Ambiguous Others: Theology and Science in the Work of David Tracy Kenneth A.

Reynhout Princeton Theological Seminary Paper presented at the Zygon/HPRSS 2009 Student Symposium on Science and Spirituality May 1, 2009 Abstract In this paper I examine David Tracys treatment of theology as a public discipline in a pluralist context, in order to determine whether his view of theology includes a robust engagement with science, and what the nature of that engagement might be. I proceed by way of a more or less chronological investigation of his major works, and in each case I attempt to locate the place and role of science in Tracys theological landscape. This investigation results in a two-part thesis. First, I argue that although Tracy does eventually come to identify an explicit location for science and interdisciplinary engagement in his theological method, this location was initially unclear and mostly implicit. Second, I argue that an interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and science would take concrete shape in Tracys theological paradigm as a hermeneutical encounter between ambiguous others. Introduction I take it as axiomatic that theology should be interdisciplinary, and that theologians must engage the sciences in more than superficial ways. In this paper I examine David Tracys magisterial treatment of theology as a public discipline in a pluralist context, in order to determine whether his view of theology includes a robust engagement with science, and what the nature of that engagement might be. I will proceed by way of a more or less chronological investigation of his major works, and in each case I will attempt to locate the place and role of science in Tracys theological landscape. This investigation results in a two-part thesis. First, I argue that although Tracy does eventually come to identify an explicit location for science and interdisciplinary engagement in his theological method, this location was initially unclear and mostly implicit. Second, I argue that an interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and science would take concrete shape in Tracys theological paradigm as a hermeneutical encounter between ambiguous others. Before proceeding, it is important to be clear about what I am not trying to argue. First, I am not suggesting that Tracy either ignores or disvalues science. Rather, science is an explicit concern throughout his work, even if its role as an interdisciplinary dialogue partner was not initially clear. Second, I am not arguing that Tracy at any point denies the possibility or the importance of an interdisciplinary engagement between theology and science. Instead, he consistently

recognizes that theology and science must no longer be enemies, even if the full implications of this recognition were not always apparent in his theological method. The Role of Science in Tracys Theological Method Tracy discusses the complex relationship between science and religion in his earliest work, Blessed Rage for Order, where he argues that science has an implicit religious dimension (Tracy 1975, 94-5). The practice of science is one of the important ways in which human beings expand their cognitive horizons by engaging and affirming a reality beyond themselves, and as such scientific questioning and scientific judgments are a form of intentional self-transcendence. The religious dimension of science is part of what Tracy calls the faith of secularity, which is that fundamental attitude which affirms the ultimate significance and final worth of our lives, our thoughts, and actions, here and now, in nature and in history (8). Theologians, meanwhile, are caught in a bind between the modern challenge to religious belief and the postmodern critique of modernity. On the one hand, theologians can no longer understand their task as merely defending orthodoxy because there is a now an ineluctable morality of scientific knowledge that demands a critical posture toward doctrines, a commitment to open-ended inquiry, and a fidelity to evidential reasoning (7). On the other hand, the postmodern critique of autonomous rationality has not eliminated but only deepened and broadened this demand for self-criticality. What the scientist and the theologian both share in this postmodern context is the belief that there is some meaning in the world and some path for achieving authentic, meaningful existence. As such, they share a common faith, and it is therefore incumbent upon the theologian to articulate how the Christian faith can render intellectually coherent and symbolically powerful that common secular faith which we share (Tracy 1975, 9). Tracy argues that this situation calls for a revisionist approach to theology: the theologian must attempt a critical reinterpretation of the Christian tradition that is appropriate to the central meanings of both that faith tradition and of our shared secular faith (14). The two principal sources for the theologian are thus (a) Christian texts and (b) common human experience and language, and the theological task involves a critical correlation of the investigated results of these two sources. On the side of human experience, the principal method of theological investigation is a phenomenology of the religious dimension present in everyday and scientific experience and language (47). In Tracys early discussion of theology it thus appears that scientific practice would be included as part of our common human experience, but does this entail a robust, interdisciplinary theological engagement of science? He maintains that reflection on common human experience can include engaging trustworthy modes of mediation, including art, psychoanalysis, history, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences (Tracy 1975, 66), but toward what end? For Tracy, the fundamental theological task is to interpret the religious dimension that arises out of common human experience, and some areas that disclose this religious dimension quite clearly are scientific, aesthetic, and moral experience (93). Science is thus one of the tools available for a theological investigation of human experience, but its importance is limited to the way that the implicit religious dimension of scientific practice informs our understanding of the human, existential condition. What is unclear is whether the truth claims of science are important for the theologian beyond this implicit religious dimension.

In The Analogical Imagination (Tracy 1981) Tracy argues that in a pluralist context theology must be a public exercise that speaks from and to various aspects of our common culture. But, if theology is a form of public discourse, to whom does theology address itself? Tracy identifies three related yet distinguishable social realities that every theologian addresses: the society, the academy, and the church. Each of these three publics operates with different sets of plausibility structures, which are the criteria by which truth claims are evaluated. Theologians who are committed to authentic publicness must therefore recognize and reflect on the fact that that they speak across the range of all three publics, that they are in fact a complex arrangement of multiple selves in discourse with different social locations (5). It seems reasonable to assume that a truly public theology would be committed to engaging the relevant claims of science, one of the most ubiquitous and public aspects of our contemporary western culture, but where is science located in the three publics identified by Tracy? Science is not explicitly included in Tracys three theological publics; nevertheless, it is in his discussion of the public of the academy where we can most easily discern an implicit demand for an interdisciplinary dialogue with science. Tracys primary concern in this context is the question of whether theology qualifies as an academic discipline in public universities. He answers affirmatively, but only if theology can be self-consciously interdisciplinary. Any academic discipline must have both (a) disciplinary autonomy and (b) criteria that allow public, critical attention from practitioners of each discipline. These two qualities guarantee the possibility of genuine collaboration among the disciplines on a publicly adjudicable basis (Tracy 1981, 19). The disciplines of science are clearly implicated in this interdisciplinary understanding of public theology in an academic setting. Moreover, Tracy calls for theologians to recognize their responsibility to produce theological discourse which meets the highest standards of the contemporary academy (21). The situation for contemporary theology as Tracy describes it is shot through with ambiguity, with both intellectual and existential dynamics. Intellectually, theologians must navigate all three publics of society, academy, and church. Existentially, theologians must navigate the inevitable tensions arising from their dual commitment to the church and to the world (Tracy 1981, 51). Such complexities are nevertheless tempered by two constants, which correspond precisely to the two poles of his model of critical correlation: All theologians agree to the appropriateness, usually the necessity, of appeals to a defended interpretation of a particular religious tradition and a defended interpretation of the contemporary situation from which and to which the theologian speaks (59). A theological interpretation of a given situation can be publically evaluated according to two criteria: (a) whether the situation is accurately analyzed, and (b) why this situation is said to bear a religious dimension and/or import and thereby merits or demands a theological response (61). We see here two subtle shifts. First, what Tracy previously called common human experience and language is now referred to more generally as the situation. Second, the theological significance of a situation is no longer limited to its implicit religious dimension, but may also include other matters of theological importance. The truth claims of the sciences, including the natural sciences, are important considerations for theologians who desire to authentically engage a pluralist context in a public manner. It is hard to imagine Tracy disagreeing with this statement, especially when he claims that the theologian has no more right than any other thinker (that is to say, no right at all) to violate the canons of

history, hermeneutics, social science, literary criticism, philosophy or any other mode of disciplined reflection in making ones case (Tracy 1981, 81). Indeed, Tracy eventually makes interdisciplinary engagement with even the natural sciences an explicit part of his theological paradigm. In a volume he co-edited with Nicholas Lash titled Cosmology and Theology, Tracy argues that theology must engage the natural sciences. Once again he affirms his view that theology is an interpretive enterprise that attempts to establish mutually critical correlations between interpretations of our contemporary situation and interpretations of the Christian tradition (Tracy and Lash, 1983, 88). However, he asks: Is it possible for theology to be faithful to the demands of either our situation or the Christian tradition while continuing to ignore cosmological concerns? The question is not merely rhetorical. For the fact is that the rediscovery of history by contemporary theology has not been matched by a parallel rediscovery of nature. A well-nigh exclusive focus on the doctrine of redemption (as related to liberation and emancipation) has not been paralleled by new explorations of the doctrine of creation. Contemporary theology is in danger of developing interpretations of God and self while quietly dropping the traditional third category of world or cosmos. (89) Notice the parallelism here: interpretations of history and nature are part of what it means to interpret the contemporary situation, while interpretations of redemption and creation belong to our interpretation of the Christian tradition. Here is explicit evidence that the sciences (including the natural sciences) are indeed a constitutive part of the contemporary situation, and that part of the theological challenge is to critically correlate scientific interpretations of the cosmos with interpretations of traditional theological doctrines. Tracys move to make the interdisciplinary encounter with the natural sciences an explicit obligation for theology was prefigured in his call for theologians to exercise an analogical imagination in our pluralistic context. The function of analogical language in theology is to articulate the relationships between God, self, and world (which in the Christian tradition are focused in the primal event of Jesus Christ). Analogies, as similarities-in-difference, allow for both continuities and negations, and facilitate the possibility of a critical correlation between tradition and situation (Tracy 1981, 408-21). The three realities of theological reflection God, self, and world present a set of inescapable ordered relationships for the Christian analogical imagination. Since the world includes the cosmos, it follows that theologians must include interpretations of nature (or natural science) in their attempts to interpret the contemporary situation (429-38). Theology and Science as Ambiguous Others Tracy never again returns to discuss the interdisciplinary questions of why and how theologians should dialogue with the sciences, although he himself has on occasion engaged science (e.g., Tracy 1994, 47-58). In what follows, I want to consider how he might have further elaborated on the specific character of the interdisciplinary encounter by borrowing from his reflections on the question of interreligious pluralism. In Plurality and Ambiguity, Tracys main concern is to articulate a theory of interpretation that can meet the challenges posed by religious diversity, where religion is the most pluralistic, ambiguous, and important reality of all (Tracy 1987, x).

In this context he argues that conversation is a good model of interpretation for this problematic, and that a hermeneutics of conversation should be practiced in encounters with ambiguous, religious others in a pluralistic culture. I want to suggest that Tracys model of interreligious interpretation also works as a model of interdisciplinary engagement, and that this model is consistent with the correlational model of interdisciplinary theology that we have already established. Interpretation is not merely a skill for reading texts. According to Tracy, every time we act, deliberate, judge, understand, or even experience, we are interpreting. To understand at all is to interpret. (Tracy 1987, 9) In other words, to interpret is to be human, and it is through acts of understanding in interpretation that the human self finds itself (16). The phenomena we interpret vary widely, including laws, actions, rituals, symbols, texts, events, and even other persons (1011). Our interpretive interactions with these phenomena are like games that we play, in that we lose ourselves in the movement of the play that is shaped by the rules of the encounter. Games, Tracy reminds us, are fundamentally about encounters with potentially ambiguous others. Games liberate our ability to understand ourselves by facing something different, other, and sometimes strange. (18) Moreover, conversation is itself a kind of game. Conversation, Tracy argues, is a game where we learn to give in to the movement required by the questions worth exploring. The movement in conversation is questioning itself. It is not a confrontation. It is not debate. It is not an exam. It is questioning itself. It is a willingness to follow the question wherever it may go. It is dia-logue. (18) A hermeneutics of conversation can function as a working model for interreligious pluralism when it is both honest to the self and respectful of other perspectives (Tracy 1987, 26). It is the exploration of possibilities in the search for truth, which involves the recognition of similarities-in-difference, or analogies. In other words, conversation as a model of interpretation is precisely the successful exercise of an analogical imagination, something which all good interpreters possess (20). It is here that we may begin to draw a connection to our preceding analysis of interdisciplinary engagement in Tracys view of theology. Recall that we located the interdisciplinary demand for scientific engagement in the responsible exercise of an analogical imagination that crosses disciplinary boundaries in order to interpret God, self, and world in light of both the tradition and the contemporary situation. This included the scientific interpretations of nature and the cosmos. This means that Tracys model of interdisciplinary engagement is fundamentally equivalent to his model of interreligious dialogue. They both require the exercise of an analogical imagination, which is nothing more nor less than the successful exercise of our human capacity for understanding through interpretation. Religious pluralism is certainly different from disciplinary pluralism, but that is not to deny that interdisciplinarity is itself a form of pluralism that requires the skill of interpretation. As Tracy himself notes, if a pluralistic attitude is genuine, it will be willing to learn from anyone (Tracy 1987, 91). However, someone may attempt to argue, how can we talk about hermeneutics of conversation when it is science with which theologians are in dialogue? Isnt science about demonstrable facts, and not about interpretations? Tracy is not silent about this question. He recognizes that a view of science that denies its hermeneutic character is potentially disruptive to his argument because it undercuts his appeal to the universal exercise of interpretive understanding. Such scientism was once a formidable obstacle, but the collapse of positivism

in the philosophy of science has diluted its potency. Instead, the hermeneutical character of science has now been strongly affirmed. Even in science, we must interpret in order to understand. (33) In fact, he notes that all disciplines are hermeneutical in character (40; cf. 478). The sciences therefore represent for theologians a set of ambiguous others in a context of disciplinary pluralism. The interdisciplinary demand, which follows from the theological obligation to interpret the contemporary situation in a publicly adjudicable manner, is analogous to the interreligious imperative. Both are forms of a potentially radical pluralism that can increase ambiguity and appear threatening to theological integrity. In Tracys theological paradigm, both situations call for the exercise of an analogical imagination that can navigate similarities-in-differences, which presupposes a skill for dialogical interpretation. Conclusion In conclusion, I want to highlight two potentially important implications of my arguments. First, while it is true that the work of David Tracy is not frequently cited in scholarly discussions of religion and science, it is also true that even after three decades he continue to exert an enormous influence on the way that theologians understand the complexities and obligations of their discipline in a postmodern context. By explicating both the implicit and explicit ways in which Tracys model of theological reasoning is harmonious with approaches that emphasize interdisciplinary engagement, my hope is that otherwise disinterested theologians might sense an invitation to enter the theology and science dialogue. Second, by painting the interdisciplinary encounter between theology and science as a hermeneutical conversation involving ambiguous others, I am hoping to expand the self-reflective horizons of the religion and science dialogue itself. To date, the interdisciplinary question has usually been asked in terms of the divergent demands of rationality, or what Tracy called plausibility structures. One of my driving questions remains whether and to what extent a move to hermeneutics significantly alters our understanding of and practices within the dialogue between religion and science. References Tracy, David. 1975. Blessed rage for order: The new pluralism in theology. New York: Seabury. . 1981. The analogical imagination: Christian theology and the culture of pluralism. New York: Crossroad. . 1987. Plurality and ambiguity: Hermeneutics, religion, hope. San Francisco: Harper and Row. . 1990. Dialogue with the other: The inter-religious dialogue. Louvain: Peeters. . 1994. On naming the present: Reflections on God, hermeneutics, and the church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

Tracy, David. and Nicholas Lash, eds. 1983. Cosmology and theology. New York: Seabury. 1