Living Wittily

Category: Theological Education

  • Great Theologians: Anselm 1. Loving God with the mind

                                   Anselm of Canterbury51acv3t3ral__bo2204203200_pisitbdp5. The Beauty of Theology, David Hogg (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). £16.99. 207 pages. Thanks to Ashgate for a review copy.

    There are different ways of doing theology, and I can become enthusiastic about most of them. Systematic theology is the attempt to render a coherent account of Christian faith and doctrine such that the inner mechanisms allow balancing truths to bear the weights and tensions of each other. This is faith seeking understanding. Applied theology explores the application of theology and doctrine to human life and experience, individually and communally, ecclesially and politically. This is faith seeking faithful practice. Pastoral theology is the appropriation of theology and doctrine to human care and community. This is faith seeking to resource love. Biblical theology is identifying through study of the ancient text and its context, those ideas and insights which shaped, and go on shaping, the theology and doctrine of God and God’s ways with humanity and creation. This is faith seeking normative roots.  Historical theology traces the origin and development of Christian doctrine through studying the history and development of theological ideas, personalities and historical contexts. This is faith seeking its own shared and continuing story.

    When a publisher embarks on a series called Great Theologians it’s an interesting question which of these various approaches to theology is being used. My own view is that an adequate account of any great theologian needs to engage with all these perspectives – and I would want to add another. I’m not aware anyone (apart from the late James W McLendon) has used the phrase ‘Biographical theology’, or ‘theological biography’. But once we set out to study theology through its greatest exponents we are embarked on the study of theology mediated through personality, set in a particular historical context. And therefore study of theology through how it was lived by a particular person. In that sense lived theology is faithfully enacted Gospel, a bearing witness to truth demonstrated in a particular kind of life.

    Anselm_of_canterbury Which brings me to Ashgate’s series, Great Theologians. The books in this series, by concentrating on individual theologians, aim at offering around 200 pages on each figure, and ‘at the upper level of study and academic research.’ The first volume I’m reading is on Anselm, whom I first encountered in a philosophy class where we were introduced to the ontological argument; and I first asked the question of what earthly use philosophy of religion was to people who just wanted to get on with life!

    Aerobicexercise I’ve since repented of such impatience with intellectual aerobic exercise. (Not me in the picture, just in case you were wondering). The image is both intended and specific – to learn how to think clearly and highly about God, to force the mind to push at its own barriers, to develop stamina, muscle and mental energy resources by wrestling with truths that make us feel the discomfort of breathlessness, is to prepare ourselves for the equally demanding exercise of pastoral care offered by minds fit for life.

    Or to change the image, for those preparing for Christian ministry, it is crucial to effective service in Christian ministry, that we love God with our mind, that strategic and critical thinking is developed by engaging with levels of thinking way above those ideas which are the educational equivalent of cheaply purchased, mass produced objects sold in the ‘Less Than a £1’ shops! Quality of ministry, and the theological competence of those who preach, teach, serve and seek to enable Christian communities, can’t be acquired at Primark prices.

  • God is the expert on theology

    Sometimes learning is fun. Sometimes learning is boring. Sometimes learning means unlearning. And nearly always unlearning is inconvenient, disruptive, disturbing, scary. And learning theology, which is learning about God, can be all of the above and a blessed lot more.

    Hubble_1_2 Fun because theology deals with a subject area that drives to the core of life’s biggest questions; boring because sometimes we have to do the hard stuff before we experience the benefits, and we are used to instant benefits, as if the work needed to possess knowledge could be put on some intellectual credit card. And theological learning can be inconvenient because it gets in the way of our comfortably familiar take on what we call our faith; disruptive because when you’re dealing with God and who God is you shouldn’t expect life to be a tidy, predictable routine which includes worship, fellowship and the odd bit of witnessing; scary because God is – I mean both God is scary, and God IS.

    As we work to act a little less clumsily, less inhumanely, less thoughtlessly; to speak a little less ignorantly, less dishonestly, less inattentively, there is always much to say and even more to do. Only God speaks one Word which says everything, which makes and heals the world…

    Good learning calls, no less than teaching does, for courtesy, respect, a kind of reverence; for facts and people, evidence and argument, for climates of speech and patterns of behaviour different from our own. Watchfulness is, indeed, in order but endless suspicion and mistrust are not.

    There are affinities between the courtesy, the delicacy of attentiveness, required for friendship; the single-minded passionate disinterestedness without which no good scholarly or scientific work is done; and the contemplativity which strains,- without credulity, – to listen for the voice of God – who does not shout.

    To which I can only say, Amen!

    (The quote is from Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God, London: SCM, 1992, pages 2,10-11).