Radical Theology and the Problem of Objectivity

Abstract

It is now time to sort out the significance this analysis of Buri has for the hermeneutics of a radical theology. Acknowledging the pervasiveness of the so-called problem of objectivity in existentialist theology, this study began with the question in what sense the problem of objectifying thinking and speaking can be the central hermeneutical problem for a radical theology when it must be recognized that theological language will inevitably be objectifying. Buri is of paradigmatic importance here because he self-consciously adopts the hermeneutical centrality of the problem of objectivity but clearly recognizes that all theological thinking and speaking will be objective in character. At the same time he does not equivocate on what the problem is by reducing it to something else, namely, to the problem of the canons for assessing scientific knowledge. In order to show how objectivity as such is a problem for theology he must show how the conditions of objectivity are wider than the conditions of scientific knowledge alone. This he does through his analysis of the subject-object relation. From this perspective, it becomes evident that the two primary realities with which the content of theological assertions has to do, the existential actualization of faith and the transcendent ground of faith, transcend the subject-object relation and are non-objective. It becomes possible in this way both to criticize objective theological assertions because of their objectivity and to show how the non-objective character of faith qualifies what the theologian says objectively (when a critical awareness of the subject-object structure is present) so that his own objective assertions do not fall prey to the same shortcomings which force him to reject the criticized forms.