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Jason wrote in a helpful comment

Jim. I think the answer must include the kinds of words you note, but must extend further less the theological conversation and attendant ‘discoveries’ or, better yet ‘revelations’ become reduced to no more than a life-sapping circularity in which the belief and practises of the particular community are only ever affirmed and never really challenged – leaving that local body unreformable and closed off to the prophetic and corrective word of Scripture and unaccountable to the wider body whose tradition and future it shares. Great challenges though, and worthy of life-long pursuit for any community of faith.

I’ve taken a few days to respond to Jason’s comment because I think what he is saying is an important caution against the wrong kind of theological community reflection, growing out of the exaggerated sense of a community’s own importance. I mean such community sins as spiritual introspection, intellectual self-indulgence, theological myopia, intentional ignorance of wider traditions, relational exclusion of those who differ, all of these and other communal expressions of that inward curving, self concerned overconfidence in our own insights that William Temple called ‘our original sin’.

Of course these dangerous distorions are the potential dark side of any community that makes ‘community’ ‘our community’, and ‘our community’ more important than that which calls us together, Christ, by the Spirit, in the name of the Father. When I talk of the reciprocal relationship of community theologian and community of theologians, I am thinking of Paul’s stupendous prayer ( in Ephesians 3.14-21), which is ontologically definitive for Christian community, and theologically definitive for that community’s way of doing theology together. The sheer scale and scope of Paul’s thought annihilates any pretensions that Christian community can ever be other than graced into being, called to God’s purpose, nourished and sustained by God’s love, part of a purpose eternal yet to be lived here and now, limited by human finitude yet touched by holiness infinite in both demand and gift. ( The image is of the Eagle Nebulae – my favourite Hubble photo – vast as it is, incomparably superceded by the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ).

Ephesians 3.14-21 is one of those prayerful aspirations that act as a doxological corrective to self-fascination, but also acts positively by exulting in the incalculable possibilities of discovering together the transforming presence of Christ, inwardly and outwardly. The anchorage isn’t ‘the community’ but its rootedness and groundedness in the love that calls it into existence and sustains it. And what we seek to comprehend together is the impossible possibility of knowing the love of Christ that passes knowledge, though we will be lifelong learners determined to go on trying. And while a community can degenerate into a self-preserving, self-promoting, and yes self-destructive circle of self-loving, and become too full of itself, the antidote to all of this is to know the love of Christ and be filled with all the fullness of God.

And yes I know. That is ‘all very well in theory’. But for me an insistence on practice and pragmatism can never take priority over ontological truths which define what we practice, and how and why, with reference to the One of whom all our theology seeks to speak – humbly, but not without confidence. Practical theology is the practice of what we believe – and what we believe is truly discovered, tested and adjusted by practice – but Paul is right. Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith is bedrock truth, and practical theology is Christology understood as transformative living truth embodied in discipleship, expressed in community in the Body of Christ, and exalted in doxology.

So I suppose what I am arguing is that the community theologian is one who accompanies, facilitates, shares the mystery, encourages the seeking – but in a community centred not on itself but on Christ; founded not on its own values but rooted and grounded in redeeming, reconciling, mystifying and transformative Love. Paul has little time for the singular ‘you’ – and in this prayer he uses the inclusive you plural – this is indeed a community of theologians – true theologians are those who pray, and those who pray are true theologians. I’m still thinking about all this…….

Talking recently with a group of folk about ministry, community and how theology is an important element in a community’s identity. I don’t mean the hard edged, brand name, logo-protected kinds of theology like Reformed, Evangelical, Liberation, Charismatic-Pentecostal, Feminist and Womanist. I mean the theology that is this community’s own self-articulation of what God in Christ, by the Spirit, is doing amongst them, and what they are now doing and planning together in response to what God is already doing. I’m thinking of how a community has come to think of God, of themeselves, of their reason for being who they are, where they are, together, and what that means for their coninuing life and health as a community of Christ.

We began to wonder about each community having community theologians, perhaps each Christian community coming to see itself as a community of theologians. I posted earlier about every believer a theologian – I passionately believe that. So what I’m thinking about is not THE person in the community who does theology, reflects theologically, gives the theological lead; not THE person who is the professionally trained, academically best resourced, and whose theological education exudes an unearned authority. Forget that – theological reflection and conversation is at its best when it is an open shared conversation by a group of people who worship together, read and think about the Bible together, experience God and take that experience seriously – (and the togetherness is part of the experience) – try to serve God and love each other according to the Gospel, and have their own theological take on what God is about.

But most times someone needs to encourage such conversation; and yes someone needs to resource it with teaching, to accompany it in friendship and listening love. Such a community theologian is one whose gift is to interpret the community’s experience of God, of each other and of what is happening to them, in a way that enables each of us to see and trust God not only with MY life, but equally with our life together; and then to interpret that experience in the light of the Bible, the Gospel story, the call of the Prophets. And it will be a symbiotic relationship of each enriching the other, interpreting together the shared experience of people committed to each other in the risks of love, acknowledging that the theology of a community is not shaped, or directed, or conformed, to any one mind or style. The community theologian is the enabler of spiritual reflection, modelling but never monopolising theological thinking, praying with the heart and mind while in conversation with sisters and brothers, and together interpreting the life of the Spirit, the grace of the Son and the love of the Father as revealed in Scripture and experienced and enacted amongst us.

In any such community there will always be prophets who see clearly and speak bluntly, sages who think wisely and speak hesitantly, pragmatists who think strategically and speak practically, initiators enthused by the new and conservators who value the way it is. Community theologians are in that sense the ones who take on all of this and more, and encourage theological conversation about who we are, why we are, what is God saying through the life we are living; how do we align ourselves with the movement of the Spirit in the culture and world around us; what is happening in this church, in this city, in the church in other places, that tells us what the Spirit is up to, and what is expected of us if we are to go on living faithfully to God’s call?

Obedience is about listening and responding – the first presupposes the second. Who are the listeners amongst us, the ones who see trends, discern movement, imagine possibilities, and voice these not as an agenda to impose or pursue, but as a way of inviting further trustful conversation into a shared future?  A community of theologians, reflecting on God in Christ active in the Spirit, builds in a set of constraining and enabling criteria that test the blunt words of the prophet, respect the hesitant caution of the sage, stay alert to the persuasive strategies of the pragmatist, and are neither pushed around by the impatience of the initiators nor demotivated by the cautions of the conservators. Because what makes community theologians so important for us is the shared recognition that we are a community of God – and the two things we should know something about is God (Theology!) and each other (Community!). Anyway, that’s the thinking so far……….hmmmm.