Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology

by Don S. Browning, Francis Schussler Fiorenza (Editor)

Jurgen Habermas is by far the most preeminent and influential philosopher in Germany today. The scope of his writings is remarkable. Their influence extends over a wide range of disciplines that include philosophy, social theory, hermeneutics, anthropology, linguistics, ethics, educational theory, and public policy. The impact of Habermas's writings on theology alone reaches from fundamental to political theology, from moral to practical theology.
The significance of Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology is twofold. First, it represents a genuine dialogue, an actual conversation, between Habermas and theologians. While theologians have appealed to Habermas's work in innumerable articles and monographs, he himself until now has remained silent. This book, then, is unique insofar as it offers the true give and take of dialogue. Second, this book focuses on Habermas's most recent work, especially his interpretation of modernity, his theory of communicative action, and his development of a discourse ethics. In so doing, it corrects some of the prevalent misreadings of Habermas within the theological literature devoted to him.
In examining the relation between critical theory and a public and practical theology, the contributors note both the promise and limitations of Habermas's basic arguments and insights. They challenge Habermas as much as they learn from him. Sharing the conviction that religious traditions contain sources for interpreting human nature and society, they argue that if Habermas would attend more to the role of religion within life and society, he would more fully realize his project for a communicative rationality under the conditions of modernity and would offer a more comprehensive understanding of rationality, society, and modernity.
Taking his own turn at the end of the book, Habermas responds to each of the contributors, comments on the broader theological reception of his work, and offers his own fascinating views on the function and development of religion in modernity and on the status and claim to truth of theological discourse. The work concludes with an extremely useful annotated bibliography covering Habermas's own writings, general introductions to Habermas and to critical theory, and works devoted to specific aspects of Habermas's thought.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1992

About the author

Don S. Browning was the Alexander Campbell Professor Emeritus of Ethics and the Social Sciences at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Trained in theology, he was equally conversant in modern psychology, philosophy, ethics, sociology, and in the last decade of his life, family law. Browning brought Ivory Tower theological theory to earth by bridging the study of religion with fields including psychology and law, and issues such as marriage and family.

One of the architects of Practical Theology, which looks into ways to link theology to law, psychology and pastoral care. The ideas were laid out in one of his most widely known books, "A Fundamental Practical Theology," published in 1991.

In his early work, he sought to bridge theology and psychology in the service of pastoral care around such diverse themes as the atonement, generativity, poverty, personality theory, and the quest for a normative anthropology. Browning is constant in his challenge that religious leaders need to be capable of moral deliberation in the midst of the complex emotional and social dynamics of daily living. His critical observation about pastoral counseling in a parish or congregational setting remains relevant.

Reviews

[Mu-tien Chiou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Habermas' public theology begins with his concerns about theological transcendence. He proposes what he calls "methodical atheism", whereby he tries to develop a solidarity with everyone in a communicative fellowship.

The goal of this methodology is to decide if a theological interpretation of the religious discourse can "by virtue of its argumentation along" permit a joining to the scientific discussion in such a manner that the religious language remains its integrity (or should it fall before the scientific investigation).

Habermas tests to make sure that theological transcendence matches the praxis of a religious community while ensuring that the community's integrity and autonomy are intact from any state coercion. It is a methodology which keeps an immanent approach (i.e., atheistic) in order to maintain transcendence "from within". Here his concerns about the negative potentiality of religious transcendence are still clearly present.

However, Habermas seems to assume that [religious] communal solidarities will form and have an automatic interest in rational political debate, and their interaction driven by a "world-wide, civilizing power of formation." The fact is that, given the influence of mass culture and consumerist capitalism that drive irrational thinking, in many cases ethical solidarity comes not from such a civilizing power of mutual recognition, but a [pre-societal] power which makes the mutual formative process possible at all.

This would be a Bergerian critique and extension of what Habermas left behind in his public theology: for example, the postliberal ethics of altruistic care and love cannot be sufficiently motivated by a universalized rational procedure. Per Joseph Ratzinger (now the Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI), it is rather God's power and love that foster a reconciled human solidarity, a divine democratic new creation.

In response, Habermas is willing to concede, as a post-secularist, that a secular state must in no ways claim its authority independent from certain religious traditions and discourses. But Habermas stays positive about theology only insofar as the theological discourse is 'public', viz., able to inform nonreligious political discourses. To either fulfill or change this paradigm thus becomes a public theologian's responsibility.