Tradition on Fire: Polydoxy, Orthodoxy, and Theological Epistemology

This article explores four accounts of fire in texts that have become influential to theological epistemology, written by L uce I rigaray, R ené D escartes, G eorge F ox, and B laise P ascal. Each of these fires represents an epistemological conversion to a particular way of knowing about G od. While the authors of the K eller and S chneider volume resist a strict binary opposition between polydoxy and orthodoxy, the book as a whole—whether inadvertently or inescapably—functionally reduces orthodoxy to a single epistemological viewpoint, diagnosed by I rigaray as the L ogic of the O ne. This singular view of orthodoxy has two drawbacks. First, it is inadequate to the multiplicity of C hristian orthodoxies. It cannot account for the fires of F ox and P ascal, or for the orthodoxies that threatened them. Second, polydoxy itself is limited. Reading all orthodoxies through the lens of I rigaray's critique re‐inscribes the L ogic of the O ne that she protests. Furthermore, this pattern belies the relationality that polydoxy emphasizes. Thus, the continuing development of polydoxy might require attending to the specific multiplicities of orthodoxy itself.