Marxist Science and Christian Theology

Abstract

Francis Barker’s refreshing contribution to the New Blackfriars debate on Marxism leads me to pursue my own thoughts a little further. Barker and Eagleton have both accused me of idealism: it is part of my purpose to show that this accusation is false. On the contrary, if Marxism can claim to be scientific, so too (I maintain) can Christian theology. Indeed, Marxism will only become completely scientific, i.e. have shed all residual elements of deforming ideology when, ceasing to need to incorporate within itself a systematic misrepresentation of Christianity, it can be said to have become identical with it. But that is a matter for the distant future.To begin with, it is agreed I think that we are discussing questions of theory: the relative claims to scientific status of certain forms of discourse. Neither side is likely to deny that at the level of actual praxis, there is an enormous amount of ideological distortion around. But what we are talking about is what Althusser calls ‘theoretical practice’. And it is my contention that what I shall call ‘scientific theology’ is scientific in the sense that, like Marxist science, it claims to be able to provide a ‘symptomatic reading’ of ideologies. Such a theology will consist of concepts and rules whereby not only the Christian ideology (that is, the Christian religion as a lived praxis) but also the ideological elements in Marxism, can be critically distinguished and dealt with.