What Theology Can Bring to the Table

Abstract

Several years ago, a philosopher friend asked me about what, if anything, Christian theology might contribute materially to philosophical thought. My friend doubted that theology could actually contribute anything of real significance to a wider contemporary intellectual conversation, especially with respect to understanding the human phenomenon. He thought that he had stumped me with his challenge. With theologians like Augustine, Calvin, and Kierkegaard in the back of my mind, I replied that the Christian doctrine of sin contributes a necessary reality principle for thinking about all things human, something of real value even for philosophers. In marked contrast to naturalistic views of humanity—whether of philosophical or scientific origin—a Christian way of thinking about the nature of human nature assumes factors like self-interest, self-sabotage, jealousy, woundedness, hatred, violence, contradiction, irrationality, and absurdity in human life and history. Held together with a profound appreciation for the beauty, order, and complexity of human existence in its individual and collective dimensions, the Christian doctrine of sin can provide a portrait of our species that takes into account all the facts of human life, not just those things that make us look good, free, and capable. It always strikes me as a bit odd that the problem as to why human self-understanding presents such perpetual fascination and perplexing challenge—the fact of which, upon due reflection, may be telling in and of itself—rarely seems to help secular or naturalistic thinkers come to a realistically complex view of what it means to be human. While I still stand by the response I gave to my friend the philosopher, I would today offer an additional line of argument concerning what Christian theology can contribute to thought more broadly. Today, I would add that differentiated unity is the norm of personhood. Arising from reflection on the concept of imago Dei seen in the light of the distinctive Christian teaching about God as Trinity, theologians can offer a profound corrective to the modern or Enlightenment anthropology of the isolated subject for whom relationships are secondary and optional. In this view, a person is a dynamic activity of simultaneous delimitation from and integral connection with other persons. In teaching UCLA professor of psychiatry Daniel Siegel’s second edition of The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are this past spring, I was struck by one of his key insights: