What is Theology? Definitions, Approaches
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
Contents |
BECOMING A DIY BELIEVER
A Very Short Introduction to Theology
Winter Series, Wellington Cathedral, 2010
Rev Dr Raymond Pelly, Priest Associate raymond.pelly@clear.net.nz
1/
What is Theology? Definitions, Approaches
If I give you a fish, I feed you for today. If I teach you to fish, I feed you for a lifetime. Pacific Proverb
Well, Raymond, whatever the truths of our blessed religion are, I don’t think that is one of them. Kenneth Pickthorne
Denis Nineham, Professor of Theology, pointing to a pigeon, asks a beginner student, Well, boy, what is that that you see? A pigeon, or is it the Holy Ghost?
Introductory
In earliest Christian tradition, a theologian was defined as a person who prayed and who, out of his or her own vision of God, offered reflections on or explorations of that vision: ‘to contemplate, and to communicate to others the things contemplated’ (Contemplare, et tradere aliis contemplata).
Over time, two things were added to that. First, there was on-going argument as to what constituted true Christian Faith (or orthodoxy); and second, closely related, how Christian Faith defined (or defended) itself as against the prevailing worldview (or philosophy) of the day.
A good summary of these approaches was offered by St. Anselm (1033-1109) for whom theology was, ‘Faith Seeking Understanding’ (Fides quaerens intellectum). Anselm also had another seminal idea – one we shall come back to – when he defined God as ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ (Id quod nihil maior cogitari potest).
In our own day we are faced with two sorts of fundamentalism – and a good deal of ignorance; a fundamentalism in Christianity (and other religions like Islam); and a fundamentalism in secularism or modernity according to which only that which is scientifically verifiable (or falsifiable) can count as knowledge.
For us this means not only do we have to be well-informed about our faith, we also need to be able to re-think it as we ourselves grown and mature and encounter new knowledge; and, at the same time, know how to define and defend our faith at a time of secularism, modernity and post-modernity; and, just as important, an ever-increasing pluralism of cultures, worldviews, religions and so forth. The six sessions of our Winter Series is designed to help you in this situation.
Here, then, is a statement (by Philip Kennedy, Oxford) of the predicament of theology in the modern world.
‘The uniqueness of modern theology springs from the way its practitioners respond to a complex chain of historical and intellectual revolutions since the fifteenth century…. revolutions in geography, astronomy, scientific method, critical philosophy, biblical studies, historical Jesus research, biology, physics and hermeneutics. They have pondered the intellectual revolutions in concert with social and political transformations represented by the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, secularization, a gaping and growing wealth-poverty divide, feminism, and religious diversity. Other revolutions could be examined, such as the sexual revolution of the last forty years in the west and the emergence of what many call the postmodern condition in the latter half of the twentieth century …. All the movements just mentioned and the ideas generating them have produced the present world, or rather disorder, of over 6 billion human beings, choking to death in pollution of their own making, waging wars in societies blighted by AIDS, and divided between a superabundantly wealthy few living on islands of luxury surrounded by oceans of massive human misery…. Theology’s most intimidating challenge today is to talk about God in a new way that takes into account the current predicament of humanity’ (1)
Some Contemporary Definitions of Theology.
So what I want to do now is lay out some definitions and approaches to theology which, I hope, will help you to get your own bearings as someone who wants to think through their own faith (my faith seeking my understanding) in a way that addresses the realities of being alive and a person of faith at this moment in history and in the New Zealand context.
A. David Ford (2)
NB I ‘Modernity’: Condition or quality of being modern, distinguished by a sense of separation and distance from the past, emphasized by advances in all fields of human endeavour.
NB II ‘Postmodernism’: Position which regards much of the present intellectual and cultural situation, especially in advanced capitalist societies, as in discontinuity with modernity, springing from a decline in confidence about the possibility of universal rational principles, and manifesting itself in skepticism about progress, objective or scientific truth, or fixed meanings. It is often characterized by eclecticism and self-conscious parody.
1.
Repetition Theology that merely reiterates (repeats or restates) words and concepts from the past. Pure fundamentalism – if there is such a thing!– would be an example. A thoroughgoing rejection of modernity.
2.
Christian Self-Definition Here priority is given to the way believing, praying theologians, who see themselves as part of the Christian community, define faith. Anselm’s ‘faith seeking understanding’ would be the watchword of this type, Karl Barth its chief modern exponent. Theology, however, is done in dialogue with modernity.
3.
Corrrelation This type, exemplified by Paul Tillich, attempts to take up the burning questions of contemporary life – for Tillich anxiety and the quest for meaning – and to correlate these with answers drawn from a range of Christian symbols. The best known is Tillich’s re-definition of faith as ‘ultimate concern’. The strength of this approach is dialogue, it’s weakness an inability to put tough questions to modernity – as, for example, in the works of Reinhold Niebuhr. Here modernity sets the agenda.
4.
Reinterpretation The task for these theologians is to reinterpret Christian faith in terms of some contemporary idiom or moral crusade. Rudolf Bultmann’s use of Martin Heidegger’s existentialism to reinterpret the message of the New Testament would be a classic example. The same goes for those who see questions of gender, race, political liberation, ecology, or interreligious dialogue as what Ford calls ‘the decisive integrator’ – what we might call ‘historical absolutes’- to which faith must perforce respond. Now modernity provides the categories in which faith is expressed.
5.
Other Defined Here complete priority is given to some modern or secular philosophy, and, as David Ford puts it, ‘Christianity is only valid in so far as it fits in with that’ and ‘the assessment is always made according to criteria which are external to faith and which claim superiority to it’. (3) Modernity has replaced theology.
This typology is of course not absolute, and there is often cross-fertilization between the different types. Ford’s typology, furthermore, shows why theologians of Type 1, Repetition, are unable to communicate with thinkers of Type 5, Other Defined, and vice-versa. The one is an unreflected theology that rejects modernity, the other a wholesale acceptance of modernity. The result, predictably, is mutual anathemas, there being no common ground for conversation.
B.
Rowan Williams (3)
A second typology, one suggested by Rowan Williams, divides theology into three sorts:
Celebratory
Communicative
Critical
Celebratory theology has its roots in the rich, resonant language of poetry, hymns and liturgy. Eastern Orthodoxy operates chiefly in this mode; and Hans Urs von Balthasar would be an example in western theology. ‘His intention’, says Williams, ‘is less to argue than to evoke fullness of vision – that “glory” around which his theology circles so consistently’. The rigour of his work, Williams further comments, is poetic or aesthetic and ‘will be familiar to anyone who knows anything about the composition of poetry or the attempt to find a proper aesthetic congruence in creative work’.
The limitation of this approach is that while it is internally coherent – a ‘world’ one can enter – it is in danger of losing touch with its own cultural or historical context and its specific concerns. It needs, therefore, to be complemented with a communicative theology. Such a theology is dialogical or conversational, sufficiently confident in the Gospel to risk translation into other idioms. Examples would be Marxism, feminism or ecology. In the process of translation insights into the Gospel hitherto unseen may emerge. ‘It involves’, says Williams, ‘a confidence that the fundamental categories of belief are robust enough to survive the drastic experience of immersion in other ways of constructing and construing the world’.
The communicative approach, however, can produce its own kind of crisis. It provokes the question: Are these ‘idiomatic’ translations of belief in real continuity with authentic Christian tradition? What are the fundamental categories of belief and what do they mean? These questions give rise to a critical theology which Williams describes as ‘This nagging at fundamental meanings … alert to its own inner tensions or irresolutions’. This critical theology, it should be noted, can move in one of two directions. It can result in agnosticism or even nihilism; and here Williams cites what he calls the ‘atheous’ theologies of Don Cupitt or Mark C. Taylor. Or it can open out onto a ‘rediscovery of the celebratory by hinting at the gratuitous mysteriousness of what theology deals with’. And so the cycle of celebratory, communicative, critical begins again.
C.
Raymond Pelly
My own working definition of theology goes like this.
It asks the question: what kind of theology does justice to the wholeness of the discipline itself, but is also capable of producing wholeness in believers engaged in becoming people who think for themselves?
As a definition, I suggest the following: ‘Theology’ is the activity whereby intentional reflection (theology, narrowly so called), ethics or action, and spirituality meet and interact creatively’. This activity, however, doesn’t take place in a vacuum. It is, on the one hand, grounded in Scripture and Christian Tradition generally, ‘tradition’ understood as the ‘handing on of the Gospel through time’ in Bible and Church. On the other hand, it is highly responsive to the culture and context in which it does its work. The key question is: what – in ‘word or action’ (Romans 15:18-19) – will come over to us in particular and to people in general in our Aotearoa/New Zealand context as Gospel, as life-changing Word (or practice) of salvation?
We are thus in the presence of three mutually enhancing (and correcting) streams of learning and communicating. They comprise, to spell it out, the heart work of prayer and praise, the actions of ethical practice (and reflection), as well as creative and critical thinking in theology narrowly so called. Negatively we could say that thinking without spirituality or action (ethics) becomes heady and sterile; that ethics/action without reflection or spirituality can degenerate into mindless, shallow pragmatism; that spirituality without reflection or action can drift off into sentimentality and other-worldliness.
Thus we could define theology in this inclusive sense as the creative interaction – or ‘unity in related diversity’ - of:
- Critical reflection on Christian tradition (aka: the handing on of the Gospel over time) with a view to repristinating and articulating the Gospel of salvation for today; a discipline sometimes called ‘hermeneutics’.
- Action and reflection on everything to do with praxis: building Christian community (Church); the Church as servant of the wider community and its needs; constructive thinking around ethical issues facing people in contemporary society.
- How to celebrate the glory of God in praise and thanksgiving – liturgy; how people grow in wholeness and holiness – prayer, spirituality, growth in personal maturity.
Preliminary Conclusion
‘To get started in theology we have to realize that there can be truth-telling languages other than that of scientific rationalism. Charles Taylor puts it like this: ‘In certain domains love and self-giving enable us to understand what we would never grasp otherwise’. (4) The fullness of life (as of faith) requires us to have a worldview or faith which includes – or starts from – blindingly powerful insights stemming from the experience of self-giving love given and received, one which carries over as a principle of reciprocity to structure our attitudes to the environment and social relationships. If the evolving cosmos is given in love, then love and care all round are the response that is truly called for. Such a grace-filled world is one that can never be fully analyzed by science, but is – in terms of its own undoubted reality – one that invites respect, reverence, celebration. It brings with it the general enlargement (and fruitfulness) of our sense of what it means to be human.
The insights in question, I would further suggest, are at home in the languages of faith, art, ethics, inter-personal love, social justice and a sense of the holy or authentically sacred rather than in that of scientific rationalism. Here a creative yet disciplined use of metaphor, symbol, myth will be what crystallizes the community’s sense of meaning and restlessly pushes out it frontiers. Thus for all the undoubted value of pure scientific research, the uses to which it is put need to be governed by ethical and other criteria not derivable from science itself. For if our quest is indeed for ultimate meaning, then the kinds of alternative truth-telling languages I have mentioned will be key. The exploration involved, further, will need to be dialogical, open-ended, never ending.’ (5)
Appendix I
Recognition If Jesus’ kenosis in self-humbling service and suffering is what is recognized – exalted by God and confessed by believers – what would it mean to recognize the victims of the Shoah beyond simply noting that they are dead? What is it about their pre-Holocaust lives that we can remember and celebrate with thanksgiving? What values can we discern (and learn from) in spontaneous and heroic acts of love in the death camps themselves? May they not challenge us to tell the truth about them and their contemporary analogs; force us to think in terms of recognition and inclusion rather than exclusion and, in the extreme case, elimination?
Co-passion The pattern of humiliation and exaltation in Philippians 2:1-11 might embolden us to go beyond the standard notion of compassion. I have claimed that the self-humbling obedience of Jesus, abutting in his crucifixion, is what licenses us to call him a victim. It is, further, the ground of his de facto solidarity – compounded by the fact that he was Jewish – with the victims of the Shoah (and of course with victims at other times and places). This is part of his on-going passio, his passionate and costly desire to be in solidarity with his own people (and people everywhere). But that is just half the story. This passio is far exceeded by his equally passionate and continuing desire for the liberation of his people, for their accessing, whether as victims or victim-survivors, the fullness of life. What this means will be explored in greater depth later in this book. For now, let us simply note that in picking up the theme of liberation and exodus, so central to Judaism (as to Christianity), Jesus not only commiserates with the victims, but actively engages – and this with passion – in their longing for freedom, for deliverance. I have therefore coined the word co-passion to do justice to both dimensions of his Gestalt or true character: his solidarity in suffering with the victims (in virtue of his being a victim himself) and his irrepressible desire – resurrecting in its power – to inspire or empower every aspiration to freedom on the part of the victims, their desire to access the fullness of life.
Engführung / narrowing, impasse This too can be seen as corresponding to the humiliation-exaltation pattern of the Christ of Philippians 2. Engführung, a word that has no exact equivalent in English, means a no-exit road (or cul-de-sac, Sackgasse) which narrows as it reaches its end, the place where there is no way out, no way forward. David Liebeskind’s architectural design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin is constructed around the concept of Engführung in that its angular structures time and again brings the visitor into ‘no-exit’ spaces that narrow down to nothing and from which symbolically there is no escape. This concept, I suggest, vividly corresponds to the experience of a person being crucified as to that of persons in gas chambers. In both there is the same deadly narrowing down, the same ‘no way out’. For the Holocaust interpreter trying, in the context of Jewish-Christian dialogue, to make connections between, say, Golgotha and Auschwitz, what is so truly amazing about the shared (but different) situations of Engführung is that they gave rise to acts of spiritual and ethical heroism – perhaps to be crystallized around the notion of ‘care’ exercised in powerlessness – that are not only well-authenticated but which could form the basis of a new covenant (Torah or ethic) that Judaism and Christianity might have in common in a possible shared sense of mission to the modern world. (6)
Notes
(1) Chapter, Theology’s Paramount Task. In: A Modern Introduction to Theology. New Questions for Old Beliefs. I.B.Tauris, London, New York, 2009, pp.253, 256.
(2) The Modern Theologians. An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century. Second Edition, Blackwell, Oxford, 1997, pp. 1-15.
(3) On Christian Theology. Challenges in Contemporary Theology, Blackwell, Oxford, 2000, pp. xii – xvi.
(4) Varieties of Religion Today. William James Revisited. Harvard University Press, 2002, p.47. Taylor is here building on St.Augustine’s dictum, ‘You do not enter into truth except through love’. In the original Latin, ‘Non intratur in veritatem, nisi per caritatem’.
(5) Raymond Pelly & Peter Stuart, A Religious Atheist? Critical Essays on the Work of Lloyd Geering, Otago University Press, 2006, p.38.
(6) Raymond Pelly, Pilgrim to Unholy Places, Wellington, 2010, pp. 10-11.
Raymond Pelly, 22 July 2010
