The Relevance of Theological Rationality to Public Discourse

Why take an interest in theology at a time when religion has such a bad reputation? How can we address the relationship—seemingly tenuous in a secularized society—between politics and religion? And how can we do so without either violently excluding one from the other or naively reconciling them, but instead finding pathways for their mutual enrichment?Too often, when tackling the overused theme of “the role of religion in politics,” one falls into two overly simplistic reductions. On the one hand, religion is equated with its dogmas and the institutions that protect them; on the other, religion is reduced to personal convictions, often inherited through primary socialization. Either way, it places us intellectually within the framework of tolerance and freedom of conscience, fundamental to liberal democracy. This leads to discussions about secularism and freedom of thought, emphasizing the individual's right to determine their own moral, political, and intellectual beliefs. Everyone is free to hold whatever convictions and beliefs they choose and to adjust their expression within the boundaries set by law.However, there is an aspect of religion that almost invariably escapes consideration in these analyses of religion and politics: theology. There are few political reflections that engage with religion from its rational dimension—its theology. Instead, focus tends to fall on religion's institutional, sociological, or personal aspects. In general, preconceived notions about theology prevent it from being taken seriously. Theology is often associated with religious faith, seen as a slightly more sophisticated version of it, but not as a form of public rationality capable of contributing to the development of a pluralistic ethic. The problem addressed by this article can thus be formulated as follows: from a philosophical standpoint, can theology integrate into the framework of public reason and contribute to the development of a resolutely pluralistic ethic?1 The ambition behind this rethinking of the relationship is to develop an expanded understanding of public reason and the process of constituting a pluralistic ethic. My main argument is that theology has a role to play in public reason, but only if theology is understood in a particular way, as a form of critical rationality and not a set of truths to believe.The pages to come aim directly to study the modalities of ethical norm formation in liberal democracy. Specifically, the objective I have as a political theorist and a Christian theologian,2 is to reveal that a lever for renewal in these modalities could be found in the distribution of speech rights among all societal actors, particularly the role theology plays in this process. It should be clarified from the outset that my proposal is limited to so-called “liberal” Christian theology, as it shares, as I shall show, the epistemological premises of liberal democracy.3 I suggest that reevaluating theology's role in public reason could contribute to developing a pluralistic ethics. The privatization of theology, the reliance on experts for ethical decision and the paternalistic tendencies of liberal institutions highlight today's difficulties of implementing truly pluralistic ethics. Addressing these challenges will require renewed commitment to participatory processes and a willingness to engage with diverse perspectives and rationalities, including those rooted in religious traditions. To do so, I will first provide the theoretical framework of public reason, followed by the intellectual landscape on which the article relies on by explaining how the collapse of principiality4 brought by modernity affects the ethical creation process of liberal democracy. Then, I shall clarify the role of theological rationality in generating ethical norms before demonstrating the epistemological compatibility of liberal theology to liberal democracy. This will lead me to put forward a pragmatist discriminatory principle based on the notion of experience that allows distinguishing between foundationalist and a-foundationalist theology. I will reveal a mirror effect between the epistemology of pragmatism, which makes experience the non-foundationalist paradigm from which liberal democracy derives its legitimacy, and that of liberal theology, which similarly establishes experience as the foundation of its reflection in place of absolute truth. This notion of experience is what I propose to use as a non-foundationalist paradigm, allowing us to engage in a dynamic of the provisional. 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