Date of Award
5-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Religion (M.A.R.)
First Reader
Kathryn Tanner
Second Reader
Linn M. Tonstad
Abstract
This thesis critically assesses Sarah Coakley’s proposed “théologie totale,” especially as articulated in God, Sexuality, and the Self and her 2015 Warfield Lectures. It advances four aims: (1) to analyze how Coakley’s privileging of contemplative prayer and her broad interdisciplinarity work together; (2) to situate and contextualize her claims by placing them in dialogue with Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theological method, noting convergences in experience-based starting points; (3) to evaluate contemplation as a methodological locus using Jean-Yves Lacoste’s phenomenology of prayer and Miranda Fricker’s account of epistemic injustice; and (4) to reflect on the implications of Coakley’s method for future systematic work. The study commends Coakley’s desire-centered theological anthropology, retrieval of the spiritual senses, and refusal to separate doctrine from lived religion. It also identifies tensions: a precarious balance between “un-mastery” and privileged epistemic access; risks of elitism and subjectivism in making contemplation the prime gateway to theological knowledge; and practical limits and generalizability concerns in a lone scholar’s ethnographic and interdisciplinary reach. The thesis finally sketches a collaborative “totale” that preserves contemplation’s purgative and heuristic value while refusing its exclusivity, harnessing interdisciplinary insights through ecclesial and scholarly partnerships to renew systematic theology without replicating totalizing ambitions.
Copyright
© 2017 Vincent P. Williams
Recommended Citation
Williams, Vincent P., "An Assessment of Théologie Totale" (2017). Yale Divinity School Theses.