A7W99.1
“Coherent, Inclusive, Dialogical, Hospitable”:
Veli-Matti Karkkainens Constructive
Theological Method
Sc
o t t
Ma c D o
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Christ and Reconciliation . By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive
Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 1. Grand Rap
ids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2013. xiv + 453 pp. $40.00
(paper).
Trinity and Revelation. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive
Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 2. Grand Rap
ids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2014. xii + 472 pp. $40.00
(paper).
Creation and Humanity. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive
Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 3. Grand Rap
ids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2015. xix + 554 pp. $40.00
(paper).
Spirit and Salvation. By Veli-Matti Karkkainen. A Constructive Chris
tian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 4. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2016. xvii + 498 pp. $40.00
(paper).
These four books are the first four volumes of a new five-volume
systematic theology by the prolific theologian Veli-Matti Karkkainen.
Karkkainen has been a professor of systematic theology at Fuller
Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, since 2000, and also
has an appointment as docent of ecumenics at the University of Hel
sinki in his native Finland.
* Scott MacDougall is Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology at Church Divinity
School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. He is the author of More Than Com
munion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology (T&T Clark, 2015).
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Christ and Reconciliation (volume 1) examines the person (part
1: “Christ”) and work (part 2: “Reconciliation”) of Jesus Christ, treat
ing along the way such topics as the significance of Jesus’ earthly life;
evolving conceptions of messiahship; the question of Christ’s preex
istence; the relationship of Logos Christologies and Spirit Christologies; views of atonement and reconciliation; and their connection to
Christian mission. Trinity and Revelation (volume 2) weaves together
an approach to the doctrines of God, the Trinity, and revelation by
developing theologies of “Triune Revelation” (part 1) and the “Triune
God” (part 2), addressing such theological questions as the relation
ship of revelation, history, and promise; the authority of scripture, tra
dition, and community; natural theology; and approaches to speaking
properly of God, including whether to enumerate divine attributes,
within a framework that maintains God’s relationality, communality,
and hospitality as Trinity.
Creation and Humanity (volume 3) explores the world as God’s
creation (part 1: “Creation”) and the human person as having a special
role within it (part 2: “Humanity”), developing perspectives on such
crucial matters as the importance of taking the sciences seriously in
formulating doctrines of both creation and theological anthropology;
cosmological and evolutionary perspectives as resources for theology;
divine providence; the question of suffering and flourishing of life in
general and of human life in particular; the uniqueness of the human
person as created in imago Dei; and the nature of human nature. Un
like far too many systematic theologies, Spirit and Salvation (volume
4) articulates a helpful and robust pneumatology (part 1: “Spirit”) and
connects it directly to soteriology (part 2: “Salvation”), taking up such
topics along the way as the deep connections between pneumatology
and the doctrine of the triune God and between pneumatology and
the doctrine of creation; the discernment of spirits at various levels
(personal, social, political, cosmic); the character of salvation as expe
rienced as gift and transformation; the question of justification; and
the role salvation plays in effecting two related groups of phenomena:
“healing, restoration, and empowerment” and “reconciliation, libera
tion, and peacebuilding.”
R will be more than clear from reviewing just this partial list
of the topics treated thus far in Karkkainen’s systematics that space
here will not permit a detailed look at the content of it. What can and
ought to be accomplished is a closer look at his theological method.
While Kiirkkainen advances more than a few important theological
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conversations by offering fresh perspectives on old problems (some
of which are pointed out below), a case could be made that the most
important contribution that his massive effort makes resides in his
overall approach to the theological task.
Defining two of the key terms in Karkkainen s name for the work
as a whole begins to provide insight into his method, ffe calls his systematics A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World.
What he means by “constructive” and “pluralistic” is highly instruc
tive with respect to characterizing his project. For Karkkainen, “con
structive” is to be understood as synonymous with “systematic.” 1 They
are not actually synonyms, however, since like most theologians who
characterize their theologies as constructive rather than as system
atic, he marks a distinction between a systematic approach to theol
ogy that operates as if theological insights can be organized into neat
and tidy systems without doing violence to the enterprise and a con
structive impulse that seeks to build more complicated, textured, and
forthrightly perspectival views.2 He champions the latter. Moreover,
in Karkkainen’s estimation, the truth of what is delivered thereby is
not demonstrated by adherence to the systematic principle that or
ganizes, if not determines, what is offered, but by “coherence.” The
particular coherence theory of truth that he employs, however, is not
limited to connecting theological insights to one another within that
single realm of discourse, resulting in an inward-looking “ghetto” fo
cused solely on the church, a condition that he takes to be a significant
limitation of the nonfoundationalism of the Yale School. Rather, it is
one that maintains a coherence built across disparate areas of knowl
edge, exemplifying a constructive postfoundationalism that Kark
kainen wishes to extol.3
This approach connects directly to Karkkainen’s emphasis on
pluralism. His method is pluralistic in at least three senses. First,
consistent with his broad coherence theory of truth, it features a dis
ciplinary pluralism. He uses the mathematical concept of transversality as a metaphor to describe the multidisciplinary, intersectional,
embodied, and contextual character of knowledge, arguing that, as
1 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 13.
2 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 14.
3 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 10, 14.
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Thomas Aquinas thought, what is claimed theologically must cohere
with knowledge more broadly.4
Second, Karkkainens approach to Christian theology itself is
marked by an ecumenical and contextual pluralism. While he himself
is rooted in the Pentecostal tradition, his theological viewpoint is thor
oughly informed by deep and sustained engagement with theologians
from a wide range of times, places, and locations on the Christian
spectrum. Moreover, he is refreshingly aware that he, “as a middleaged European white male ,”5 has perspectival limitations stemming
from his context, that such limitations mark us all no matter what our
contexts, that all theology has a context, whether the theologian is will
ing to admit that or not, and that, therefore, a constructive theology
must engage theologies from as many contexts as possible.6 While this
means taking seriously voices that have often been marginalized—
“female theologians of various agendas such as feminist, womanist,
and mujerista; women from Africa, Asia, and Latin America; other
liberationists, including black theologians of the USA and sociopo
litical theologians from South America, South Africa, and Asia; and
postcolonialists”7—it does not mean wholesale acceptance of them.
The wide diversity of theological views, put into conversation with
one another and with Christian tradition, certainly shifts understand
ing but may not completely revise it. Karkkainen notes, presciently,
As a result—if I may put it somewhat daringly—should my
approach to constructive theology be successful according to
my own standards, the “traditionalists” would find my way of
doing theology much too open to new voices, dialogue part
ners, and sets of issues, while “progressives” might lament
that my proposal is still too much stuck with Christian tradi
tion, both biblical and historical!8
Neither does it mean that Karkkainen does not have preferred inter
locutors. Generally speaking, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jurgen Moltmann are the two theologians to whose work Karkkainen returns
4
5
6
'
8
Karkkainen, Creation and Humanity, 3-4.
Karkkainen, Spirit and Salvation, 3.
Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 16-21.
Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, xi-xii.
Karkkainen, Trinity and Revelation, 6.
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again and again w hile form ulating his own proposals throughout the
four volum es. H e also often lifts up certain voices w here particular
topics are concerned. F o r exam ple, Elizabeth Johnson, “the m oderate
Catholic fem inist,”9 is frequently a go-to figure w hen a fem inist voice
is needed. O n the person o f Christ, the biblical scholar N. T. W right
looms large. W here a postfoundationalist approach to canonical
m ethod in theology is engaged, Kevin J. V anhoozer s work is accented.
N one of this, of course, im pugns th e im portance of K arkkainens
stated goal o f treating often sidelined perspectives as “equal conversa
tion p artn ers,”10 w hich he does, particularly am ong liberationist th eo
logians. His ecum enical and contextual pluralism is crucial to the
strength and value o f his project.
Third, extending ecum enical and contextual pluralism further,
K arkkainens constructive theology attends to th e reality o f religions
pluralism. It does this in th ree modes: (1) com parative religion, which
seeks to describe and com pare the features o f religions; (2) C hristian
theology o f religions, w hich is a theological exam ination of the role
th at non-C hristian religions play in G od’s economy; and (3) com para
tive theology, w hich investigates discrete topics or concepts across
two or m ore religions w ith an eye tow ard understanding the extent to
w hich they are understood and practiced similarly in each tradition.
O f the three, K arkkainens em phasis is on the latter, the approach of
com parative theology.*
11 This is a distinctive com ponent o f his theolog
ical m ethod, one th at receives a great deal o f detailed and sustained
attention. Karkkainen returns to the com parative theological exercise
at regular intervals, investigating in d epth how the theological m atter
being treated functions in o th er faiths (lim ited alm ost exclusively to
Judaism , Islam, H induism , and Buddhism ), and som etim es how other
faiths view particular aspects o f C hristianity (for example, the Jewish
understanding o f C hristian ideas o f m essianism or Islam ic perspec
tives on C hristian trinitarian theology). Again and again, Karkkainen
rem inds us that the goal is not to advance a facile type of theological
religious pluralism , one positing that all religions are essentially and
ultim ately the same. (Karkkainen devotes an entire chapter in volum e
2 to “T he Failing Prom ises o f T/mo-Logical Pluralism s” th at fully d e
velops this view.) Rather, sensitivity to the integrity and complexity
9 Karkkainen, Creation and Humanity, 225.
10 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, xii.
11 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 21-29.
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of other faiths, as well as our own, helps us to see more clearly how
each is different, unique, and particular, and allows us to dialogue
across these differences in a spirit of confidence and hospitality. En
gaging religious pluralism via comparative theology, it seems, does not
so much reveal how Christianity and other faiths are “essentially” the
same or different, but how much they are simply themselves and are
to be honored as such. Karkkainens contention is that there is much
to be learned by doing this.
These three pluralisms—disciplinary, ecumenical/contextual, and
religious—each make crucial contributions to Karkkainens overall
method, which requires engaging this breadth of knowledge in pursu
ing theological coherence and truth. Constructive theology is, there
fore, an “integrative” discipline. In order to build a coherent “web”
that incorporates more than solely theological concerns by taking the
wider world directly into account, it must interact meaningfully with
not only “biblical studies, church history and historical theology, phil
osophical theology, . . . [and] ministerial studies,” and not only with
“religious studies, ethics, and missiology,” but also with “nontheological and nonreligious fields such as natural sciences, cultural studies,
and . . . the study of living faiths.”12 This is the tack Karkkainen takes
throughout the four volumes, to great effect, both in terms of his
handling of the individual theological loci and the overall cumulative
impact. For example, in framing his theological presentation of the
doctrine of creation, Karkkainen notes that it will need to include:
(1) reexamination of scripture and doctrinal history to recover an ear
lier non-duality between “nature” and “person”; (2) theological reaf
firmation that to speak of the creation is to speak of the Creator who
is a relational communion (as established in the preceding volume);
(3) scriptural and theological attestation that creation cannot be un
derstood rightly without a proper understanding of its eschatological
destiny; (4) detailed, substantive, and sustained engagement with the
natural sciences; (5) attention to ecumenical voices and theological
perspectives from various confessional and doctrinal locations; and
(6) careful consideration of the creation stories of the living faiths.13
In Karkkainens estimation, this provides a theologically rich view of
creation that coheres with what he has already argued and will argue
subsequently, and that accords with not only theological, Christian, or
12 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 13.
13 Karkkainen, Creation and Humanity, 9-11.
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even religious knowledge alone, but also our best understanding of the
realities that constitute the world, as broadly construed as possible.
For Karkkainen, there is no other way to do theology in what he
calls our “ ‘post-’ world,”14 a world that is “postmodern, postfoundationalist, poststructuralist, postcolonial, postmetaphysical, postpropositional, postliberal, postconservative, postsecular, post-Christian,
post-?”15 To be convincing, theology undertaken in such a context
requires a constructive method suited to its concerns and tempera
ment. To be truthful, it must also not shy away from critically resisting
its context, where necessary. Karkkainen’s working definition of his
method reflects this tension.
Systematic/constructive theology is an integrative discipline
that continuously searches for a coherent, balanced under
standing of Christian truth and faith in light of Christian tra
dition (biblical and historical) and in the context of historical
and contemporary thought, cultures, and living faiths. It aims
at a coherent, inclusive, dialogical, and hospitable vision.16
Similarly to the way in which his engagement with marginalized theo
logical voices was seen to be somewhat ambivalent, taking them seri
ously on the one hand but not uncritically on the other, Karkkainen’s
method allows him to take the “ ‘post-’ world” seriously without neces
sarily requiring him to assent fully to it.
In his initial programmatic chapter on method at the beginning of
volume 1 (which is summarized in a very abbreviated form at the be
ginning of each volume), Karkkainen writes that “this series continues
developing ‘theological method’ incrementally, step by step, as part of
the material presentation of various themes and issues.”1. It is not en
tirely clear what he means by this, since this idea is repeated in all of
the introductory chapters in each volume, yet the method itself does
not appear to develop in any appreciable manner from one volume to
the next. The method is applied in volume 4 just as it was articulated
at the start of volume 1. If, however, what he means by “development”
is that the theological implications carried in the method become
14 Karkkainen, Spirit and Salvation, 3.
15 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 1.
16 Karkkainen, Trinity and Revelation, 2.
11 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 4.
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increasingly evident and more robust as the exploration unfolds, then
this is certainly the case. The overarching theological viewpoint deliv
ered by application of his method definitely develops as the topics in
his constructive theology are addressed.
To trace just one example, Karkkainen argues in volume 2, as part
of his treatment of the “Triune God,” for a position he calls “classical
panentheism.” In this chapter, he deploys a sophisticated analysis of
the scriptural, patristic, medieval, and modern theological legacies to
argue that, far from being a contemporary emergence, panentheism is
a view with a deep root in Christian biblical and theological tradition.
If, Karkkainen argues, this classical strand of panentheistic thought—
one that balances properly Gods transcendence and immanence,
rather than sliding too far toward immanence, as he holds Schleiermacher, for instance, to have done—it can be a mediating position be
tween the hyper-transcendent extreme end of some forms of classical
theism, on the one hand, and overly immanent forms of panentheism
(as in types of process thought, for example), on the other, in a way
that accords well with both the sensibilities of our time and Christian
tradition. In volume 3, Karkkainen develops this notion of classical
panentheism in his thinking about divine action. There, Karkkainen
makes the case that holding a classically panentheistic view of God
affirms God as continual creator (transcendence) and constant pre
server (immanence) of creation, one who allows creation its proper
autonomy while still remaining present, active, and involved in the
worlds processes, in and through both their regularities and indeterminacies, an argument worked out in conversation with quantum
and chaos theories, among other scientific contributions. In volume
4, where Karkkainen is elucidating a component of his doctrine of
the Holy Spirit, he acknowledges that neither of the foregoing claims
could be made without a robust trinitarian doctrine of God that, in
accordance with both traditional and emerging feminist theologies,
and consonant with developing cosmological science, understands the
Spirit to be the life-giving and life-sustaining immanence of the God
who, while remaining transcendent, nevertheless indwells and per
meates the whole of creation.
The unfolding of the interconnected logic of this position, which
develops over the course of three volumes, demonstrates the effec
tiveness of Karkkainen s method. I have had to move too quickly over
its particulars here to make the case fully. Even so, I hope it is clear
that, while the method itself has not changed, its implications have
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become more evident. We can see at each step a balance between
tradition and contemporary context and engagement with a variety of
conversation partners from diverse sectors (including other religions,
which were not mentioned here, though Karkkainen clarifies these
positions with reference to them). And, as each step builds on the
previous and leads to the next, the overall effectiveness of the method
in constructing a viable theology for the “‘post-’ world” becomes in
creasingly visible.
This only makes good sense, for several reasons. Karkkainen s co
herence theory of truth demands it, for one thing. For another, he
seeks not only coherence but to evaluate the truth claims of theo
logical propositions in a way that, in his view, many nonfoundationalists and the Radically Orthodox shy away from doing, as they both
generally accept traditional theological propositions as intrasystemic
“rules” for the faith without much further ado. In making his case
for the interconnected conceptions of classical panentheism, a robust
but preliminary conception of divine action, and a full articulation
of pneumatology, Karkkainen tests his theological views against not
only scripture and tradition, but the insights of the natural sciences
into the conditions of creation and of other faiths on similar issues,
arriving at conclusions that are appropriate to our time and place and
that are also persuasive rather than doctrinaire. 18 As Karkkainen un
derstands it, truth can only convince, it cannot demonstrate with the
certainty of proof. This is because truth is an eschatological reality. 19
While knowledge and history are still ongoing, unfinished processes,
truth is something we need to claim humbly and hospitably, as we
can and will be limited by our finite perspectives and our theologies
will always stand in need of revision. The suggestive, searching, and
sincere tone of Karkkainen’s important work exemplifies the wisdom
of this method and of taking this approach.
These are books of technical, academic theology that are best
engaged by readers with a working knowledge of the terms, concepts,
figures, and movements of the Christian theological heritage. They
could be used with great profit in advanced seminars on specific theo
logical topics such as Christology or Trinity or soteriology.
I await the final volume of Karkkainen’s systematic/constructive
theology, Community and Hope, with great anticipation. This is not
18 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 33.
19 Karkkainen, Christ and Reconciliation, 9, 15.
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only because my own work is situated at the nexus of church and es
chatology, the two themes of the final volume, but also because it
will be a great pleasure to observe and learn from how Karkkainen
brings the ideas he has been developing over the course of the first
four books to conclusion. Given what he has produced so far, it is a
good bet that there are not only more provocative ideas coming but
even more evidence that Karkkainen s constructive method deserves
to become a noted and influential one.
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