Introduction: Theology and Rationality Inside Out
The following six articles are revised versions of papers given at a research workshop, ‘‘Theology and Rationality,’’ at the University of Toronto in November 2012. The workshop came about as part of a larger project bearing the same title, launched and carried out by the Department of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion at Goethe University Frankfurt. Promoting and strengthening the ‘‘strategic partnership’’ between (and supported by) both institutions, a follow-up to the Toronto workshop titled ‘‘Rationality Inside Out’’ will be held at Goethe University in October 2013. Here the nature and inter-religious significance of rationality will be discussed both from an internal (intra-religious: Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and external (extraor non-religious) perspective. The six papers presented here cover a fairly wide range of what at first sight might seem rather disparate aspects of the overall theme. However, closer inspection reveals a common focus in guiding interests and in particular topics and methods chosen. As such the papers can be divided into three subgroups. The first two are in large parts, though not exclusively, devoted to the concept of rationality. Heiko Schulz suggests to conceive of the latter as an epistemic virtue-concept, which, other characteristics notwithstanding, is to be placed halfway between virtues that admit being reformulated both as goods and duties (e.g., honesty) and those lacking this capacity (e.g., wisdom). After briefly arguing for a pragmatical, ‘‘success’’-related standard or measure of rationality, theological statements and/or religious beliefs are shown to be epistemically successful and thus rationally justified, at least in principle, if and to the extent that they are rooted in experiences to be spelled out as ‘‘acute spiritual crises.’’ Some theological implications of this view are briefly discussed at the end of the article. A different approach—yielding epistemically similar conclusions—is chosen by Gesche Linde: drawing on selected examples of religious argument across world religions, she outlines a minimum concept of rationality (person-relatedness, structure-relatedness, communicability, generality, differentiatedness), in order subsequently to connect the latter with a semiotic frame theory. This theory invokes Charles Peirce’s analytical system of semiotic trichotomies, which, among other things, allows and calls for distinguishing between different types of rationality. In light