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Michael Zbaraschuk's recent article, "Not Radical Enough: William Dean's Problems with God and History,"1 deserves a published re sponse, because it applies not only to my work but to that of many other philosophical theologians, some of whom read this journal. Before discussing the larger issues, I must attend to an item of scholarly housekeeping. Although Zbaraschuk draws narrowly, i.e., from only two of my books?History Making History (1988) and The Religious Critic in Ameri can Culture (1994)?he applies his arguments indiscriminately to my work as a totality, omitting most crucially the score of articles and the book written between 1994 and the present. Of course, there is nothing wrong with an analy sis of a narrow range of someone's writings?unless, as Zbaraschuk's does, it presents itself as an analysis of the full range of those writings. This problem is compounded by the fact that, during the years Zbaraschuk ignores, especially the later years, I was publishing some of the same arguments and revisions he faults me for never having made. Zbaraschuk does insert one piece of additional evidence, a paper I deliv ered in 1999 at the American Academy of Religion. Stunningly, he calls this my "latest effort" and opines that only "time will tell if this is a minor hiccup or the beginnings of a new direction in [my] work" (37, 50), never bothering to investigate the later publications that would have answered his question. Furthermore, he has selected for detailed analysis a never published paper? never published because I myself regarded it as unpublishable, exploratory, and speculative. Despite the above, Zbaraschuk deserves credit for challenging one aspect of my work?and, by implication, that of other philosophical theologians, especially during the period when some of us sailed under deconstructionist, neopragmatist, historicist, and other postmodern flags. I failed, he charges, to speak in a distinctively theological voice, one that moves beyond metaphys ics and morality; or, in his terms, I failed to demonstrate how my theological ideas "provide a religiously satisfying doctrine" (34). Although this is a protest |
