Theologians I now couldn't not read

There are some modern theologians I now couldn't not read. Sometimes a double negative is the best way to be emphatic, making a point by grammatical clumsiness. Double negatives act like speed-bumps on the rat run of our hasty assumptions.

So just to  

slow   you down

enough  

to   hear  

the   point  I'm making,.....

There are some theologians you read and that's it, you've done it and you can move on. But there are others who aren't so easily assimilated, and who refuse to be reduced to the status of transient interest now dispensable.  
For different people, the names would be different. I know readers of this blog have their own need-to-read authors. For myself I couldn't not read Moltman, Bonhoeffer, T F Torrance, Yoder, Newbigin, Brueggemann, Hauerwas, Rowan Williams.

From earlier centuries there are others I return to, and some of them I couldn't not read either (Julian of Norwich for one, the very different P T Forsyth for another). But for now I've been reflecting on why these particular modern theologians have so fully entered my theological bloodstream that they are now essential to my spiritual and intellectual health. It isn't that I agree with all that any one of them says. And not as if they are all from the same theological stable. Some of them are quite hard to read, several of them write far too much, and I haven't read all that any one of them has written.

But they are,

every one of them,

Christian theologians who have required of me

a new depth of response,

demanded a full measure of intellectual integrity,

and instilled a spiritual seriousness

that understands the necessary connections

between good theology,

Christ-like practice,

and the habit of doxology.

This coming year I intend to pick one book from each of these, and read them again. With one or two it might be one I haven't read before. But Moltmann's The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, Newbigin's The Open Secret, and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, (I see these two as essentially together), Yoder's Politics of Jesus, and Volf's Exclusion and Embrace, are all but self selecting. It's a sign of age I'm told - to re-read instead of reading what's new. To be honest though, even the five books cited above are hard to beat as worthwhile theological writing that is inherently if at times uncomfortably transformative for those who engage with them.

Which other theologians, writing today, meet the benchmarks of that italics sentence above?

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

A good list Jim, to which I would add Robert Jenson, Eberhard Busch, Marilynne Robinson and John de Gruchy. I’m biased, but I also think that Trevor Hart is very underrated and I’m really looking forward to reading his three-volume A Poetics of Redemption. Of course, 12 months ago I would have had to have added Ray Anderson too.

[Lawrence]

‘It's a sign of age I'm told - to re-read instead of reading what's new.’ Personally I prefer C.S. Lewis’s view: a book that hasn’t been re-read hasn’t been read properly.

As for the list, like Jason I would add Robert Jenson, but also Colin Gunton, Dan Hardy and David Ford.

[Simon Jones]

Thanks. It is a good list and a challenge to me, immersed as I am in NT studies and history, to get out of the ghetto and read more widely.
So, I've just received Hauerwas' new collection of sermons to read and also plan to read the Open Secret this year.
I guess the person I might add to the list is Richard Hays. I know he's an NT specialist but his work on ethics and imagination is hugely stimulating.

[Jim Gordon]

Lists are personal, which is the limit of their usefulness to others I suppose. Those mentioned by Jason, Lawrence and Simon are just as valid. If I'd asked not about theologians but individual books it would be a very different list - and to it I'd add Vanstone's Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense, Vanier's Community and Growth, Lacugna's God for Us, Lash's Believing Three ways in One God, and Tanner's Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity. But then the list becomes a library!

[Tony]

Hi Jim,
I'm wrestling with Volf's Exclusion and Embrace - again!! Perhaps if I had a reading and discussion partner it might be easier?

[Terry]

During 2009, Marva Dawn's work especially had an impact on me.

[Jim Gordon]

Hi Tony. Volf deals with a subject that is itself a challenge. Add to that his writing style which I find at times abstract and requiring a grasp of unfamiliar concepts. But if the perseverance of the saints means anything in literary practice, it probably refers to how in theology benefit is sometimes directly proportionate to difficulty! Hope you persevere - he IS worth it. I won't get to him for a while yet.

[Bruce Hamill]

I love Volf. He is beautifully precise. To Volf and Williams, I would add James Alison and David Bentley Hart.

[Bruce Hamill]

Oh, and I would second Jenson too.

[Jim Gordon]

Hi Bruce. We haven't met, but I think you are another of Jason's friends charged with ensuring his good behaviour? More seriously, thanks for your suggestions. Jenson I know through his Systematic Theology, Alison's The Joy of Being Wrong, and Hart (Beauty of the Infinite) I've now bought three times - having given the volume away twice! Enjoyed them all, learned much.