Show Me
This project forms part of the Widening Horizons in Philosophical Theology initiative, which aims to glean insights from the continental tradition of philosophy, with a view toward enriching theological thought. The whole larger project, including this sub-grant and eleven others, was generously funded by the Templeton Religion Trust.
Continental hermeneutics has illumined how party-dependent interpretive frameworks operate in all human attempts to understand the world. For a framework to be party-dependent means that, in some way, people’s knowledge is dependent on their language, cultural situation, and/or historical context. People can have a genuine grasp of reality, but the party-dependent aspect of knowledges means that a certain inflection, which not all share, has been imparted to what they know.
Some accounts of interpretation make it difficult or even impossible to appeal to divine transcendence, so stressing language, culture, and history that transcendent reality is ruled out of bounds. This creates the problem that lies in the background for this project. If a theory of hermeneutics, which is attractive in that it sheds light on the party-dependence of interpretive frameworks, simultaneously prohibits reference to the divine, can it prove fruitful in grasping the ways the world communicates a reality beyond itself?
While some versions of hermeneutics unsettle engagements with the divine, might an appropriately formulated version of the ideas ultimately enrich our understanding of how the divine is interpreted? This project hypothesizes that it is possible to marry divine transcendence to the insights of hermeneutics. The project will test this supposition in two ways: (1) by locating tensions between divine transcendence and hermeneutical thought in recent discussions and (2) by beginning to develop constructive proposals unencumbered by such tensions.
To do this, the project leader has convened a research group of international collaborators who have established themselves at the leading edge of this discussion. Over the course of grant’s two-year term, the primary investigator and his seven research group members will gather in-person for two symposia and six supplementary virtual workshops. The main academic output of this project will be an edited book that collects revised versions of the best papers from these discussions. The book will be complemented by three course syllabi and media work, which will bring about impact from the project’s ideas outside of a university context.
The project team includes:
Below is a photo of the research team at the conclusion of three days of lively discussion that took place during the 2023 Rome Symposium. Not pictured: Victor Emma-Adamah (participated virtually)
