International Journal of Systematic Theology

Volume 8

Number 1

January 2006

Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Reections towards an Explorative Theology1

HANS G. ULRICH* Translated by Brian Brock2

Abstract: The postmodern critique has rendered traditional justications of the practice of research incredible. Further, the status of theological research, in which the discovery of new facts or the like is at best ambiguous as an aim, must be under question. This article argues that the aim of theological research is to discover what life lived as if theological claims were true might look like.

What is theological research? New and old questions

In the tangle of scientic discussions, when research emphases are being established and research plans implemented, the question regularly recurs of what is to be considered research. But how earnestly and in what respect do we ask what the practice of research means or what are the ways to research within which the different disciplines move and exist when we no longer talk as if there is a monolithic logic of research or a coherent theory of research? Scientic theory to date has hardly begun a (public) discourse in which the formulation of questions and theories has been tested by correspondence or coherence criterion. The description of this understanding of science has been described by Paul Feyerabend, who held up for inspection the science of pluralism as his method.3 But above all, it is Jean-Franois Lyotard who has successfully
* Theologische Fakultt, Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg, Kochstrasse 6, D 91054 Erlangen, Germany. 1 Originally published as Hans Georg Ulrich, Fides quaerens intellectum: berlegungen zu einer explorativen Theologie, in Karl F. Grimmer, ed., Theologie im Plural. Fundamentaltheologie Hermeneutik Kirche kumene Ethik; Joachim Track zum 60. Geburstag (Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 2001). With thanks for clarications to Martin Wendte. Paul K. Feyerabend, Wider den Methodenzwang. Skizze einer anarchistischen Erkenntnistheorie (German edition pending: Frankfurt am Main, 1976).

2 3

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indicated that the prioritization of knowledge inquired after, and the way this knowledge is legitimated, is based on the criterion of what is marketable.4 The leading master story of modern research, that we are on the way to the emancipation of humanity, can no longer legitimate the direction of research after Lyotard. In addition, narratives or metanarratives of scientic advance, such as Thomas Kuhns description developed in the Structure of Scientic Revolutions,5 do not comprehend many elds and dynamic processes of scientic activity, although people still often speak of paradigms and paradigm shifts. Of course, against Lyotards analysis one will want to establish that at least the framing story of technological progress, in which knowledge is produced, still legitimates the search for knowledge to a great extent. Current scientic narratives (and also the problem of the interpretation of such narratives) will not, of course, be analysed here.6 Nor will past discourses and past eras be recalled or even evoked, although the time may be right to consider what of the scientic theoretical discourse has penetrated theology in the last twenty years. One line of theologians, not least of whom is Joachim Track, has engaged in this scientic discourse and also embraced language theory not to show that theology is also science, by including themselves within scientic theories (although these strategies existed), but to describe theology with their own scientic and linguistic theoretical reections.7 Thus in Joachim Tracks investigation,8 which we will follow up here, we nd a weighty contribution to the understanding of theological language and religious speech, in reference to the theological question of the generation of knowledge in the medium of language. One way forward is to show from the perspective of this history of research how we stand today. Here, however, we will pursue the question of how and in what way we in theology should consider formulating anew the question of what theological science and theological research is, can be, or should be. At the moment, the reason for urgency is that theology must formulate research aims or knowledge production in a situation of widespread changes in the context of university research, and above all in a radically changing context of what one calls the scientic community.9

4 5 6 7 8 9

Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition. A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions, 3rd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Aspects of this are found in Jrgen Mittelstra, Die Huser des Wissens. Wissenschaftstheoretische Studien (Franfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998). See especially Oswald Bayer, Friedrich Mildenberger, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Gerhard Sauter, Dietrich Ritschl. Joachim Track, Sprachkritische Untersuchungen zum christlichen Reden von Gott (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976). Compare with the most recent discussion of Christoph Hubig, ed., Unterwegs zur Wissensgesellchaft. Grundlagen-Trends-Probleme (Berlin: Sigma, 2000).

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The language of research and knowledge production is ubiquitous, a fact that is rarely questioned in theology. We speak of exegetical research, of Pentateuch research or Pauline research, or of further differentiated research areas. This is similarly true of the other subdivisions of theological research. Self-evidently, what is called research coincides with and overlaps with other areas of research in multifaceted ways and so the question should be posed whether there is within all these areas something which can be called a special theological research or whether there is a form of research which needs theological reection in order to be aptly characterized.10 That scientic theory, like language theory, has enclosed theological reection is largely beyond dispute.11 There is therefore every reason to ask about a theological understanding of research, and especially to ask about a theological understanding of theological research.

Research ars inveniendi

The extensive discourse of scientic theory about research has spawned distinctions which have helped to develop a description of what is allowed to pass as research, one which is already at rst sight not without theological explosiveness. The relevant difference within this description can be said to be between searching and demonstration, as Kuno Lorenz has indicated in his article Research.12 The rst denition of research is the investigating of reality so that we become aware. The other is describing (to safeguard its validity), so that what we have ascertained becomes comprehensible (learning in order to teach).13 One can relate

This question must not immediately be turned into the question of whether there is a specically theological method. Nor must we immediately take up the old question of the relation between theology and the sciences. The initial question, once we are directly in view of the problem of what is to be called theological research in exegesis, church history, or systematic and practical theology is used in a reected, perhaps theoretically comprehensive way, to direct attention to the question of whether the word research is reected in one or more of these senses, and whether, therefore, resolution of the questioning will perhaps depend on theoretical comprehension of the concept. 11 This is articulated in very informative ways in the treatise from Joachim Track, Sprachkritische Untersuchungen zum christlichen Reden von Gott. His language theory is a case of a language critique approach called modied nominalism which implies a theological reection: God and experience are heard together. We are discovering who God is in immediate experiences, which will be enabled and created through Gods history of disclosure. Here our language-critical proposition is afrmed once again by theological reection; that in immediate experience the understanding and reality of God is at risk (pp. 312f.). 12 Kuno Lorenz, Forschung, in Enzyklopdie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie, vol. I (Mannheim: Metzler, 1980), pp. 663f. Compare also Jrgen Mittelstra, Die Huser des Wissens. 13 This is not identied in the mode of producing demonstrations by the logic of coherence (with making systematic equaling making rational, understanding knowledge as
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this difference to the traditional differentiation between the ars inveniendi and the ars iudicandi: research is in the rst instance about locating or discovery, and not a single activity of proving, justifying and presenting.14 Research is either the locating of and getting to know objects, the discovery of reality, or representing and converting into terms of the known that which is given. Research aims at discovery, it aims at what is not yet given, at what is not yet identied as given. These reasons open up the problem of a description of research in which theology has an interest. The problem regards research as a theme of inquiry (Topik), which is not properly described through a procedure utilizing a universal logic of research.15 A wide range of tasks of research must be described, and so our understanding of research must be differentiated in its character. Close attention must be paid to the question of how objects come into existence, or appear for the rst time as objects at all. Here critical language considerations are necessary in order to clarify the extent to which objects come into existence in linguistic accounts or linguistic conventions.16 Research is not directed at things as they already are, but searches for that which is not yet an object, what has not yet appeared or been identied. The other option is for research to unearth only what presents itself according to the measure of that which is already understood to be present, or the measure of immediate apprehension. Such research will only augment what is already given; it will not locate the unknown or make any discoveries. Research has to do with the question of how the unknown and unrecognized comes into our world, how the new appears as unknown and unrecognized.17 When, for example, black holes were discovered in physics, one asks what it was that was discovered and known. Did its novelty stem from our becoming newly acquainted with it, or was it novel because it did not
produced by rationality), or the mode of research which establishes by identifying and recovering coherence (with historical equaling empirical, and knowledge being of causes), because demonstration as meta-competence depends on object competence. Lorenz, Forschung, p. 664. 14 Compare also as ars inveniendi the aspect of nature, which we search but do not nd: quaerit se naturam sed non invenit; Wolfram Hogrebe, Sehnsucht und Erkenntnis (Erlangen/Jena: Zweigniederlassung der Unibuch Erlangen-Jena OHG, 1994), p. 17. 15 Compare this with Rdiger Bubner, Dialektik als Topik. Bausteine zu einer lebensweltlichen Theorie der Rationalitt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990). 16 See here Track, Sprachkritische Untersuchungen, especially the themes Metaphern und Metapherbildung. Also see Hans G. Ulrich, Metapher und Widerspruch, in Reinhold Bernhardt, ed., Metapher und Wirklichkeit. Die Logik der Bildhaftigkeit im Reden von Gott, Mensch und Natur; Dietrich Ritschl zum 70 Geburstag (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999). 17 Compare Joachim Tracks positioning of the task between the retreat of assertive speech and the logic of hypothesis formation and verication. In itself the latter form of speech is decient. Assertive speech is itself identied by Track as the discovery. Such speech contradicts perception which means that the speaking of God is in a formal, functional sense hypothetical speech. It is exactly this positioning which we are once more following out, as we search here to clarify the understanding of des quaerens intellectum. Sprachkritische Untersuchungen, pp. 275f.
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t our general sense of what might exist? How do the new and the unknown come into visibility? These questions are also appropriate in reference to the discovery of the gene. What exactly was discovered? Descriptions like the information carrier by which we are decoding the mystery of life (James Watson),18 speak rather in favour of the notion that the designation of the object is not yet settled. This unsettledness means that metaphors are needed to depict the novel. Science which inquires after the novel is not necessarily successfully achieved by the philosophy which ies with the owl of Minerva at twilight. This science searches not to display the coherence or the concept of what there is, but to investigate what is not yet contained in these givens. Such science is not reexive, not self-aware or looking backwards; it is not concerned with the safeguarding and securing of what is already known, or compiling records on the basis of what is otherwise given (coherence justication), but nds itself in the place of the genesis or the appearance of the given in the position of studying the novel.19 Science so described nds itself regularly on an adventurous path. In any case, it searches for, and regards there to be, virginal soil where there appears to be none. It is explorative. The means or method needed for this are categorically other than those which are utilized to safeguard and to communicate what is already given. The search for the novel is at the same time the search after a way. Method in the sense of an approved procedure for perception and knowledge exploration will emerge if the main aim is to render validation. What such validation consists of is the display of the repeatable conditions for recovering the location of the novel. Methods are, on this view, remembered routes by which one recovers what has been found. When we speak of a heuristic method as a method of investigation, this might be a contradiction in terms, in so far as what is meant is that we investigate in ways which have not yet been tried, yet do so using familiar methods. How can familiar methods help us to discover the unknown?

Theology as ars inveniendi

Is theology an ars inveniendi, an art of the discovery of novelty? Perhaps theology is the art par excellence of the discovery and investigation of the novel? Or is it only like that philosophy whose owl ies in the twilight? Because God has already established his reality, theology only searches to understand what already exists. Is this not especially the case if we are allowed to say that God is also treading this path in making appearances?20
18 James Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (New York: Scribners, 1998). 19 See Track, Sprachkritische Untersuchungen, pp. 256f. 20 For an eagle-like view of the differences in the sciences, the owl and science, see Jrgen Mittelstra, Natur und Geist. On dualistic, cultural and transdisciplinary forms of science, in Die Huser des Wissens, pp. 91158, especially pp. 13f. Mittelstra, oddly enough, does not make reference to Nietzsches eagle.
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In any event, we have quite often heard this in the history of theology. God in his abundance precedes everything we can investigate. This is therefore the whole comprehensible object of theology, how God in his abundance is given in faith (or in the religious consciousness). The only question then is how and to what extent this object which is given in faith can be represented, how it becomes present and understandable in more distinctly and in increasingly differentiated and comprehensible ways, and also how it comes into language.21 This would no longer be the activity of investigating a novelty, but the explication and presentation of what is already given. In Schleiermachers terms this would be the task of a positive science, a science of the given, of the positum, in this case of the positum of living faith and its forms of devoutness. A different theme within the same investigation of research is Karl Barths interpretation of Anselm of Canterburys identication of theology in the sense of des quaerens intellectum: the ratio of God which precedes human understanding and knowing becoming the object in faith and understanding. Here research is all about this transfer, the entrance of Gods ratio into our reality. That, in a sense, is the central theme within the investigation of research, differentiating the activity of investigation from other tasks such as the providing of justication.22 How does Barth understand this theme?

Fides quaerens intellectum

Is theological research an analysis appended to, or is it the explication of what is given in faith so becoming doctrine? This is how Anselm of Canterbury is often understood to have brought des quaerens intellectum as a theological task back into view. Theology explicates per rationem, per intellectum a positum. This is the (rational and intelligible) reality of God given to faith and contained in faith.23 Theology thinks about what is already given in faith (but not yet contained in the intellect). It does not search behind that which is given in faith as reality.24 On this interpretation it is possible to hold that theology acts on the assumption of an unchallengeable faith (although this is to be distinguished from a deposit of faith). One can then underscore, as did Karl Barth in his exegesis of Anselms Fides quaerens intellectum, that in this respect the believer and the unbeliever are in the
21 22 This would also correspond to a specic theory of language. Compare also the distinction between discovery- and justication-rationales in the theology of Gerhard Sauter, Die Begrndung theologischer Aussagen wissenshaftstheoretisch gesehen, in Erwartung und Erfahrung (Mnchen: Gtersloh, 1972). 23 This is also suitably understood as the speech of God as the object of theology. 24 For a sophisticated discussion of these problems see Dietrich Ritschls posing of questions about implicit axioms. See also Wolfgang Huber, Ernst Petzold and Theo Sundermeier, eds, Implizite Axiome. Tiefenstrukturen des Denkens und Handelns (Mnchen: Gtersloh, 1990).

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same situation: neither want to or are able to bring about their own faith. The nonbeliever has the intention to gain greater insight which does not necessitate additional faith. Believers seek to grasp deeper intellectual insight, but this insight does not add anything to faith. With the sola de it is essential that at the same time there is a sola ratione or solo intellectu. Nothing else can sustain insight, because insight itself cannot be based upon anything given. When one speaks of experience, then only the insight itself or the faith itself can be considered the experience (not being an experience which is added to faith). This being the case, we will speak of an experience of faith or an experience of insight. The theology which seeks to articulate this insight does not think after what is already given in faith: faith itself consists of the discovery of the novel the very faith which appears as insight. Such faith originates through the discovery and with the discovery of the not-yet-appearing. Through faith is the object which faith holds on to given. Through faith the reality appears which has become present in understanding (intellegere). What faith so discovers cannot by denition be given only for a specic individual human, but because a new object is discovered it will be available to everyone who is situated on the path which leads to this discovery. The most important difference is that faith itself is placed where the object will be attained, where the new will be present: it is in that place where, as Kuno Lorenz has put it, object competence (becoming aware of the object) counts. Faith places itself where the object will be discovered, not at the place where the given is already held to, arranged, vindicated or only needing to be presented. The place of faith is the place where it is necessary to be in order to be aware of God in his partiallyencountered fullment. Faith has its place in these learning situations.25 This is the place, incidentally, of the assertiones,26 which are marked by the statement of certainty. These are not utterances of something valid or held to be indisputably given, but are reports of discovery which include the understanding. Such reports are on another measure true assertions, yet for which substantiations must still be sought.

Faith and ars inveniendi

What might the process of such discovery look like? When we are asking about biblical history and reection we can say that faith follows the Word, allowing the
25 See for instance the meaning of the teaching and learning situation in the acquisition of language, Track, Sprachkritische Untersuchungen, p. 281. Track speaks here on the meaning sense of the teaching and learning situation of faith. 26 See this topic as discussed by Martin Luther in On the Freedom of the Will (De servo arbitrio) 1525, in Martin Luther, Ausgewhlte Werke, ed. H.H. Borcherdt and Georg Merz (Mnchen: Kaiser, 1962), pp. 1114. See also Gnter Bader, Assertio. Drei fortlaufende Lektren zu Skepsis, Narrheit u. Snde bei Erasmus u. Luther (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985).
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object belonging to the reality of God to become present. This is the basic procedure of discovery. In this light it is possible to cite biblical texts in which such discoveries are discussed. We may take Psalm 82 as one example of the specic contours of justice coming into language. Israel has discovered what justice is by being told what it means to discern the neighbour in his distress. Psalm 82 speaks about the God who himself appears in order to call for justice. This is the learning situation of faith, which originates in Gods entrance onto the scene. Such learning situations are arranged through Gods address because Gods address enables the perception of another form of justice. Justice itself (this is the other implication) consists precisely in this changing of view: discerning means to do justice to the reality of the other.27 This is the process of discovery: it happens with the primal naming by the vox signicans rem. Gods voice speaks what justice is. This is no predicament like Wittgensteins This is (also) a tree. It is much more a creative word, a speaking forth of things: this, and nothing else, is the meaning of justice. Such justice is differentiated from the exercise of law and force in all its forms. Within these different exercises of justice the novel is named and discovered; the novel becomes present in the process of dispensing justice. In such activity how the ratio Dei enters into human reality becomes explicit. In all strands of the biblical tradition this activity is displayed as a dramatic activity culminating in the epiphany of Christ in the stories of the Gospels, such as in the story of Jesus baptism. There it is given to the listeners to hear: This is my beloved Son. In this statement Jesus appears as something new to these people; Gods Son is discovered through this divine word. It is a matter of this object competent word that faith follows in the listeners. This word makes explicit that the object is not brought into appearance by the faithful, but that it is the creative word which brings it forth and with the object faith itself is brought forth as a specic realization, a heard realization of what in this way becomes the present reality of the one who has faith. The object is thus generated as a faith-object. The origin of this faith is coeval with the appearance of the object. Thus the discovery is of faith itself. Faith is the place and mode of the discovery. The point is this: what faith stands for is that the object not be confused when this or that memory, this or that experience, or this or that motivation comes to the fore to comprehend the object. This faith has its telos (its essence) in sola de. A faith which supports itself in some other way is no faith. Only this faith sola de has this object competence.28 Faith is a very precise name for this object competence: provided an object is genuine in faith, it is being included in its own

27

On this exegesis of the Psalms see Martin Buber, Right and Wrong, trans. Ronald Smith (London: SCM Press, 1952). 28 This is pivotal for a perception theory of faith as it becomes clear through the miracle accounts in the New Testament, such as walking on the water. The miracle is not the overcoming of physical laws (Bodenlose), nor is it the irrational for which we can give no reasons (Begrndbare), but centres on the disciples radical exposure in the context of the new appearing. Miracle is the giving of space to the novel. Yet a miracle is no guarantee that the new will appear.

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logic and is not derived from another object. In this way the object unmistakably proves itself not to be descending from some dubious genealogy. Justice so we learn in Nietzsches Genealogy of Morals 29 is no justice when it grows out of ressentiment. Ressentiment makes appeal to what it understands as incontestably justied reasons, and in the end the nal aim is that one justies oneself instead of receiving what in each case one is due. But this self-justication cannot rest on perceived arbitrariness or superiority; it requires the construction of its own form of power and authority. This example displays, like innumerable others, what it is necessary to investigate here! The discovery of a new reality in faith is consummated at the same time in the intellect. The intelligere is not necessarily a given, but is itself a discovery. This means that intelligere is not necessarily directed towards a given object, but is the perception of an object in the mode of discovery. The intelligere of the subject comprehends the discovery: the intelligere follows anew the dramatic of this discovery in no other way than as faith. The intelligere is itself the consummation of the discovery in its own way: it is a matter of the fullment of the object acquisition in the intellect. It is in this way that we talk about vox signicans rem in intellectu. The res originates here, the new res. Here deeper insight is fullled as faith, and faith as deeper insight. Faith is thereby that point in the process whereby what is acquired anew by the intellectus is anticipated and carefully preserved. This understanding in faith, the ratio dei or intellectus dei, is the exercise of this (specic) object competence. This exercise allows the meaning to become present of what is necessary to be understood. But this present-becoming is also a discovery. The immense richness in the biblical and Christian tradition of such discovery is still to be explored, as has already been implied. On which path is justice to be discovered, how will freedom be discovered, how will humanity be discovered, how will creaturely-being and the similarly complex Christian ethic be discovered? An example of this is the gospel story of the rich man. A new way is opened for him into what it means to be perfect and good. This discovery is then integrated into a dramatic story. Stories like that of Job, of Psalm 82, or of the rich man are those in which a human has entered into virginal territory, in which through the hearing of the voice, the word, which says what is (dicit, quod res est), he has uncovered something new.

Discovery in the name of God

Karl Barth adhered to Anselm of Canterburys programme: From the whole tenor of his treatment of the problem as we have seen it up till now, it is his concern to meditate upon a particular article of the Christian Credo
29 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
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by itself, that is to investigate the meaning of what it contains that he may place it in its relation to all the other articles or to the one next to it, comparing and connecting it with them and allowing them to illumine it. All this he does with the intention of himself conceiving by reection the hidden law of the object of faith about which this article speaks, that thereby he may show it forth and so be able to know the thing believed: the noetic ratio becomes the discovery of the ontic ratio in so far as it follows after it; in which case the remaining articles of the Credo point the way along which the ontic precedes the noetic ratio, along which the noetic ratio has to follow to discover it.30 Here we nd clearly articulated the intertwining of reection and discovery: the intelligere (the noetic ratio) attains the object as the ratio Dei has it ready. For this reason we must ascribe discovery to the insight which thinks about (thinks about ratio Dei): not to a portrayal or conrmation, clarication and display of distinctions.31 In the same way, faith and insight follow the dramatic of discovery. Their proper task is the distinction of what God has said and what can be discovered. God is not the object, but God becomes in this event objective. We need hold behind our back neither faith nor perception. Nor need we consciously ignore what is already present in the rst word that faith has grasped. At any given moment this rst word opens a new way for perception because it is an as-yet completely unheard, and therefore creative, word. It is not an illustrative, vericatory, or mediatory word because it is not propped up by legitimating narratives of progress or liberation. This understanding of research is all about the discovery of the new we discover nothing when we endeavour to apply old methods, as the results would not be novel. The signicatio rei works with these path-nding words. Of these words the rst is naming, or name-afxing. This applies also for Gods name which Anselm of Canterbury designates as the object of theological science.32 Discovery of the name of God precedes any other discovery. God is the source of the worlds novelty, his annunciation is creative for faith and in intellectu.33 Such name giving permits the receiver to become a creature.

30

Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides quaerens intellectum. Anselms Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, trans. Ian W. Robertson (London: SCM Press, 1960), p. 53. [I have slightly modied Robertsons translation at several points. Trans.] 31 Compare Oswald Bayers indication of the proximity of Barth to Hegel in Theologie (Mnchen: Gtersloh, 1994), pp. 330f. Dogmatics is understood here (only) as the thoughtful displaying of faith. 32 See Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum, p. 77. The transaction depicted here lies very near the interconnection sought by correspondence language theories and linguistic critiques. See Track, Sprachkritische Untersuchungen. 33 This is to say, When he (Anselm) gives God a name, it is not like one person forming a concept of another person; rather it is as a creature standing before his Creator. Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum, p. 77.
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Anselm presents this creative naming in a paradigmatic way in respect to the naming of God as the aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit.34 This is neither a proposition nor a hypothesis about God, but is a name of God. This name cannot be independently conceived or deduced. The name says this itself. It is a name of God, selected from among the various revealed Names of God for this occasion and for this particular purpose . . . All that can possibly be expected from this Name is that, in conformity with the programme of Anselms theology it should demonstrate that between the Name of God and the revelation of his Existence and Nature from the other source there exists a strong and discernable connection. Only in that way and to that extent will statements about the Existence and Nature of God inevitably follow from an understanding of this Name.35 The name of God, which is present with faith, continually opens up discoveries, letting these openings be immediately distinguishable as discoveries. Anyone who follows in the dramatic of aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit will discover the novel. Those who follow other names instead of Gods name will make other discoveries: possibly the (dubious) name of God, which does not call God Creator but Author of all things or something else.

Quaerens intellectum
Thus the decisive point is that the insight which follows the name neither serves as protection nor validation nor mediation nor portrayal. But this insight too is discovery provided that the name, no matter what it brings into view, permits hitherto undiscovered perceptions of the novel. This is the point at which misunderstandings arise ever anew. Unless intelligere is understood as reection in the sense that the name has itself become reality, then it becomes concerned to validate, to prove, or to pursue another line in order to verify the already given name. This appears to suggest that we follow the theological programme of Anselm of Canterbury, which Karl Barths interpretation does. In so far as intelligere is a probare36 (as Anselm also says), it is a demonstration. This we have already heard: that whatever happens, it is sola ratione, sola intellectu which has taken place. The implication is that this intelligere and probare are the execution of discovery, not of instrumentality and illustration. Discovery and giving reasons are different activities.

See Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum, p. 77. In addition, see Eberhard Jngel, God as Mystery of the World. On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucied One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Gruder (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1983), section IV, On the Speakability of God. 35 Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum, pp. 75f. 36 See Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum, pp. 61f.
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This intelligere is inquiring after discovery on the way that the name of God has opened. It is the discovery of a whole new reality, a reality which awaits discovery but which will only be discovered if the aim does not change unexpectedly into trying to secure or give reasons for what is found. That is, we must not exchange discovery for justifying and displaying what is discovered. It is signicant that Anselm of Canterbury aims to win non-Christians by taking them along the route to discovery, not by offering them justications or legitimations by means of translations. They did not hear self-assurance strategies, but were called onto the way which it is necessary to nd. The entrance onto the way of discovery is for Christians and non-Christians the same: it is the hearing of the name of God.

Theological research explorative theology

What follows as a consequence of this fundamental heuristic? What is the task of searching after and discovering in theology and what is the theological research which results? Theological research, we are now prepared to say, is devotion to exploring the reality which exists in the presence of Gods name. It follows in the way, the trace, of the reality drawn in by this name.37 It follows the trace that those who are on this way are following. An essential part of discovering what is drawn together with this name is that everything that this name has permitted to be associated with itself, and everything which through this name has become real, is understood to have been made available through this name.38 This is not a self-reassurance that this name can reveal expert knowledge through which we can connect ourselves with God, but a testing and exploration of the novel that came into the world: what happens and what has happened where people are seized by this name, by the God of this name. The paradigm of this process is the story of Jesus, who was discovered as Jesus Christ in this way. It is paradigmatically novel that Gods Son comes into our world, a discovery for which no skill which might have been given before his coming could have been adequate. This coming generated a new experience,39 and theological research follows the dramatic of this genesis. It can only explore those things of which it has been made aware: with the arrival of this Jesus a new form of life comes into the world, a new love, a new justice, a new hope, a new story. This is the life form of the one who is able to say the Lords Prayer, and in doing so says Thy will be done. The discovery of this life form is dramatic: it is fullled in the story of Jesus. Jesus listened to the voice of the One who sent him on this way of discovery.

37 38 39

See especially Christian Link, Die Spur des Namens. Wege zur Erkenntnis Gottes and zur Erfahrung der Schpfung (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1997). For an understanding of the opening up function of the speech of God see Track, Sprachkritische Untersuchungen, pp. 283f. This is identied as experiencing as experience. This is meant here in the sense that there arises a new explorative experiencing of experience.

English translation 2006 Brian Brock Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006

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Hans G. Ulrich

When we in faith retrace this way, when we catch hold of the name spoken by this voice, hear the call, then in intellectu, we can in our understanding and testing discover this new life form in a way which coheres with Christ. An explorative theology issues from precisely this point where there is this transcendence into the novel. Were the new form of life in Christ only some (ascetic) ideal, of which Friedrich Nietzsche spoke,40 then nothing would be discovered except for a moral system. But when it is expected that the name will yield this new life form, quo nihil maius cogitare possit, then it is understood that the logic is Thy will be done. Whoever articulates these words has discovered the new life form. They expect not an ideal, but a different possibility for living which Jesus embodied in the world. To trace the testing of this life form in all areas of human reality, a testing which plumbs every region of that reality, is the task of an explorative theology.41 This is the task of intelligere, not striving for self-reassurance but being directed to testing and the putting on probation of human reality. The topic of research, which has been so rudimentarily and sketchily laid out here, explicates what Paul in Romans 12:12 has formulated in this way: I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship which follows the Logos and the ratio Dei. And let your life-forms be changed, in order to nd out what is the will of God, the good and acceptable and perfect. Following the discoveries of faith which are essential to probe and investigate is always and again experienced as novel. At the present time the statement (assertio), I believe that God has created me, together with all creatures, is being tested in many areas. How might this be probed and tested in the many areas in which people currently are radically changing the conditions of their existence, and who are not able to state what the foundation of their existence is? On this passive side speechlessness, if anything, is ascendant. This is a decisive reason for undertaking theological research, which locates and makes accessible to language what it means to be Gods creature. An example for this possible theological research aim are all those projects which investigate anew the phenomenon of human existence from within the perspective of the certainty that we humans are allowed to be Gods creation.42

40 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay. 41 This is to set out an alternative conception of ethics. It understands ethics as instruction in the probing of the Christian life form by those who themselves exist in the testing of Gods will. See most prominently Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder, among others. 42 See as an example of an explorative theology of the activity of blessing and the blessing, Dorothea Greiner, Segen und Segnen: Eine systematisch-theologische Grundlegung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1998); and on the phenomenon of being born, Karin UlrichEschemann, Vom Geborenwerden des Menschen: Philosophische und theologische Erkundungen (Mnster: Lit, 2000).
English translation 2006 Brian Brock Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006