When I told Alvin Plantinga that I make theological use of Rorty and Davidson (see my earlier post on how to make the best of an interview) in my critique of postliberal theology, he stared at me unbelievingly. What possible use is there for Rorty? He does not believe there is a God. Well, actually that is a rather crude way of describing his position. Actually he does not believe there is a point to follow up on the question of ’should we speak religiously’ with the question ‘but does a religious being of ultimate worth really exist?’ Questions of independent existence are simply matters of cultural politics. Neither does Rorty believe in truth, or that there is a reality our there to which we are responsible. In an earlier published paper I was convinced by Rorty that the distinction between realism and non-realism cannot get going without the so-called scheme-content dichotomy. I might have overstated my case just a little. The point that I am trying to make is that the intuitions which stand at the foundation of realism and which are worth preserving can be preserved under different theoretical constructions.

But why engage with neopragmatists at all? The most obvious reason is that they are simply there. Why climb Everest? Because it’s there, as a famous climber put it. Not only are neopragmatists there, but such has been the effect of a Quine, Davidson, Rorty, Putnam on the current field of analytic philosophy that the territory has been significantly altered. No longer can we take notions of meaning, representations, truth, reality, justification, analyticity, correspondence etc. for granted. With respect to some of these, they are right. Where they are wrong, they nevertheless provoke us in sharpening our understanding of important notions.

Let me point out some of these positives. Most, if not all of them, are due to the influence of Davidson.

1. The scheme-content dichotomy: here Davidson shows why it is incoherent to speak of alternative and simultaneously true conceptual schemes. To my knowledge, it’s the best argument against incommensurability and relativism. Theology can profit from this immensely.

2. Truth-conditional semantics. While I am not satisfied that Davidson’s rendering of meaning in terms of truth conditions is empirically adequate to the communicative experience of speaking persons, it does illuminate the way in which one aspect of meaning is connected to truth. This militates against undue reification of meanings. They are not to be taken for granted. At least two major theological implications follow: first, we can only be confident in the ascription of meaning to our theological notions if we refuse to insulate them from the hard work of justification and critique(my initial critque of postliberalism). Secondly, the meaning of the Gospel has to be constantly rendered in terms that establish its connections with everyday realities and concerns.

3. Reification of meanings. Davidson is a minimalist in the sense that our theories have to postulate only those entities which serve theoretical (explanatory) purposes. If the work of the theory can be done adequately without postulating previously taken for granted yet burdensome notions like meanings, reference, correspondence, then all the better for the theory. Regardless what one thinks about this, it is an empirical question whether such theoretical notions should be retained. But with respect to meaning, it provides a check against the proliferation of notions like symbolic and metaphorical meaning. Davidson shows that we can explain metaphor without postulating notions for which there are no clear identity criteria, or which cannot be individualised. Why is this important for theology? Because it provides a correction against revisionist strategies, what nancy Frankenberry called the ‘theology of symbolic forms’. Of course, problems accrue at this point as well, but the general direction is in the favour of clear, crisp notions, which have a clear theoretical function.

What is the conclusion? What can theology learn from neopragmatism? What have I learned from it? A complete answer can be found only in the book - even there one may find only hints. More specifically: justification must avoid a sheer ‘unconstrained coherentism’ of the sort advocated by virtually all neopragmatists. Secondly, correspondence still has a role, but one that is grounded in the inherent features of reality as created by God, that is to say, grounded in divine intentionality. An account of creation (perhaps even an eschatology and soteriology) have a significant bearing on what Christians are to think of reality. There is no single perfect description of reality, but a plenitude, an infinity of such perfect descriptions in view of the fact that it has been created. I haven’t learned this from Davidson! Third, experience is always conceptually and pragmatically mediated. This does not render it useless for justification. Fourth, given this mediation, a proper epistemology of religious experience must take into account religious conversion as well as a religiuos habituation into the practices of Christianity. Central among these practices is the reading of Scripture. My argument has been that Scripture creates an intensional context which is normative for the reading of religious and mundane experience.