A Month Without Jenson

“Death indeed will terminate my story, but it will not conclude it; for it will make all my hopes into might-have-beens and my fears into never-minds, and so make absurd the anticipatory coherences by which I have lived. If I am to have a conclusion, it will have to be a resurrection.” 

—R. W. Jenson (Aug 2, 1930-Sept 5, 2017)

It’s been a month since Robert Jenson left us to the tasks of Christian life: the speaking and hearing of the gospel. These tasks directed all of Jenson’s theology, and press towards questions of culture and life. Jenson refused to indulge the strategy of cultural retreat that attempted theology as though all the modern philosophical movements had not occurred. All contemporary theology jostles in the wake of Kant and Hegel and Heidegger and the rest. We must ask how we can speak the gospel faithfully, but without simply capitulating to modernity. We cannot be premodern, but neither can we be simply modern. Jens’s theology rescued this student of the tradition more than once from the worst excesses of modern theology.

As a young evangelical student, all of my brightest ideas were merely stolen notions taken from the reactionary and modernising evangelicals: a full-throated endorsement of divine passibility, a commitment to divine temporality (arising from a tendency towards univocity), credulity towards the “hellenisation” thesis, and a belief that divine love required libertarian human freedom. Like the worst kind of young evangelical modernist, I sifted through the tradition cynically, believing the ancient Christians to have been enthralled by pagan philosophies.

When my masters degree led me to my first detailed study of Jens’ theology, I presumed that his raging against certain elements of the tradition was animated by the same scepticism as my own. I had always taken Jens as holding to the Athenian captivity of the Church, but I found that his approach to the hellenisation thesis was more nuanced than I had supposed. In one reflection, Jens playfully dismissed the purity of theology by asserting that the boundary between theology and any other discourse is “blessedly ill-defined”.

The task of theology, Jens shows, is not to find its own peculiar pure discourse, but to evangelise—to speak the gospel and see what difference it makes. It would later become a commonplace statement for Jens: the early Christians did not “hellenise” the gospel, they evangelised their own antecedent hellenism. This single observation completely eroded the thrall of the hellenisation thesis for me. I no longer looked to ancient Christianity to see what was uncorrupted that could be salvaged, but to see just how the gospel had shaped the thought-forms of the ancient world. Jens taught me how to see the gospel as the engine driving all Christian discourse.

Startled from my doctrinal slumbers, I decided to make Jens the object of my doctoral studies. Though his theology is undoubtedly revisionist, my study of Jens’ writings revealed to me a deep commitment to the Christian tradition. I was amazed to find that he was only partially modernising, tending to keep the architecture of the tradition in place, while putting up new signs or perhaps offering a coat of paint here and there.

Sometimes the awakenings to Jens’ subtle treatment of the tradition came slowly. Having swallowed Hart’s assertion that Jens denies simplicity, and having witnessed Jens’ vociferous critiques of Augustine, I mistakenly concluded that Hart was right. Knee-to-knee with Jens in Princeton, I tried to provoke him to some remarks on divine simplicity. Jens began, “Of course God doesn’t have parts”, and proceeded to robustly defend the necessity of simplicity for a thoroughly Christian theology. I went home to Sydney and read all of his books again and finally found my error.

It's been a month without Jens—a difficult month for those of us shaped and supported by him and Blanche (and there are many of us). And yet, as he affirmed again and again, we slouch not towards the grave, but towards resurrection. We are each of us drawn forward into God's enjoyable presence, roused to life by the musical harmony of the restless divine activity. Though death may take us, we are each of us remembered by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. "And to be remembered there is to live" (On Thinking the Human, 11).

Sonderegger on Style

A good book gathers annotations—marginal notes, exclamations marks, and question marks, often paired together. When the margins are full, these engagements overflow into the pages of journals and reviews. Katherine Sonderegger’s Systematic Theology is a good book. Marginalia has just published a wonderful review essay by Brad East, which captures well the confounding and compelling spirit of Sonderegger’s work.

Brad ends his review with a comment on style: “Her distinction is not that she does systematic theology… but how she does it. Her style is a throwback: unashamedly spiritual, punch-drunk with praise and prayer, compelled by living encounter with divine reality.” Which describes wonderfully the experience of reading her work.

Style, after all, has been of interest to Sonderegger for years. In the early 90s, she published a piece, “On Style in Karl Barth”, which made me never want to write on Barth again. In the opening paragraphs, she provides a chilling description of the lifelessness of Barth scholarship when compared with its source. “The lengthy treatments of Barth’s ‘method’, so popular among Anglo-Americans, seem to march on, correctly but rather mercilessly, revealing so little of the joyful delight and freedom of movement Barth shows at every turn” (p. 65). 

Those who wish to avoid method might attempt to write on Barth’s doctrine, but will hardly fare any better, since Barth forces a choice upon the interpreter: “are they ‘within the system’, or are they without, looking in? … Allegiance often results in a wooden repetition of Barth’s own phrases, only in a very loud voice” (p. 66). If one wishes to reckon with Barth at all, one must face this problem at some point, either creating a false system to critique from a distance, or entering into his world and bumbling like a fool. “It is”, Sonderegger laments, “a particularly friendless hour when this problem finally arrives at your door. Nothing, really, is so wooden to read as one’s own prose about Barth” (p. 66).

And so it is no wonder that when she comes to turn her hand to a systematic theology, Sonderegger mostly puts Barth to the side and speaks with her own voice. Perhaps being a true disciple of Barth means simply doing the work of theology, as Sonderegger says, "without a loss of nerve."

Does theology reflect self-interest? (another response to critics)

My recent posts described how my understanding of the relation between God and the world has changed in the past several years. One of the recurring criticisms of these posts was that my changing views were motivated by self-interest. This view was expressed by several party members of the AUFS People's Republic, as well as by some of my politically sensitive Facebook friends. A comment on my previous post states this view with admirable clarity:

Why don't you just be entirely honest with us? The real reason why you've changed your stance is because you've realized that you have a huge vested interest in keeping the status quo. I mean, you can say it's your kids and the stockholm syndrome you've developed toiling away for the system, but really at the end of the day, it's your desire to maintain your current comfortable lifestyle. Ahh, how nice it must be!

This habit of associating intellectual convictions with personal self-interest seems to be quite widespread among leftist undergraduates and other well-meaning citizens who get their Marxist theory at two or three removes.

Marx's class theory, however, was about the way broad social changes occur in history. It was not a psychological theory about the motivations of individual persons. In fact, it is axiomatic to Marx's theory that individuals are not consciously serving the interests of their class. Marx was familiar with attempts to explain historical events by uncovering the private interests of individual persons; he regarded such tactics as beneath contempt. In a letter to Engels, Marx poured scorn on a certain German historian who had reduced "the spirit of history" to "facile anecdote-mongering and the attribution of all great events to petty and mean causes" (Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, 1846-1895, 159). Marx was emphatic about distancing his theory from "the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest" (Marx, Surveys from Exile, 176-77).

The Marxist class theory explains the way alterations occur in vast social patterns. It does not explain why the bourgeois shopkeeper sells one kind of cheese instead of another. It does not explain why intellectuals subscribe to competing views on any given topic. It does not explain why an Australian theologian might change his mind about something. Marxist class theory is a theory of historical change, not a theory of private motivations.

One of the most brilliant and influential modern revisions of Marxian theory was Foucault's theory of discourse. Like Marx, Foucault wanted to measure large historical patterns of power and interest. His work on power and discourse, so formative for contemporary critical theory, was an attempt to lay bare the vast machinery of language and institutions, not to explain why specific individuals think and act the way they do. His theory of discourse claimed to be an explanation of the whole field within which human subjectivity operates. It was not a reductionist psychological theory, as if all one's daily choices were secretly motivated by power and self-interest.

Again, it is fundamental to critical theory that the real operations of history are hidden from historical agents. (To digress for a moment, this is one aspect of what I am referring to when I compare critical theory to gnosticism: critical theory is always concerned with the acquisition of a secret knowledge that is hidden from the masses.) A theory of discourse does not imply that individual agents (or in Foucault's case, individual speakers) are motivated by power interests. To assert this would be to miss the whole significance of "discourse" as a domain that encompasses a huge diversity of competing interests and motivations. Discourse is "a space of multiple dissensions; a set of different oppositions whose levels and roles must be described" by the critical historian (Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 173).

At any rate, Foucault's concept of power has nothing to do with sentimental moral admonitions about self-interest. Power, in Foucault's vocabulary, is a morally neutral term that describes the way a particular social order is created. "We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it 'excludes', it 'represses', it 'censors', it 'abstracts', it 'masks', it 'conceals'. In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth" (Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 194).

Anyone who has understood this theory will perceive the absurdity of the claim that the views of a particular Australian theologian can be explained by unmasking his sinister power-interests. My interlocutors used their critical theory to explain why I had really changed my mind: they might just as well have used quantum theory or homeopathy to explain it.

I have no intention of advancing an alternative account of why people change their minds. Presumably each person's intellectual convictions depend on a unique configuration of culture, education, language, environment, temperament, and experience. A theory rich enough to explain all this would have to be as large as life itself. I will only venture to say that one should take it for granted, until proven otherwise, that other people's convictions are not the product of bad motives or a wicked heart.

In which Wittgenstein encourages the academics

The Welsh scholar Rush Rhees (1905-1989) went into academic life very reluctantly. Inspired by Wittgenstein and Simone Weil, he tried working as a welder in a factory; but he was such a bad welder that he finally accepted a job at Swansea University. Still, he couldn't quite resign himself to academic life, and he often talked about quitting his job. On one occasion, when he was very close to leaving Swansea, he received the following letter – encouraging, yet brutally honest – from his close friend Wittgenstein (cited in Mario von der Ruhr, "Rhees, Wittgenstein, and the Swansea School", in Sense and Reality: Essays out of Swansea, 225):

I should, for personal reasons, hate you to leave Swansea…. Don’t stupidly throw away an opportunity of doing some good. Your derogatory remarks about your philosophical abilities & success are so much rubbish. You are all right. And I mean just that: nothing more & nothing less. Philosophical influences much worse than yours & mine are spreading rapidly, & it’s important that you should stay at your job. That your success won’t be brilliant is certain; in fact it will be meagre, it’s bound to be. Please, if you possibly can, resign yourself to it & stay on.

Have you ever heard a better rationale for sticking at academic work?

On theology and friendship

Thomas Mann once said that a writer is simply someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

I wonder if this insight could also be extended into theology. Theologians are people for whom the Christian faith is especially difficult, incomprehensible, infuriating. As a rule they are not especially talented or spiritually adept individuals. They are people whose minds have been hurt by God, and they are restlessly searching for – what? Healing perhaps, or catharsis? To expect so much from the study of theology would be futile or even dangerous. At any rate there is no lack of opportunities for theological catharsis: often our worship services seem calculated to remove the difficulty of believing, to make God easy and accessible, more a cure than a wasting sickness.

Perhaps then we should define theologians like this: They are people for whom even the Christian worship service does not provide adequate catharsis of the hurtfulness of God.

That is why, as a general rule, you should try to show kindness to theologians. Not because they are necessarily exemplary personalities. Not because they necessarily know what they're talking about. Not because they are necessarily people of great faith. Instead, you should show them kindness because their faith is so weak and so vulnerable; because they are burdened by the difficulty of God; because they are driven to think about God the way some people are driven to drink. You should take care of your theologians the way you would care for the widow and the orphan.

Jürgen Moltmann has somewhere remarked: "We are not theologians because we are particularly religious; we are theologians because in the face of this world we miss God."

This does not mean theology takes place under conditions of God's absence. We "miss God" in the world only because God is revealed in the world, only because God is so devastatingly near. It is in the company of an intimate friend that one experiences the true depths of loneliness. Theology springs from the joy and the loneliness of God's nearness.

Thus one of the proper goals of theology is not so much spiritual catharsis or intellectual mastery – clearing up every difficulty so that one can sleep at night – as the cultivation of theological friendships. Friendship sustains the difficulty of thinking about God. I warm myself by the fire of a friend's loneliness. God is near, and so we are lonely for God. Friendship is the small room in which we share together the loneliness and the joy of God's nearness.

A theology of scholarship

I've started working on a paper titled "Discerning Christ in Contemporary Thought: The Christological Basis of Christian Scholarship", for a conference in Melbourne next month. I'm trying to develop a christological understanding of the nature of Christian scholarship, followed by a brief discussion of contemporary philosophical readings of St Paul as an example of this approach to scholarship. Here's an excerpt from my first draft of the paper:

Contact with contemporary thought has nothing to do with generic sentiments about difference, tolerance and open-mindedness. It is rather – to put it as starkly as possible – a matter of obedience. The risen Christ is not internal to the church’s life; he is not ‘in’ the church, but is always on his way into the world. He judges, addresses and leads the church from without. For this reason, the church cannot rest content with its own traditions and internal resources, as though the church already possessed Christ. Rather the church must remain alert and attentive, looking into the world for traces of Christ’s life and activity.

It is here that scholarship proves indispensable to the church’s mission. The vocation of Christian scholarship is to cultivate a continuing alertness to the voice of Christ, knowing full well that Christ – because he is risen – is ‘not a dead friend but a living stranger’ (Rowan Williams). He speaks to the church in ‘strange ways’ from strange places; scholars have no privileged access to Christ’s voice, but their job is to help the church to discern this voice so that the whole church can respond in obedient faith. The church will at times discover ‘its own nature and mission’ only as it listens carefully to the voice of Christ in contemporary thought or in wider social discourses and practices.

Christian scholars must labour with the complexities of contemporary thought, not in pursuit of mere novelty or a colourless open-mindedness, but out of a disciplined attentiveness to Christ’s own voice. It is the risen Christ who draws the church out of itself and into a history of promise; because Christ is not ‘in’ the church, there is no way of anticipating in advance where he will be found, or the places from which he will speak. As Karl Barth famously remarked: "God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog…. God may speak to us through a pagan or an atheist, and thus give us to understand that the boundary between the church and the secular world can take at any time a different course from that which we think we discern."

Just as the church’s vocation is to remain poised and attentive to Christ, so the vocation of Christian scholarship is to cultivate the asceticism of discernment, to steel the church for future opportunities – strange and unpredictable – to respond faithfully to the voice of Christ.[...]

This account might go some way towards dissolving the old debate about whether theology is primarily oriented towards the church or the university. Christian scholarship will naturally be practised within these (and other) diverse institutional environments. Fundamentally though, the vocation of Christian scholarship is neither ecclesial nor academic, but christological. Its most basic orientation is neither to the academy nor the church, but to the risen Christ.

Karl Barth on writing theology

Time for another post on writing. You often hear the mantra that theology needs to be simple and accessible, addressed to some anonymous general audience. Here's what Karl Barth has to say about this view, in his preface to the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans (pp. 4-5 in the English edition; translation modified):

Those who urge us to shake off theology itself and to think – and more particularly to speak and write – only what is immediately intelligible to the general public seem to me to be suffering from a kind of hysteria and to be entirely without discernment [halte ich für eine durchaus hysterische und unbesonnene Ansicht]. Is it not preferable that those who venture to speak in public, or to write for the public, should first themselves seek a better understanding of their topic? ... I do not want readers of this book to be under any illusions. They must expect nothing but theology. If, in spite of this warning, it should stray into the hands of non-theologians – some of whom I know will understand it better than many theologians – I will count it a great joy. For I am altogether persuaded that its content concerns everyone, since the question it raises is everyone's question. I could not make the book any easier than the subject itself allows.... If I am not mistaken ..., we theologians serve the "laity" best when we refuse to have them especially in mind, and when we simply follow our own course, as every honest labourer must do.

Drawing by nakedpastor.

Theological education: what is it for?

A while back, I was asked to write a few paragraphs on theological education for some church magazine. So I wrote the following:

Last semester I taught a class on the doctrine of the Trinity: a notoriously difficult and challenging topic! Later in the year, I heard one of the students from that class leading prayer in our morning chapel service. I was really struck by his prayer: it was a kind of meditation on the things we’d been discussing all semester in class. It was an outpouring of thanksgiving to the God who is made known to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

For me, this summed up the whole purpose of theological education: not simply to make students cleverer, but to help them learn better ways to speak to God in prayer, and to one another in witness.

Who is this God who comes to us and meets us in Jesus Christ? That is the basic theological question. Answering this question requires broad knowledge, sharp thinking, scholarly discipline, and a good dose of intellectual creativity. But it also demands much more than that: if we’re really to grapple with the significance of God’s self-witness in Christ, we’ll also need to respond to that witness.

In this way, scholarly discipline becomes a form of discipleship; theology becomes an exercise in prayer. When we think – really think – of all that God has done for us in Christ, our talk about God gives way to thanksgiving, while thanksgiving likewise issues in a joyful witness to others about God’s grace and goodness.

For me, this is why theological education is so exciting and so promising – and why it’s an urgent priority for the church today. What the church really needs is not cleverer or more relevant or more professional ministers, but women and men who know how to pray and how to bear witness. Nothing could be simpler; nothing more demanding. For true prayer and witness spring only from a life that has been formed in the way of discipleship – the way of Jesus Christ.

Writing theology with Marilynne Robinson

The Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton is holding an intensive three-week residential workshop with Marilynne Robinson, for theologians who want to write for wider readerships. The workshop runs from 20 June through 10 July 2010. Applications are invited from tenured and tenure-track scholars in any of the theological disciplines: full details here. Robinson explains the purpose of the workshop:

“Theology has been the mediator of the primary literature of faith since antiquity. The writers of the psalms, the prophets, the Apostle Paul all interpret core belief — that God is One, the Creator of heaven and earth, and that he has made humankind in his image. Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin each gave intellectual, social and artistic form to modes of Christian life which without them are hardly to be imagined. Lately the practice of this ancient tradition has receded into the academy and learned the idiom of specialization, leaving religion increasingly vulnerable to the charge, and the fact, of vacuousness. We will consider the impulse to think and write theologically, always in light of the intrinsic and profound significance of theology to the life of faith and the world of thought.”

This is a great opportunity to work with one of the world's finest writers. In my view, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Cormac McCarthy's The Road are the two great American novels of the past decade. And Robinson is also a vivid and incisive theological writer, as her remarkable essays in The Death of Adam attest.

So anyway, you might like to get along to this great workshop. If I could hitchhike from Sydney to New Jersey, I'd be there myself, hauling my old typewriter across the country like Jack Kerouac with his dirty coat and 100-foot scroll.

Theologians (still) talking to one another about themselves

Following our recent discussions, Evan talks about theologians talking to one another about themselves, while Erin posts on theologians and their crazy talk. On the topic of theology as a university discipline, Samuel also has a post on theology as a (deservedly?) marginalised science, while Jason discusses doing theology in the university.

Update: Erin now has another very extensive post, Theologians and their crazy talk, Part 2.

Ecclesiological Stockholm Syndrome

Responding to Halden on doing theology against ourselves, Adam suggests that many theologians have Ecclesiological Stockholm Syndrome: "the twin tendency to idealize and fetishize local church life and to denigrate their own role".

Doing theology against ourselves

Halden has two posts on "doing theology against ourselves", with some interesting ensuing discussion. He writes:

The frequent discord between theology and theologians isn’t actually such a bad thing.... If theologians could only write in accordance with their moral achievements, no one could ever write in a way that called herself into question. Theology would merely be an exercise in self-congratulation if we only recommended our own achievements. That our attempts to talk about God often end up condemning us is, you might say, far better than the alternative.

Or to put it another way: the brokenness of the theologian can also be taken up in the service of theology's witness to a reality that utterly transcends it.

On theology as research

Ross has posted these comments by Geoff Thompson on theology as academic research:

Theologians engaging in research commit themselves to certain protocols of argument which are often absent from the populist theological debates which occur in the church. Involvement in research is, at the very least, a commitment to the academy’s culture of debate where protocols such as the following would (hopefully) apply: the sifting and weighing up of evidence, a humility to see the weaknesses in one's own position and to be corrected by one's critics, care in the construction of arguments, a willingness to employ persuasion rather than dogmatism, and (therefore) a refusal to be dominated by the immediate....

Sometimes theological discussion in the churches is illuminating and inspiring. Generally, however, the culture of theological discussion in the churches has little patience with the kinds of protocols noted above. It is frequently reactive, often trapped in denominational and geographical parochialism, and seldom well-informed. It is often driven by the pragmatic and the contingent, and is thereby distanced from any patient quest for the truth which intentionally draws on a larger horizon of theological wisdom. All of this is intensified by the underlying theological and biblical illiteracy which characterises so much contemporary Christianity.

Of course, for an alternative model to be recognised and appreciated, it would be necessary to break through the prevailing culture. The work and witness of the research-oriented theologian might not of itself be sufficient to effect that break through. Nevertheless, a research-strong faculty might become something of a benchmark within the life of the church for more patient and theologically-richer discussions within the church at large.

I think these questions deserve much more attention than they usually receive. What does it mean to say that theology can be practised as university research? One of the most interesting things I've read on this is an article by Hans Ulrich, which I summarised in an earlier post. And I also really appreciated Bruce McCormack's brief article on the justification of a theology faculty.

Augie March and the problem with systems

So I’ve joined a cool book club that meets in the Kings Cross area of Sydney. This month, our book was Saul Bellow’s playful rambling picaresque romp, The Adventures of Augie March (1953). One of my favourite characters is Einhorn, a guy who (at least early in the story) likes to cook up elaborate plans and schemes. The narrator, Augie, describes him like this:

“He was absolutely outspoken about vital things, and he’d open his mind to me, especially when we were together in his study busy with one of his projects that got more fanciful and muddled the more notions he had about being systematic, so that in the end there’d be a super-monstrous apparatus you couldn’t set in motion either by push or crank” (pp. 74-75).

Could you say the same thing about some theological systems? Is it possible for a theology to become so perfect, so elaborately systematic, that you simply can’t do anything with it?

The art of citation

Recently I was talking with some friends about the problem of citation in contemporary theological writing. We bemoaned the disturbing rise of block-quotes in much current writing: the tendency merely to cite large chunks of (presumably transparent and authoritative) text, instead of trying always to speak in one’s own voice, while reserving the apposite citation for particular strategic purposes.

Anyway, Leland de la Durantaye’s excellent new book on Agamben includes a discussion of Agamben’s notion of “the art of citing without quotation marks” – an idea derived from Walter Benjamin. Durantaye writes (pp. 145-46):

“Benjamin had a singular relation to citation. He once wrote that the ‘craft of the critic’ required a ‘theory of critical citation’…. In his One-Way Street, he informed his readers that ‘citations in my work are like armed thieves who emerge suddenly and rob leisurely strollers of their convictions.’ He thus uses citations strategically; they are part of the guerilla warfare he wages against the preconceived notions of his reader…. To cite without quotation marks is to offer the idea without the imprimatur of an author or authority. This requires of the idea that it stand or fall on its own merits and not find automatic support from its lineage. Elsewhere in The Arcades Project, Benjamin compares citational footnotes to bills slipped under the garters of women for hire. His sensitivity to the less reputable sides of citation was particularly keen.”

Theology and the self in cyberspace

At next week’s AACC conference in Brisbane, I’ll be giving a dinner talk entitled “Theology 2.0: Blogging as Theological Discourse”. If anyone knows of some good research in this area, I’d be glad for some extra reading tips before I start writing the paper. Here’s the abstract I submitted:

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben once remarked: “There are no authors today who could console themselves by thinking that their work will be read in a century (by what kind of human beings?)...” The emergence of new web technologies, coupled with the formation of new online communities, raises sharply this question of “what kind of human beings” might exist a century from now. This paper analyses the contemporary Web 2.0 environment (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, online gaming, etc), and offers a reflection on the way these web technologies are forming our interior human landscapes. Focusing especially on the place of blogging in contemporary theology, the paper argues that theological discourse is changing and adapting under the impact of new technologies and new forms of human interaction – just as, in another period, theological discourse changed under the impact of the printing press and the mass production of books. The paper will suggest some possible answers to the questions: what kind of self is formed by blogging? And what kind of theology?

Some autobiography from John Webster

I know I’m a latecomer here, but last night I finally read Shaping a Theological Mind: Theological Context and Methodology, edited by Darren Marks (Ashgate 2002). It’s a fascinating collection of autobiographical reflections by leading theologians (e.g. James Cone, Colin Gunton, Jürgen Moltmann, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Kathryn Tanner).

There are some really nice moments – such as Alister McGrath’s observation: “Why do theologians not write novels, aiming to express theological notions in a narrative manner? … There are many theologians who have written about novels; why not write novels instead?” (p. 43). Or Moltmann’s observation, which could serve as a perfect summary of the history of 20th-century theology: “Looking back, it is a curious thing about theology that problems come up, are discussed to the point of personal recrimination (at least in Germany) and then, still unresolved, quietly disappear again, pensioned off, so to speak” (p. 92).

But the best part of the book is John Webster’s wonderful autobiographical narrative, “Discovering Dogmatics.” This is a great introduction to Webster’s theology, as well as an insightful polemical history of British theology since the 1970s. Even if I’m ambivalent about Webster’s current emphasis on divine aseity, it’s very impressive to hear him articulating the contexts within which this emphasis has become so important to him, and to hear of the very deliberate way in which he has set out to “reinvent for myself the office of theologian.” Webster’s theological style (like his doctrine of God!) is typically marked by balance, poise, invincible serenity – so it’s especially good in this essay to glimpse something of the polemical background to his work. Here’s an excerpt:

“I have found that commitment [to Christian dogmatics] has sometimes entailed a measure of academic isolation. In view of the widespread view that English language doctrinal theology is in a much healthier condition than it has been for many years, this isolation may seem odd. But as I read a great deal of contemporary systematic theology, I am struck by a sense that the centre of gravity is in the wrong place – usually it is heavily ecclesial, strongly invested in the Gospel as social and moral reality, overly invested in the language of habit, practice and virtue, underdetermined by a theology of divine aseity. It is not yet Ritschl; but, without a seriously operative eschatology, it has little protection against slipping into social and cultural immanentism…. And so I find myself at odds with those of my British colleagues who are more confident of the state of systematic theology: where they see an invigorated and invigorating discipline engaged in lively conversation in the academy, I tend to see a soft revisionism chastened by bits of Barth, or over-clever Anglo-Catholicism with precious little Christology, soteriology or pneumatology” (p. 133).

Ten virtues for theological students

The ancients understood education as inculturation (παιδεια) into a life of virtue (αρετη). The main point of my recent satirical post was to suggest that theological education should similarly be understood as formation in virtue, rather than (as is too often the case) an inculturation into the vices of academia. In that post, I highlighted ten vices of theological education. And due to the number of emails I’ve received in response (partly from students who felt a little chastened or disillusioned, or that I was being too cynical), I’ve tried here to sketch out a contrasting list of ten virtues. Obviously this isn’t meant as a complete list (much less an autobiographical list!) – it’s just a parallel which makes explicit what was implicit in the earlier post:

1. Patience: In theological education, the process of learning is more important than the specific opinions you might acquire as a result. You can’t learn everything at once; just relax and enjoy the ride.

2. Breadth: In theological education, the connections between disciplines are often more important than the content of any single discipline in isolation. The development of wide-ranging interests – and the capacity to engage in wide-ranging discussions – is more valuable than the selection of any narrow specialisation.

3. Curiosity: One of the goals of theological education is to cultivate a lively sense of curiosity; the student who sticks only to the curriculum will not learn much. So resist the temptation to become too disciplined – and be sure to “waste” plenty of time reading novels, listening to music, and aimlessly enjoying the company of friends.

4. Clarity: In theological discourse, a single lapidary statement is better (and more difficult to achieve) than twenty pages of jargon.

5. Attentiveness: In theological education, even the most brash and opinionated among us are given the opportunity to cultivate a childlike fascination with the views of other people. Without attentive fascination, one’s capacity for surprise is diminished; and the essence of theology is surprise.

6. Love: Theological formation should be driven by a love for truth, not by animosity towards untruth. Truthful theology always involves polemics – but since truth takes form as love, it can never be used as a weapon to wound another person. Where this occurs, truth becomes a falsehood.

7. Friendship: Education is always competitive to some extent; but your peers should be viewed as friends and companions rather than competitors. In theological education, friends are your best unofficial teachers: one often learns more from them than from any of the curricular activities, or any of the professors.

8. Simplicity: The goal of theological education is Christian proclamation. Students sweat and labour for years through difficult texts and languages and ideas – only so that their preaching can one day seem easy and effortless and spontaneous. Preaching is not like mathematics: you do not “show your steps.”

9. Truth: Ambition for the comfort and respectability of a career is a deadly temptation which the theological student must resist. One can serve the idol of career only by compromising the call to speak the truth – that is, by sacrificing one’s entire theological vocation. Theological education is not about garnering academic favour, nor about treading the eggshells of correctness and respectability; it is about loving the truth and speaking the truth faithfully, while “taking no thought for tomorrow” (Matt. 6:34).

10. Prayer: Prayer is the theologian’s most fitting and most distinctive activity. A theologian who does not pray is a grotesque aberration – like a literary scholar who doesn’t read, or a music teacher who cannot play an instrument. Above all else, “the theologian is the one who prays” (St Evagrius).

What is systematic theology?

The latest issues of the International Journal of Systematic Theology and Irish Theological Quarterly contain a great pile of essays exploring the nature of systematic theology from Catholic and Protestant perspectives. Interestingly, a couple of the articles refer to Lewis Ayres’ polemical call for “a wider critique of the culture of systematic theology as such, an uncovering of the conditions that make it possible, and a sketch of the sort of theological culture that would enable a deeper and more attentive engagement [with historical sources]” – but none of the articles really attempts to respond to this remarkable challenge. Anyway, here’s a list of the articles, with a few remarks about each one:

Nicholas M. Healy, “What Is Systematic Theology?”
This is one of the most interesting and stimulating of all the essays. Healy distinguishes between “official theology” (the production of church institutions), “ordinary theology” (the reflection of virtually all believers), and “professional-academic theology.” The purpose of academic theology is to mediate constructively and critically between the other two kinds of theology. In order to do this, academic theology must maintain a certain distance from both church and academy; “systematic theology must necessarily be a bit of an outsider in both the church and the university if it is to contribute fruitfully to the quest for greater understanding of the Christian faith.” Professional-academic theology suffers if it is accommodated too much to the demands of the university, or if it is “required to serve the church rather too directly, either by teaching the official theology or working to support it.” On the whole, Healy argues that the university provides the best environment for this kind of academic theology, provided it always stays in close relation to both “ordinary” and “official” theology. Thus theology can work “as a constructively unsettling element in both places,” the church and the university.

Fáinche Ryan, “Theology as a Road to Sanctification?”
I think this is by far the most important and most challenging essay. Ryan opens with this: “In an article entitled ‘Théologie et sainteté’, written in 1948, Hans Urs von Balthasar notes that for a long tract of Christian history the great theologians were also the great saints, but that this no longer seems to be the case.” She thus raises pointed questions about the kinds of people who are responsible for teaching theology: “Is God truly the subject of this ‘academic’ theology? Do theologians, indeed does the Catholic Church, expect students to become formed and transformed through the doing of theology? … Who might teach this discipline which seems to pertain to the sacramental life of the Church?” Through a close reading of Aquinas, Ryan argues that theology should be regarded as “a sanctifying activity”, indeed that it is a kind of sacrament – or at least a “quasi-sacrament.” Prayer and contemplation are of the essence of a theologian’s life; and “like true prayer, authentic theology leads to transformation, it leads towards God, towards holiness, and in this way may be seen as pertaining to the sacramental life of the Church.”

John Webster, “Principles of Systematic Theology”
A defence of the contemplative nature of systematic theology. Theology’s rationality is made possible by the trinitarian relations; the Father and Son “open to creatures a share in the divine knowledge.” The article provides an interesting window on how Webster’s current work is being shaped by his ever-deeper immersion in the world of Reformed scholasticism (so that the influence of Reformed orthodoxy appears to be eclipsing that of Barth). He says things like this: “The first material object of systematic theology is God considered in himself.” And this: “It must be emphasised: theology is possible; there is a proportion between theologia in se (the divine knowledge) and theologia nostra (creaturely knowledge).” And this: “Systematic intelligence is fitting, and it is appropriate to attempt a consistent overall presentation of Christian teaching, in which the infinite divine archetype is echoed in finite ectypal modes of intelligence.”

Paul S. Fiddes, “Concept, Image and Story in Systematic Theology?”
An argument for the importance of an “aesthetic theology” which utilises extra-biblical novels and poetry as theological source materials. Fiddes responds to Francesca Murphy’s book, God Is Not a Story. He agrees that systematic theology is concerned with concepts and realities, not merely narratives; but he concludes: “God is indeed a story, but a story that is more actual than anything in the world about which the story is told. To say this is ‘poetic’, but it is also a matter of sheer realism.”

Neil Ormerod, “What Is the Goal of Systematic Theology?”
A critique of the residual Kantianism of contemporary systematic theology, and an argument (via Lonergan) for the role of judgment in systematic theology: “if we acknowledge the constitutive role of judgment in knowing truth, then … dogmas are essentially ecclesially constituted judgments of truth, not reinterpretations of interpretations of experience. They seek to express in precise and concise terms truths presented to us in the Scriptures.”

A. N. Williams, “What Is Systematic Theology?”
An argument that “systematicity – the fact of being systematic, of expressing connections between doctrines – is of the essence of theology.” The subject-matter of systematic theology is the relationality within the Trinity and the relations between God and the world; this means that theology is always concerned with the “system” of these relations and connections.

In conclusion, this is a very interesting range of essays, including a couple of first-rate articles: but all this talk of “systems” has given me a sudden urge to go read some Rowan Williams...

Hans Urs von Balthasar on writing and living

The other day, a friend gave me a very charming little book by Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect (Ignatius, 1993). It includes some remarkable reflections on the processes of writing – including the following, on the gap between one’s life and one’s writing:

“It is not possible to make a clean separation between [writing and living]; a book must reflect much of the meaning that the writer seeks to give his own existence, even if this meaning is rather often stamped on the book against the direct will and supposition of the author…. Whoever has truly experienced this gives up the attempt to bring his literary work into harmony with his life; when he writes, he is ahead of himself in a dream of the totality in which he would like to give his fragments a sure home; then once more he limps along behind his own self, or even creeps backward and looks around, like Lot’s wife, into a beloved image of the past, an image that entices all the more magically since it is already ablaze. Who can keep up?” (pp. 17-18).