Critical Conversations: Michael Polanyi and Christian Theology

4.6/5 ( ratings)

Critical Conversations provides a series of theological engagements with the work of Michael Polanyi, one of the twentieth century's most profound philosophers of science.

Polanyi's sustained explorations of the nature of human knowing open a range of questions and themes of profound importance for theology. He insists on the need to recover the categories of faith and belief in accounting for the way we know and points to the importance of tradition and the necessity sometimes of conversion in order to learn the truth of things. These themes are explored along with Polanyi's social and political thought, his anthropology, his hermeneutics, and his conception of truth. Several of the essays set Polanyi alongside the work of other thinkers, particularly Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and René Girard, and they discuss points of comparison and contrast between the respective figures. While all the essays are appreciative of Polanyi's contribution, they do not shy away from critical analysis--and take further, therefore, the critical appreciation of Polanyi's work.

"Though not often heard in contemporary theology, Michael Polanyi's voice had a significant influence over the likes of T. F. Torrance and Colin Gunton. . . . Polanyi's groundbreaking work offers constructive avenues for thinking through, not simply the relationship between faith and science, but many central themes in the Christian tradition. Such potential is aptly demonstrated in this warmly recommended collection of essays. Murray Rae and his colleagues have done us a good service in compiling this study."
--John G. Flett
Habilitand at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel, and author of The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and the Nature of Christian Community

"Michael Polanyi has attracted growing attention . . . in many disciplines in recent years. This scintillating collection . . . critically engages with Polanyi's post-positivist ideas on the important role in all human knowing played by faith, relationality, authority, tradition, and communities of inquiry. As well as exploring his social, political, anthropological, and theological views, contributors bring Polanyi into conversation with Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and René Girard. This is theology-and-science at its most responsible, insightful, and interesting. Read it!"
--John Stenhouse
Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Otago, and editor with Ronald L. Numbers of Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion and Gender

"Critical Conversations displays two remarkably distinctive things about . . . Michael Polanyi's epistemology. The rich, open-ended truthfulness of his proposals inspires innovative and penetrating cross-disciplinary conversations of all kinds; and conversants thus engaged experience freeing creativity and conviviality. Theological engagement is especially fruitful since Polanyi himself challenges a deadening Enlightenment legacy with an approach that is knowledge- and humanity- and hope-restoring because it is theologically attuned. These essayists offer a rich conversation that others may join profitably--convivially."
--Esther L. Meek
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Geneva College, and author of Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology

Murray Rae is Professor of Theology and Ethics at the University of Otago, New Zealand.