and meaning need to wait on a conceptual thematization in language to be known and experienced as true and meaningful. The refugee mother carrying her malnourished infant knows full well the truth and meaning of her plight in the act of running from the terror and taking refuge, quite apart from whether the linguistic meaning of ‘refugee’ has ever been contemplated. The truth of the reality of a mortal wound inflicted through a roadside bomb comes unannounced and does its damage quite apart from whether the wounded and now perhaps unconscious person is able to place this causal event within a conceptually determinative structure of cognitive meaning.
But why, it might be asked, go to these lengths to make a distinction that to the common healthy human understanding will seem fully obvious or that most people would not question? Because it is exactly this distinction—between the fully accurate and self-guaranteeing truth and meaning that ‘is’ within language and doctrinal theory on the one hand, and the truth and meaning that ‘happens’ or is done in the contingent reality of embodied life on the other—that theology today has often overlooked, and that transformation theology seeks to recover as an orientation. What we are saying here agrees with what the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig recognized already in the late 1920s, especially in the exchanges then occurring between Barth and Harnack. In Rosenzweig’s words: ‘What the people discover, the theologians forget. And the more they do so, the better theologians they are. The most accurate theology is the most dangerous. After a long drought, we have today a theology, mostly Protestant, that [is faultless] as to its accuracy’ (Philosophical and Theological Writings, Hackett, 2000, 89).
But the basic and overriding summary point in all of this is that what the people of faith know and what theology tends to forget, what the people are interested in from theology and what theology today often fails to provide, is not merely how theological terminology—revelation, transcendence, incarnation, kenosis, cross, resurrection—can be shown to be intelligibly ‘meaningful’ or analytically ‘coherent’ within itself on the basis of the conceptually presupposed ‘truth’ of the definitions of terms in doctrinal theory. What the people themselves discover and know is that God is presently real in revelation at the center of embodied life today, and what they seek from theology is assistance in bringing to a clearer understanding the truth and meaning of this encountered reality in life now. Transformation theology seeks in various ways to respond to this.