Papist?!

You scored as Roman Catholic. You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you. Roman Catholic 96% Neo orthodox 79% Emergent/Postmodern 43% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 43% Modern Liberal 29% Classical Liberal 25% Charismatic/Pentecostal 21% Reformed Evangelical 14% Fundamentalist 7% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

The turn of Radical Orthodoxy

The limited pressures of the MA course I am currently studying do have the advantage of allowing me a lot of free time to pursue my own theological interests. The latest development in this has been my fixation with the "Radical Orthodoxy" movement. I am reading two books on the subject: "Radical Orthodoxy - a new theology" edited by Pickstock, Milbank & Ward; and, "Introducing Radical Orthodoxy - mapping a post-secular theology" by James KA Smith. For anyone interested in the matter, I would recommend reading these (starting with Smith as he gives a good overview).

One of the premises of Radical Orthodoxy (henceforth RO) is that as part of the Enlightenment religion became a private concern and was no longer an appropriate feature of the public sphere. Alongside this there flourished a range of secular philosophies and disciplines that sought to take religion's place, ie. to make sense of the world and our experience of it. Most (perhaps all) of these disciplines are therefore predicated on ideologies that are necessarily antogonistic to Christian theology. By constructing philosophies that deny God modernity also excludes revelation and so reason becomes the sole vehicle for understanding and sense-making; to use the RO phrase we have here "autonomous reason" - reason that functions without reference to anything else. This, RO claims, has been the development of modernity.

However, theorists now claim we are entering (or, more optimistically, have entered) postmodernity, that is the breakdown of modernity and its absolute claims, including the breakdown of the secular. If this is the case, then Christian theology ought to be able again to take a place in the public sphere (rather than the private) and confidently proclaim its "system" for making sense of the world and our experience, and revelation ought to be valued alongside reason (indeed, as intrinsically connected parts of the same process). But, that this is not yet the case reveals that postmodernity is an arriving phase, rather than one that has been fully realised, and that our current stage is something more akin to hyper-modernity; the final swansong of secular modernity.

Radical Orthodoxy (on my reading) encourages the challenging of this phase and the inauguration of true postmodernity. In postmodernity we will arrive also at the post-secular: Christian theology can confidently proclaim the riches of its tradition and the depth of its insight.

Part of this confident proclamation will be the eschewing of the correlationist project of much "modern" theology. Theology need no longer compete for a voice by conspiring with disciplines (especially modern philosophy some of the social sciences) which are fundametally antithetical to a Theo-logical interpretation of the world. Rather, Christian theology can explain itself in its own terms, rediscovering the riches of its past and reinterpreting in light of the present.

Such an argument (which I have simplified and explained as I understand it) is attractive and convincing. There is more to RO than this so expect more posts on that front...

On a related note, I will be hearing Pickstock and Milbank (two of the founders) at a seminar on Aquinas (who is part of the inspiration of RO) next week. I hope to give you a report of that also.

All change

Most of my small group of readers have probably stopped checking my blog as it is an absolute age since I updated it. I did have about four posts in draft but they never quite came to fruition.

That besides, things have changed a lot with me. I have moved and am differently employed now.

Having finished my job in London in July and moved back home (briefly) in August I had a very pleasant holiday in Istanbul, Turkey. A few weeks after that I moved to Cambridge to commence training for ordination at the august institution of Westcott House.

It is my hope to do an MPhil next year in the area of Spirituality and Doctrine, however for the moment I am enrolled on an MA in Pastoral Theology (see below). In terms of commitment the MA demands very little time of me and manages to fulfill most of the remaining requirements for ordination (happily, many of the academic requirements are met by the undergraduate degree I hold). This will give me the opportunity to audit some of the doctrine courses offered by the university and to begin reading/thinking/work for my MPhil.

Otherwise, I find myself in Cambridge very happily. Westcott is very full this year, about 70 students, I think, with c.40 in the first year. The house has a good atmosphere, people are congenial (sometimes even fun) and I am enjoying exploring Cambridge.

More updates will follow soon...

This is how theology is done

For an assignment this week for my MA in Pastoral Theology (more of that later...) we were asked to write a short piece to end with the sentence "This is how theology is done". This is my offering.

How do we do theology?

There are four main sources from which we derive our theologies, and any good theology will need to be informed and consonant with all four of these sources. These four starting points incorporate the traditional Anglican triad, plus one.

First, our theology must accord with Scripture: the word of God through which God has revealed himself to us and to his people. Because we have a Canon of Scripture it is not sufficient to pick out individual verses to support our theology, rather our theology must be consonant with a hermeneutic view of Scripture, that is, allowing the whole of Scripture to enable our interpretation of each part. We must also understand Scripture as part of God’s revelation of himself within the Christological context, that is to say that God’s fullest and ultimate revelation of himself has been made in the person of Jesus Christ. We need also to read Scripture within its given context so that our understanding is enriched by our knowledge of the writer(s), the intended audience and the cultural context in which it was written. Finally, we need to have a doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture as it is only from such a point of view that Scripture is of any use to us.

Second, our theology needs to correspond with Tradition. Within the heading of Tradition I would want to encompass doctrine, liturgy and sacraments, the Church and the Saints. By this we engage with the heritage which was commissioned by Christ to his Apostles and has been delivered, by tradition, through time, to us. Our theologies must engage with and be endorsed by the orthodox and “approved” theologies of the past (doctrine), the worship and practices of the Church, including those which were commanded by Christ (liturgy and sacraments), the historical and universal testimony of the people of God (Church and Saints). Our understanding of the Spirit of God operating through Tradition is what commits us to this view.

Third, we need to ensure that our theology accords with our Experience. The theologies we engage in and endorse must be consonant with our experience and process of making sense of the world. They must be theologies of personal integrity whereby we can “own” them fully; we cannot make liars of ourselves or bastards of our theology. Our theology will resonate deeply with our experience of God’s revelation to us and therefore with our spiritual life and our prayer: our participation in the life of God.

Fourth, and finally, we must engage our theology with Reason. Our theologies will need to be things of logic so that we can think them through, and they need to accord with theo-logic so that we can understand more of God by means of them (ie. to be theological). They must have an internal coherence that enables us to make sense of them and to make sense of the world by means of them.

Over and above these four starting points there are two criteria which I would maintain are the ultimate principles, the roots and the framework for all our theology because it is by these that we understand what God himself is like: the Trinity, and the person of Jesus Christ.

So, within the context of the Trinity and the person of Christ, we engage deeply with Scripture, Tradition, Experience and Reason. This is how theology is done.