Studies in Christian Ethics: Theological Reasoning in Public Sphere
In a recent issue of Studies in Christian Ethics, Prof. Christoph Hübenthal has edited a collection of articles on the topic of Theological Reasoning in the Public Sphere. The articles originated from a CCS conference in 2017, which brought together colleagues from all over Europe, UK, & USA.
Theological Reasoning in Public Sphere
The argument put forward in the special issue is that the central medium of theological speech employs precisely the kind of public reason that the liberal tradition holds to be the medium of societal self-reflection, but which it falsely construes when excluding religious matters from public discourse. This is an innovative and advantageous position because it makes a critical intervention in contemporary debates on three fronts: i) it resists exclusivist and reductionist strands of political liberalism; ii) it resists versions of post-liberal theology which denounce society’s discursive self-reflection as a particularist myth, only because they doubt that religious beliefs can still be articulated plausibly by means of secular reason; and iii) it resists versions of public theology that adapt theological speech to exactly those standards of reason which a particular kind of political liberalism employs to exclude theology from the public discourse.