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But engage Rorty we must, if only at the level of the thought-experiment which follows. To do

so, however, we need to take Rorty seriously on his own terms so as to minimize the risk of his changing

the subject, etc. I propose to do this by taking his advise and following out the consequences of central

neo-pragmatist ideas for religion and theology. The conviction I share with Rorty, and which we both

derive from Peirce, is that human beliefs are habits of activity, and that the clarity of ideas can only be

achieved by following out their consequences. In this case, of course, my habits as a religious person and

as a theologian are going to lead me to read Rorty religiously and theologically. Here, I admit to

following Rorty`s example of selectively re-reading his ancestors and peers according to his own

purposes. But insofar as the driving question for me is what pragmatism contributes to theology in our

(post/modern) world, to that extent, then, I hope to draw constructively from Rorty`s neo-pragmatist

project. Following out the consequences of pragmatism therefore requires me to take one of those

consequences--Rorty`s neo-pragmatic vision--seriously, precisely in order to be able to trace the kinds

of habits and actions which it has spawned and nurtured, and to assess the viability of the pragmatism in

all its complexity for theology. As such, I seek what Peter Ochs, following Peirce, has called a

performative solution to the question that drives this paper, motivated by the conviction that only by

doing--in this case, the activity of theologizing--can the divergent, seemingly contradictory, and

perhaps broken practices emergent from the religious intuitions of both classical and new pragmatisms be

repaired.

II.

Toward a Post-Rortyean and Post/modern Theology

Our goal here is to sketch the contours of pragmatist theology in dialogue with Rorty`s neo-

pragmatism. The post-Rortyean locution therefore plays a double-role, calling attention to what a

pragmatist theology might look like following after Rorty on the one hand, and yet specifically retrieving

Mitchell, ed., Against Theory: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1985), 132-38; quote from 135.