Abstract

This study traces the influences of American Philosophical Pragmatism as represented by William James, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce on the development of three generations of Yale theologians: D. C. MacIntosh, H. Richard Niebuhr, and James M. Gustafson. The author enlarges the recent research on American religious realism and empiricism that has focused almost exclusively on the relationships between pragmatism, the Chicago School, and process theology. By examining the Yale theologians, this study provides an account of pragmatism that highlights its pervasive character in American intellectual history in general and theology in particular. The author argues that MacIntosh, Niebuhr and Gustafson all sought a legitimate space for the cognitive meaning of theology within an intellectual environment that rebelled against the triumph of theology. ;The first three chapters locate theology's crisis of legitimacy within classical pragmatism's reconstruction of experience, its optimistic view of human intelligence, and its commitment of naturalism in metaphysics and religion. Within this atheological context, the discussion on MacIntosh focuses on his attempt to recover the cognitive meaning of theology based on conceptual realism in the realms of morals and religion. MacIntosh hoped to achieve this possibility through a phenomenological analysis of the religious consciousness. ;The discussion of Niebuhr describes his criticisms of MacIntosh and the Chicago theologians, and it also describes Niebuhr's own attempt to locate the cognitive insights of theology within the limits of historical faith. Finally, the discussion of Gustafson tries to show how he seeks to overcome projects such as MacIntosh's phenomenology of religious consciousness and Niebuhr's fideism by turning theology back toward the original context of its crisis of legitimacy: natural theology. The unity of experience, methodological holism, and communicative praxis characterize Gustafson's religious pragmatism. On the basis of dialogue among various discourses on nature, experience, and meaning, Gustafson hopes to recover a legitimate space for the cognitive meaning of theology in ethics and religion