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The Turn to Experience in Contemporary TheologyDavid S. Koonce, L.C., S.T.D.

Required course in dogmatic theology, Pontifical AthenaeumRegina Apostolorum

Academic Year 2013-2014, second semester

LECTURE 11. CONCLUSION: A SEARCH FOR PATTERNS

May 28, 2014

The previous two chapters have sought to listen to the voices of theologians down

through the centuries as they comment, either explicitly or implicitly, on the relationship

between theology and experience. The sequence has been diachronic, but the purpose has not

been so much to serve the demands of historical researchfor indeed, the preceding chapters

have contributed little in the way of new historical data or innovative historical insightsas

to draw upon the historical research of others in the service of what Bernard Lonergan has

called the dialectical function within theology.1

Various techniques have been advanced for carrying out the dialectical function. For

instance, the typological or model method employed by Ian Ramsey (1915-1972), Ewert

Cousins (1927-2009), and Avery Dulles, among others, seeks to abstract from the particular

circumstances of time and place to focus on the structural features of different systems.2The

method of types is moreover extremely valuable for singling out the decisive issues and

implications of pure positions.3Nevertheless, it is not the intention of this chapter to identify

types or models of the relationship between theology and experience, for as the data show,

the number of permutations of positions would produce far too many models to be of any

service. Any systematic attempt to provide a complete and exhaustive taxonomy of all actual

and possible positions would create more confusion than clarity. The present chapter will not

offer such a taxonomy, but will limit itself to pointing out certain structural questions thatpermit a unified grasp of the whole field of data. Although the array of answers to the

questions is manifold, the basic questions are few, and by grasping these basic questions, one

can hold the whole complex field of data in a relatively simple view.

What are the basic questions that give shape and form to the data? The fundamental

questions can reasonably be reduced to three. First, how does the subject experience? Second,

what is the extension of theologically relevant experience? Third, what is the relationship

between theology and experience? This chapter, therefore, will seek to lay out the variety of

answers to these three questions, recalling the salient points from the diachronic analysis.

Since the first two chapters have already examined all of the authors, with the relevant

references to primary and secondary sources, this chapter will limit itself to internalreferences to preceding sections, provided in parentheses.

1cf. B.LONERGAN,Method in Theology, 235. Lonergan identifies three basic causes of dialectical

opposition, namely, differences in cognitional theories, ethical stances, or religious outlooks. In

addition to these three, one may find other causes of opposition. Indeed, the differences that this

chapter will seek to identify are not necessarily reducible to the three categories that Lonergan offers.2

cf. R.P.HALE, Religious Symbols as Evocative of Insight: the Model Method of EwertCousins, Studia Anselmiana64 (1974), 72-75, 80, 86-87.3cf. A.DULLES,Models of Revelation, Doubleday, Garden City, New York 1983, 25.


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1. The modes of experience

The term modes of experience seeks to group under one heading various ways of

answering the first question: how does the subject experience? In terms of the classical

psychology of the philosophia perennis, it would be possible to couch the answers to this

question in terms of the faculties of the soul, but since many of the authors examined in thissurvey either do not adhere to the faculty psychology of the scholastics or explicitly reject it,

the use of the generic if somewhat non-descript term modes seem preferable to designate

the realities under consideration.

There is a wide consensus that experience always implies an immediate contact with

reality, but how does the subject enter into such contact? The answer to this question

historically entails some reference to any or all of the following components of the human

way of being and acting: intellect, will, affections, and sensation. In the context of this thesis,

these human operations are what are meant by the modes of experience.4

By applying this framework to the data assembled in the first two chapters, a certain

measure emerges for gauging the different positions with respect to each other. Prior to the

20th

Century, most authors follow a recognizable pattern of privileging one mode of

experience over the others. For instance, Augustine privileges the intellectual component of

experience, while the monastic tradition starting with Cassian and Benedict of Nursia

emphasizes the volitive-affective dimension of experience. In the modern period two

differing trends appear: one line runs from Luther to Schleiermacher, in which feeling and

sentiment begin to take greater precedence over other modes of experiencing; the other line

finds its origin in English empiricism, in which sensory perception becomes identified with

experience as such.

Obviously, painting a picture in such broad brushstrokes leaves out many details and

nuances. In some of the authors, such as Augustine and most of the monastic and scholastic

theologians, while one mode of experience will often seem to be privileged with respect to

other possible modes, few of these authors would deny the existence or the importance of the

other modes of experience. The difference is one of emphasis, accentuation, and relative

importance. Moving into modern times, the tendency is toward reductionisms and

exclusivity: still, it is a tendency, and not all modern authors share it. Finally, in the second

half of the 20th

century, a broad movement to restore an integral notion of experience can be

discerned, in which all of the modes of experience are present and operative. Such is the case,

to a greater or lesser degree, with Mouroux, Bouillard, Lonergan, and OCollins, to name themost conspicuous examples.

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4An alternative meaning of modes of experience, as advanced by Michael Oakeshott, was

explained in the introductory lecture.5The tendency in the late 20th Century to seek an integral notion of experience is not unique to

theology. Martin Jay documents the ways in which philosophers of the period also sought to

rediscover a unified notion of experience, overcoming the disaggregation of experience into separatediscursive sub-contexts, whether epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, or historical. cf. M.

JAY, Songs of Experience, 260-400.


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2. The extension of theologically relevant experience

The second fundamental question concerns the extension of theological relevant

experience. If the modes of experience concern the subject, and the way or ways in which the

subject enters into direct contact with reality, this second question concerns the reality or

realities that form the objective pole of experience, and specifically, which objects ofexperience are theologically relevant?

Answers to this question vary in terms of their extension. For some contemporary

theologians, like Henri Bouillard and David Tracy and to a certain degree Gerald OCollins,

all human experience, insofar as it has a religious dimension, is theologically relevant. In

other words, theologically relevant experience is coextensive with all human experience. In

contrast to the position that sees a religious dimension in all human experience, there are

others who argue or at least postulate that even without reference to a religious dimension,

all human experience, simply insofar is it provides insight into reality, is theologically

relevant, and thus, there could be room for an empirical critical method, as HeinrichStirnimann suggests but does not develop.

Other authors restrict theologically relevant experience to a subset of human experience.

William James and Bernard Lonergan, among others, argue that within the whole realm of

human experience, there are certain experiences which are specifically religious, and it is

these that are relevant for theology. Thus, theologically relevant experience is not coextensive

with the whole of human experience, but only with that subset which is specifically religious.

Even this restricted subset seems far too broad for some authors, who prefer to restrict

theologically relevant experience to a further subset of religious experience, namely, that

experience which is properly Christian. Authors that give special attention to Christian

experience as a particular instance of human, religious experience include Jean Mouroux,

John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger and Aidan Nichols. Within Christian experience, there are

those who give special consideration to mystical experience as a subset of Christian

experience; such is the case with Bernard of Clairvoux and the mystics of the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries. Even on this score, however, there is disagreement, since a swath of

modern authors inspired by William James and the study of comparative religions argue that

the phenomenon of mystical experiences is not confined to Christianity, and thus even non-

Christian mystical experiences ought to be considered as relevant to theology.

Lastly, the notion of subsets of experience can be restricted even further to the kinds of

experiences which are considered particularly apt to mediate an experience of God. ForJames and many of his followers, the religious experience is primarily a positive one, of

wonder and awe, while for Lonergan, religious experience is equivalent to being in love

with God. On the other end of the spectrum, for Luther the most powerful religious

experiences are those of sin, weakness, and fear; the emphasis on negative experiences finds

an echo in the approach of Hume, for whom fear is the basic religious experience, and also in

that of Schleiermacher, insofar as the feeling of dependence is an experience of weakness.

The monastic tradition, as represented by both Cassian and later by Bernard of Clairvaux, is

much more balanced, recognizing that both positive and negative experiences can be caught

up into the Christian experience of God.

Which of these kinds of experience is theologically relevant? Are they all relevant? Do

they admit different degrees of relevancy? There is no consensus regarding the answers to


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these questions, nor do all authors exhibit equal awareness of the full range of questions to be

addressed. In a certain sense, it is futile to compare authors positions when they are not

addressing the same questions in the same way, yet by identifying the most basic underlying

question and the range of answers that have been given, a dialectic approach to theology can

at least help to pinpoint any given authors position with respect to others.

3. The relationship between experience and theology

The final question to be considered concerns the relationship between theology and

experience. Here, too, the answers vary, and the survey of relevant literature reveals that there

is no clear consensus concerning this relationship, nor even of the terms of the relationship.

Just as there is no consensus about what experience in either its subjective modes of

appropriation or its theologically relevant extension, neither is there a full consensus about

what theology is, what its nature is, and what its tasks are. The question concerning theology

itself is one of the major threads of the historical narrative, appearing in different forms at

different times, whether in the various conflicts between dialectic and monastic theology inthe Middle Ages, or in Martin Luthers rejection of scholasticism, or more recently, in

Bernard Lonergans repudiation of a discourse on the nature of theology in favor of a

discourse on its method. Where the notion of theology itself changes, one should expect to

find that the notion of theologys relationship to experience will also change. If one factors in

the different notions of experience, too, the number of possible relationships is further

multiplied. To muddy the waters even more, in some of the 20th

century authors there is a

tendency to conflate fundamental theology and its method with the whole field of theology,

or to take approaches that are proper to the apologetic and dialogical dimension of

fundamental theology and apply them uncritically to the methods of dogmatic or systematic

theology.

Independent of the mutable terms of the relation, there is the relationship itself. How

many ways are there of relating theology and experience? Five basic patterns suggest

themselves as ways in which the authors studied relate theology to experience. Experience

can be considered to be one of the following: (1) a presupposition of or condition for

theology; (2) a source for theology; (3) the object of theology; (4) the goal of theology; or (5)

the criterion for theology.

The first basic pattern sees experience as a presupposition or condition for theology. The

type of experience that is generally presupposed is a specifically Christian experience, in

which the participation in the various aspects of the Churchs liturgical, spiritual andapostolic life nourishes both the Christians faith and the quest to understand ones faith that

is proper to theology. Most authors who subscribe to this pattern would describe theology in

some form of Anselms classic definitionfides quaerens intellectum. Since there is no quest

for understanding without a previous life of faith, that living experience must be the

presupposition and condition for theology. Although there is a broad consensus on this point,

some noted authors, such as David L. Tracy (2.4), explicitly deny that the theologian must be

a believing or practicing Christian.6 Others, including Bernard Lonergan (2.3), are less

explicit in making such a denial, but LonergansMethodseems to require little in the way of

actual Christian practice. One could just as well be a Buddhist or a Muslim or an animist and

6cf. D.TRACY, The Task of Fundamental Theology, 14, footnote 3.


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be attained.8A balanced synthesis is possible, as St. Thomas Aquinas so aptly exemplifies

when stating that Omnia autem pertractantur in sacra doctrina sub ratione dei, vel quia sunt

ipse deus; vel quia habent ordinem ad deum, ut ad principium et finem. (ST I q.1 a.7).

Following St. Thomass reasoning, it would be possible to affirm that experience falls within

the object of theology, insofar as experience is ordered to God.

The fourth basic pattern considers experience as the goal of theology: theology should

lead to a richer experience of God, where experience encompasses various kinds of

knowledge not about God but of God. This, too, is a thread running through the whole

history of theology. It is present in the scholastic debate about whether theology is a practical

or a speculative science.9The value judgment one makes concerning this position will depend

upon the precise meaning given to the term experience. If experience means an existential

commitment, encompassing both an intellectual and affective response to the revealing God,

within the context and structures of Christian tradition, then setting such a goal can be

extremely beneficial for theology. Indeed, it was this kind of notion of experience that

informed both the monastic and scholastic traditions, though in different ways. If, on the

other hand, experience is taken to mean a purely subjective emotional state uninformed by

Christian traditionas William James and his followers understand itthen such a

conception of the relationship between theology and experience should be met with extreme

caution.

The fifth basic pattern holds that experience is a criterion for theology. This pattern

emerges as a logical consequence of the fourth, for if the goal of theology is to produce a

more profound experience, then it follows that such experience can become a criterion for

theology.10

Any theological statement or system can be measured and judged according to its

adequacy to experience, to use the term coined by Schubert Ogden and employed by David

Tracy. Here again, the evaluation of such a formulation will depend upon the meaning givento the term experience. If experience is interpreted in a purely empiricist fashion, or in a

merely sentimental and subjective way, then such a criterion would prove unwieldy at best

and dangerous at worst. If, on the other hand, experience is taken in an integral way,

involving all of the faculties and powers of the subject, as well as the subjects integration

into the whole intersubjective world of the ecclesial community and Christian tradition, then

it can be a criterion for theology, though hardly the only one. Experience, rightly understood

can be a criterion for theology, but it can never be thecriterion for theology.

8J.RATZINGER, Principles of Catholic Theology, 318.

9See, for instance, THOMAS AQUINAS,STI, q.1.a.4.

10For a critical investigation and assessment of the appeal to experience as a criterion of

theological judgment or as a warrant in theological argument in the works of Schubert Ogden,

Langdon Gilkey (1919-2004), and David Tracy, see:. O.C.THOMAS, Theology and Experience, The

Harvard Theological Review78/1/2 (Jan-Apr, 1985), 180-201. There, the author notes that the appeal

to experience as a warrant in theological argument or as a criterion for assessing theological proposals

is not limited to the three aforementioned scholars, but is a widespread phenomenon, cutting across

ideological and denominational lines; it is found in a range of very diverse trends, including seculartheology, liberation theology, process theology, romantic countercultural theology, Roman Catholic

fundamental theology, as well as forms of theology derived from analytic philosophy.


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4. A fourth question?

At this point, it is worth entertaining whether a fourth basic question should not be

considered, namely, the one raised by Monika Hellwig: whose experience counts in

theological reflection?

Although the question is an important one, it does not seem to be one that is widely

addressed either explicitly or implicitly by the bulk of the theologians considered in this

survey. Therefore, since the basic questions were chosen for their aptitude to provide order

and structure to the dizzying variety of data, the question of whose experience does not

enjoy the same organizing power as the others. Furthermore, the range of answers generally

provided to the question whose experience counts can be reduced to various further subsets

of human experience like those considered in the answer to the second question. Indeed, the

subject of group experiences favored by various streams of so-called identity politics and

its theological equivalents is a metaphysically tenuous entity, for the subject considered is no

longer the existing person who does theology, but rather is merely a representative of a groupwhose very membership is defined by sharing in certain experiences. In other words, the

normal answers to the question whose experience counts? obliterate the very subject who

in favor of sets of experiences that supposedly define a group, such as the poor, blacks,

women, Latinos, Asians, etc. Central to the answer to the question, therefore, is not the

person, but sets or ranges of experience.11

For this reason, the answers to this question can be

subsumed under the notion of the range of theologically relevant experiences addressed in the

second basic question.

5. Conclusions

The relationship between theology and experience is as fascinating as it is difficult and

complex. From this relatively brief survey contained in the three chapters of this first part,

one can conclude with Hans Geybels that religious experience is not a ready-to-use concept

that Christians can simply adopt from the past by dipping into Augustine, Cassian, Bernard or

Luther.12

Indeed, there simply is no unified consensus regarding the nature of experience

and how experience functions in theological argumentation, nor are there easily identifiable

schools or models that can help to reduce the complexity of the issue to a manageable size.

For this reason, the three fundamental questions seem to hold the most promise for

establishing parameters to gauge what any theologian may say regarding the issue. These

three parameters offer certain coordinates, analogous to the axes of a three-dimensional grid,

which can help to pinpoint the position of any given theologian with respect to his peers,whether present or past.

11For a stinging critique of the assumptions and practices of identity politics, seeM.JAY, Songs of

Experience, 407-408.12

H.GEYBELS, Cognitio Dei Experimentalis, 452. The survey contained in part one of this thesis is

brief relative to the whole field of research against which it is set. Relative to the remainder of thethesis, it may be objected that the survey is too long, but it seems necessary to provide sufficient detail

to establish a proper context.

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