Reasoning From Faith by Justin Sands

Author:Justin Sands
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2017-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

6. FAITH SEEKING UNDERSTANDING

Westphal’s Postmodernism

APPROPRIATING POSTMODERNISM, REVEALING REVELATION: WESTPHAL’S FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

Overcoming Onto-theology finds itself in two worlds: one that is suspicious of postmodern critique of religion and one whose appreciation of postmodern thought makes it suspicious of religion.1 Speaking to both, Westphal situates the work as a primer for the Christian theist’s endeavor into postmodern philosophy. The book’s very first words set this trajectory:

Some of the best philosophers whom I count among my friends are postmodernists. But they do not share my faith. Others of the best philosophers whom I count among my friends share my faith. But they are not postmodernists…. At varying degrees along the spectrum that runs from mildly allergic to wildly apoplectic, [these believing philosophers] are inclined to see postmodernism as nothing but warmed-over Nietzschean atheism … that leads ineluctably to moral nihilism. Anything goes.2

Westphal continues by siding with the postmodernists even though few share his faith. Citing postmodernity’s suspicion of the Enlightenment project and subsequent critique of “science in the service of technology,” Westphal finds himself often agreeing with postmodernists as he did with Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche in Suspicion and Faith.3 Yet he asserts that the central critiques against religion made by postmodern philosophers can also be found in the Christian tradition, and through Overcoming Onto-theology he seeks to appropriate these postmodern themes for a Christian audience.4 “This appropriation,” he argues, “is a recontextualization in which the themes in question are removed from the anti-Christian or atheistic settings that are the horizons of the postmodern philosophers and articulated within the framework of Christian/theistic assumptions that are, I claim, their proper home.”5 That is quite an audacious argument! That the ideas of these serious scholars—most of whom are majorly critical of Christianity—properly reside within Christianity is eyebrow raising. Yet it is also familiar to Westphal’s thinking; he is essentially following the same pattern from Suspicion and Faith, in which he jokingly accused the masters of suspicion, particularly Marx,6 of plagiarizing biblical sources. However, here he proclaims something much more piercing: that these critiques’ proper home, the origin of their scholarship and their appropriate place in culture, is within Christianity. This makes his philosophy a fundamental theology and a very peculiar fundamental theology at that.7

It is a fundamental theology that evades an apologetics and is primarily interested in appropriating (or perhaps reoriginating) philosophical critique aiding in faith seeking understanding. I further articulate how his work reads as a fundamental theology in what follows by exploring Westphal’s notion of faith in “faith seeking understanding,” a motto that permeates all his postmodern work. I also switch from calling him a philosopher of religion, as he calls himself, to calling him a theologian. From a theological perspective, I show that Westphal’s engagement with postmodernity is an appropriation for a Protestant theology crafted in light of his concepts of revelation. This ultimately leads to an exploration of his appropriation that trails a hermeneutical epistemology based on overcoming metaphysics. From there, we investigate Westphal’s phenomenology and its emphasis on the believing soul’s loving obligation to the widow, orphan, and stranger.

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