Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Reflections towards an Explorative Theology1 (original) (raw)
2006, International Journal of Systematic Theology
The postmodern critique has rendered traditional justifications of the practice of research incredible. Further, the status of theological research, in which 'the discovery of new facts' or the like is at best ambiguous as an aim, must be under question. This article argues that the aim of theological research is to discover what life lived as if theological claims were true might look like. What is theological research? New and old questions In the tangle of scientific discussions, when research emphases are being established and research plans implemented, the question regularly recurs of what is to be considered research. But how earnestly and in what respect do we ask what the 'practice of research' means or what are the ways to research within which the different disciplines move and exist-when we no longer talk as if there is a monolithic 'logic of research' or a coherent theory of research? Scientific theory to date has hardly begun a (public) discourse in which the formulation of questions and theories has been tested by correspondence or coherence criterion. The description of this understanding of science has been described by Paul Feyerabend, who held up for inspection the science of pluralism as his method. 3 But above all, it is Jean-François Lyotard who has successfully English translation
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