There are theologians whose thought we try to understand; and then there are theologians who shape the way we understand.
Put another way, there are those theologians whose way of thinking about God is attractively coherent, intellectually and spiritually satisfying in a demanding way, whose vision of God and the world deserves our serious attention.
But then there are those other (but few) theologians, whose vision of God and the world is lived in such a way that they draw a deeper response of personal engagement, they demand our attention. In that sense their theology becomes transformative for us, working our deeper soil to a more fertile tilth, out of which the fruit of our own theology begins to grow and bear the fruit of the Spirit of Christ in performative and transformative Gospel practices.
Theology at its best is communal, shared conversation about God, a communion of the saints through shared insight. Theological discussion is a fellowship of minds and hearts, like informal prayer when we talk about God in God's presence, but without the rudeness of ignoring that Presence. In my current ministry which is theological education and pastoral formation, I try very hard to avoid those ways of doing theology that attract the pejorative and reductionist use of 'academic' - as if talk of God could be detached from the life we live, abstract rather than livingly engaged, an inner discipline of thought without the outer performance of faith.
If my own theological reflection has been kept rooted in Christian practice, prayer, and personal conviction, I think it's because of time spent in conversation and discussion with those theologians who work my deeper soil, who have shaped the way I think of God, and whose lived theology has impinged in transformative ways on my own attempts to follow more faithfully after Christ. It's one of the responsible joys of life to share those fruits with others in a process of theological networking through pastoral friendships, personal encounter, widening circles of conversation beyond the church.
Several theologians whose writing has worked itself deeply into my way of thinking have remained frequent and sometimes awkward conversation partners. I trust them. Not because they are always right, or above criticism themselves. But because they provide reference points for my own journey, correctives to my perspective, retardants to my prejudices - and because in them I see and hear the voice of the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. (By the way there are other kinds of theologian, who might not use or own the term, but who paint, compose music, write poetry and story, embody loving practices that humanise - and in their gift they live their faith and deepen ours. But that's another story worth the telling.)
Over the next while I'd like to work out what it is about those Christian theologians I've unwittingly turned into my own canon of Christians to attend to, and why it is they do it for me. Some told their truth, made their mark, and I moved on the better for meeting them. Others have stayed around, their voices still amongst those I listen to most carefully. And then there are new voices saying things that not everyone wants to hear, too easily drowned out by the din of hyper-marketed voices hawking Christian consumer religion. But which of these new voices now to attend to, and how to decide, and what they are saying that needs to be heard, spoken and lived, here, now?
God's voice is of the heart.
I do not therefore say,
all voices of the heart are God's,
and to discern His voice amidst the voices
is that hard task to which we each are born.
One of those long time conversation partners, a voice I've found it important and demanding to attend to, is Walter Brueggemann. I've already posted on him, (on Jan 25), touching on one of his major contributions - giving the Gospel back to the preacher and the preacher back to the Gospel. In the wiriting of Brueggemann, the Gospel comes to us, individually and as the community of Christ, as both cultural critique and invasive grace. Every Friday for the rest of this this year I'll come back to him here - a kind of Through (most of) the Year with Walter Brueggemann!
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