Discerning: the Call of Theology

In this paper, I contribute to the recent dialogue between anthropologists and theologians by focusing on the disciplinary self-understanding of the latter. In the first part, I present the results of an analysis of interviews conducted with thirty theologians and religious studies scholars in the Netherlands and in Germany. I argue that the disciplinary coherence of theology found in these interviews is well captured by theology’s overarching purpose of ‘discerning life lived in God’s presence’. In the second part, I try to put more flesh on the bones of this ‘theology as discernment’. I start by introducing the work of Dutch theologian Erik Borgman, whose theology exemplifies what theology as discernment might look like. I then introduce a central discussion within theologically engaged anthropology, namely that on the relationship between description and judgment. Bringing the reflections of my main anthropological interlocutor, Joel Robbins, in dialogue with Borgman’s theology, I suggest that discernment can uniquely bring description and judgment together. In the final section, I return to the first part by reflecting on discernment as theology’s disciplinary coherence, tying this to the description/judgment discussion and drawing conclusions for what this means for the distinction between theology and anthropology.