336 - Theological Method and Imagination

Theological Method and Imagination
By Julian N. Hartt
New York, Seabury, 1977. 268 pp. $12.95.

For several decades Julian Hartt has been one of the major figures in American theology. As Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School for thirty years, Hartt trained a large number of those individuals now recognized as this country's ablest theologians. Among his students and his colleagues Hartt is well known as a provocative, brilliant lecturer, and a formidable figure in public debate. He combines impressive abilities in philosophical inquiry with a keen appreciation for literature and aesthetics and a remarkable sensitivity to recent developments in culture. It is unfortunate that A Christian Critique of American Culture, which he published ten years ago and at that time described as "the initial part of a theological program that I conceive to be Dogmatic," did not receive the critical attention and careful assessment that it deserved.

337 - Theological Method and Imagination

Theological Method and Imagination is not an essay in dogmatic theology. It is a "look at a variety of things commonly judged to be foundational methodological concerns for theology." And it is also vintage Hartt. The eight essays that make up this volume are an investigation of the nature of theology and the metaphysical implications, whether or not consciously acknowledged, of a Christian view of "what is." These essays are not light reading. They are laced with important but sometimes subtle distinctions between image and concept, world view and vision, inference and implication, immanent and transcendent modes of hope, the credible and the creditable, the content of a command and its mode of address, the historicality of the Gospel and modern "historical evidentiality," verisimilitude and fact-confirmation. But this heavy porridge is also spiced with frequent allusions to Shakespeare, Faulkner, Tennyson, Whitman, O'Connor, and a host of other novelists, poets, and historians.

The first four essays deal with the question of the nature of theology, the task of the theologian, and the relation between theology, faith, and hope. Hartt argues that theology is a second order discipline; it is not the language of faith. Rather, it is a distinctive mode of reflection on the story and the constitutive images of Christian faith. Furthermore, Hartt insists that despite the tenor of the age and the present philosophical tastes of the academic community, theology must not, indeed cannot, avoid the investigation of the metaphysical claims implicit in Christian faith. The first task of theology is "to discover and propagate the truth about ultimate reality," and in so doing offer an account of all that exists. When theology attends to its proper task, it increases the believer's "power to see God in all things and thus to participate in the superabundance of his being." In the second essay, "On Seeing God and Proving That He Exists," Hartt carefully examines what be believes are the essential features of the modalities of proving God within a Christian world view.

The fifth and sixth essays examine the problem of authority in theology, particularly with reference to Scripture, and the Christian concept of revelation as personal address. These are the two least impressive essays in the book. In light of philosophical questions that some have raised recently about whether there is any sense in which Scripture can be said to be authoritative, or whether it makes any sense to describe revelation as God's self-disclosure, it is unfortunate that Hartt addresses himself only indirectly to these broader theological issues.

The last two essays concern the relation between theology and history and exhibit Hartt at his best. In some detail in the seventh essay, "Historical Reality and Historical Evidence," he reassesses the intelligibility of historical relativism and concludes that it is a "hopelessly inadequate foundation on which to rest any of the piers of Christian faith." In the last half of this essay Hartt offers a general theory of history based on the categories of historical subjecthood, historical agency, laws of history, and importance. By "importance" he means

338 - Theological Method and Imagination

an event that has a "trans-subjective structure of meaning" in the sense that it presupposes and defines a community, apparently in much the same manner that H. Richard Neibuhr thought external events may become constitutive for the identity ("internal history") of a community.

The last essay, "Story as the Art of Historical Truth," continues the development of these themes. Here Hartt makes an important contribution to the recent discussion of the use of "story" in theology. He forcefully argues that "the proper theological interest in truth is best served by story rather than by fact-oriented history" and that "a story may be truthful, that is authentic, whether or not it is factually accurate." But Hartt also insists that the Gospel story is "reality-intending" and therefore the task of theology is not simply to repeat the story but to explicate and render intelligible the metaphysical presuppositions of the story.

Hartt's essay offers a wealth of theological insights and discoveries that deserve careful attention and considerable reflection. This is not an easy book to read, in part because of the difficulty of the subject matter, but also, to be honest about it, because at important points Hartt writes obscurely and sacrifices lucidity for wit. Still, Hartt has given us an essay that could provoke critical attention and discussion for some time to come. There are numerous critical questions that could and should be raised about his argument. I will mention only two, both related to the title of the book.

The title notwithstanding, Hartt has precious little to say about the role of the imagination in theological reflection. There are several brief allusions to the imagination but at no place does Hartt offer us a sustained discussion of how the imagination functions, what he means by "creative imagination," or the role of the imagination in theological argument. Except for a brief reference to Austin Farrer, Hartt has nothing to say about other theological proposals, such as Ray Hart's, concerning the role of the imagination in theology. Secondly, although Hartt has much to say about theological method, the book does not really delineate a method as such. Hartt provides us a compass of sorts for the direction theology should pursue, and he warns of pitfalls and precipices to be avoided, but the book is not itself a road map for getting there. For example, on the basis of these essays it would be difficult for the reader to know how to apply Hartt's comments about method to a theological discussion of the Trinity or Christology. Now that Hartt has explored some basic questions in theological method, perhaps we can look forward to books and essays in which we will apply his methodology to the systematic elucidation of Christian faith.

George W. Stroup
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey