Theology as rational enterprise: Implications for Christian theology of Stephen Toulmin's philosophy of human understandin

Many theorists would argue that theology is not a rational enterprise. However, questions about the nature of rationality are not unique to theology. Stephen Toulmin criticizes both relativist and absolutist accounts of rationality and posits that rational enterprises are corporate ways of understanding experience and responding to it. Each enterprise is constituted by the ideal of resolving some basic problem or set of problems, and each has two related aspects: a discipline (a set of ideals, concepts, and particular applications of these concepts) and a profession (persons and institutions committed to employing the disciplinary concepts in order to realize its ideals). The rationality of such an enterprise is manifested in the way it evolves as its practitioners change their positions in response to changing experience, rather than in an unchanging set of ideals and concepts.;While such evolutionary accounts of rational enterprises have been rather controversial, a critical exposition and analysis of Toulmin and his critics provides an understanding of rational enterprises which avoids the problems of both relativism and absolutism. It also provides a model for understanding the particular nature of religion and theological rationality. Christian theology's constitutive ideal is the explication of Christian testimony so as to establish its authenticity and truth, and the theological profession, which includes those individuals and institutions dedicated to realizing this ideal, is a joint venture of church and academy as manifested in Christian universities and schools of theology. Because testimony itself concerns a wide range of experience, theologians must employ a variety of concepts in a variety of settings in their attempt to realize theology's ideal; because the theological task is multifarious, there are several theological subdisciplines each responsible for its part of the theological task.;Although Christian theology is currently only diffusely disciplined, it should be considered a rational enterprise. In fact, there is nothing in its character preventing its becoming more compactly disciplined if theologians would accept as the constitutive theological ideal that of so explicating Christian testimony as to establish its authenticity and its truth.