The Future of Christian Theology E-Book

David F. Ford

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Blackwell Manifestos
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 396

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The Future of Christian Theology represents a personal manifesto from one of the world's leading theologians, exploring the ways Christian theology in the twenty-first century has been, and can now continue to be, both creative and wise. * Represents an outstanding and engaging account of the task of theology today * Offers an insightful description of what makes for discerning and creative theology. * Written from the perspective of decades of experience, and in close dialogue with theologians of other faiths * Features a strong interfaith and public theology dimension, and a contemporary portrait of the field from the inside * A hopeful and illuminating search for wisdom and understanding in the increasingly complex religious and secular world of the twenty-first century.

Leseprobe

Contents

Preface

Source Acknowledgments

1 A Cry for Wisdom: Theology for the Twenty-first Century

From the Twentieth to the Twenty-first Century: Theological Abundance and Variety

Four Elements of Wise Creativity

Conclusion

2 Drama in Bible, Theology, and Life

The Bible: More Dramatic than Epic or Lyric

Gospel of John – Epic, Lyric, and above all Dramatic

Intensity and Extensity in the Ongoing Drama

Conclusion: Drama, Wise Theological Creativity, and an Unanswered Question

3 A Dramatic Code for Twenty-first Century Theology

Modern Secularity and the Health of the Public Sphere

A Drama-centered Account of Modernity

A Dramatic Code for Theology Today

Conclusion: Within and Beyond the Drama

4 Desire Above All

A Balanced Dynamic of Theological Moods

Between Closed Religion and Wide Open Religion

Theological Moods in Bible and Tradition

God-centered Moods: The Divine Passive

5 Belonging: Church, Collegiality, Conversation

Belonging to God and Each Other through Covenant

Theological Creativity in and for the Church

Learning and Teaching Together: Collegiality

Extended belonging: Conversations

Intensive Belonging: Cohabitations, Collaborations, and Movements

Intimate Belonging: Friendships

Conclusion: Complex Belonging

6 Church and Society

First Case Study: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Continuing This Drama

Contemporary Case: Theological Tasks for the Church in Democratic Civil Societies

7 Inter-Faith Blessing

A Jewish Blessing: Dabru Emet

A Muslim Blessing: A Common Word

Scriptural Reasoning as “First Inter-Faith Theology”

Seeking Wisdom for Inter-Faith Engagement: A Muscat Manifesto

Civil Wisdom

8 New Theology and Religious Studies: Shaping, Teaching, and Funding a Field

What is New Theology and Religious Studies?

A Framework for Creativity

Other Frameworks

Curriculum and Teachers

Funding

The Global Potential of New Theology and Religious Studies

9 Becoming a Theologian: The Apprentice

Disciple and Apprentice

Retrieval – A Receptive, Reading Self

Engagement – A Loved and Loving Self

Thinking – An Imaginative, Discerning Self

Communication – A Witnessing, Poetic Self

10 The Bible: Creative Source of Theology

How the Bible Has Shaped This Manifesto

What Sort of Bible Reading is This?

The Four Elements of Wise and Creative Theology in the Bible

A Biblical Hope for Twenty-first Century Theology

Notes and References

Index

Praise for The Future of Christian Theology

“This is, quite simply, a wonderful book. At one level, it is vintage David Ford, in that it contains themes that he has worked on for three decades. At another level, it is all new, and provides an ever deeper integration of themes which is profoundly creative rather than systematic and invites each reader to engage and make fresh connections. At a time when the church is changing so quickly and therefore attentive theology changes also, David Ford more successfully than any other theologian I know bridges the concerns of the academy and those of the worshipping communities. This book contributes massively to that bridge building.”

Iain Torrance, President of Princeton Theological Seminary

“David Ford’s The Future of Christian Theology is a manifesto for a theology adequate to its new context in the twenty-first century. It is not so much a program for a new theological project as a vision of theology oriented as a search for wisdom, focused on the Spirit, in service to the Church, guided by Scripture construed above all as drama and explicitly read in an inter-religious context, and engaged with the struggles of its host society. It’s a bold, powerful and provocative vision.”

David H. Kelsey,Weigle Professor Emeritus of Theology, Yale Divinity School

Blackwell Manifestos

In this new series major critics make timely interventions to address important concepts and subjects, including topics as diverse as, for example: Culture, Race, Religion, History, Society, Geography, Literature, Literary Theory, Shakespeare, Cinema, and Modernism. Written accessibly and with verve and spirit, these books follow no uniform prescription but set out to engage and challenge the broadest range of readers, from undergraduates to postgraduates, university teachers and general readers – all those, in short, interested in ongoing debates and controversies in the humanities and social sciences.

Already Published

The Idea of Culture

Terry Eagleton

The Future of Christianity

Alister E. McGrath

Reading After Theory

Valentine Cunningham

21st-Century Modernism

Marjorie Perloff

The Future of Theory

Jean-Michel Rabaté

True Religion

Graham Ward

Inventing Popular Culture

John Storey

Myths for the Masses

Hanno Hardt

The Future of War

Christopher Coker

The Rhetoric of RHETORIC

Wayne C. Booth

When Faiths Collide

Martin E. Marty

The Future of Environmental Criticism

Lawrence Buell

The Idea of Latin America

Walter D. Mignolo

The Future of Society

William Outhwaite

Provoking Democracy

Caroline Levine

Rescuing the Bible

Roland Boer

Our Victorian Education

Dinah Birch

The Idea of English Ethnicity

Robert Young

Living with Theory

Vincent B. Leitch

Uses of Literature

Rita Felski

Religion and the Human Future

David E. Klemm and William Schweiker

The State of the Novel

Dominic Head

In Defense of Reading

Daniel R. Schwarz

Why Victorian Literature Still Matters

Philip Davis

The Savage Text

Adrian Thatcher

The Myth of Popular Culture

Perry Meisel

Phenomenal Shakespeare

Bruce R. Smith

Why Politics Can’t Be Freed From Religion

Ivan Strenski

What Cinema is!

Andrew Dudley

This edition first published 2011© 2011 David F. Ford

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Library of Congress Cataloging–in–Publication Data

Ford, David, 1948 –

The future of Christian theology / David F. Ford.

p. cm. – (Blackwell manifestos)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-4272-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-4273-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Theology–Methodology. I. Title.BR118.F718 2011

230.01–dc22

2010033793

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

For Rebecca, Rachel and DanielWith joy

Preface

The question this book tries to answer is: how might Christian theology in the twenty-first century be creative and wise?

The past century has been the most theologically prolific in Christian history. Today more energy than ever is going into theological scholarship and thinking, wisdom-seeking in engagement with God, church, and society, and communicating theology in many modes and media. This book is for anyone who is interested in the future of this global enterprise.

A few parts of the book (especially chapters 8 and 9) might be of special interest to those who have theological scholarship, thought, education, or communication as their jobs, but I have tried even in those chapters to make what is said accessible and relevant to a wider readership. Overall, the hope is that, whatever the careers and commitments of theologically interested readers, this manifesto might stimulate them to seek wisdom about important issues and might help them shape personal and social life in the light of what they discover. I have found doing theology to be extraordinarily gripping, stretching, and surprising, and my deepest desire for this manifesto is that others might be drawn into a similar engagement.

Why a manifesto? I was immediately attracted by this watchword of the series when I received the invitation to contribute to it. It invites to a distillation of thinking and a concentration on what is most important and generative for the future. It is also about going public with a program that one hopes might be taken up by others. One surprise for me in the course of writing it was the extent to which the manifesto requirements made me rethink things. At the beginning I expected it could be written “off the top of my head” and quite quickly; no sooner was it under way than I found myself drawn into all sorts of depths and complexities and was challenged to reconsider a range of categories, judgments, and orientations.

Stretching to meet those challenges took far longer than anticipated, and I thank Wiley-Blackwell, especially Rebecca Harkin, Isobel Bainton, and Lucy Boon, for their patience and encouragement. I have many other debts of gratitude. Simeon Zahl has been a dream research assistant, both on the big issues of theological judgment and on the details of references and the preparation of the final text. Aref Nayed and Steven Kepnes, authors of the forthcoming companion volumes on the future of Islamic and Jewish theology, have been wonderful intellectual companions. Our intensive meeting in Abu Dhabi to discuss all three manifestos was especially fruitful, and it led to extensive revision of mine. The influence of many years of conversation with Aref and Steve, as well as other Muslim and Jewish thinkers, is explicit in chapter 7 on “Inter-Faith Blessing,” but it is implicit throughout – they have become part of my life, alongside Christian and secular friends and thinkers. Nicholas Adams’ years as Academic Director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme have been especially stimulating, and the Programme’s team members (Catriona Laing, Barbara Bennett, Miriam Lorie, and Cheryl Slater) and others associated with it (Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, Alison Richard, Leonard Polonsky, Georgette Bennett, Abdullah Al Salmi, Omar Zawawi, Ghazi Bin Muhammad, Abdulrahman Al Salmi, Michael Bos, John Marks, Emilia Mosseri, Edward McCabe, James Kidner, Richard Chartres, Tim Ryan, David and Sharon Rosen, James Marrow, William Salomon, Sarah Coakley, Peter Agar, Graham Allen, Kate Pretty, Debbie Patterson Jones, Jennifer Barnes, Richard Wilson, Stuart and Sibella Laing, Tim Winter, Richard Rex, Fraser Watts, Simon Franklin, Sarah Snyder, Mike Higton, Ahmad Achtar, Diana Lipton, and others) have given vital support. Discussions with graduate students have been continually fruitful. This is, as a result, a Christian manifesto for a complexly religious and secular world, and I hope those of many ages, traditions, and spheres of life will find something of value in it.

Finally, there are other long-term interlocutors who are so much part of my life that they help to shape everything I write. These include the late Daniel Hardy, who was part of the genesis of this manifesto before he died in 2007; Micheal O’Siadhail, first reader of whatever I have written for over four decades; Frances Young; Jean Vanier; Peter Ochs; Tim Jenkins; Ben Quash; Iain Torrance; Robert Gibbs; Annie and Alan Hargrave; Stephen Plant; Susannah Ticciati; Peter Sedgwick; Madeleine O’Callaghan; Angela Tilby; my brother, Alan; my mother, Phyllis Ford; and my wife, Deborah. Since this is a manifesto that above all looks to future generations, it is dedicated with deepest gratitude and love to our children, Rebecca, Rachel, and Daniel.

Source Acknowledgments

Quotations from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in chapter 6 are from the following source: From Ethics: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Volume 5 copyright © 2004 Fortress Press. Reproduced by permission of Augsburg Fortress Publishers.

1A Cry for Wisdom

Theology for the Twenty-first Centuryoo

Christian theology is thinking about questions raised by and about Christian faith and practice. That thinking is almost unavoidable in some form by anyone who tries to live a Christian life or who for some other reason is interested in Christianity. Theology by this broad definition is open to all and is part of ordinary life whenever any of a vast range of questions is raised. It is also many other things, but this manifesto is mainly concerned with the quality of theologies that, directly or indirectly, feed the minds and hearts of millions of people and are of interest to many more. That is why its key word for the goal of theology is wisdom, which unites understanding with practice and is concerned to engage with the whole of life.

The search for wisdom is the passion of this manifesto. It leads through the Bible and Christian history; into the depths, heights, and varieties of human life – past, present, and future; into engagement with communities, cultures, academic disciplines, public life, and other faiths besides Christianity; and into the ways a Christian theologian might be formed today. It is driven by questioning and drawn by the desire for God and God’s wisdom.

At its core, theological wisdom is about the discernment of cries. In Proverbs, personified wisdom herself cries out:

Wisdom cries out in the street;in the squares she raises her voice.At the busiest corner she cries out;at the entrance of the city gates she speaks …Does not wisdom call,and does not understanding raise her voice?On the heights, beside the way,at the crossroads she takes her stand;Beside the gates, in front of the town,at the entrance of the portals she cries out:“To you, O people, I call,and my cry is to all that live …Take my instruction instead of silver,and knowledge rather than choice gold;For wisdom is better than jewels,and all that you may desirecannot compare with her.”

(Proverbs 1:20–21, 8:1–4, 10–11)

That is a manifesto. Wisdom is often thought of as a rather “cool” concept, associated with slow deliberation and reflective distance. But the poetry of Proverbs shows wisdom’s passionate intensity and urgency, represented by a mature, attractive woman. She does not by any means do away with patience, reflection, and deliberation, but opens up the heart of wisdom as a hot, energetic passion for clear discernment, accurate knowledge, good judgment, right living, and far-sighted decision-making. She is also passionately against fools and foolishness. She is wholeheartedly committed to the public realm and the shaping of families, friendships, neighborhoods, and societies, as well as individuals. She wants to attract as many as possible to devote themselves to her:

“Come, eat of my breadand drink of the wine I have mixed.Lay aside immaturity, and live,and walk in the way of insight.”

(Proverbs 9:5–6)

The cries of wisdom are meant to stimulate us to cry out for her too. If nothing else we desire can compare with her, then we need to relate our desire for wisdom to our other desires. In the midst of all the cries – longings, appeals, and demands that come from within us and from all around us – how are we to shape a wise life? Desiring wisdom means seeking to test and discern the cries, learning how to respond to them. The Bible and life are full of cries: of suffering, joy, wonder, thanks, praise, victory, defeat, fear, faith, despair, hope, remorse, petition, and much else. These are the intensities and urgencies that can call forth a “hot” wisdom. Theology seeks wisdom through this engagement, relating to all that we cry out for – love, food, peace, security, freedom, health, hope, truth, joy, and God.1

A classic description of wisdom-seeking in the midst of intense pressure and suffering is the book of Job.2 It is one of the most perceptive and devastating interrogations of God and of human existence ever. In the first chapter comes the fundamental question of the book: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” ( Job 1:9). “Fearing God” is basic to wisdom in the Bible. It is a “right fear,” the sort appropriate to a relationship of love and trust, where the main thing to be feared is the damage or loss of the relationship through unwise behavior. But this fear has the further, awesome, dimension of the involvement of God who creates and judges. The quality of Job’s fear in relationship to God is tested drastically through the events of the book. Is he in this relationship for the sake of wealth, health, family, reputation, or religious satisfaction? All those are taken from him and he is traumatized. He despairingly faces the evaporation of the meaning of his life, and cries out in anguish again and again. His friends offer traditional, “packaged” theological interpretations, such as that he is somehow to blame for his own situation, or that God runs the world according to a simple rule of repaying good for good, evil for evil. But their wisdom does not discern the key issue in Job’s cries: that Job is being tested and searched, and in response he is rightly questioning and searching. The urgency and radicality of his searching is a model for all theology. New, overwhelming challenges require fresh wrestling with God and reality together.

What is at stake is whether Job is relating to God for what he gets out of it or “for nothing,’ for the sake of who God is, for God’s sake – a typical biblical idiom is “for his name’s sake,” echoed in the first, embracing petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Hallowed be your name.” The Greek translation of “for nothing” is dorean, “as a gift.” The wisdom Job learnt in the time of his virtuous prosperity was not enough, but he also finds that the most terrible affliction does not have the last word: God does. His eyes are eventually opened to this: “Now my eye sees you!” (Job 42:5). He is proved right over against his friends because he persisted in crying out to God and for God, even when there seemed no point in doing so. He is shown as wanting above all to have God for God’s sake.

Who is God? This God is one who lets his name be at stake in the risky openness of life. Why? The most adequate answer for the book of Job, worked out through taking the rest of the Bible into account, seems to be: because of the preciousness to God of the relationship with Job. God does this for the sake of a “for its own sake” relationship. It is beyond manipulation, coercion, self-interest, threat, or retribution, pointing to the deepest wisdom of a relationship of passionate love. And part of this love is a passion for searching out understanding, for questioning beyond the limits of what has been thought so far, for relating all reality to God and God’s purposes – that is, a passion for theological wisdom. The scope of Job’s searching is unlimited: personal and social life; the whole creation; and God.

In the New Testament, perhaps the most influential short passage in the history of Christian theology is the Prologue of the Gospel of John,3 which has a similar scope to the book of Job. It is daringly innovative in its interpretation of scripture (for John, that meant the Hebrew scriptures or the Greek translation of them, the Septuagint, later called by Christians the Old Testament); in its reconception of creation and of God in relation to Jesus Christ as the Word; in its concern for “all things” and “all people”; in its picture of loving intimacy in God (v.18); and in its weaving together of these themes around the pivotal statement:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

John set a standard for later theology in terms of interpretation of scripture, the whole of creation as horizon, utter involvement in history and the contemporary world, and the centrality of God.

John also sowed the seeds of continual theological creativity through his Gospel’s teaching of Jesus about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is probably the most exciting, disturbing, and uncertain topic in Christian theology. The New Testament announcement that, since Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, God’s own Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, has been poured out “upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28–9) is stupendous – and it may be early days yet for adequate realization of its implications. Throughout Christian history, the Holy Spirit (and such closely related topics as holiness, grace, gifts, freedom, power, authority, inspiration, blessing, and all sorts of innovations) has time and again been an occasion for movements that have expanded and renewed Christian communities, often impelling them into internal and external conflict or confrontation. It is as if all efforts to domesticate the Spirit fail, and the wild imagery of fire and wind is actualized in events. It happened in Paul’s churches in the first century CE, in the Montanist movement, in Augustine’s controversies over grace, in the great schism between the Eastern and Western Christian churches at the end of the first millennium, in many medieval movements, in the Reformation and its radical offshoots, in Quakerism, Methodism, and popular “awakenings” and “revivals.” But the twentieth century saw the most amazing development of all. In 1906, in Azusa Street, Los Angeles, the worldwide Pentecostal and Charismatic movement began. This became probably the fastest-growing religious movement in world history, with perhaps as many as 300 hundred million people involved within a century. Its main appeal was to signs of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. It now has numerous educational institutions, scholars, and thinkers, and one of the most important things to look for in the present century is how they work out their theological wisdom. It is vital to recognize how deeply the Spirit is related to the seeking of theological wisdom. The cry, “Come, Holy Spirit!” is a daily precondition for thinking theologically. But the Spirit also needs to be thought about and appreciated more fully if theology is to be lively and true. John draws together and interprets much in the other Gospels and the early Church. It is one of the first theological syntheses. Here the Spirit is given not in wind and fire but quietly, through the risen Jesus communicating it to his disciples face to face, by breathing on them (John 20:22).

Earlier in the Gospel he had already interpreted what this meant, the most important statement for future theology being: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). That is a promise that John himself sought to enter into in his innovative Prologue and throughout his Gospel. It is the core challenge to Christian theology down the centuries: can theologians be guided with others into “all the truth,” both the wisdom that has already been learned by others and the fresh wisdom needed to discern the distinctive cries of the present time? Job’s friends could only offer the wisdom of the past, but failed to discern the meaning of the cries they were hearing. Job too knew and practiced the wisdom of his tradition: “There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8). But he was also willing to search for fresh wisdom, inseparable from wrestling with God in a new situation.

The new situation John found himself in was that of trying to make sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In order to do so, he practiced what might be called “wise and creative theology,” as in his Prologue – trying to do justice to scripture and tradition while also exploring new ways of conceiving the truth. In every generation and situation since then theology has had to come to terms with its past in fresh situations, trying to discern how best to be faithful, loving, and hopeful, and praying for the Holy Spirit as it does so. To cry out for the Spirit is to seek wisdom for God’s sake and to be open to following both trodden and untrodden ways.

So twenty-first century Christian theology inherits vast riches from the past but can never simply repeat them. What, then, are the key elements in wise and creative theology? I will try to answer that question by reflections that draw heavily on the experience of editing a textbook on twentieth-century Christian theology, The Modern Theologians,4 now in its third edition.

From the Twentieth to the Twenty-first Century: Theological Abundance and Variety

Was the twentieth century the most theologically productive and cre ative in Christian history? There is a strong case to be made for this.

It was certainly productive, in two main ways: there was the sheer abundance of it; and there was the generation of new varieties. Each of these has important consequences for the twenty-first century. There are two main reasons for the amount of theology produced in the twentieth century.

The first was the global spread of Christianity. This had accelerated during the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century was massively boosted by Pentecostalism and various forms of Evangelicalism, while Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Anglican and Protestant churches also grew.5 This increased demand for what one might call ordinary, basic theology. In general, this meant two things: education for the teachers, preachers, pastors, priests, catechists, writers, broadcasters, and other communicators; and, largely through them, more widespread popular Christian teaching.

The second factor was the spread of education at all levels. There was an explosion of primary, secondary, and tertiary educational institutions all over the world, and a vast expansion of publishing and other communications media. By the end of the century it was normal to talk of the “information age,” “knowledge economy,” and “learning societies.” The synergies of all this with the global spread of Christianity helped to generate large quantities of theology.

Twentieth-century theology was unprecedented not only in quantity, but also in variety. German-language theology, both Protestant and Catholic, was for much of the century the leading academic tradition, and five of the six individuals6 who might, from the standpoint of the early twenty-first century, be seen as “classics,” were formed within that. It is a tradition shaped through commitments both to a range of academic disciplines and to church life (often in some tension with each other), and tested through the century’s political and other traumas. Above all, it faced the challenges of Western modernity, producing a range of Christian responses to it. The thoroughness with which these were grounded,7 thought through, and debated means that classics from this tradition must be on the curriculum of any theologian who does not wish to reinvent the wheel. It is not clear yet what promise this tradition holds for fresh twenty-first century theology – it may be that its most creative successors will not be in its homelands of Germany and Switzerland.

In the rest of Europe and America, most leading theologians and movements were in continuity or continuous dialogue with German theology, but there were also other strands not so indebted to that – Anglican, Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical, revisionist, and liberal theologies, and a range of philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion more influenced by Anglo-American or French philosophers than by Germans. There was also a blossoming of other types: postmodern theologies; an array of “theology and …” (race and ethnicity; the physical, biological, and social sciences; literature; the visual arts; music; film; spirituality; etc.); and, above all, feminist, womanist, and other gender-related theologies. Of these, the one that most profoundly affected theological consciousness was feminism. In retrospect, this is likely to be seen as a fundamental shift in the twentieth century, as the theological voices of half the world’s Christians began to be heard in new ways. In historical perspective, we are also probably still in the early days of theological thinking on gender, and the same goes for the other types mentioned, especially the “theology and …” list. The implication for twenty-first century theology is clear: this work must be taken much further.

The presence of women’s voices in theology is, like many of the new twentieth-century developments, a global matter. The same is true of the theologies of the global churches and communions (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed), and of movements such as Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. All of these have been increasingly shaped by theological thinking from beyond Europe and North America. The grip of certain sorts of American theology on Evangelicals and Pentecostals elsewhere in the world (partly enabled by the Americans’ capacity to fund those they agree with) now seems to be loosening due to a double pressure. On the one hand, within America there is a blossoming of new theologies within these churches; on the other hand, there is a new theological confidence elsewhere, especially in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Some of the other churches have also been trying to think together in new ways. The Christian ecumenical movement is unique in world history in having led many religious bodies from situations of confrontation and even conflict to conversation and collaboration with each other. It is mostly a twentieth-century phenomenon. Explicitly ecumenical theology, and the agreed documents emerging from ecumenical dialogues, are only the tip of the iceberg of its influence on theology. As with feminism, there has been a profound shift in consciousness in many churches, opening them to fellow-Christians in ways unimaginable in 1900. Yet, unlike gender-related theologies, ecumenism and its associated theology have not flourished in the years surrounding the turn of the second millennium. One hopeful sign is the birth of “receptive ecumenism,” a theological program determined to make the most of ecumenical progress so far and to deepen and enrich the churches through learning from each other in many spheres.8 This is a minimal requirement for Christian churches this century if they are not to lose the momentum of what has been one of the most healing and transformative movements in Christian history.

The global character of twentieth-century theology lay not just in types that had a global reach and participation, but also in the range of theologies that were often highly specific in their orientation or local in context. In the third edition of The Modern Theologians some of these are labeled “Particularizing Theologies,” including black theology of liberation; Latin American liberation theology; African, South Asian, and East Asian theologies; and postcolonial biblical interpretation. The list could have gone on almost indefinitely, and new types are constantly arising. Indeed, one safe prediction for the coming century is that such particularizing theologies will multiply as more and more “niches” in the complex religious, cultural, and environmental ecosystem of our world discover the desirability of theological wisdom. There is also a feedback effect on other theologies that might not have seen themselves as “particularist.” Just as feminist critiques made us aware how masculine much theology is, so classic German and other European and American theologians now seem far more a part of their own time, place, and tradition.

In a sense, we are all particularist now, encouraged to be more aware of what has shaped us, such as origins, contexts, interests, perspectives, and limitations. This is a common postmodern or late modern emphasis, whose danger is fragmentation, as particulars disconnected from each other develop their identities and put their cases. A tempting response is to attempt a new “modern” integration or overview, or to absolutize a particular identity. In our century at present religion is the favorite candidate for this, but one can see others – Americans and Chinese, for example, who are tempted by global hegemony, complexly combining elements of ideology (religious and secular), politics, economics, and civilization. This manifesto takes particulars with radical seriousness, as seen especially in the retrieval of religious traditions without syncretism or denial of their universal claims. Its response to the terrible dangers is not a new totality, integration, or hegemony, but a diverse ecology of wisdom-seeking, in which the connections are not maintained by conformity within one overview but by partnerships of difference.9

Within theology, this is found in the best practices of ecumenical theology – the “receptive ecumenism” just mentioned is a form of hospitable wisdom-seeking in engagement with other churches than one’s own. It is also well exemplified in many varieties of “theology and …’ These often draw together people with diverse theological convictions into conversation around a common concern. As suggested above, many of the growing points of Christian theology this century come under this broad heading. I would especially highlight four.

First, “theology and poetry” is a matter of deep concern to theology as it tries to shape its language more richly, imaginatively, and effectively. Poetry is “maximal speech,” the most condensed and intense use of language in premodernity, modernity, and today. It not only draws listeners and readers into the depths of the Bible and of Christian liturgy, poetry, hymns, and culture; it also gives access to analogous depths in other faiths, civilizations, and cultures, including secular ones. Second, “theology and the sciences,” both human and natural, offers a critical set of test cases for the engagement of theology with modernity (whether early, middle, or late), as well as understandings vital for discerning how to shape twenty-first century education and living. Third, “theology and public life” has become of increasing importance in dealing with the fresh prominence of religions in the public sphere, both internationally and in many particular zones of conflict. Fourth, “theology and the religions” is perhaps the most comprehensive challenge of our century. It will be the subject of a case study in chapter 8 of this volume, but some remarks now are relevant.

The reason why other religions are such a comprehensive challenge is that they are analogous to Christianity in their particularity and universality. They are irrevocably particular in that they shape a whole way of life and thought, and one cannot simultaneously participate fully in more than one. They are universal in the scope of their horizons, affirmations, and questions.

Christian thinking about other religious traditions goes back to its origins, but the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have given it a new impetus. As the great secular ideologies of the past century either faded as credible contenders for hegemony (fascism, communism), or lost much of their attractiveness in the face of failures, inadequacies, and crises (socialism, capitalism), religions re-emerged in the public sphere. This has been highly ambivalent, accompanied by much violence and other bad news. It has also been a realization of something that in the secular twentieth century had been a largely unrecognized fact (especially among Western media and educated people): that perhaps four to five billion of the world’s population are directly involved with one or other of the major religions.

The religions’ new prominence has not only highlighted their problems and pathologies, but has also stimulated them to engage afresh with each other. Can they be partners in difference? Do they have the resources to serve the common good together? What about all the conflicts, bad histories, missionary aggression, passionate rejections, contradictory convictions, and other incompatibilities? The present century not only unavoidably presents those sharp questions to the religions; it is also already testing the resources and qualities of each faith as the questions are ignored, rejected, or tackled. Inter-faith theology is perhaps the analogy to feminism and ecumenism in the twentieth century, inviting Christians into a change of consciousness regarding many millions of their fellow human beings.

So Christian theology of the past century has been both abundant and diverse, and some of its varieties are likely to be of special significance for the coming century. But what about theological quality?

Four Elements of Wise Creativity

The case for the unprecedented creativity of twentieth-century theology is more speculative than for its quantity and variety. It is difficult to compare instances of creativity (however defined) in general terms. As Patrick Kavanagh said about recognizing good poetry, “... but I know the beast when I see it.” I will use four categories to consider the matter, while acknowledging that judgments of quality within each of them are highly contestable. For brevity’s sake, my examples will mostly be from six “classic” twentieth-century theologians in the continental European tradition: Barth, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, de Lubac, Rahner, and von Balthasar.10 The main aim of the exercise is not just to help in identifying wisdom and creativity, but also to offer an exemplary pattern to those inspired to attempt it.

1. Wise and creative retrieval

Christian theology must deal with the past, discerning how best to relate to it so as to resource the present and future. It is what French Roman Catholic theology of the early twentieth century called ressourcement, a return to sources that can nourish theology and life now, and the term became a watchword of the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) in its renewal of Catholicism.

Some of its leading exponents were French, such as Henri de Lubac. The variety and historical breadth and depth of his retrievals were remarkable. He was especially perceptive in showing how vital earlier meanings can be lost, impoverished, or distorted with serious consequences, and how their recovery can involve radical change in the present. He did this not only with key figures in the tradition, such as Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, and Nicholas of Cusa, and with core practices such as Eucharistic worship, the exercise of authority in the church, and patristic and medieval exegesis of scripture; he also discerned Archimedean points of leverage in the tradition centered on fundamental terms and concepts, including “the supernatural,” “nature and grace,” “the vision of God,” “the body of Christ,” and “the senses of scripture.” His retrievals (for which he endured a good deal of official opposition) contributed substantially to the transformation of Roman Catholic sensibility that made the Second Vatican Council possible and influenced its deliberations and documents.

What is the secret of such creative retrieval? There is no formula for genius, and the only adequate way to appreciate it is to follow carefully how he actually does it. But his mixture of ingredients is instructive. There is intensive attention to texts as well as to contexts and historical events, amounting to an ability to inhabit the past in a scholarly yet imaginative way. There is the discernment of pivotal moments, especially of loss or change of meaning. There is also a comparable effort to discern what is most significant in the present – de Lubac wrote on evolution and other scientific topics, on atheistic humanism, on art and literature, and on Buddhism. He is fully involved with the past for the sake of the present and future, with the result that the Christian tradition becomes habitable in a fresh, relevant, and challenging way. In theological terms it might be described as an achievement of prophetic wisdom.

Yet this very prophetic dimension also runs great risks. De Lubac can be accused of distorting the past in order to make his case, and of reading present concerns into earlier periods. Any creative retrieval will open up such debates. For a theology that wants to be genuinely connected with the past it is not an option to avoid the problems that de Lubac faced: the challenge is, if possible, to do better.

A generation after de Lubac’s death, his own work too requires the labor of retrieval and renewed reception. One of those who interpreted him in his lifetime was another classic thinker, Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose own efforts of retrieval are on an even larger scale than de Lubac’s, and include far more on the direct interpretation of scripture – the task that might be seen as the core of all Christian retrieval. Von Balthasar learnt much from his older Protestant contemporary, Karl Barth, whose major work, the six million-word Church Dogmatics,11 is pervaded with excursuses on one after another past thinker, topic, or debate. The Bible is his prime focus, as it is that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in contrast with the concerns of Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich, who in very different ways concentrate more on past theological and philosophical ideas. So the modes of retrieval practiced by such thinkers vary, and are one of the principal indicators of their theological interests, passions, and strategies.

Looking at others, alongside continental European theologians, it is also clear how formative have been discernments about where the focus on retrieval should be. These have ranged through colonial history and missions; the pervasiveness of patriarchal structures and practices; specific denominational, regional, racial, or ethnic histories; or some formative period (the favorites being New Testament, early church, Middle Ages, Reformation, and the nineteenth century). Such judgments on the significance and relevance of the past will continue to be essential to substantial theological wisdom and creativity.

2. Wise and creative engagement with God, church, and world

Alongside ressourcement, the other main watchword of the Second Vatican Council was aggiornamento – “bringing up to date.” It nicely expresses the most essential accompaniment of retrieval: engagement with the present. The double immersion in past and present for the sake of the future is a mark of wise and creative theologians.

The first, incomparable, present engagement is with God. This pervades all other engagements but is above all “for God’s sake” – the great commandment is to love God with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and strength (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). Our six classic theologians all sought to follow that, practicing prayer and worship in diverse ways. The Catholics were Jesuits (De Lubac, Rahner, Von Balthasar for a while before founding a lay institute), the Protestants were Reformed (Barth) and Lutheran (Bonhoeffer, Tillich). Each in his own way offers a theocentric theology that attempts to engage with God and with everything else in relation to God.

Each was also deeply involved with both the church and the world. De Lubac not only wrote on contemporary science and other topics of current interest but was wounded in the First World War, was active in resistance to French Nazi sympathizers in church and state during the Second World War, and for long periods was the subject of controversy in the Catholic Church. Rahner’s and von Balthasar’s involvements were mostly intellectual, cultural, and ecclesial. Barth was a far more public prophetic figure both in the church and in politics, championing workers’ rights, denouncing European domestication and compromising of Christianity, insistently opposing the Nazis, and challenging the American public theologian Reinhold Niebuhr over his support of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. Tillich had to leave Nazi Germany where he had been very active politically; in America he taught in a leading seminary, and eventually appeared on the cover of Time magazine as one of the most influential public intellectuals in the United States.

Bonhoeffer is a prime example of engaged theology. His retrievals ranged widely, the main concentration being on the Bible, the early church, the Reformation, and modernity, and the many volumes of his collected works12 show the depth and range of his theological writings. But throughout his adult life till his execution by the Nazis in 1945 at the age of thirty-nine he was passionately engaged in many spheres of life. As an academic in the University of Berlin he rallied anti-Nazi students and taught confirmation classes in working-class Berlin, while also being active in the international ecumenical movement. With Hitler in power, he helped to found the Confessing Church in opposition to the German Christians who supported the Nazis, and then headed their seminary until the Gestapo shut it down. When he was writing his Ethics13 he took part in a network of resistance that eventually made a failed attempt on Hitler’s life. The Letters and Papers from Prison14 that he wrote after his arrest became a theological classic, and display an intense concern simultaneously for Christian faith and secular reality. In the decades after his death Bonhoeffer was to be an inspiration for theology marked by political resistance, especially in West and East Germany, other Eastern European Communist countries, and South Africa.

That theme which preoccupied Bonhoeffer during his months in prison, is another way of describing a most significant engagement of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian theology that continues into the present century: facing the challenges posed by the broad array of developments in all spheres of life that might be summed up as “modernity.” In the present century the agenda is changing, so much so that some describe our situation as postmodern. This term is acceptable as long as its emphasis on the discontinuities is accompanied by the recognition of so many continuities that it is also justifiable to call our period “late modern.” There is considerable wisdom to be gained from retrieving and developing twentieth-century theological engagements with modernity. This manifesto places alongside those the huge importance for our century of theological engagements with other religions. What are the forms of Christian theology that can respond wisely and creatively to both the secular and religious realities of our world, while being true to the depths of Christian faith? That is perhaps the most important question for a contemporary theology.

3. Wise and creative thinking

Thinking goes on in all four aspects of theological wisdom-seeking and creativity. Some of it is what might be termed basic intellectual good practice: asking appropriate questions, thinking logically, using experience and evidence appropriately, ordering arguments clearly, seeking and testing insights, recognizing the variety of ways in which different discourses can be developed, and acknowledging who are the models of good practice to whom appeal can be made. In relation to each of those practices there are debates and conflicting positions, and these lead into large questions of ontology (dealing with the basic character of reality), epistemology (questions to do with knowing that reality), aesthetics (on perception and beauty), and ethics (dealing with appropriate decision-making and right action).

Later chapters will discuss the role of philosophy (which is the discipline where such issues are most fully studied) in theology, concluding that the main aim should be to be sure-footed: it is wise for theologians to have their minds trained in such practices and to be aware of the issues that need to be faced in them, but they do not necessarily need to be able to contribute to technical philosophical discussions of them. Our six classic twentieth-century theologians are highly diverse in their relations to philosophy. Barth was well educated in it but deeply suspicious of its tendencies to dictate inappropriately to theology – above all, by offering a framework of understanding within which God’s existence or character could be known. Bonhoeffer was sympathetic to Barth but much more fully immersed in dialogue with philosophy and sociology, and his Act and Being is a tour de force of thinking through basic concepts in thorough engagement with both philosophy and theology. Tillich and Rahner are perhaps the most technically philosophical throughout their work, while von Balthasar attempts a massive synthesis of logic, ontology, epistemology, and aesthetics.

What of their creativity? This might be seen as what is sometimes named “abduction.”15 It is the imaginative and inventive side of reasoning that conceives new possibilities. Coleridge connects this with people being led to God by God (abduction comes from the Latin: ab – by; and ductus/ducta – led). We are being attracted to God, “drawn toward the true center,”16 through particularity ( Jesus Christ) and its relating universally (Holy Spirit).17