Abstract:
How do we know that we can trust our viewpoints, our dogmatic principles and our
religious convictions to constitute veracity, if not truth? Where can an arbiter be found for
our deliberations to establish the trustworthiness of our viewpoints or belief systems, when
we differ one from the other on religious matters, and in the context of religious conviction
also differ in political and social endeavours? Van Huyssteen deserves commendation for
his contribution to this discourse in developing the concept of a postfoundationalist
epistemology in an attempt to justify theology’s integrity, and endorse theology’s public
voice within our highly complex and challenging world. He suggests that the concept of
human uniqueness might be the common denominator in the contributions of theology (in its
specific understanding of the unique status of humans in God’s creation) and science (in its
understanding of the unique stature of Homo sapiens in terms of biological evolution).
However, the author, in this article, argues that given the radically diverse disciplines of
science in our highly developed technological – and indeed within our current Coviddominated context (on the one hand) and the pre-scientific context of religion (on the other
hand), it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine how it can remain possible to find
something like a common issue, a shared problem, a kind of mutual concern or even a
shared overlapping research trajectory that might benefit precisely from this envisaged
interdisciplinary dialogue. Is it possible that ‘alone in this world’ could mean something
different than what Van Huyssteen suggests?
Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: How do we know that we can trust
our viewpoints, and our religious convictions to constitute truth? Van Huyssteen develops the
concept of a postfoundationalist epistemology in an attempt to justify theology’s integrity within
the discourse with science. However, the author in this article argues that it has become
increasingly difficult for systematic theology to find a shared overlapping research trajectory
that might benefit this interdisciplinary dialogue.
