Critical Conversations: Michael Polanyi and Christian Theology

Critical Conversations provides a series of theological engagements with the work of Michael Polanyi one of the twentieth centurys most profound philosophers of science. Polanyis 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 Polanyis 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 Rene Girard and they discuss points of comparison and contrast between the respective figures. While all the essays are appreciative of Polanyis contribution they do not shy away from critical analysis--and take further therefore the critical appreciation of Polanyis work. Though not often heard in contemporary theology Michael Polanyis voice had a significant influence over the likes of T. F. Torrance and Colin Gunton. . . . Polanyis 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 (2010) Michael Polanyi has attracted growing attention . . . in many disciplines in recent years. This scintillating collection . . . critically engages with Polanyis 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 Newbiggin Hans-Georg Gadamer and Rene 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 (1999) Critical Conversations displays two remarkably distinctive things about . . . Michael Polanyis 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 (2011) This volume is a welcome addition to the literature bridging science and theology as it explores the work of a major thinker who allows us to go beyond . . . shallow post-Enlightenment objectivism. . . . Polanyi showed us that the knower could not be expunged from what was known and so confirmed observations both by Kierkegaard and Heidegger about the extent to which we frame our discoveries by the spirit with which we approach them. To see Polanyis work examined in this way is a vindication for those who have attempted to be rigorously post-critical in the rapprochement between contemporary theological ep