Blogs or books: the future of theology?

Theology wasn't always about books. In an earlier post I gave a very brief summary of an unexplored avenue in historical theology: genres of theological writing. Those who think books are essential to theology should remember that the academic essay - a 200+ page book with footnotes and technical terms - has replaced the sermon or the biblical commentary as the primary vehicle for theological work since the Enlightenment.

The earliest theological texts were something different from today's theology books. Just look at the first chapter of Anselm's Why God Became Human?, which seems to suggest that the text is a transcription of a conversation for the sake of those who have questions about the faith and couldn't meet and talk with Anselm directly (although this certainly may be a literary device). Most scholars today say that Aquinas's Summa Theologiae wasn't meant to be a theological encyclopedia but instead a teaching guide, something like a plan for a curriculum, that reflected a context where theology was done to address thorny questions that consistently arose from scripture.

Blogs have certain theological and pastoral advantages to books. The format of blogging offers quick commentary on current events (often within minutes of something) and also encourages back-and-forth conversation in a way that is completely impossible with books. In addition, due to the restraints of blogging as a genre, theologians are forced to write without technical terms and to boil down prose to simple snippets. Consider that theology written in blogs has a wider potential readership than most theology books right from the start, and can be a great way for Pastors to do a little faith seeking understanding with the computer-savvy people in their congregations.

Finally, consider that the best theologians writing today know that theology isn't just about ideas, but also about communication - the recent NT Wright conference made me think about this when everyone praised Wright's ability to write and communicate well on both academic and popular levels. Karl Barth and Bernard Lonergan especially among 20th century theologians argued that the task of theology involves learning to be a good communicator. (Barth describes this with the term "practical theology," Lonergan with his idea of the functional specialty of "communications").

Does Theology need the Soul?

Throughout much of the history of Christian theology it was thought that humans were an immaterial soul inhabiting a material body, and that the immaterial soul goes to God when the body dies. Some theologians nuanced this like Thomas Aquinas, who thought there was an immaterial soul but that this immaterial soul was the "substantial form" of the matter that made up the human body.

My question basically is, does theology need the soul? Many theologians and biblical scholars, including Nancey Murphy, Joel Green, and others say no. Most contemporary authors writing on theological anthropology see the soul as outdated or disproved by modern neuroscience. They're not without their critics though, as ethicists like J.P. Moreland or Thomists like Norris Clarke say an immaterial soul is a fundamental and non-negotiable part of Christian theology and ethics.

This debate has become very interesting to me (and I just presented a paper on it with more detail, especially on Aquinas, for others interested). It is interesting because I feel like those who subscribe to a rigorous "Thomist" philosophy or epistemology, I'm thinking of something like Jacques Maritain's ideas in Degrees of Knowledge here, have to wrestle at some point with what contemporary neuroscience is saying about the brain and epistemology.

I am also interested in arguing over whether or not there is a soul because of how the soul relates to soteriology. I suspect that a lot of the contemporary "practical" or "community"-based accounts of Christian salvation and the Church owe something to the way the Soul has fallen out of favor in theology in recent years. The question of the soul in theology, in a way, is partly the question "what happens to me when I become a Christian?" Does God come to dwell in the soul as a friend with me through created and uncreated grace? (John 14:23). Or is becoming a Christian only an incorporation into new bodily practices as part of a new community and way of living in the world?

Theology pet peeve: treating theologians like scripture

I once tried to get out of an introduction to theology class at Duke. I had been a religion major in undergrad and read a decent amount of theology books, blogs, and so on, and I therefore decided that this class would be too easy for me. When I went to talk to Paul Griffiths, the chair of the theology dept that year, he gave me a kind of verbal quiz instead of asking for the usual previously written papers or syllabi from previous courses. It wasn't really meant as a test to let me into the class or not, but rather to make me ask questions to myself about how advanced in theological studies I really was. He asked me "how does the two-natures doctrine of Jesus as divine and human relate to soteriology?" I fired back, "that which is not assumed is not healed," a commonplace from Gregory of Nazianzus.

"Well, what does that mean? Describe how that works exactly." Paul Griffiths asked me. I couldn't answer.

I realized later looking back on this and other events that my theological education up to that point had largely been about learning phrases like this from theologians and treating them like scripture. I had the bad habit of prooftexting from the tradition with no regard to what the phrases really meant. I suppose there is a point when one is learning theology that this kind of pedagogy is necessary, but at the same time Paul Griffiths was suggesting to me that to learn theology, you have to move beyond the citation of authority and to start learning the internal grammar of the subject matter. (I ended up taking intro to theology, which was a great class).

The problem is that a lot of theology today seems to be stuck in the theologian-as-authority view. Theologians who gain a certain amount of popular esteem are used in arguments like scripture prooftexts. This involves philosophers too - I've seen John Webster complain about the way Ludwig Wittgenstein seems to be quoted in an "oracular" fashion by theologians in North America. We could perhaps also say the same for the current Christian interest in atheist philosophers like Slavoj Zizek.

What, pedagogically, would theology look like if we focused more on learning the practice of theology as in really getting to the ground of its subject matter? What if theology courses involved only asking questions like: how does your understanding of the second person of the Trinity affect everything else in theology? How are the Son and the Spirit "sent" to us when we worship God or participate in the liturgy? How can you begin to describe in words the wonder of God's salvation for us in Jesus Christ?

Duke/Yale Theology in the Local Church (Part II)

I really liked the conversation my last post caused, both on here and among friends in real life. Now to avoid controversy I will make everyone extremely bored by describing some of the philosophical background to what I'm thinking.

Kathryn Tanner's book Theories of Culture analyzes the social and cultural location of theology in universities through the lens of cultural studies. She points out how academic theology is a specifically located social practice, one that is located in a way that is invisible to most theology students or theologians. The one professor I had who ever talked about Kathryn Tanner's book and wrestled with what it said was Amy Laura Hall, who I remember trying to drill into her students' brains that by going to Duke they were at a specific social and cultural location.

Tanner's book does a great job of making the social position of theology opaque to us. She reminds us that "academic theology is itself a material social process, a kind of Christian social practice in its own right with material means, a specific type of product, and production values" (Theories of Culture, 72). She goes on to say, in a way that seems to describe current fashions coming out of a general "Yale" perspective, that specialized academic theology works for its own "self-continuance" (and we can say the same for the "emergent" theology industry, "process" theology, and so on). She says "the goal is to enable further investigation of the cultural dimension of Christian social practices in the same explicit terms" (81).

Tanner thinks theology should focus more on the lives of everyday believers in a more material rather than more abstract way. She says theology should involve the arrangement of the pews. Tanner is concerned that an academic theology like "Duke theology," "Yale theology," or "liberal theology" operates at a level of abstraction from everyday churches because they are fueled by academic/publishing institutions that make these theological perspectives self-perpetuating. She says, "Academic theology should not squander its advantages, as it does, when tempted by its relative autonomy as a field, it artificially reduces the scope of its materials. Focusing only on other specialized intellectual productions, academic theology sometimes turns away from all it can use. It blinds itself to everyday theologies, past and present, and to the immediate practical problems that pose difficulties for Christian social practices in the particular historical context in which it works" (89).

In a more theological vein, Tanner gives a kind of "Barthian" read of the diversity in the Christian tradition in the last chapter of her book to say that it is wrong for Christians to use theology as a club to pronounce which confessions or Christian practices are properly part of "the tradition" or not. She says there is no "deep underlying or hidden depth to Christian texts or practice [that] guides the course of Christian life over time and space" (162). Then she says that "diversity is a salutary reminder that Christians cannot control the movements of the God they hope to serve" (175).

This last bit is what really hit me in my work as a youth pastor in NC, and this is what I mean in my last post when I say I think Duke/Yale-inspired theology runs over the spiritual experiences of Christians in a local church. I feel like God worked in ways that I was taught weren't supposed to happen. That sounds odd, but I think a lot of theological educators tend to put God in a box in this way (and I should add that what I'm critiquing isn't the thought of Stanley Hauerwas per se, but the matrix of faculty, students, and general attitude in Duke-inspired circles that led to this particular perspective).

Can theology "fix" local churches? No (Part I)

I've been thinking a lot lately (some here on this blog) about what theology actually does. How necessary is theology, and how does it relate to the local church?

I've noticed that many theologians and theology students influenced by "Yale theology" or "Duke theology" tend to use this language of "brokenness" regarding regular local churches. You get this picture sometimes that local church congregations in the US are being unfaithful (through being too Americanized, etc.), and that we theology-trained pastors are supposed to "fix" them. One person I know called it the theology "trickle down" theory. My divinity school spent a lot of time and energy forming and educating Pastors with the goal of sending them out to pass their formation and knowledge on to churches that needed it in a model similar to this.

I think this attitude is wrong. This kind of theology emphasizes the "Church-as-polis" aspects of the Gospel, and in doing so I think plays down the language of sin and salvation used in most congregations where Duke or Yale-influenced Ministers would work. I've struggled with this perspective in my own work with churches. When I started working at churches I felt like I should almost correct people when they talk about "getting saved" in a particular experience ("no, you've actually entered a particular cultural-linguistic system and an alternate political witness to the heretical soteriology of the state"). But I learned that the "Church-as-polis" view tends to run rough over the spiritual experiences of many Christians, and not to mention the way many local congregations read the bible. I think some of the philosophical thinking behind this brand of theology puts seminarians' understanding of theology, theology as in reflection/talking about the Gospel, at a problematic remove from people in local churches.

I may be wrong here. I'd like to blog more on this with a little more philosophical/theological background soon (mostly using Kathryn Tanner's book). I'd welcome discussion.

Aquinas the Preacher?

Ever think about Aquinas as Preacher? In the Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth charges Aquinas and the whole Catholic tradition with privileging the Sacraments to the neglect of the preached word. However, Barth's charge may be the result of a limited reading of Aquinas. While Aquinas has no special treatise confined to the topic of preaching, Aquinas scholars are discovering a theology of preaching and of the preached word nestled in the Summa Theologiae and other works.

Recent scholarship points to a section of the Summa in which Aquinas meditates on "Christ’s Doctrine” (Third part q. 42). What Aquinas looks at when he asks questions about "Christ's Doctrine" is Jesus's teaching style as described in the Gospels. They say this is an unexplored aspect of how Aquinas’s liturgical and religious context influences his theology. Aquinas was a member, after all, of an "Order of Preachers." Avery Dulles also wrote a small article tracing out Aquinas's "theology of worship" from various places in the Summa, and made a special note on preaching in Aquinas. CUA Press just published this text, a collection of Aquinas's academic sermons. We already have translations of many of Aquinas's sermons and commentaries on biblical books like John's Gospel and Hebrews.

There is a lot of interesting material emerging to help scholars put together what "Aquinas the Preacher" might be like, and what groups like Baptists can learn from him.

A Protestant, Postliberal Aquinas?

Protestants of all kinds are getting interested in Thomas Aquinas, particularly those who write on "practices" and the virtues with inspiration from the work of Stanley Hauerwas. The "postliberal Aquinas" is very popular these days, especially for those who do theology in heavy conversation with Wittgenstein.

Aquinas's doctrine of the "hylomorphic union" of body and soul seems to appeal to the current Protestant interest in "embodiment" as well (Aquinas isn't like Plato: he thinks a human being is a soul and body united, and that our bodies are an essential part of who we are as human beings and how we relate to God).

Aquinas doesn't get a mention in James KA Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom, but there's a connection there that he may not have been aware of. Smith’s reading of “secular” and “Christian” liturgies and his focus on embodiment finds a clear parallel in one of Aquinas’s arguments for the necessity of the sacraments. In this argument in the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas says that one reason that the sacraments were necessary was in order that human beings might be offered “bodily exercise” whereby they might be “trained to avoid superstitious practices, consisting in the worship of demons, and all manner of harmful action, consisting in sinful deeds” (III, 61.1).

Of course, Smith's understanding of the sacraments clearly differs from a lot of what Aquinas says, and he, along with Hauerwas and others, seems to be wary of the language of grace and individual salvation as was traditionally used by Reformed and Catholic theologians. At the same time this little overlap between Smith and Aquinas's Summa is notable for those interested in dialogue.