You Say "Speculative" Like It's a Bad Thing

On the task of theology

University of Winnipeg | Photo by Ernest Mayer

One of my favorite endeavors is to find old things, particularly ones that have been deemed irrelevant or retrograde, and discover how useful they actually are, if we’d just refine our understanding of them and reframe our use of them. This was a big part of how I got into ressourcement, though as I’ve explained before, that trades upon a faulty notion of what ressourcement was, should, or even could be. A very wise person once said something about bringing out “treasures old and new.”

Several years ago, I stumbled upon the old-school distinction between positive and speculative theology, and even more specifically, the distinction between doctrine and theology, and it’s galvanized my approach to doing theology.

In brief, positive theology draws from Scripture and tradition in order to establish what is the teaching of the church, while speculative theology takes church doctrine as its starting point and then tries to understand it as far as mere theologians can. It is, in its most basic expression, an exercise of faith seeking understanding.

In order for this distinction to work, we need to make the further distinction between what Bernard Lonergan called “questions for reflection” (or judgment) and “questions for understanding,” which in turn correspond to particular mental activities on our part. (Since I’ve brought Lonergan up, I’ll just note here that the entire perspective I’m advancing depends upon his explanations of theological method in such places as Method in Theology, Grace and Freedom, and The Triune God: Systematics.)

Questions for reflection turn upon our affirmation of the truth or falsity of something, while questions for understanding turn upon its meaning. These operations are related, but independent. For instance, I can write this essay in a browser window open on a laptop without knowing how the machine works, nor how to code a website or program a browser. I’ve settled the question for reflection (will tapping the keys on my keyboard result in the words that I intend appearing on my screen, and eventually the screens of potential readers?), without attending to any of the related questions for understanding. Or, conversely, I can explain to you what Leprechauns are without believing that they exist, or that pots of gold can be found at rainbows’ ends.

(This, by the way, has been a great tool for classroom environments. I can invite my students to understand the meaning of church teaching without proselytizing them.)

So, the speculative theologian operates with the questions for reflection (is this true?) already settled. The church’s doctrines are true, and affirmed on the basis of divine revelation. She now has a different task, to understand those doctrines’ intelligibility: what do they mean?, how do they fit together?, how do we resolve apparent contradictions between doctrines and each other or other things we know about reality? She knows that she cannot establish the truth of these doctrines. No one could ever prove that God is the Trinity, because God is a reality that absolutely and utterly exceeds the proportions of our finite intellects. Nor could she prove that the eucharistic bread and wine are transubstantiated into Christ’s body and blood. This mystery, too, exceeds our proportions.

What she can do, though, is explain how it is logically coherent for God to be the Trinity, or how transubstantiation is coherent with other truths that we affirm. This, by the way is one of my favorite side effects of appropriating the positive/speculative distinction…it clarifies that transubstantiation is an affirmation of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, not an explanation of that presence. (Don’t believe me? Take a look at the places where it’s formally and definitively taught, the Fourth Lateran Council and the Council of Trent, you won’t find any explanations, just the statement that transubstantiation is true.) So when folks object to the Catholic Church’s teaching of transubstantiation on the basis that the eucharistic presence is mysterious and that we shouldn’t try to explain it, they are, in fact, objecting to something that’s not actually happening.

Now, one could object that this begs the question of the truth of doctrine. And that’s where positive theology comes in, demonstrating that X, or Y is indeed what the church has taught on the basis of divine revelation. There’s also the further work of assessing in what way something has been taught, because the church teaches in a variety of manners, not all of which have the same status or basis or call for the same response on the part of believers. My point, though, is that these are distinct tasks. I’m glad people are doing them; my work depends on theirs. But it’s not what I’m interested in doing.

And so when I encounter criticisms of theologians for engaging in speculation, I’m always a bit baffled. Shouldn’t we try to understand things? Even things that we cannot fully understand? Yes, at a certain point, we come up against a mystery that we won’t fully comprehend, but it won’t do to throw up our hands and abandon the task before we reach that mystery, while there are still relevant questions to address.

Often times such criticisms stem from a misunderstanding of speculative theology’s role, an impoverished vision of what theology can be that flattens everything to the same level, as if the only theological task is to prove the truth or falsity of propositions. But speculative theology can never enter into questions of truth or falsity, because they belong to an entirely different (though related) enterprise.

One’s speculative positions can never prove that a doctrine is true. The psychological analogy for the Trinity is elegant, coherent, compelling (and from Karl Rahner onward only very rarely understood), but its coherence cannot prove that the one God is three persons, only that it’s not incoherent to speak of processions within the simplicity of pure act. (I’ll be circling back to the psychological analogy at some future point.)

Similarly, speculative failure neither falsifies doctrine nor makes the theologian whose speculative positions have proved inadequate a heretic. Anselm of Canterbury’s much maligned “satisfaction theory” of the atonement, advanced in order to explain why God became human, has been found wanting, particularly through the critiques of feminist and womanist theologians. But his failure to provide a satisfactory account of the atonement does not disprove either the incarnation or the redemption accomplished by the incarnate Word.

Similarly, a lot of the recent furor surrounding universal salvation would benefit from more clearly delineating the difference between speculative positions and doctrinal affirmation. (If I ever feel like sticking my hand into a blender, I’ll go into more detail about that, but I’ve found that most discussions with dogmatic universalists, especially of the terminally online variety likely to engage with something written here, are unpleasant and unfruitful in equal measure. So I’d rather maintain my overall wellbeing.)

In my experience, though, maintaining the speculative-positive distinction has really improved my sense of clarity as to what I’m up to as a theologian, while also allowing me to proceed in a far less anxious manner. It lowers the stakes considerably, because I no longer bear the impossible burden of proving my positions are true. Instead, I offer my efforts to the task of advancing our understanding of the truth given once and for all in Jesus Christ.

In my next post or two, I’ll pick up where this leaves off, considering theology in this unanxious mode, and gesturing towards its ecumenical potential.