The turn in recent decades to practical theology has been one of the enriching and expansive influences on how we understand ministry and think about God in relation to human experience. Our understanding of the nature and changing dynamics of Christian ministry has changed as a result, and the approaches to ministry formation and training are now much more responsive to context, and flexible in content, delivery and in recognising the diversities of ministries and service in and beyond the church. So far, so good.
But good as this is, the emergence of practical theology and its powerful spinoffs in missiology, ministry and leadership studies, new expressions of ecclesiology and the near ubiquitous use of qualitative research and analysis, have each and all been accompanied by a corresponding, if unintentional relinquishing of some of the more intellectually abstract disciplines in the theological curriculum. I have in mind particularly the demise of philosophical theology understood as weight and resistance training of the mind. Such a rigorous and interrogative approach to theology, along with text focused biblical studies and systematic theology, helps to keep Christian practical theology honest and faithful to that which is peculiarly and essentially defining of Christian faith and practice.
Practical theology is theology in practice. Well of course it is. Yes, but the quality and content of the theology matters and is decisive for the quality, content and application of that theology to Christian practice, human experience and ecclesial life in community. Encouraging practical theologians to read deeply in philosophical theology is not an argument for a hospice chaplain being able to trot out the varied forms of theodicy, from the free will defence to the veil of soul-making! But it is to argue that in pastoral care, in community life within the church, there is a need for the reinforcing steel of philosophical analysis and theological precision, woven throughout the poured foundations of concrete existence that is our daily life together in the Body of Christ.
One very fine example of how that works, and what it looks like is John Swinton's Raging with Compassion. What makes this book an important exemplar of practical theology at its best is precisely Swinton's wrestling at the systematic and philosophical level with the abstract questions raised by human concrete experience. The intellectual persuasiveness of the book is not due to it being an effective theodicy (reasoned explanation of whence suffering and evil in a world made by a God of power and goodness). For myself the key to this book's quality and usefulness as practical theology is precisely the analysis of human experiences of suffering measured against the biblical text and the toughest questions asked and answered, with the theological precision of one who knows that pastoral and intellectual integrity are mutually dependent.
All of this came to mind when reading again the essays of the philosophical theologian, Janet Martin Soskice. This slim collection of essays, titled The Kindness of God, is precisely the kind of project I have in mind, but from the other side of the academic common room, and from the other side of the pastoral counselling room. The combination of philosophical and practical theology in the hands of those conversant with both, can at times produce that quite rare thing, a theology of the mind and the heart. Here is Sosckice, near the end of her essay on Imago Dei, and her reflections on what makes us human, and why speech and other people matter:
"To be fully human, even to praise God, we need others who are different from ourselves. Were Adam alone in the garden, he would not only be unable to reproduce, he would not speak, for speech is a pre-eminently social possession. And without speech there would be no praise, prayer - no 'world'."
We become opurselves through being with others. They conceive and give birth to us, teach us to speak and to write. Whatever meaning we give it, the startling divine plural of Gen.1.26, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness', is no accident."
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