The Question of Prolegomena
The Question of Prolegomena
Anyone beginning the study of an unfamiliar subject faces the same problem: where should you begin? There seem to be so many ways of approaching subjects such as philosophy, the natural sciences, and theology that some kind of confusion over this question is inevitable. In theology, the debate over where theology should start has become known as the “question of prolegomena.” The Greek term prolegomena could be translated as “forewords” – in other words, things that need to be said before beginning the study of theology itself.
The question of what starting point should be adopted is of importance not merely to theology but also to a number of related subjects. An obvious example is apologetics, the discipline which aims to make Christianity credible to those outside the faith. For example, the second-century apologists (writers such as Justin Martyr, whose concern was to gain a serious hearing for Christianity among its educated opponents) took considerable trouble to find experiences and beliefs which Christians shared with their pagan counterparts. By beginning from this point, they believed that they could show how Christianity built upon and complemented these shared experiences and ideas.
Since the time of the Enlightenment, the question of prolegomena has become of especial importance. Before theology can explore the content of the Christian faith, it has to be shown how anyone can know anything about God in the first place. Talking about how we can know anything about God comes to be at least as important as discussing what we know about God. Increasing secularization in Europe and North America meant that theologians could no longer assume that their audiences would have any sympathy with the Christian faith. Accordingly, many theologians regarded it as vitally important to find some common starting point which would allow those outside the faith to have access to its insights.
Among these approaches, which seek to anchor Christian theology in the basic experiences of human existence, the following are especially important.
Nevertheless, such approaches (especially as developed by Schleiermacher and his immediate followers) have provoked hostile reactions. The most significant of these is to be found in the neo-orthodox school (see pp. 72–4), represented by Karl Barth, which protested against what it believed to be a reduction of theology to human needs, or an imprisonment of theology within the confines of some philosophy of human existence.
Barth declared that Christian theology was not in any sense dependent upon human philosophy but was autonomous and self-supporting. God was perfectly capable of revealing himself without any human assistance. The word “prolegomena” was not to be understood as “things which need to be said before theology is possible.” Rather, it was to be understood as “the things that must be said first in theology” – in other words, the doctrine of the Word of God.
Questions of method have dominated modern theology, not least on account of the challenge of the Enlightenment to establish reliable and universal foundations for knowledge. However, recent philosophical critiques of the Enlightenment have called into question whether any such “universal” foundations of knowledge actually exist. Might theology be hitching its wagons to a dead horse? Furthermore, as Jeffrey Stout of Princeton University once pointed out, “preoccupation with method is like clearing your throat: it can go on for only so long before you lose your audience.”
There has thus been a reaction against the contemporary preoccupation with method, especially within postliberalism (see pp. 78–9). Writers such as Hans Frei (1922–88), George Lindbeck (born 1923), and Ronald Thiemann (1946–2012) have argued that Christian faith is like a language: either you speak it or you don't. Christianity is viewed as one option in a pluralist context, with no need to appeal to universal criteria or principles of argument. To its opponents, this represents little more than a lapse into some kind of fideism – that is, a system that is justified by its own internal standards, which need not be shared or approved by anyone else.