Abstract

If Christian theology is understood as faith seeking understanding, it requires an affirmation of both human reason and divine revelation. However, contemporary philosophy, historiography and critical biblical studies tend to divide rather than unite reason and revelation. A theologian aspiring to be reasonable must be prepared to dispense with any irrational revelation; one who would be faithful to any account of divine revelation must limit the domain of rational argument. ;These two responses to the relation of reason and revelation form two distinct types of theology, which I call "reasonist" and "confessionalist," respectively; they can respectively be traced to Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth. Troeltsch used historical rationality to attack the notion of revelation-history; Barth, of course, reacts against just this prioritizing of human reason over divine action. Throughout this century, theologians on the two sides have been markedly hostile to each other. Witness the arguments of Brunner and Bultmann vs. Barth, and, more recently, Gustafson vs. Hauerwas . ;The dissertation addresses this division by taking up the work of John Howard Yoder and Alasdair MacIntyre. I show, first, that Yoder and MacIntyre respectively exemplify confessionalist and reasonist theology, and second that the work of both authors contains elements which can begin to move theology beyond this divide. I argue that the projects of MacIntyre and Yoder should be seen as ambitious attempts to rethink the very nature of reason and of revelation, respectively. Both authors have argued that these terms need to be understood as deeply historical phenomena, unintelligible outside of living traditions. Thus understood, far from being antithetical, reason and revelation have important commonalities. I try to show that by making use of arguments both explicit and implicit in MacIntyre and Yoder, we can see how a deeply biblical and revelational theology might make use of philosophy, critical biblical studies, and academic historiography without endangering the uniqueness of the Christian confession--and, conversely, how more philosophical theologians can make more central to their thought the particularities of the Christian tradition without endangering their credibility in and to the wider world