Is there any hope for ‘truth’ and ‘progress’ in theological thinking today?

J Wentzel Van Huyssteen

doi:10.4102/ve.v38i1.1792

Abstract

To provide the historical-theological background to his own intellectual pursuit of interdisciplinary theology, Wentzel van Huyssteen tells his story that was prompted in his student days at Stellenbosch by the then young, newly appointed lecturer Johan Heyns. It sprung from the basic understanding and confrontation with the question: How is theology to be understood as a science? The very question became Van Huyssteen’s most basic research question for his academic career, guided by the deep conviction that Heyns adamantly proclaimed, namely that the content and methodology of theology could never be deduced from ‘the truth of revelation’ itself, but would in fact always be shaped by ‘a general theory of science’. For Van Huyssteen, this conviction pointed directly to the tentative and hypothetical nature of all theology. It helped him to put into words what would eventually become the defining character of his own theology, namely seeing the intellectual context of theology as a deeply cultural and contextual venture in which the sciences, politics and philosophy would play a defining role. This role is explicated in the article by focusing firstly on the structure of theological solutions, secondly on interdisciplinarity as challenge, subsequently on continuity and change, and lastly on problem-solving within a post-foundationalist theology.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: A post-foundational approach argues for the interdisciplinary character of theology as science. The approach transcends traditional boundaries of theological, philosophical and social reflection, establishing an intellectual context of theology as a deeply cultural and contextual venture.

Highlights

The year 1966 turned out to be an unusually eventful year in my ‘’ young life: I got into the final year of my 6-year long adventure as a theology student at the University of Stellenbosch; it was the year in which I finished my Master’s Thesis in Philosophy, and most importantly, it was the year that I married Ms Hester Theron in the beautiful Dutch Reformed Mother Church at Stellenbosch
As a way of facilitating this kind of cross-disciplinary dialogue, I have argued for a post-foundationalist approach to interdisciplinary dialogue, which implies three important moves for theological reflection
A second problem, is as important as empirical ones for the advancement of interdisciplinary reflection in theology and science: this type of problem has already been identified by Kuhn, but has been developed further by Laudan as conceptual problems – problems with the specific aim of providing a broader and richer theory of problem-solving than the merely empirical

Summary

Introduction

The year 1966 turned out to be an unusually eventful year in my ‘’ young life: I got into the final year of my 6-year long adventure as a theology student at the University of Stellenbosch; it was the year in which I finished my Master’s Thesis in Philosophy, and most importantly, it was the year that I married Ms Hester Theron in the beautiful Dutch Reformed Mother Church at Stellenbosch. As a way of facilitating this kind of cross-disciplinary dialogue, I have argued for a post-foundationalist approach to interdisciplinary dialogue, which implies three important moves for theological reflection.

Results

Conclusion