205

“More Realism, Critically”—A Replyto James K. A. Smith’s “The (Re)Turnto the Person in Contemporary Theory”

By Christian Smith

I am grateful for James K. A. Smith’s (hereafter JS) very thoughtful review (see

Christian Scholar’s Review

40.1 [Fall 2010]: 77-92) of my book,

What is a Person?

(here-after

WiaP?

). Much of his exposition gets the book and my larger intellectual projectright, which I greatly appreciate. But some of his critical arguments I think missthe mark. Here I address some issues that come up in his review that strike me asdebatable and relevant to

CSR

readers.First, the general lay of the land. Both JS and I are antireductionists. But JS(apparently) subscribes to some version of pragmatism that is friendly to relativ-ism. I am a critical realist. Pragmatism cannot tolerate critical realism’s “ontologi-cal baggage.” Critical realism, however, believes it can incorporate some of theworthwhile insights of pragmatism (such as the test of “practical adequacy” as oneof many criteria for believing statements to be true), but it rejects many of the cen-tral claims of the pragmatist tradition.

My 2003 book,

Moral, Believing Animals

, ismore amenable to a pragmatist reading than is

WiaP?

, which explains why JS likesit better and judges the latter to be a “step backward” (86). My view is that whenone is standing on the edge of a precipice above a bottomless chasm (of relativism),taking a step backward is a good thing to do, a prerequisite to advancing forwardin better directions. The better direction is critical realism. JS is also a philosopher,while I am a sociologist. He seems pretty friendly to postmodernism, whereas Ihave grown increasingly unsympathetic to the same in recent years (which showsin

WiaP?

). JS has spent his career in Christian college and university settings, whileI have spent the bulk of mine in secular research universities. He has publishedmost (though not all) of his books with Christian publishers (Baker, IVP, Eerdmans,and so on), while I have published most (though not all) of mine with secularuniversity presses (Chicago, Routledge, Oxford). Finally, JS is a Protestant, and Iam Catholic. These differences, I think, are relevant in various ways to the presentdiscussion.

Christian Smith

is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology, Director of the Center forthe Study of Religion and Society, and Director of the Center for Social Research at the Uni-versity of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.

206

Christian Scholar’s Review

The first problem in JS’s thinking concerns his suggestion, developed mostlyin the second half of his review, that my argument in

WiaP?

is “timid,” which isrelated to his pressing Christian scholars to be more “sectarian” by being explicitlyChristocentric in their scholarship. I have no doubt that some Christian scholar-ship is timid. But the suggestion that

WiaP?

is timid is, for me, amusing and exas-perating. That is the sort of thing that could only be said by someone who does notreally understand from the inside the intellectual and social reality of the socialsciences today. I think this is one place where JS, being a philosopher doing a par-ticular kind of work in a Christian institutional context,

shapes his review. To methis feels like a West Point officer complaining from the banks of the Hudson thatthe troops on the ground in Afghanistan are not fighting forcefully enough. I un-derstand why JS argues as he does. But being intelligible does not mean beingright. In the academic context in and to which

WiaP?

primarily speaks, it is any-thing but timid—as I anticipate forthcoming critical reviews in social science jour-nals will demonstrate. That no doubt says more about the state of social sciencethan JS’s ideas, but it is what it is.This first problem raises two related questions. First, what are legitimate formsof Christian scholarship? Second, what are good strategies for engaging academicdebates with colleagues who profoundly disagree with Christian truth claims? I believe I understand JS’s position on these matters, as expressed in his review, butI think it is incomplete. Regarding the first question, JS seems to be suggesting thatall worthwhile Christian scholarship needs to be driven by an explicitlyChristocentric confession and argument. The mistake here is believing that schol-arship across all disciplines must include an explicit theological component or else be sub-Christian. I think that is wrong and, in its own way (ironically), reduction-istic. From a critical realist perspective, different disciplines seek to understandand explain different levels or dimensions of reality by logics and methods properto their own levels or dimensions. That explains the legitimate differences between,for example, physics, biology, psychology, sociology and astronomy. And it justi-fies different kinds of discourse proper to different disciplines.

It is one thing to believe that all thinking must ultimately be governed by theChristological reality; it is another to demand that the Christological implications of everyscholarly project be spelled out explicitly in every publication (or artistic object or perfor-mance)

. There is more than one legitimate mode of Christian scholarship, not everyone of which requires the kind of scandalously particularistic sort of explicit expo-sition JS seems to advocate. Following JS’s direction here would, I fear, produce the

The language JS uses to speak about critical realism throughout his review suggests to menot only that he is unconvinced by it, but that he also does not entirely and accurately graspits claims. If so, then the latter (not grasping) probably contributes to the former (not beingconvinced). Critical realism is complex, rich and nuanced. It deserves to be understood well before being either embraced or written off. I know it is easy to claim, “my critic just doesn’tunderstand.” But sometimes, on some points, that is true.

I am not suggesting that institutional contexts are determinative, only sociologically influ-ential as tendencies.

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“More Realism, Critically”—A Reply to James K. A. Smith

academic equivalent of the CCM (contemporary Christian music) genre of “faith- based” music: always explicit, not very poetic, pretty boring. Does this view createpossibilities for some Christian scholarship to be timid, even compromised? Ofcourse. Is the proper response to demand that all Christian scholarship make ex-plicit all of its Christological moorings and implications? No. Let’s get real. What ispossible to say in IVP and Baker books is mostly not possible with the Universityof Chicago Press. I do not have a problem with that. The world needs both. Bothare important and valuable. But let us not imagine that scholars can, in the name of“embracing the scandal,” simply shift the same message untranslated from one toanother. I do not even think that they should.To some extent, I read JS’s argument as simply telling us that he really appre-ciates good theology that connects to issues like human personhood. I am glad forthat. I do too. But that does not mean all good Christian scholarship must at somepoint shift into an explicitly theological mode. It no doubt sometimes should. But itcertainly need not always. Just because such moves are in principle

possible

(asthey are with

WiaP?

) does not mean that they must become

actual

at every oppor-tunity. And just because some scholarship dealing with issues of reality and truthdoes not make explicitly Christological claims does not automatically mean that itis a work of “nontheistic natural theology” (87). (So, comparing Smith to Kelsey isapples and oranges, but JS seems to want to view them as apples and apples.)What about the second, related question of good

strategies

for engaging inacademic debates with colleagues who embrace radically different presuppositionsabout reality? There is more than one way to skin a cat. The Christocentrically in-your-face approach has much to commend it—I have known Stanley Hauerwas(personally) and read Karl Barth (

Church Dogmatics

) long and well enough to knowall about this. But there are also other approaches that embody different Christianvirtues that are equally legitimate and, in many contexts, I think, preferable. Chris-tian scholars need to employ a variety of forms, styles, postures, methods andstrategies in their scholarship, each discerningly best suited to their particular con-ditions. JS is concerned that too many fearful and insecure Christian scholars have backed themselves into shrinking and apologetic defenses of mere theism and natu-ral law. That may be. But that concern must also be balanced with an appreciationfor the fact that certain less “scandalous” forms of scholarly engagement can also be motivated, not by fear or insecurity, but by Christian

love

for “the (worldview)stranger,” a kind of

hospitality

to “the (intellectual) alien,” an open

humility

to learnfrom “the (scholarly) Samaritan” and a

patience

in viewing the task of Christianscholarship as a long-term, developmental process. That has its own dangers. Butwhat does not?Yale’s Lamin Sahnneh has rightly highlighted the significance of the fact thatChristianity is a translatable faith, not one that demands that everyone learn the“pure language” of, say, Arabic or Aramaic. That is a relevant fact for Christianscholars directly engaging often smart and well-intentioned colleagues who sim-ply cannot see (for sometimes understandable reasons) that Christian truth claims