On November 9-11, 2006, the Research Group 'Theology in a Postmodern
Context' (K.U.Leuven) organised an expert symposium on the return of
Augustine in current postmodern philosophical-theological debates. The
North-African Church Father, or at least the thinking patterns or
intuitions borrowed from him, are often invoked in discussions on the
relation between Christian faith and the contemporary postmodern
context. On the one hand, one observes the retrieval of rather premodern
approaches in order to remedy the so-called (post-)modern crisis, which
is said to result in nihilism, relativism, etc. For what seems to
attract some theologians in Augustinian thinking is the (apparent)
marriage between Greek (neo-Platonic) philosophy and Christian faith.
Such a combination of premodern metaphysics and Christian faith would
serve as a necessary presupposition for every legitimate theological
epistemology. On the other hand, there are theologians and philosophers
who are increasingly trying to reread Augustine from a postmodern
stance, stressing the role of particularity, narrativity, historicity,
and the decentring of subjectivity, which they see present in
Augustine's approach, or from which they deconstruct Augustine's
thinking. Central questions discussed during the symposium were: Are the
analyses, offered by authors who are re-introducing Augustine with
respect to the contemporary context, correct? To what diagnosed
problems, and on what basis, do they propose Augustine as a remedy? Are
their presentations of other theological and philosophical responses to
the present situation correct and which 'Augustine' do they claim to
represent? More fundamentally: what would a genuine Augustinian
epistemology look like, and what can we gain from it? In what way can it
be normative for a theological epistemology in our day? In answering
these questions, the symposium focused explicitly on contemporary
philosophical and theological evaluations of both modernity and
postmodernity, and theological responses to them.
