I was reading Pope Benedict XVI’s little gem The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God this morning and found that he provided some new perspective on what was at issue in my post. But first, a little clarification of what I was suggesting earlier is in order.
My terribly titled post was aimed at redefining “theology” as involving more than just the establishing of facts or the advancement of scholarship. Appealing to Calvin, it assumed that knowing God is a fundamentally different sort of endeavor than knowing, say, a tree or, even, another human being. To know God is not like knowing any other reality in this world, because God, as Creator and Redeemer, is ontologically determinative for the knower in a fundamental way. To know God thus is not just about knowing another fact, but about understanding oneself, about seeing one’s true place in the world. In this way, knowledge of God provokes knowledge of self. Theological rationality is irreducibly spiritual in this way.
Unfortunately, I never clearly brought out the consequence of this which was, for me, the most important point. The point that I really wanted to make was not simply that true theology is unavoidably spiritual, but that theology must consequently take on a certain form or character wherein the spiritual struggle of accepting certain views should be on display and part of the argumentative development. One is not simply making a theoretical case for a view, but is also making a spiritual case. Simply put, theology should be sermonic or exhortatory. Theology should enjoin upon the reader the self-knowledge that is demanded by the knowledge of God and overcome by pastoral-like criticism the false selves that would inhibit the acceptance of the position being argued for. And this is why I recklessly alleged that Rowan Williams is the only true theologian, as his theology is often sensitive to the human temptation to idolatry and often ends with prescriptions about what it means to be human (see, for example, his essay “On Being Creatures,” which not only argues for a certain understanding of the doctrine of creation, but also for a certain understanding of human identity, the moral of which is humility). In short, crucial to the exposition of theology is moral and spiritual exhortation. Theology is more, but not less, than conceptual or evidential argument; argumentation that stalls out at mere description is not yet “theology.”
Now, on to Pope Benedict XVI. One side of my thesis is that theology is bound to spiritual struggle or, as Luther put it, oratio, meditatio, and tentatio (prayer, meditation and spiritual trial). Theological positions cannot be determined in a vacuum since the kind of knowledge theology is after directly bears upon oneself. Theological reasoning is not abstract, but deeply personal. Thus, as said above, theology takes assumes an exhoratory or sermonic form to be transparent to its special rationality, to the spiritual decisions one must make to reach the conclusion being offered.
In his book, The God of Jesus Christ, Pope Benedict XVI has a similar view which might supplement my appeal to Calvin. He begins by noting that “the knowledge of God is not a purely theoretical matter” (p. 17). Knowing God, he says, “depends on the relationship that a man establishes between himself and the world and between his own self and his life” (p. 17). In an existential key, he continues: “The fundamental experiences and decisions in this interplay between ‘I’, ‘you’, and ‘we’ determine how a man sees the presence with him, and antecedent to him, of the One who is utterly other: Is he a competitor, a danger, or a reason for confidence” (p. 17). How humans understand God is thus bound up with their experience of love. Successfully knowing God is not merely a matter of the conceptual integrity of a view or its scholarly benefits, then, but something more basic, more personal, namely, an interpretation of the human situation. In other words, existential judgments are prerequisite to intellectual or rational judgments; the knower will not correctly interpret God without also correctly interpreting creaturely existence.
The Holy Father grounds this in the fact that God is omnipresent and so basic to the human experience. He is careful to say that this basic human experience of God is only an experience of the hidden God and so does not amount to positive knowledge. But it does, he believes, mean the question of God is an unavoidable part of human life. In other words, as one interprets his or her life – what it means to be in relationships – one inevitably will be making decisions about God. Here is how the Pope brings his meditation to a conclusions: “The contents that an image of God holds [sic] for a man are a fundamentally decisive factor in determining whether or not knowledge can develop here. And this knowledge and these contents are so profoundly interwoven with the basic decisions of human life, which limit or open up the sphere of a man’s knowledge, that mere theory is impotent here” (pp. 19-20).
What the Pope suggests, then, is that decisions about who God is and what God has done are hermeneutic, they are life decisions about who one is and what one experiences. Theology, then, is caught up within the larger experience of human life; it must be negotiated not simply conceptually, but spiritually (which I prefer to existentially). Theology is born out of wrestling with the world, with oneself and with one’s friends and enemies. How one interprets his or her life will shape how one interprets God, the author of life.
Of course, much more must be said. As it stands, this is entirely too individualist an account of theology. A fully developed view would place Scripture and the Church as norms in this interpretive process, such that right decisions about God amount to obedience to Scripture and affirmation of Tradition. But the basic point I want to establish is simply this: theological decisions should not be made apart from this spiritual struggle, an active wrestling with oneself, one’s world and God. This, I believe, adjusts the criteria for successful theology: theology is not simply that which is intellectually satisfying or argumentatively compelling, but something fundamentally spiritually edifying which is to say it enjoins upon its audience the same spiritual struggle from which it was born. Thus, to judge a theological system is to exercise spiritual discernment, not simply weighing its argument.
I’d be happy to hear disagreements or better explications…
James
Love this stuff. You may be aware that part of my dissertation is focussed on precisely this area. The point of Augustinian knowing is that it shows us, our ’selves’ to be immediately implicated in the pursuit of knowledge. The dichotomy of reason and will, so central to modern epistemology, is just not tenable for Augustine. Which is why among other reasons the good Bishop is usually not categorised as a true ‘philosopher’ by today’s standards. But then this is his whole point!
So I would add the second (or third?) only real theologian is Augustine.
James -
I’m pretty sympathetic to what you’ve written here, although I much preferred your tone in the first post. That said, you’re are probably much closer to living out your own recommendation in this one. Way to be ’spiritual’ or whatever. (Now, in an effort to show that I just made a light-hearted comment, I will prove that I have not left the late nineties by adding a vintage emoticon.) :)
Anyway, here’s something to think about: Do you mean to be proposing a criterion for good *theology*, for good *theologizing*, or both? I suspect the last of these, but note the differences between the claims and the risk of taking the strongest position. Suppose that your view is about the product of theological reflection. Then, for all your view says, Rowan Williams could be writing his books entirely for the praise of disenchanted Evangelicals like yourself and – as long as the content encourages the sort of spiritual self-examination that you prize – it would likely pass the test. Suppose instead that your view is about the act of theologizing. Then, for all your view says, the essays in the latest issue of IJST (whatever they are) may be excellent representatives of the sort of spiritual sensitivity that you are recommending. Of course, it will be difficult (if not impossible) to tell whether this is the case simply by reading the essay; you would have to interact with the person who wrote it. But that is neither here nor there. The considerations that led the individual to offer *those* attempts at intellectually compelling arguments might be deeply self-reflective and self-critical, and this even if it is impossible to discern the self-reflection and self-criticism at the surface level of the text.
So suppose – perhaps most plausibly (as an interpretation of your position) – that you mean to impose both constraints: Both theologizing and the product thereof should reflect spiritual discernment. But now I suspect that you aren’t being as explicit as you should be about the consequences of your view. Suppose that you can’t see any existential implications of adopting or rejecting a particular theological view. Should you then refrain from taking a stance on it? If all theology ought to be product of spiritual discernment – and spiritual discernment gets cashed out in terms of self-reflection and self-criticism – then the answer to this question is probably affirmative. But now the follow up question: How many theological conversations does your view condemn as misguided? It is plausible that there are spiritual implications of accepting or denying the Filioque? No doubt some think so, but I’m not optimistic about anyone’s ability to produce an argument to the effect that there is an important connection between accepting this doctrine and some virtue (or vice). There may be many doctrines that are not all that practical – or, perhaps more plausibly, there may be many doctrines that only have practical implications as components in really large systems of belief. If that’s right, then looking for the existential implications of particular doctrines (and so of particular discussions of those doctrines) may be pretty misguided.
I see a few ways that you can handle all this. First, you can retreat to a weaker position. Second, you can recommend putting a number of theological discussions on the back burner. Third, you can reject my skepticism about the spiritual implications of particular doctrines. Fourth, you can finesse my skepticism by arguing that spiritual discernment needs to be exercised primarily in the decision to accept or reject a (relatively) large set of doctrines, and so is exercised derivatively toward particular doctrines. What say you, old man?
Really appreciated this and the last post. Excellent points in contrast to unhelpful views out there about the practice of theology.
Very interesting stuff. I have not read your post with care. So, I apologize if the following is way off.
1. “Thus, to judge a theological system is to exercise spiritual discernment, not simply weighing its argument.” I wonder if the idea expressed here is in some sense a kind of capitulation to the views you are criticizing. You seem to presuppose that it is possible to engage in mere theoretical exercises without any exercise of spiritual discernment. But one of the upshots of the kind of theology you are advocating may be that such a dichotomy is not tenable. Simply weighing the argument s dispassionately is itself an exercise in spirituality—perhaps an unhealthy one. I doubt that what I am saying here is at all inconsistent with the thrust of your post.
2. It is interesting to note how much of what you say or gesture towards is deeply connected to some issues in metaethics, namely the fact/value distinction. One implication of a rejection of the fact/value distinction is that there really is no theoretical/practical distinction either; at least not a distinction in kind.
3. One serious danger in evaluating systems of theology or whatever in terms of their practicality or livability is that it becomes perilously close to a verificationist criteria of meaningfulness (or perhaps of value). If some theological discourse does not have some positive spiritual transformative implication, then that discourse is to be rejected. But I don’t fully trust myself to judge whether some discourse has positive spiritual implications (this needs to be nuanced since I do think I am competent to judge some not all). I suspect that this is a nice place for Scripture and tradition to enter. It’s also a nice place to note that the best judge of some theology is someone who is already well on their way in spiritual discernment. So we get an interesting circle here: good theology is theology that lends itself to positive spiritual transformation and in order to know whether this system of theology is good one must already have undergone significant positive spiritual transformation. I don’t think the circle is vicious but without care it can be.
Hi David,
Thanks for your observations/suggestions. I really don’t have much to say by way of reply. I’m satisfied with the points you made, so thank you for adding to the conversation.
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