After the Theological Turn? Editorial Introduction

Abstract

“Nobody trusts theology and, in fact, for a very good reason;” John D. Caputo, one of the contributors to this special issue of Open Theology, once shocked the audience of theology students and professors at the Catholic University of Leuven. Caputo intended to criticize and challenge the partisan thought of theology which often result in self-referential debates without relevance, sometimes even without rational rigor, and almost all the time without credibility. However, there was also a bit of apologetics in Caputo’s statement: When theologians failed, philosophers are here and ready to take the initiative in exploring the fecundity of theological concepts. And indeed, despite certain forms of theology becoming less and less relevant, the questions of the late theological importance find their way back to the academic as well as public debates even stronger. The field of philosophy has experienced a return to the religious and some do not hesitate to talk directly about the theological turn. As a result, the discourse on religion, naming God, religious experience, faith, and so on, has undergone a great reversal. It is no more theologians who seek to employ the contemporary critical consciousness of philosophy to re-translate, re-read, re-interpret, and re-conceptualize Christianity to make it more comprehensible, more rational, and more attractive. Now, myriad philosophers, religious and secular philosophers alike, do not hesitate to draw inspiration from the sphere of religion and theology in order to interpret the structures of existence in the world. The motivations for such philosophical reconsiderations of religion vary, but a general perspective suggests that the religious allows for thinking excess, and exploring the impossible; religious thinking offers the possibility of criticizing metaphysics; it provides an alternative to modern objectivism and represents the other of autonomous reason. In short, religion appears as something beyond total control and mastery and yet the questions related to the religious give us much food for thought. Whatever the motivation, the result is obvious: we are confronted with de-localized Christian concepts and even de-theologized theologies that open new horizons for understanding. Perhaps the most interesting part of the whole movement is the audacious and spirited repetition of Christianity outside the exclusively defined ecclesial body. Nonetheless, there are still theologians among us; even theologians who take Caputo’s exclamation that “nobody trusts theology” seriously and who, at the same time, engage with the plethora of philosophical literature on the questions which used to be once the domain of their discipline. The trained eyes of a theologian cannot but see that the philosophical (re)turns to the religious provoke –whether they intend to or not – a radically renewed sense of theology; a sense which must be, however, uncovered and tested. This topical issue of Open Theology aims to explore, interrogate and reflect on how contemporary continental philosophy unfolds and advances the development of (new) philosophical theology. What does it mean to practice theology after the philosophical return to religion? What is the prospect for theology after the theological turn in philosophy?