Abstract

Through an interdisciplinary approach, this study investigates the possibility of using evolutionary epistemology as an epistemological tool in theological reasoning. The author argues that evolutionary epistemology contributes to overcoming the epistemological crisis currently shaking theology and allows theology to choose a different option than those offered by foundational modernism and relativistic postmodernism. This dissertation asserts that contemporary biology and its evolutionary paradigm offer a basis for a new approach to the epistemological questions within theological reasoning transcending the common modern-postmodern dichotomy. The application of evolutionary epistemology to theological questions can be seen as a concretization of the current discussion about the place of postfoundational theology in the work of Dr. Wentzel van Huyssteen. Van Huyssteen argues for a post-foundational stance which enables the researcher to fully acknowledge the role of context and the role of interpretive experience in reflections about God without falling into relativism. This is made possible through evolutionary epistemology which argues that there is a common process by which knowledge is acquired. The common denominator of thew processes is found in the selection processes that are the basis of all kinds of human knowledge; scientific, religious or even knowledge of the environment expressed by bodily adaptation. Consequently, the author does not argue for a parallel between nature and God, but for a parallel between how we know nature and how we know God. The way we acquire knowledge has, however, consequences for reliability of our claims. Not only knowledge of material reality but religious convictions must be seen as a response to experiences that reach far back into the human evolutionary past. Therefore, the author argues that we must trust our religious convictions as fully as we trust our basic knowledge of the material world around us. This position also implies that both religious and scientific rationality have common roots. The second part of this dissertation tests these claims by a critical reading of three theologians who attempted to combine evolutionary theory with theology, namely, R. W. Burhoe, Philip Hefner and Gerd Theissen