By Schubert Ogden
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There are at least two reasons for this. One is his confusing, if not confused, characterizations of the two poles. Thus, in many places, he speaks of them as "the two ways of thinking about theology" (p. 23), or "the two basic views of theology" (p. 27), only to speak of them elsewhere as "the two types of theology," or "the two kinds of theology" (p. 34). But, aside from the fact that the two poles assumed by the typology ought not to be thus confused with any of its five types, these two ways of speaking can be taken as equivalent only on one condition-namely, that any view of theology, or way of 2 thinking about it, is and must be itself theologicaLtheological Whether this condition obtains, however, Frei seems at best uncertain, referring to his typology in one place, indeed, as "a piece of conceptual analysis -- that is, in principle an exercise chiefly _about_ rather than _in_ theology, although in practice the distinction will not always be clear" (p. I; cf., however, p. 8). But even greater difficulties are created by his more specific characterizations of the two poles. Thus, for example, he can refer to the one pole both as "the philosophical kind of theology," i.e., "the kind of theology that \[is\] related to philosophy as the nearest fellow discipline in the academy" (p. 23), and as itself "philosophical theology," or "a philosophical discipline" (p. 34). Or, again, he can characterize it as "an academic discipline" (pp. 35, 65), or, simply, as "academic," in contrast to the other type of theology, which he characterizes as "church-oriented" (p. 68). Of course, there might be definitions of the operative terms here on which the equivalences implied between them would be intelligible even without the support of ordinary usage. But Frei quite fails to provide any such definitions, either explicitly as such or by implication. |
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For example, in at least two closely parallel passages (pp. 2, 124), he says that Christian theology is two things: first, "the first-order statements or proclamations made in the course of Christian practice and belief"; and, second, and more properly, "the Christian community's second-order appraisal of its own language and actions under a norm or norms internal to the community itself." "This appraisal, in tumturn," he says, "has two aspects": a "descriptive" aspect, in which it is "an endeavor to articulate the 'grammar,' or 'internal logic,' of first-order Christian statements"; and then a "critical" aspect, in which it is "an endeavor to judge any given articulation of Christian language for its success or failure in adhering to the acknowledged norm or norms governing Christian use of language." Elsewhere, however, in a passage in which Frei tells us that one can discover "at least three aspects" to Christian theology, we are given a significantly different account. Although he still speaks, first, of "first-order theology," which he now explicitly identifies as "Christian
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witness," he characterizes the second aspect, not as an "appraisal" of such witness having both a "descriptive" and a "critical" aspect, but exclusively as the descriptive endeavor to bring out the grammatical or logical rules implicit in such witness, while he describes the third aspect as "a kind of quasi-philosophical or philosophical activity, ... which consists in trying to tell others, perhaps outsiders, how these rules compare and contrast with their kinds of ruled discourse" (pp. 20 f).
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