Intellectual humility and the difficult knowledge of theology

Abstract

We seek, in this analytical essay, to complicate the conversation around knowledge production in the academy by proposing “intellectual humility” as a mode for moving toward new avenues of knowledge-making, particularly as an epistemic stance against the kinds of “intellectual arrogance” (Lynch, 2017) that have made certain avenues of knowledge, especially in the social sciences, sparsely traveled in the last half century. Drawing on the conceptual frames of difficult knowledge (Britzman, 1998; Garrett, 2017; Pitt & Britzman, 2003) and weak theology (Caputo, 2006), we turn to our own stories of faith and inquiry as ways in to thinking humility, through which we draw broader conclusions about what humility may offer that’s especially useful in this particular post-truth moment. We might unsettle the dangerous story that theology has no use for educational research, other than as a caution against the backwardness of faith in a patriotic god. If we’re to consider the possibility of evidentiary epistemologies as valuable in the work of combating ignorance and asserting certain values in and around education, then we’d do well to further diversify our sense of the possible in public education to include the difficult knowledge of theology as a rich framework for pursuing new ends.