STANLEY J. GRENZ’S THEOLOGICAL METHOD: A POSTFOUNDATIONAL EPISTEMOLOGY

In the present article, I have examined the communitarian theological method of Stanley J. Grenz. The article was dedicated to outlining Grenz's overall proposal for reshaping evangelical theology along communitarian lines due to a major cultural shift from modernity to postmodernity. To his mind, evangelical scholars can benefit the most in their theologizing from this communitarian methodological orientation. Drawing on the works of other postfoundational scholars and my personal research in the Eastern European context, I have suggested revising certain aspects of Grenz method (in particular the structure of epistemology, the question of language and truth). Taking my conclusions as a starting point, I tried to put Grenz's communitarian methodology into practice in order to present the contours of revisited communitarian method. I have demonstrated that contemporary evangelical theology, indeed, requires the notion of community due to biblical, theological, sociological, hermeneutical and apologetic reasons. While Grenz did not dedicate much writing to such questions as relationship between theology and Tradition (an exception is his work on the role of Tradition in postfoundational epistemology, unto which I drew), I have expanded them following his overall emphases. Therefore, I have concluded that Grenz's communitarian methodology can be applied well to theology if certain aspects could be revised.