Stellenbosch Theological Journal 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17570/stj.2022.v8n1.ad3
Online ISSN 2226-2385 | Print ISSN 0028-2006
2022 © The Author(s)

Public Theology and the linguistic turn

Rachel Sophia Baard
Union Presbyterian Seminary
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Stellenbosch University, South Africa
[email protected]

Abstract
In response to Dirkie Smit’s inaugural lecture at the University of Stellenbosch, In
Diens van die Tale Kanaäns: Oor sistematiese teologie vandag, the question is raised:
what is the relationship between language and theology? Traditionally theology
subsumed rhetorical language under confessional language, but this shifted in the
twentieth century as theologians started to pay more attention to the ways in which
even confessional language shapes human experiences and actions and reflects and
constitutes power relations. This linguistic turn has implications for public theology,
i.e., theology done for the sake of the public good. First, it relates to the question of
the role of culture and the reality of pluralism in theology, pointing to the need for
careful balance between the emphasis on the church’s own historical language, and
the need for critical and pluralistic perspectives to engage that language. At the same
time, while the linguistic turn rightly points to the relationship between language
and violence, care should be taken not to confuse the two and, in the process, ignore
concrete concerns.

Public Theology and the linguistic turn

In his lecture, In Diens van die Tale Kanaäns: Oor sistematiese teologie
vandag (transl. Serving the Language of Canaan: On systematic theology
today), Dirkie Smit presents the task of systematic theology in terms of
a linguistic metaphor: theology, he says, speaks the language of Canaan,
the language of faith.1 Deceptively simple in style and structure, the

1 D.J. Smit, “In Diens van die Tale Kanaäns? Oor Sistematiese Teologie Vandag”,
Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, 43, no. 1&2 (2002):94–127. This was his
inaugural lecture at the University of Stellenbosch. Quotes will be from his unpublished
translation of the essay, with page citation referring to the formal Afrikaans version.
2 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17

lecture brings together almost the entire modern theological conversation

in order to outline the work of systematic theology, supplemented by
extensive footnotes. The choice of the metaphor of language for thinking
about theology is rooted in his identification with “a tradition in which
the confession of hope is seen as liberating truth”, the tradition of Luther
and Calvin, of Barth and Bonhoeffer, of Barmen and Belhar – although his
take on that confessional tradition is broad, enabling him to incorporate
insights from Catholic thinkers, liberation theologians, and political
theorists.2 As such, his linguistic metaphor derives from a long-standing
interest in expressive-confessional language in the Christian tradition.
This is distinct from the so-called (post)modern “linguistic turn”,3 which
understands language as primarily rhetorical rather than expressive.4
While not denying the validity of the latter’s emphasis on the way language
shapes or even creates reality and praxis, the emphasis here is on language
that follows revelation of the religious truth in which hope is invested.
Because faith sees the world differently, the “language of Canaan” also
names things differently.5 From this vantage point, he then proceeds to
make four comments about the nature of theology.
His first point is that theology as the language of Canaan gets its grammar
from the church – in other words, it is rooted in the life of a human
community centred on worship, faith, and life together. As such, second,
the truth that theology proclaims is embodied and contextual truth. To
put it in the language of Aristotelian rhetorical theory: it is not just logos,

2 Ibid., 118.
3 Ibid., 97. Later in the lecture (p. 119) he rejects the concept of postmodernism, suggesting
(rightly in my view) that the current moment is better described as modernization.
4 The well-known debate between David Tracy (“Chicago school of thought”) and
George Lindbeck (“Yale school of thought”) is illustrative of this the tension between
theological language as at least partially expressive of pre-linguistic religious experience
and as formative of religious experience.
5 Smit, “Tale Kanaäns”, 95. Interestingly enough, in the Afrikaans text there is a more
dialectical tone than in the English text, since Smit suggests in the Afrikaans that the
language of Canaan, in confessing its hope, constructs a strange new world (which
suggests a more rhetorical view of language), but in his English translation, Smit uses
the word, “depicts”, which suggests pre-linguistic revelation (the truth of which is
then confessed in the language of Canaan, even if that language indeed also depicts
a strange new reality). Overall the context of the lecture as a whole suggests that the
latter emphasis is more central to his lecture. See also footnote 16 on p. 99 in the essay
for references on the rhetorical nature of theological language.
 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17 3

the word, that matters, but ethos, the whole life of the speaker, and finally
also the pathos of the audience, which means using the right language in
the right time, the Kairos time.6 Third, there is no standard version of the
language of Canaan – it exists only as multiple dialects. In other words,
theology is inevitably pluralistic, and efforts to find a single truth by
recourse to experience, reason, tradition, or Scripture, are doomed to fail.7
Finally, the language of Canaan is a strange language, not quite of this
world, but living from hope, and therefore easily dissatisfied with the state
of the world. This dissatisfaction opens up to the prophetic, critical task
of theology in the interest of the common good, in short, public theology.
As Smit notes, the “language of Canaan is the language of dialogue, of
conversation, about the catholic fullness of reality”, and it “wants to serve
the public church, and is interested in the public life of the city and the
welfare of the world.”8 In summary, the subject matter of the lecture is
the nature and task of theology as the ongoing reflection of a community
of faith which must proclaim its message not only with words, but with
praxis and awareness of the moment, with a recognition of theology as
a pluralistic and at times ambiguous task, and finally, with responsibility
towards the common good.
Despite the linguistic metaphor, the lecture is actually not that concerned
with language itself. Even the use of rhetorical theory is for the purpose
of emphasizing that words are not sufficient (as rhetorical theory indeed
argues!) However, the linguistic metaphor does bring up the question of
the relationship between theology and language, and in particular the
relationship between public theology and the issue of language. In fact,
if theology is to speak the “language of Canaan” today, two decades after
Dirkie Smit’s lecture was written, it needs to recognize the extent to which
our current Kairos time is impacted by continuing questions about the
nature of language, and especially about the relationship between language

6 The concept of Kairos usually refers to “the right time”, but in modern rhetorical
theory it can refer more broadly to the situation in which rhetoric originates.
7 Experience is highly subjective, reason often blind to its own prejudices, traditions
often reflect only those who have taken central stage in the past, when in fact the purest
speech often comes from those who had been marginalized, and Scripture, of course,
being complex and pluralistic itself, evokes the task of hermeneutics.
8 Smit, “Tale Kanaäns”,120.
4 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17

and power. There is a certain duality in the latter. On the one hand, the
linguistic turn that has marked philosophy, critical theory, and theology
in the last century, allows for the critical interrogation of the relationship
between language and power. In the field of theology, it contributes to an
important hermeneutic of suspicion against ways in which theology has
served not the common good, but the interests of elites. On the other hand,
if language is constitutive rather than expressive of the world, the question
arises: where does truth lie? If all semblance of objective truth is lost, then
all that remains is power, and that, in turn, and indeed ironically, reifies
the very power structures that critical theory seeks to interrogate. This
dilemma was at the root of Socrates and Plato’s rejection of the Sophists
in ancient Greek philosophy, and it shaped the church’s traditional stance
on language. In our era of “truthiness”, “speaking your truth”, “alternative
facts”, and the moral cacophony of the online world, theology, if it is to
truly speak the language of Canaan, also needs to take the question of the
nature of language seriously in new ways. This is, of course, a monumental
and complex task far beyond the scope of this essay, so a few preliminary
remarks must suffice. But first, a brief overview of some of the central
elements in the history of the relationship between theology and language.

Language and theology: A brief historical overview

Dirkie Smit is right in noting that language and speech acts have always
preoccupied the Christian imagination. The opening narrative of our Holy
Scriptures tells of a God who creates through neither battle nor birth, but
through speech.9 This is the same God who is said to speak in the Torah,
through the sages and the prophets, in letters and gospels and apocalyptic
fever dreams in the Scriptures, and above all, in the incarnate Word. In the
2,000 years of our existence, Christianity, emulating the God Who Speaks,
has built up an impressive linguistic heritage: massive theological tomes,
multiple creeds, confessions, and catechisms, canon law and liturgies and
poetry and hymns, and of course, sermons, reflecting the fact that the
proclamation of the Word is often central to Christian worship.

9 Of course, already in the second chapter of Genesis, the Scriptures bring us back to
the clay, the earth, to farming and creatures, providing some balance to the Jewish
and Christian imaginations.
 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17 5

Not only is our religious imagination informed by the metaphor of divine

speech and responded to by our words, but as a tradition we have insisted
on the importance of accurate language. Most famously (or infamously), in
the fourth century the church fought a fierce intellectual battle ostensibly
centred on a single letter. Bishop Arius, seeking to defend the unity of God,
argued that Jesus Christ was the first and greatest of God’s creatures, a
divine emissary who delivers the definitive Word of God to humans, but
certainly not equal in divinity to God the Father: he was homoiousios, of
like substance to God, the way a child shares DNA with a parent without
being the same as them. Athanasius of Alexandria, fearing that our
salvation is at stake if the full divinity of Jesus Christ is not recognized,
since only the one who is truly and fully God can take our sins upon
himself and can overcome death and hell, argued, against Arius, that Jesus
is in fact homoousios, of the same substance as God the Father; he is the
incarnation of the living God, and not a mere emissary. Homoiousios vs.
homoousios: what a difference an “i” makes! What might initially appear
to the uninitiated ear to be an almost comical argument about linguistics
turned out to be crucial in reflecting on the foundational question of the
Christian faith, the question Jesus himself asked his disciples: “who do you
say that I am?”10 In its varied response to that question, Christianity has
confessed its hope in Jesus Christ, the living Word of God, and has said
that, in confessing the faith, accurate language matters. Yes, there are, as
Dirkie Smit says, various dialects of the language of Canaan, but in all
these dialects there remains an emphasis on clear and precise language in
the interest of confessing our faith with as much clarity as possible.11
When it comes to the rhetorical, rather than the confessional role of
language, Christian theology has traditionally tended to proceed with
caution. Here, as in many other instances, Augustine of Hippo set the tone:
despite, or perhaps because of being a professional rhetorician in his pre-
conversion life, Augustine was nervous about confusing the truth of faith

10 This question is present in all the synoptic gospels, in Matthew 16:13–16, Mark 8:27–29,
and Luke 9:18–20.
11 Karl Rahner expresses this well in his consideration of the Chalcedonian formula as
boundary language that can encompass a wide variety of viewpoints, but that places
boundaries, across which heresy lies. See Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations,
Volume I (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1961), 149–155.
6 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17

with the persuasiveness of language. Recognizing the power of language

to sell lies rather than to seek truth, he set parameters for the Christian
use of rhetoric: language was to be utilized in the service of the truth of
revelation, but not confused with it. That meant, in practice, that language
was primarily theological (confessional, expressive of Christian hope) and
only secondarily and subserviently rhetorical (shaping of the faithful’s
ethics and praxis). As such, language-as-rhetoric tended to be limited to
Christian ethical writing and preaching that deliberately sought to shape
Christian spirituality and praxis, and it remained secondary to language-
as-confession-of-truth. This general orientation in which the rhetorical use
of language is secondary to its confessional use largely remained the status
quo in Christian theology until the twentieth century.12
The 20th century linguistic turn with its emphasis on the reality-shaping
power of language, brought a shift in the Christian conversation on
language, and in particular on language-as-rhetoric as part of theological
reflection, as some theologians turned their attention more explicitly
to the ways in which language is related to power and praxis – in other
words, to the rhetorical element in theology. A significant example of this
shift can be found in George Lindbeck’s postliberal model of theology,
in which doctrines are described as grammatical rules that shape the
life of the community.13 This kind of emphasis is echoed in Serene Jones’
phrase “Rhetoric of Piety”, or David Cunningham’s language of “Faithful
Persuasion.” 14 While this approach is in some ways close to the classical
Christian perspective of deliberate rhetoric in service of Christian praxis,
Lindbeck takes it a step further by arguing that religious truth itself cannot
be experienced without language, that “it is necessary to have the means of

12 One exception was John Calvin, who, as a humanist lawyer well trained in classical
rhetoric, brought an awareness of the rhetorical nature of theological language into
his thinking, albeit without abandoning the Platonic focus on objective truth. See, e.g.,
Serene Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox
Press, 1995), and Don H. Compier, John Calvin’s Rhetorical Doctrine of Sin (Lewiston,
NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001).
13 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age
(Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1984), 37.
14 Serene Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety; David Cunningham, Faithful Persuasion:
In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1991). Both note Lindbeck’s influence, although neither should necessarily be
described as postliberal theologians.
 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17 7

expressing an experience in order to have it.”15 As such, he blends religious

experience with language to the extent that language becomes constitutive
of truths confessed instead of being prior to it. In short, Lindbeck presents
an interesting twist in the story of theology and language, essentially
collapsing confessional and rhetorical theological language.
As such, Lindbeck is clearly influenced by the philosophical linguistic turn.
He rejects what he calls an experiential-expressivist model of theology, which
in his view seems “to maintain a kind of privacy in the origins of experience
and language that, if Wittgenstein is right, is more than doubtful.”16 In
contrast, David Tracy, who was initially erroneously called just such an
“experiential-expressivist” by Lindbeck (a classification rejected by Tracy),
recognizes a more dialectical relationship between religious experience
and language. Like Lindbeck, Tracy rejects the idea that theology is merely
expressive of pre-linguistic theological experiences, and he recognizes the
hermeneutical nature of theology, i.e., the ways in which it is imbedded
in language. However, says Tracy, “this critical insight does not mean
that we should, in effect, abandon half the dialectic by simply placing all
experience under the guardianship of and production by the grammatical
rules of the codes of language.”17 In short, while Tracy acknowledges the
role of language in mediating religious experience, he leaves space for the
apophatic, for the breaking through of divine revelation that is not tied up
with language. Furthermore, in contrast to Lindbeck’s focus on the specific
language game of the confessional tradition as it functions rhetorically in
the lives of the community of believers, Tracy’s theology is more explicitly
concerned with the public nature of theology, and as such, with the issue of
pluralism, and the way the latter calls up the question of truth. His inquiry
eventually leads him to a conversational approach to theology that seeks

15
16 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 38. His evocation of Wittgenstein of courses places
Lindbeck’s model squarely within the linguistic turn. As such, his confessional theology
is quite distinct from that proposed by Dirkie Smit.
17 David Tracy, “Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology: A Reflection”, The Thomist
49(1985):464.
8 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17

truth (understood phenomenologically as event rather than proposition)

that occurs in the intersubjectivity of multiple conversation partners.18
Both Lindbeck and Tracy’s models blend the traditional confessional
and the rhetorical perspective on language in ways that transcend the
traditional approach, but they do so in different ways. Lindbeck’s model
emphasizes the ways in which the confessional language of the church is
also its rhetorical language, shaping Christian consciousness and praxis.19
As mentioned, Tracy’s model is more aware of the ways in which the
“language of Canaan” participates in pluralism – the pluralism of its own
dialects, but also, potentially, the pluralism of finding itself alongside other
theological “languages” in the world.20 However, neither of them analyses
the relationship between language and power to a great extent, although
Tracy shows more awareness of the issue, as can be seen when he warns
against a pluralism just for the sake of enjoying ever-new possibilities at the
exclusion of “any particular vision of resistance and hope.”21
The task of critical rhetorical interrogation of the relationship between
language and power has fallen to various liberation theologians, in
particular feminist and womanist theologians. One can more easily trace
the difference between an approach to rhetorical theology such as that of
Lindbeck, and the kind of critical rhetorical inquiry found in liberation
theology by noting the shift in the secular field of rhetorical theory that
occurred in the 20th century (as part of the linguistic turn): whereas
classical Greek and Roman rhetorical theory was interested in the ways
in which public speakers might persuade an audience, the (post)modern
“New Rhetoric” is interested in how language identifies some as members
of the in-group while simultaneously “othering” others - as such, the New

18 See, in this regard, David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), and The Analogical Imagination: Christian
Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 2000). For a helpful
secondary source, see Stephen Okey, A Theology of Conversation: An Introduction to
David Tracy (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018).
19 Lindbeck’s approach of course echoes Karl Barth’s view that theology is ethics.
20 Tracy has done extensive work on interreligious dialogue, especially with Buddhism.
21 Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity, 90.
 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17 9

Rhetoric is a critical mode of inquiry into power.22 There was, in short, a

shift in focus, from language as persuasion to language as identification,23
which enables the kind of critical interrogation of the theological tradition
that liberation theologians are interested in, and that someone like
Lindbeck leaves little room for (Tracy represents an interim figure with his
hermeneutical inquiry and his recognition of pluralism). A few examples of
feminist and womanist scholarship (biblical scholarship as well as practical
and systematic theology) serve as illustration of the influence of critical
“New Rhetoric” in theology.
Feminist biblical scholar Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has been an
important pioneer in examining the ways in which the foundational texts
of the Christian faith are “neither reports of events nor transcripts of
facts but rather rhetorical constructions that have shaped the information
available to them in light of their religious or political interests.”24 As such,
she develops a model of “critical rhetorical inquiry” that seeks to show
how texts reflect the power relations in a patriarchal society, and in turn
serve to uphold similar patriarchal structures. Similarly, but also bringing
the rich Jewish tradition of midrash to her biblical scholarship, womanist
scholar Wilda Gafney seeks to bring the lens of women’s lived experience
to the retelling of biblical narratives as well as to the work of translation.25
In the field of practical theology feminist scholars like Carol Lakey Hess
have noted the ways in which the rhetoric of humility and submission
traditionally aimed at women serve to undermine female resistance to
violence, while Marie Fortune has focused not so much on the language
of the church, but on its silence when it comes to violence against women
and girls.26 In systematic theology one of the main conversations has been

22 On “critical rhetorical inquiry”, see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, But She Said:
Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon, 1992).
23 See Kenneth Burke, “Rhetoric – Old and New,” Journal of General Education, 5
(1951):203–5.
24 Ibid., 41
25 Wilda C. Gafney, Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and
the Throne (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017); A Women’s Lectionary
for the Whole Church: Year A (New York: Church Publishing, 2021); and A Women’s
Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year W (New York: Church Publishing, 2021)
26 Carol Lakey Hess, “Reclaiming Ourselves: A Spirituality for Women’s Empowerment”,
in Women, Gender, and Christian Community, ed. Jane Dempsey Douglass and James
10 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17

about traditionally male language for God. As Mary Daly once quipped, “if
God is male, then the male is God.”27 In her now-classic work, She Who Is,
Catholic feminist theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson suggests that the symbol
of God as male figure functions culturally in support of “an imaginative
and structural world that excludes or subordinates women.”28 Similarly,
rhetorical analysis of some aspects of the church’s traditional “sin-talk”
shows how careless theological language on sin (sloppy interpretations of
the concept of the sin of pride, and associating women’s bodies with sin, in
particular) has often served to dehumanize women in ways that contribute
to making women “quintessential victims” of male violence.29 The critical
lens of the New Rhetoric is illustrated, therefore, in the work of feminist
and womanist theologians, who analyse how androcentric language about
God, misogynist associations of women with sin, or ideals of femininity as
reinforced by the rhetoric of humility and submission in Christian moral
teachings, identify women as the Other or the Victim.30
In sum, the history of the relationship between theology and language has
been a somewhat complex one. For most of its history, Christian systematic
theology has emphasized the confessional nature of theological language
and kept the rhetorical to the realm of explicit ethical teaching. In the
20th century, however, theology has been influenced by the linguistic turn
that emphasizes the world-creating power of language, giving rise both to
theological emphases on the persuasive power of confessional language (an
approach that echoes the focus on persuasive language in classical rhetorical
theory), and the ways in which religious teachings have been intertwined
with power and praxis in sometimes problematic ways (an approach that

F. Kay (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997). 147; Marie Fortune, “The
Church and Domestic Violence”, TSF Bulletin 9, no. 2 (1984): 17.
27 Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston,
MA: Beacon Press, 1985), 3.
28 Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse
(New York: Crossroad, 1995), 5.
29 Rachel Sophia Baard, Sexism and Sin-Talk: Feminist Conversations on the Human
Condition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), 73.
30 One of the best examples of this is Elizabeth A. Johnson’s She Who Is: The Mystery of
God in Feminist Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1995) which argues that the symbol of
a male God functions to sustain patterns of male domination. For an explicit discussion
of feminist theology through the lens of rhetorical theory, see Baard, Sexism and Sin-
Talk.
 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17 11

echoes the critical mode of the New Rhetoric). What are the implications of
this linguistic conversation for public theology, that emerging and still to
be fully defined form of theology that deliberately seeks to engage various
publics, whether ecclesial, academic, societal, or, these days, digital, in the
service of the public good?

Language and Public Theology: Two preliminary observations

Public theology, i.e., theology that is done for the sake of the common
good, always engages the Kairos moment in which it finds itself, one
way or the other. And language itself, in particular the question of how
language relates to power and reality, is central to our current Kairos
moment. From academia’s interrogation of the relationship between power
and language, to social media twittering about language and identity, hate
speech, or freedom of speech, it seems that the questions brought to us by
the linguistic turn and the critical theories to which it gave birth, cannot be
avoided. In light of this recognition of the centrality of language and power
in our current Kairos moment and based on the preceding overview of the
theology/language conversation, let me make two concluding observations
regarding public theology and the question of language.
First, the question of language and public theology is related to the twentieth
century debate about the role of culture and human experience in theological
reflection. Those theologies (correlational, liberal, and liberationist) that
aim to answer “the questions asked of, and the criticisms directed against,
a concrete religion” are more obviously public in tone.31 In contrast, neo-
orthodox and postliberal theologies generally focus on the confession of the
classical Christian tradition, and the rhetorical impact of that confession in
shaping piety, but leave little room for either the engagement of pluralism
(Tracy’s emphasis) or the critical interrogation of the tradition (such as is
seen in the work of feminist and womanist scholars, among others).32 In

31 Paul Tillich, “The Problem of Theological Method”, Journal of Religion XXVII, I

(January 1947): 25.
32 Postliberal theologies often lean towards the theology of Karl Barth, although not all
do, and although not all theologies that build on Barth are necessarily postliberal. As a
school of thought one can trace it back to the 1980’s, and it is represented by theologians
like Hans Frei, Paul Holmer, George Lindbeck, David Kelsey, and Stanley Hauerwas.
12 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17

fact, as Hak Joohn Lee suggests, postliberal theologies might be seen as the
nemesis of public theology, since their primary concern is “neither social
change nor improvement, but rather safeguarding the distinctiveness of
a Christian tradition from liberal cultural influences and protecting the
church from their fragmenting and disintegrating forces.”33 However,
postliberal theologies have a point about the risk of public theology (in the
form of theologies of culture) becoming mere surrender to public opinion.
If the theologians of crisis from the Second World War Era have taught
us anything, it is that finding common ground with whatever is popular
in any given cultural milieu runs the risk of betraying the message of the
gospel and collaborating with evil. So, the postliberal theological impulse
occupies an important, if somewhat paradoxical, space in public theology,
by suggesting that the church’s mistrust of the cultural fashions of the day
has an important role to play in thinking about the ways in which faith
engages our various publics.
Of course, this need not be an either/or situation. In his lecture, Dirkie Smit
rightly cautions against both sectarian withdrawal from public life, and,
conversely, “total surrender and merely repeating public opinion.”34 While
the postliberal approach has the merit of offering up a warning to public
theology not to succumb to the fashions of the day, the refusal to allow
human experiences to challenge the kerygma of the church allows for little
challenge to the power relations inherent in that kerygma. Public theology
cannot ignore the ways in which our language of Canaan itself has often
reflected unequal and oppressive power relations (sexism, anti-Semitism,
racism, etc.). As such, postliberal theologies, in withdrawing from cultural
entanglement, risks doing what it fears: supporting a potentially problematic
status quo. It is also not the case that the correlational approaches found
in liberal and liberationist theologies necessarily suggest that human

They reject notions of universal rationality and instead emphasize how religious
experiences and truth claims are embedded in particular traditions – or as Lindbeck
would suggest, in particular language games.
33 Hak Joohn Lee, “Public Theology”, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political
Theology, ed. Craig Hovey and Elizabeth Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015), 57–8. Lee argues that postliberal theology tends to be confessional or
fideistic in nature, refusing public adjudication of Christian truth and moral claims.
His focus is particularly on Stanley Hauerwas.
34 Smit, “Tale Kanaäns”, 120.
 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17 13

experiences or cultures are revelatory in themselves (that would indeed be

idolatrous). Rather, as Tillich states it, it is not “experience, but revelation
received in experience, [that] gives the content of every theology.”35 These
correlational approaches have the merit of making space for pluralism, for
the “new” voices in the global church who bring their cultural riches to
the ongoing Christian theological conversation, as well as for the critical
interrogation of power relations (both those power relations that influenced
our discourses and those influenced by our discourses).36 In short, a careful
balance is needed between the emphasis on the church’s own historical
language, and the need for critical and pluralistic perspectives to engage
that language.
The second observation relates to questions of truth and reality. The
linguistic turn in its various forms has shown that language plays a
significant role both in shaping our perception of reality (the hermeneutical
emphasis) and indeed in shaping reality itself (the rhetorical emphasis).
However, this focus on language risks becoming the denial of material
reality if the latter is made completely subject to language. This has a host
of overlapping theological, philosophical, ethical, and epistemological
implications, all of which need more fleshing out than can be provided
here. On a theological level, the subjugation of material reality to language
presents a problematic neglect of the doctrine of creation, and it might
even be argued that it carries a faint resemblance to the ancient heresy of
Gnosticism. Particularly problematic is that this undermines the material
analysis (e.g., Marxist analysis of class conditions, or feminist analysis of
the exploitation of women’s reproductive capacity) that has often been
at the root of liberative political work. Furthermore, while these (post)
modern discourses rightly point to the links between language and power
or language and violence, it sometimes risks confusing language with
violence. As much as language might play a role in violence, it is not in
fact the same as violence against human bodies and confusing the two can
lead to problems (for example, it might lead to curbing freedom of speech,

35 Tillich, “The Problem of Theological Method”, 23.

36 See, on the topic of how rhetoric both participates in existing power structures and
shape it in return, Baard, Sexism and Sin-Talk, p. 10, 18–23.
14 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17

or the focus on language might take the focus off concrete problems that
need attention.)
Most importantly, public theology needs to be careful about the question of
truth. It behoves us to hear the cautionary note coming to us through the
centuries, from Socrates and Plato, who were concerned with the Sophists’
abandonment of the idea of truth in favour of their emphasis on the power
of language to persuade. As we shift our gaze to the tasks ahead for 21st
century public theology, we should be particularly cautious not to get
so caught up in thinking about language that we abandon truth: if there
is no truth beyond what we can convince others of, then we are subject
to the power of “persuasion” by the person with the loudest voice or the
biggest gun. (There is of course a certain irony here that the very discourse
that would interrogate power itself risks becoming a tool for power and
dominance.)
Therefore, theology that serves the common good can never abandon the
ideal of truth. To be sure, Modernity’s “Masters of Suspicion” have shown
how the Enlightenment ideal of access to objective truth via reason masks
our class interests, psychological needs, etc., but that should not mean that
we can simply abandon the idea of truth in our postmodern/late modern
era. As suggested earlier, David Tracy offers us one way of thinking beyond
this dilemma of finding ourselves between the illusion of objective truth
attainable by reason, on the one hand, and the chaos of pure subjectivity,
on the other hand, by focusing instead on conversation, where truth is
the event that happens in intersubjectivity as we open ourselves up to the
Other. Here language returns to the scene, not as enemy of the truth but in
service to it. After the hermeneutic of suspicion that critically interrogates
language and power, also comes the hermeneutic of retrieval, of standing
on truth even amidst suspicion, of confession of the hope that is in us in
Jesus Christ. In short, after critical rhetorical inquiry comes confession.
To conclude, in his reflection on theological education, Dirkie Smit argues
that merely learning the knowledge and skills to be a religious professional
is not enough, but that what is needed is spiritual formation that would
shape “believers, critical thinkers, people searching for truth, who want
to learn a grammar in order to be able to confess the hope that lives in
them, with humility, gently and respectfully, but also with confidence and
 Baard • STJ 2022, Vol 8, No 1, 1–17 15

courage.’”37 This emphasis on spiritual formation provides a key for finding

a way out of the dilemma of either withdrawal into the language game of
the church or surrender to the cultural whims of the day, and it brings
to mind what the rhetorical theorist Scott Consigny says about Aristotle’s
view of rhetoric as an art. The art of rhetoric, he says, requires two
attributes: integrity, i.e., the knowledge and skills that are ready to engage
any situation (this is the universal element), and receptivity, i.e., the ability
to become concretely engaged in specific situations (this is the particular,
concrete element).38 What this boils down to is holding on to what is true
and real, on the one hand, and being open to change, on the other hand.
This artistic nimbleness is needed for public theology to avoid the Scylla
and Charybdis of withdrawal from or surrender to the fashions of the day –
including those fashions of the day that confuse language and power even
as it seeks to critically interrogate the relationship between language and
power. In short, in an era in which much of the public debate struggles with
truth, caught up in late modernity’s linguistic fluidity, its multiple claims
of truth and simultaneous denial of truth, its valid critique of power games
and inequities, but also its struggle to move beyond the hermeneutic of
suspicion, the public theologian must be spiritually formed into an artist,
or perhaps a skilful artisan, who continues to search out truth amidst the
chaos and cacophony of our Kairos moment.

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37 “Tale Kanaäns”, 124.

38 For a discussion on this, see Baard, Sexism and Sin-Talk, 32–3.
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