‘grounding’ our theological reflection

I have a 2500-3000 word review of James K.A. Smith’s Thinking In Tongues due next Wednesday for Dr. Begbie’s “Spirit, Worship & Mission” course. While attempting to finisht the text earlier this morning, I came across this simple, yet necessary reminder to Christian philosophers, theologians, and ministers alike. It is taken from chapter 5, which bears the title “From Beliefs to Altar Calls: A Pentecostal Critique of Philosophy of Religion.”

Our philosophical accounts of the nature of Christian belief will be fitting and illuminating only to the extent that they can help us understand how “ordinary folks” believe–that is, folks without Ph.D.s or college degrees, who don’t share the philosophers’ fixation on epistemology. Too often our Christian philosophizing betrays the fact that we tend to paint all believers in our own rationalistic image, as if all believers spend their time fretting about coherentist accounts of truth, or are vexed by issues of warrant that plague testimony, or are persistently haunted by the specter of antirealism. We do well to be reminded otherwise–to discipline our theoretical reflection by regularly confronting it with “ordinary” believers with whom we worship.

James K.A. Smith, Thinking In Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), p. 121.