No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
I have previously argued that the state of ‘theology’ and ‘religious studies’ in most English Universities is such that one could hardly distinguish between the two disciplines, in their institutional presuppositions, their objectives and goals, and in their methodological procedures. It just happens that the subject of one is Christianity, and that of the other, religions other than Christianity. Were a ‘theology’ department to be renamed ‘religious studies’ overnight everything could probably continue as it did before, although there would be understandable pressures to include more study of religions other than Christianity. Here, I would like to pursue one feature of a tradition-specific department, such as I canvassed, whereby theology could break free from the homogeneous secularisation of the discipline that currently predominates and offer students within the university an intellectually rigorous alternative. If I am told that I should teach in a Roman Catholic seminary—a frequent criticism—I suggest that one vocation of the Roman Catholic Church, and this may be true of other churches, requires the rigorous educating of lay faithful. Roman Catholic, Anglican and Jewish parents in many parts of the country have the opportunity to send their children to denominational specific schools, endorsed and supported by the government. If all enquiry is tradition-specific, and the legitimacy of enquiry within often highly reputable religious foundations is publicly accepted at primary and secondary level—why not take the argument to Higher Education level? This paper is devoted to keeping that question open.
1 See “The End of “Theology” and “Religious Studies'”, Theology, 1996, pp.338‐51; and before that ‘The End of Systematic Theology’, Theology, 1992, pp.324‐34.
2 Rev. Butler, Alban, The Lives of the Fathers. Martyrs and Other Principal Saints, edited for daily use by Rev. Kelly, Bernard, Virtue & Company Ltd, London, Vol 3, 1936, p.1123Google Scholar. On the Divine Office in the modern church see Vatican H's, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, ch. IV, paras. 83‐101, and the helpful commentary and historical contextualization by Josef Andreas Jungmann, in ed. Vorgrimler, H, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol 1, Burns & Oates, London, 1967, esp. pp.57‐69Google Scholar.
3 Williams, Rowan, “Theological Integrity”, New Blackfriars, 72, 847,1991, pp.140‐51: p. 143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Catholic Truth Society, London/Veritas Publications, Dublin, 1990–given in Rome on May 24, 1990. Also pertinent as a backcloth to this discussion are the Apostolic Constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, (1990) on the Catholic University, and the joint document from the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Pontifical Council's for the Laity and for Culture: “The Presence of the Church in the University and in University Culture” (1984)–in Briefing, 21 July 1994, pp.2‐9.
5 I add the latter qualification in memory of the dead bodies that litter Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and the danger of idolatry ever present in such a proposal as this. See also Kuschel, Karl Josef, Laughter, SCM, London, pp.2‐9Google Scholar
6 Instruction, para 8, my bracket; after the word prayer, there is a reference to John Paul II, ‘Discorse in occasione della consegna del premio internazionale Paulo VI a Hans Urs von Balthasar’, June 23, 1984: Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, VII, 1 (1984), 1911‐1917. von Balthasar is the single modern theologian mentioned within this document. Others could have been mentioned, but he does suggest one significant role model of the ecclesial theologian, not least in terms of method and style.
7 See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, la. 1. All references to the Summa use the Blackfriars translations published by Blackfriars/ Eyre & Spottiswoode, London/ McGraw‐Hill Book Co. New York. Victor White OP and Thomas Gilby OP are coresponsible for the appendices to the first volume which have been of invaluable assistance to me, especially, appendix 10: Dialectic of Love in the Summa (pp. 124‐133) and appendix 6: Theology as Science (pp.67‐88).
8 See Polanyi, Michael, Knowing and Being, London, 1969Google Scholar and Personal Knowledge, Harper & Row, New York, 1962Google Scholar; Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1970Google Scholar; Gadamer, Hans‐Georg, Truth and Method, London, 1975 (2nd German edn)Google Scholar; and Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, Duckworth, London, 1985Google Scholar and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Duckworth, London, 1988Google Scholar. See also Roy A Clouser's interesting argument that scientific theories cannot help but having religious presuppositions that control and regulate them–argued in relation to Mach, Einstein, Heisenberg. He also examines maths in relation to Mill, J S, Russell, and Dewey, : The Myth of Religious Neutrality. An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories, University of Notre Dame Press, London, 1991Google Scholar, esp. section III.
9 Williams, ibid, p. 149.
10 Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1994, para. 2565.
11 ibid. para. 2558, citing Manuscrits autobiographiques C 25r. See also Autobiography of a Saint (tr. Knox, Ronald), Fontana Books, London, 1958, pp.105‐110Google Scholar, 243‐48.
12 Many genres and modes of life are included in the Office as is clear from the saint's days and feasts of the church, the inclusion of celebrating special buildings (eg. Dedication of the Basilica of St Mary Major–5 August) and sites (eg. Mount Carmel–July 16); the fact that the office is supposed to be sung, the poetry throughout the psalms and the explicit poems and hymns, and the dramatis personae we inhabit in praying, for example, the Magnificat and Benedictus (the dramatic parts of Mary and Zachariah) which indicate that we only learn our parts through familiarity with the drama and then we must improvise, but learned improvisation characterises the virtuoso. Wyschogrod's, Edith Saints and Postmodernism. Revisioning Moral Philosophy University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990Google Scholar is a rich and interesting non‐churched turn towards the lives of saints as the source and method of moral philosophy. However, it still maintains a form of positivism (and therefore modernism) in failing to recognize that the accounts of the saints are tradition‐mediated and not historically and conceptually self‐present. See. David Matzo's engaging critique of Wyschogrod in, ‘Postmodernity, Saints and Scoundrels’, Modern Theology, 9, 1993, pp. 19‐36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 The term ‘Professor’ used in many European Universities has religious roots going back to medieval times and indicates the learned wisdom of the religious. See OED.
14 However, Michel Foucault also reminds us of the power of tradition to persecute, tyrannize and marginalize–and this we should not forget. See Foucault, , The Archaeology of Knowledge, Tavistock Publications, London, 1972Google Scholar. The CDF document is remarkably sensitive to this complex issue (paras. 32‐41). Certain elements, especially within the feminist tradition have painfully struggled to negotiate these tensions between fidelity and critique. See for example, the work of Roman Catholic feminists such as Janet Martin Soskice, Anne Carr, Elizabeth Johnson and Catherine Mowry LaCugna–in the collection edited by LaCugna, Catherine Mowry, Freeing Theology. The essentials of theology in a feminist perspective, Harper, San Francisco, 1993Google Scholar (pp.5‐30, 115‐38 and 83‐114 respectively), and Beattie, Tina, Rediscovering Mary. Insights from the Gospels, Burns & Oates, Kent, 1995Google Scholar. The recent convert Catholic novelist, Sara Maitland has also done this, quite brilliantly, in Angel and Me. Short Stories, Mowbray, London, 1995Google Scholar.
15 Attwater, Donald, Dictionary of Saints, Penguin, 2nd ed., 1983, p. 182Google Scholar.
16 See Milbank, John, ‘Can a Gift be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysic’, in ed. Jones, L. Gregory & Fowl, Stephen E., Rethinking Metaphysics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995, pp.119‐61Google Scholar; and ‘The name of Jesus: Incarnation, Atonement, Ecclesiology’, Modern Theology, 7, 4, 1991, pp.31133Google Scholar, although Milbank is in danger of playing down the problem of authority involved in such new practices. Joseph Ratzinger's insightful commentary on the dogmatic constitution on revelation in the Second Vatican Council criticises Pope Pius XH's Humani generis (1956) for advocating just such a regressive understanding of tradition whereby it is seen as a fixed unambiguous deposit. See his commentary in ed. Vorgrimler, H, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol 3, Herder & Herder, New York, 1969, esp. p.197Google Scholar. See also Karl Rahner's extremely helpful exploration of the theologian, magisterium and tradition in ‘Magisterium and Theology’, Theological Investigations, vol 18, Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1984, pp.54‐73Google Scholar.
17 The Divine Office in one sense presents an arbitrary particularity within the tradition. The eucharist presents itself as another obvious point from which to approach this question, as would the sacrament of confession, or indeed listening to music, going to films, enjoying sex, or walking in the countryside, which can all constitute paths to holiness. However, I have had to chose one of the many points of departure, none of which have foundational priority for they can all mediate, in different ways, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.
18 After the word ‘beloved’ the document cites St Bonaventure, Prooem. in I Sent., q.2, ad 6.1 shall, however, follow Aquinas to illuminate this point.
19 One might equally use Augustine. His first book in On Christian Doctrine makes it clear that Christians are schooled within the church of love: Christian paideia, rather than by pagan education–and that love is both the prerequisite (within seven steps) which teaches us how to read the scripture as well as being the goal of scripture. See Augustine, , On Christian Doctrine, The Liberal Arts Press, New York, 1958Google Scholar, esp. pp.7‐34. See also Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery, An essay on the nature of theology, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983, ch. 4, esp. pp.76‐84. I am deeply indebted to Louth's book, although his generous ecumenical approach sometimes obscures the importance of locating the tradition‐specific starting point that he in fact argues for. Louth's own later denominational shift into the Orthodox church may be significant in accounting for such textual ambivalence. One might also use Augustine's Confessions to show his critique of secular paideia, one not dissimilar to the critique of modernity's paideia and its monstrous implication in the Holocaust in Zygmunt Bauman's, Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991. I am also indebted to Lewis Ayres for letting me see a draft of his outstanding scholarly piece: ‘The education of desire: the fundamental dynamics of Augustine's Trinitarian theology as a resource for modern theology’, forthcoming in Augustinian Studies. This alerted me to both Augustine's (and Aquinas') significance for method in theology.
20 In ST la. 1,6 Aquinas recognized well the significance of habit forming and its theological status–as a gift–within a community of love as essential to theology. He makes the distinction between two types of wisdom when a ‘wise person’ comes to a correct judgment, 'arrived at from a bent that way, as when a person who possesses the habit of a virtue rightly commits himself to what should be done in consonance with it, because he is already in sympathy with it; hence Aristotle remarks that the virtuous man himself sets the measure and standard for human acts. (Ethics X, 5. 11 76a17) Alternatively the judgment many be arrived at through a cognitive process, as when a person soundly instructed in moral science can appreciate the activity of virtues he does not himself possess.' Being in ‘sympathy with’ is precisely what is referred to in the CDF document as a ‘supernatural sense of faith’, for Aquinas is clear to point out that the first type of wisdom is classed among the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: 'The first way of judging divine things belongs to that wisdom which is classed among the Gifts of the Holy Ghost; so St Paul says, The spiritual man judges all things [1 Corinthians 2,15], and Dionysius speaks about Hierotheus being taught by the experience of undergoing divine things, not only by learning about them. [De Divinis Nominibus II, 9] The second way of judging is taken by sacred doctrine to the extent that it can be gained by study; even so the premises are held from revelation.' ST la. 1, 6, ad 3.
21 Vol. 34, p.200.
22 Lash, Nicholas, ‘The Difficulty of Making Sense’, New Blackfriars, 70, 824, pp.74‐84CrossRefGoogle Scholar: p.74.
23 Summa 2a2ae. 27,4. See also 2a2ae. 26, 1 &2. See also, Davies, Brian, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, pp.288‐96Google Scholar.
24 ST 1a.2ae.28,5. See Vol. 19, p.105. For ‘orexis’ see page xxiv for Eric D'Arcy's notes on this term.
25 Interestingly this particular genre of miracle is a Southern Italian speciality–see Attwater, p.181, and Butler, p.1124.
26 para. 42; although an allusion is all that it remains. See also Hans urs von Balthasar, Mary for Today, St Pauls, Slough, 1977, pp.33‐41. However, his Marian ecclesiology is not without problems in identifying the feminine as primarily passive, with all the problematic socio‐political‐sexual ramifications.
27 ‘Sermon XV: The Theory of Development’ in Newman's University Sermons. Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford 1826‐43, SPCK, London, 1970, p.313Google Scholar.
28 It is vital that tradition be seen as ‘living’, for otherwise there would no resources to draw upon by which it develops and criticises itself. In regard to tradition, I would wish to qualify my indebtedness to Lindbeck in ‘The End of “Theology” and “Religious Studies’”, in so much as his prioritizing the biblical world (his Lutheran emphasis) has the unintended consequence of giving the bible a structural theological priority over the living church which reads it, which is a traditioned church. For a slightly more Catholic appropriation of Lindbeck and Frei's category of narrative, see Loughlin, Gerard, Telling God's Story. Bible Church and narrative theology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reading the final chapter first, has a profound effect in narrating Loughlin's narrative.
29 Some examples of exceptions are: Rowan Williams' The Wound of Knowledge, Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1979Google Scholar; Ford, David and Hardy, Dan, Jubilate: Theology in Praise, Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1984Google Scholar; Waimvright, Geoffrey, Doxology. The Praise of God in Worship Doctrine and Life. A Systematic Theology, London, Epworth, 1980Google Scholar; and Nichols, Aidan, The Shape of Catholic Theology, T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1991CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kieran Flanagan's The Enchantment of Sociology. A Study of Theology and Culture, Macmillan, London, 1996Google Scholar, esp. chs. 3 and 6 offer a sociological argument for the liturgical importance of determining theology's method. The fact that only the last two writers are Roman Catholic indicates both the specificity and shared sense of the task I am proposing.
30 para. 16. Josef Andreas Jungmann points out how this paragraph relates to Deus Scientiarum (1930) which placed Christian archaeology and patrology as compulsory principal subjects. See also Decree on Priestly Formation, ch.5, esp. para. 16.
31 I would characterise Ed Sanders' type of approach to the bible as precisely the sort that I am criticising. See for example Jesus, SCM, London, 1986Google Scholar, and especially his criteria for establishing what counts as valid materials. However, his historical theses and reconstructions are not without importance.
32 ed. Richard John Neuhaus, Biblical Interpretation in Crisis. The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, William Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1989, p.120. Lindbeck's claim about the AAR is disputed by some. See pp.120‐22. See also ed.Braaten, C E & Jenson, Robert, Reclaiming the Bible for the Church, Cambridge, Mass, 1995Google Scholar which makes out a similar case from a broadly Lutheran perspective.
33 For some searching examinations into the philosophical presuppositions of historical criticism see Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, ‘Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today’, in ed. Neuhaus, pp.1‐23; John Coventry's excellent critique of this method with specific reference to The Myth of God Incarnate:‘The Myth and the Method’, Theology, 81, 682, 1978, pp.252‐61; and Gerard Loughlin, ibid, pp.149‐52. Regarding the reading of history seeYoung, Robert, White Mythologies. Writing History and the West, Routledge, London, 1990Google Scholar.
34 ed. Neuhaus, pp.20‐21. Ratzinger never specifies carefully how the Fathers and Medievals were ‘lacking’ and some participants within the subsequent conference implicitly question this: e.g. p. 117, 155‐60. Avery Dulles, rather briefly, but very provocatively suggests the rehabilitation of the medieval threefold spiritual sense of scripture married to the three theological virtues: ibid, p.154. See also Louth's defence of allegory over against the historical critical method–see Louth, ibid, esp. chs. 3 & 5. Ratzinger's balance can be seen as developing Vatican II 's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, which suggests both the necessity of technical exegesis and its insufficiency and inadequacy apart from tradition–see para. 12 and Ratzinger's commentary, in ed. Vorgrimler, op cit. See also his criticisms of Pius XII in note 16 above. All citation of Vatican II documents are from ed. Abbott, Walter M SJ, The Documents of Vatican II, Guild Press, New York, 1966Google Scholar.
35 p.118.
36 Some Roman Catholic departments may require prompting from Orthodox departments to focus more rigorously on the significance of liturgy. I say this, as in the conference from which I have been quoting, it took Thomas Hopko (from St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary) to remind Cardinal Rattinger (what no doubt he already knew, but had not specified) that the ‘hermeneutical key [to biblical exegesis] is liturgy’ (p.118–ed. Neuhaus, ibid). As in the CDF document, there is a real (and necessary?) tension between liturgically generated method and the importance of apologetics–the latter causes Ratzinger to immediately qualify his agreement with Hopko–p.118.
37 Decree on Priestly Formation, para. 16. Cardinal Ratzinger also makes the point well: ‘I am against the reduction of orthodoxy to orthopraxy, but without concrete Christian action, biblical interpretation will be found wanting…’ in ed. Neuhaus, p. 188. I would suggest that the present pope's encyclicals are one possible model of this re‐marriage between ethics and biblical scholarship, as also found in the work of John Howard Yoder.
You have
Access