"Always make time to read authors with whom you know you will profoundly disagree". I can still hear the slow deliberate way that was said, the last two words enunciated with a combination of relish and mischief. One of many one liners that stuck when I was at College. It was in the philosophy of religion class, and we were being subjected to R E O White’s unrelenting enthusiasm for disciplined thinking which he believed, rightly, is an essential key competence for responsible pastoral ministry.
He would have loved Stephanie Paulsell’s Pastoral Agility and Intellectual Work for its persuasive arguments in favour of forming and maintaining habits of careful, disciplined thought in the areas of intellectual reflection, analytic thought and critical appreciation of the thinking of others. Of course he would have put a red pen through my lazy and incongruous use of the word ‘loved’ at the start of that previous sentence – not least because it betrays intellectual laziness and semantic carelessness. Great teacher, R E O White – Principal of our denominational College when it was still called The Baptist Theological College of Scotland. I still like the serious ring of that now rather old fashioned name.
Anyway I took his words to heart. It was wise permissive advice, telling us that if our heart’s loyalty was to Christ, and if we were serious about being biblically literate, theologically alive, pastorally wise and homiletically worth listening to, then we’d better not stop thinking. And we’d better learn while we had the chance in College, those habits and disciplines of thought that would enable us to read and think with critical understanding, to discriminate between the ephemeral and the enduring trends in cultural thought and development, and to remain humble learners always excited by different perspectives, hard won insights, and scholarly labour in the service of truth. And if we wanted to have worthwhile, constructive things to say about the world we live in, Christian perspectives and responses to the events and movements of our own times, relevant and faithful preaching that had vital connections with where people live, then we’d better learn to be patient with those disciplines of thought that would enable us to think, and to think in a certain way. To think with clarity and the thick texture of an open, well informed and fair mind, with awareness of our own prejudices and assumptions, and with intellectual charity so that our comments are constructive rather than dismissive, hopeful rather than cynical, morally mature instead of religiously shrill. I like that combination – thinking with intellectual clarity and charity.
One way of achieving even the beginnings of such moral and intellectual thoughtfulness was to read those with whom we know we will profoundly disagree. In theological education I suppose there is always going to be a tension between the aims of training people for ministry within a clearly stated confessional context, and training people to be mature, careful, Christian thinkers unafraid of those changes and developments in thought that are part of the ongoing history of Christian existence.
If there is to be the right balance between, on the one hand, being a thoughful reader able to engage with thinking that is uncongenial, that gets my back up, or that just sounds plain wrong, and on the other, being a thoughtful reader who in following after Christ knows there is more to know than is already known, then the discipline of intellectual hospitality is essential. Does not faithfulness to Christ who is above all, through all and in all, require resistance to self-imposed limitations such as reading only certain authors from certain publishers? Is Christ the Word through whom all things were made, the Colossian Christ in whom all things hold together and in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell – is this the Christ we worry about in the marketplace of ideas? Is the truth of Christ, of the One who pervades and gives reality and substance to all that is – is such truth so fragile and Christian faith so uncertain that we fear to venture beyond what we now know? The gospel of Jesus Christ does not call us to intellectual timidity, and is not best served by chronic loss of theological nerve. The Gospel impels us outward in a mission that includes debating with the philosophers of our age, and seeking at a level way beyond our own inner piety, to bring every thought captive to Christ.
So I have learned to learn from those who think as I do – and from those who think what I think is wrong. For example, reading Hans Kung’s On Being a Christian in the late 1970’s, (and most of what he’s written since), I was confronted by a mind of vast erudition, provocative courage, and a way of doing theology that took seriously the fact that we live in a world of historical and political circumstances where being a Christian is no straight-forward exercise in personal piety. Sure in R E O White fashion I ‘profoundly disagree’ with some of Kung’s observations on Christology, or on the nature and aim of dialogue with other faiths – but this book, along with Does God Exist? and his magisterial Christianity, demonstrates to church and world alike, that Christian faith is not forced into embarrassed silence because it cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas. These three books remain important repositories of some of the most telling critiques of aspects of Christian tradition, atheist philosophy and cultural relativism as these are confronted by the New Testament reality of Jesus Christ.
In like manner, Augustine’s understanding of sin and human sinfulness, on the nature of the church, and on how the grace of God is operative in human salvation; John Wesley’s view of original sin and of the pervasiveness of sin as a condition of fallen human existence; John Calvin’s conclusions on reprobation and the divine decree; Clark Pinnock and Greg Boyd on Open Theism as a critique of classic Reformed thought on Providence; Barth’s hard line on the inadmissability of natural theology in a prolegomenon to Christian Dogmatics; Tom Torrance’s views on paedo-baptism as a valid expression of covenant theology over and against believer’s baptism; Moltmann’s eschatological (over?)-emphasis, and his exposition of social over economic models of the Triune life of God…and on and on. Those with whom we profoundly disagree are some of our best teachers, urging us to think, challenging us to answer, inviting us to listen, proposing other ways of seeing honestly and living faithfully the truth we say we believe.
Because in the life of pastoral and theological reflection, while it is essential to have confidence in our own understanding, a clear grasp of hard-won insights and experience, a good and growing awareness of our own standpoint and how that affects how and what we think, and a sense of belonging and at-homeness within our own place in the Christian tradition,while all these are essential – they only come to those who cultivate before God one of the more elusive spiritual disciplines and theological virtues. Theological humility, a willing and inward recognition of the scale of mismatch between the immense reality of a Gospel which is the mystery of the ages enfolded in the heart of the Eternal God, and our own limited time-bound capacities. There is truth in the Gospel that will always be beyond us – and will always call into question, as truth must and God will, our present, partial and personal grasp of the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ, and whose Spirit leads us into truth. By that calling into question, we grow to a more mature apprehension of the Gospel by which we have been apprehended. A Colossian understanding of Christ, accompanied by an Ephesian understanding of Christian existence in the love of God:
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power, through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you,being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God. (Eph 3.16-19)
To know the love that surpasses knowledge – always there is more, and always our understanding is partial. That is the reason for cultivating theological humility, and that is the promise and joy of theological discovery – Christ dwelling in the heart, through faith.
Leave a Reply