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Ever since I discovered the joy of reading, and the more disciplined joy of study, I’ve been developing the discipline of indiscipline. I’ve never wanted to specialise, though there have been times when particular interests have commanded attention, provided focus, called for sustained study and the work of writing. But overall I’ve learned to be at ease with a wide range of interests, exploring a variety of subject fields and allowing ideas and arguments to cross fertilise, inviting insights and questions to set up tensions, creating inner conversations between voices which don’t usually talk to each other.

Just looking over recent posts, there might be a case for suggesting chaos theory underlies my reading choices. Abraham Heschel a Jewish theologian with hasidic forebears, and philosopher in close conversation with Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran, theologian, witness and martyr, and extraordinary writer whose fragments of theological reflection are the antidote for spiritual complacency; Elizabeth Johnson, feminist Catholic theologian whose contribution to a contemporary understanding of God expresses the creative and constructive possibilities of feminist theology;  Samuel Rutherford, Scottish Presbyterian of adamantine certainty, ferocious polemical outbursts and overflowing devotional sentiment; Hans Kung, disqualified Catholic theologian yet deeply qualified apologist for global Christianity and its place amongst the world’s faith movements; John Owen the quintessential Puritan, and as Carl Trueman has argued, a thoroughly Renaissance scholar and foremost exponent of Trinitarian spirituality.

Asked what my research interests are I always struggle to reduce my interests to such limited menus as ‘the seventeenth century Cambridge Puritans’; or ‘the viability of kenosis as a motif for understanding pastoral care as a communal process of self giving’; or ‘Scottish Protestant piety from the Reformation to the present’; or ‘theological loci as separately or together, clues to the nature and practice of pastoral theology’; or the history of the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and the connection between such interpretations and cultural context; or ‘Julian of Norwich, George Herbert and Charles Wesley’s spirituality of love in a broken world. So I move happily and freely from church history to systematic theology, then to spirituality and pastoral care, then there’s biography as a form of theological performance, biblical studies from theological exegesis to the history of interpretation – which then opens up further history, biography, philosophy, exegesis of scripture and life……….

None of this is a complaint. More a gentle warning to those who might think that there is neither rhyme nor reason to my reading choices. Major focused projects apart, and conscientious (and usually much enjoyed) reading required for specific teaching responsibilities assumed, most other reading is decided by a kind of impulsive openness to conversation with interesting folk. So Brian Kay’s book on Trinitarian Spirituality not only introduces me to John Owen but to the fascinating connections between Owen and Julian of Norwich, the Cloud of Unknowing and Thomas a Kempis; Gordon Mullan’s book on Scottish Puritanism goes to the pulsating core of Scottish Covenant Theology; Sabine Dramm is clearly a highly skilled interpreter of Bonhoeffer’s voice for a post 9/11 world, and without the damaging reductionism of those who want to use Bonhoeffer against his own grain.

Each year I ensure specific areas of intellectual interest are included in a planned reading list – but that list always leaves room for the large number of unexpected guests that are likely to come knocking – and often is not completed. Both Kay and Dramm were noticed while I was looking for something else – but I’m glad to have spent time in conversation with them – I learned from them. So I’ve never been an enthusiast for specialism, though I recognise that in scholarship we are all faced with choices – and I’ve made some too. Evangelical Spirituality as expressed in the lives of significant exponents; the hymns and theology of the Wesleys; the poetry of George Herbert; James Denney who is less a specialism than an important orienting theological landmark.

But such openness to conversation does mean that personal convictions, opinions, life experience, limited knowledge – are each likely to be challenged, corrected, deepened, now and then downright contradicted. Which is an important part of growing in the knowledge of Christ, slowly and humbly accumulating wisdom, the heart enlightened even as the mind is informed, as ‘together with all the saints’, heart and mind come to know the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of God in Christ.

And maybe the true Christian scholar isn’t the specialist at all, but the wide ranging explorer of a faith that is as vast as the Gospel and is expressed in story and song, biography and theology, philosophy and conversation, in text and human life, in community experience and individual encounter with God. I have never envied those whose reading and study are restricted to this or that aisle in the supermarket of ideas, or whose theological vision is deliberately narrowed to systems, schools, publishers or traditions selected for their capacity to confirm what they believe they already know, or know they already believe.

Time now without number I have been made to think again, and to discover or remember, what it means to be open to the infinite, eternal reality of God who in Christ ‘accommodated himself’ to human capacity. Coming to know the love of God ‘together with all the saints’ for me has meant that I owe more debts than I can pay or even remember, to such people as…. well how would you finish that sentence? Who do you owe a debt of gratitude to, who has taught and shown you the love of God?

"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.