Living Wittily

Church History as keeping memory alive... Henry Chadwick, 1920-2008.

“Nothing is sadder than someone who has lost his memory, and the church which has lost its memory is in the same state of senility.”

The words are by Professor Henry Chadwick who died yesterday. Chadwick, with his brother Owen, represent between them some of the finest written scholarship in Church History in the 20th Century. The Early Church, the first of the Penguin History of the Church Series, was the preferred undergraduate text book when I was in College in the early 70's. The Church in Ancient Society, a massive volume in the Oxford History of the Christian Church series, is written with that elegant, deceptively effortless authority you can almost inhale from the pages. His translation of Augustine's Confessions and his short study  of Augustine in the Oxford Past Masters Series combine to present Augustine as both attractive and unsettling as a mind massively learned, passionately engaged, and theologically alight.

It could be argued, and I do so argue, that it is the duty of church historians to keep the church's memory alive, alert and interested in its own story. Only as that story is known, reflected upon, learned from, absorbed as both inspiration and correction, only then is the church in a position to think of its life here, now. Impatience with the past arising from a dangerous privileging of the present, creates a know it all culture, that undervalues what it never tried to understand. In that sense I think reading history, reflecting on the insights of previous generations, learning lessons from past experience, is an important expression of humane reflection on human life - it is humanising. The church historian, a category in which I include all those Christians not so obsessed by contemporary experience that they ignore the historical roots and shoots of our faith, is someone who is interested in receiving the faith humbly though not uncritically. Those with a sense of the history of our faith, and who enquire how people down the generations have tried in their time and in their way to understand who God is, the meaning of Jesus, and how to follow after him faithfully and well, wisely refuse to hijack the story in order to tell only their part of it as if the rest didn't matter.

Confining the list of honours only to Britain, and to those who happen to be on my shelves, Henry Chadwick, Owen Chadwick, R W Southern, Gordon Rupp, Frances Young, Jay Brown, David Bebbington, Tom Torrance, Michael Watts, Gillian Evans, Adrian Hastings, Geoffrey Nuttall, and Rowan Williams - are people who help the church keep its memory alive - lest we suffer from historical senility.

One more thought. Several of us heard the same TV interview with a rather pedantic self appointed guardian of the english language. He was infuriated (not annoyed, upset, angry) - infuriated, when BBC announcers and sports commentators misused the word "oblivious", as in 'Fabregas was oblivious of Van Nistelroy's run into the penalty box'. The word oblivious does not mean totally unaware; it means, so our semantic purist argued, 'to forget that which we used to know'. It would be a pity then, if we were oblivious of those things by which the church has lived and grown down through the centuries. It would also be a pity if we were ignorant of the same, and had never taken the trouble to know them in the first place.

Which brings me back to Henry Chadwick, whose scholarship, sympathy and curiosity about the past, enabled him to help us understand and learn from the great cloud of witnesses who surround us, so that we can run our race with patience....and due humility.

Theological education, writing, and an ethic of words.

Here is Stephanie Paulsell on 'Writing as a Spiritual Discipline', one of a number of very fine essays in The Scope of Our Art. The Vocation of the Theological Teacher L. Gregory Jones & Stephanie Paulsell (Eds.), (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 17-31.

It matters what words we choose, what voice we speak in, what tone we take. It matters both for the quality of our own thought, and for the quality of our invitation to our readers. The intellectual and aesthetic choices we make when we write are also moral, spiritual choices that can hold open a door for another to enter, or pull that door shut; that can sharpen our thinking or allow it to recline on a comfortable bed of jargon; that can form us in generosity and humility or in condescension and disdain. (page 24)

One of the courses I teach involves introducing students to writing as a moral and spiritual practice of slowed down thinking, that is intellectually generous and curious, while also providng a framework for trying out ideas, developing mental agility, and learning to love and value words. To preach, to lead others in prayer, to speak into situations of human experience where what is said can be transformative, creative, supportive, redemptive, communicative of love or hope or peace; and also to know when words won't work and wordless presence is the gift we must offer - these require facility with words, but also a practised ethic of choosing our words with care - care for those who will read them, hear them, be touched and affected by them.

Writing this blog is one way of practising the moral and spiritual choices that are part of the vocation of those whose calling involves the use of so many words - may the words of my mouth, pen, keyboard, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Impulsive openness to conversation with interesting folk

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?

Intellectual Hospitality and Theological Humility

"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.

Scottish Baptist College Blog

The Scottish Baptist College now has its own blog, set up by Stuart and a place where we will post news, articles, reviews and open up discussion on areas of theology and ministry, both in a Baptist context and with openness to wider views and experience. We will also do book reviews in areas in which we teach, or have an interest, and for those who engage in a preaching ministry some suggested reading, shared experience, ideas.

The link is on my sidebar amongst the Blogs I Regularly Read. I posted there yesterday and you can find it here. The post asks whether we are entirely right to say the raison d'etre of the Church is mission. One witness who sees the Church's role from a different perpsective is P T Forsyth who prefers the word mediatorial to missional.

Receptive or interceptive listening?

Discussion the other day about reflection as a form of listening. Is listening a gift, a skill, an art, a discipline, or a combination of some or all of these? What would reflective listening feel like? A very good friend, of an older school of Evangelical formation, good naturedly pulled my leg about overuse of the word reflect. he felt that too much time reflecting, got in the way of doing. I know what he meant, and as one of the most skilled workers of wood I know, trained as a ship's carpenter, he knew about the importance of doing, of practical, manual making a difference. Till I pointed out that the good carpenter (and he is one of the best I've watched) is a reflective practitioner, thoughtfully working with tools and material to create a solid object that witnesses to his skill and thought. So, I'm yet to be convinced we would ever be in danger of reflecting too much. More likely we have educated ourselves out of reflection as slowed down thought, considered opinion, informed judgement, balancing considerations with evidence. And maybe it isn't we have educated ourselves out of reflective listening, as that we never really learned it.

Now when it comes to theology, theologising, and theologians, I am entirely persuaded that theological reflection is an important form of listening, reflective listening. And in that conversation we identified two ways of listening that we all practice, and we aren't often aware of the difference it can make to a conversation, a relationship, an outcome, which one we use. There is receptive listening  and there is interceptive listening. Receptive listening is when our attitude is open, our presuppositions and prejudices silenced, our attention is given, and the other is the guide to where the conversation is going. Interceptive listening is when the word clothed thoughts of the Other are intercepted by our own thoughts impatiently waiting to be clothed in words as soon as we get a word in edgeways. The first, receptive listening is interested in what the other thinks, how they think, why what they think is important, and so their words are gifts that make possible communication and understanding. Whereas interceptive listening is a defensive stance, anticipating the earliest moment available for regaining cotrol of the conversation.

The good theologian is a receptive listener - whether to the human voice in discussion, argument, testimony - or to the voice of a text which informs, persuades, challenges, contradicts, affirms, - or to the choral voice of the Christian tradition, recognising the harmonies and movements, the points and counterpoints, and responding to the textured sound of theological music as it is composed, practised and performed. I suppose what I am asking you to be receptive to, is the idea that a receptive mind and heart is one skilled in the art of reflective listening; openness of spirit to what is new and different, humility before the careful thought of others, docility that is the attitude of the teachable ( and reachable) soul, hospitable to the truth that will always be more than we can safely contain. A lot of theological writing, quite a lot of contemporary preaching, and maybe even too much of our usual ways of conversing, lean more towards an interceptive form of listening, when our own presupposed rightness is more important than the off chance that the Other may have something life-enhancing or life-saving to say to us.

Amongst the habits I've grown into over the years is reflective reading - a long, slow, meandering walk with someone whose voice, at least during those pre-arranged appointments, is always to be considered more important than mine. It may be that reflective, receptive listening describes those times when we let others get their words in edgeways. One further thought from that discussion - talking of theology and imagination, we moved to the word speculation. Why does speculative theology get such a bad press? As if God's immensity, mystery and overwhelming mercy were in some sense threatened by our thinking! A far greater threat to the vast mysterious truth of who God is, is that guarded timidity that wants our talk of God to stay within already confirmed parameters, a process of interceptive listening that is in danger of making what we already think, know, or think we know, a final position to be defended.

Theological reflection can only take place if there is a willed vulnerability, a determined openness, a receptive attentiveness, to voices other than our own.

Great Theologians: Anselm 1. Loving God with the mind

                               Anselm of Canterbury. 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.

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!

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.

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).