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Archived Newsletter #1 Article: "Theological Reflections"
12 8 08 version
Joachim Viens - Theological Reflections
1. On Doing Theology
Of late several of my friends have asked me to explain what I mean by “doing theology.” What follows is a personal statement: What was my image of theology, and what was my theological project as a Theologian-in-Residence working on the boundaries of a Catholic Campus Ministry Parish and a State University?
Let me start with a working definition of theology. Final, absolute, non-negotiable definitions of things are suspect these days. The definition I offer is what has been called positional and provisional, that is, the definition states how I am using the word theology in this essay, and that my definition has been honed in light of my history. For starters, theology is reflection on religion. But in light of my encounters with modern philosophies, religious studies, various forms of liberation theologies, etc., each of which has been a call to some form of conversion on my part, I have had to add several qualifiers to my definition of theology. Theology is a skillful, systematic, critical, poetic and evocative reflection on the experience of a religious tradition, usually by a person from within the tradition.The theological project to which I devoted my efforts could be summed up by the idea of reappropriation. Reappropriation literally means to re-own a tradition. Reappropriation is a project which seeks to reinterpret one's own religious tradition in light of ever new contexts and experiences. Just as my definition of theology was refined during my career, so was my notion of reappropriation. I came to see reappropriation as retrieval, critique and transformation in dialogue with the "other." That project comes out of a conscious belief that one's religious history, tradition, heritage is worthy of retrieval, critique and transformation. Reappropriation is a commitment to honor and even to cultivate one's personal and cultural roots while living in an evolving and pluralistic world, actually in a globalized world.
A few brief examples of the tasks of reappropriation may provide an answer to the question of this essay, what does it mean to “do theology?” I will speak to Retrieval, Critique, Transformation, and "Passing Over as a Theological Adventure."
I could almost say that retrieval is what I did during my twenty-four years in a contemplative monastery. I spent ten of those monastic years in formal study of Thomas Aquinas. I also read the Confessions of Saint Augustine, his treatise On Teaching Christian Doctrine, his letters, his commentaries on the Fourth Gospel and on the Psalms. And yet, that study was not quite what I came to call retrieval. Somewhere between my studies in Rome (1958), and in Louvain, Belgium (1968), I experienced Catholic theology's transition from what has been called "a non-historical orthodoxy," i.e. a tendency to lift propositions out of ancient texts without enough awareness of the historical context, to "historical consciousness," i.e. an awareness of how the various historical, social, religious contexts, etc. shaped the world view and the language, the rhetoric of the ancient texts. This historical consciousness, was the energizing ground for learning how to retrieve the evolving meanings of my religious tradition in their historical contexts.
The work of retrieval makes use of contemporary historical, literary-critical, and hermeneutical methods and studies. Hermeneutics refers to the theories and the art of interpretation. I will return to the idea in the last part of this essay. Retrieval of what the tradition really meant, “the point” that it was making, is no easy task. One needs to get beyond “the plain meaning of the text” to the meaning it had historically. Then one needs to ask what meaning the text opens up for the contemporary reader.
In the past few years I have spent a great deal of time studying and teaching "New Testament Interpretation," and applying what I have learned in courses on "Luke/Acts," and "Invitation to the Fourth Gospel." Those courses were exercises in retrieval. My most recent, challenging, thought-provoking biblical reading was Jack Miles' God: A Biography. That reading provided me with an opportunity and a medium to review every single book of the Jewish bible, or TANAKH. It was like going home again. I found the book very enriching even though Miles' reading is deliberately not theological. It is rather more a creative form of comparative religion. In fact, Miles' reading of the TANAKH made me conscious of my own view that there are several ways of reading the bible and why confusion over how we as a people (Catholic, Christian and American) read the bible is a problem for our public life, ecclesial and civil. An excellent reflection on and example of a faith-filled but scholarly reading of the bible is Sandra Schneiders' Written That You Might Believe.
Several things made critique an important part of my reappropriation project in the early seventies. The first was the emergence of liberation theology, which soon became a large set of theologies. Liberation theologies emerged from several developments during and after the Second Vatican Council. Liberation theology is in the prophetic line of our biblical tradition. It was also influenced by the implications of historical consciousness, and influenced by a dialogue between Christian and Marxist thinkers in Europe. One need not be a Freudian, nor a Marxist, to see that just as individuals have unconscious defense mechanisms, so societies, including religious communities, have blind spots, unconscious worldviews which protect the well-being of the advantaged over the disadvantaged. Such world views (ideologies) are blind because they cannot stand the light of day. It seems to me there are references to those tendencies in both the Fourth Gospel and the Letters of Saint Paul. Robert Schreiter has described the movement of liberation theologies around the world as "global flows," movements which flow like the air currents influencing life around the world.
Contrary to Ma Bell's old adage that "the system is the solution," liberation theologies taught, that the most profound problems of the world are systemic biases and injustices. A historical and cultural consciousness leads us to be aware that any culture has both strengths and weaknesses, including systemic biases. Uncritically accepted ideologies promote, protect, and sometimes even sacralize those unjust biases. Rosemary Ruether, for example thought it would be a great wrong to tell someone that they could not participate in the life of the community because of some irrelevant reason. It would be a larger wrong to make a law forbidding that participation. But the biggest wrong of all would be a theology which falsely sacralized that exclusion. Liberation theologies have been characterized as systematic methods of surfacing the systematic biases and ideologies of a tradition. Many Catholic feminist theologians see their work as a form of liberation theology.
Critique, whether in civil society or ecclesial society always raises the question of whether the critique is disloyal and/or is a loss of faith. Of course a critique can be a cheap critique, it can be disloyal, reductionistic and destructive of community, and itself the product of an uncritical ideology. Or, it can be the cry of the prophets we read in church on Ash Wednesday. A critique could be the cry of an Amos, an Ezekiel, an Isaiah, or of Jesus! There is a well developed theology of discernment in the Church's spiritual tradition which offers a theologian or a pastor ways of testing her or his own spirit.
I find the word transformation helpful because it connotes to me serious change and continuity in identity, both at the same time. I was struck by the address of a theologian several years ago who titled his talk "transforming tradition." Of course the phrase could mean two things, that tradition needs to be transformed or that tradition transforms. The theologian was arguing that tradition is transformative when it is itself continually transformed.
Eventually, theology has to have a constructive word to offer. One does the hard work of retrieving the historical context with all the tools offered, for example, by historical, critical, literary scholarship. Indeed, David Tracy tells us all methods are relevant to our search for understanding. One also passes over into the world of the tradition with a deeply sympathetic as well as wisely critical desire to understand what the tradition saw and experienced. Having experienced the retrieval and grasped the critique, one reconstructs elements of the tradition so that they can speak justly to the present.
Mary Boys’ book Does God Have only One Blessing is a good example of a theologian who uses excellent scholarship to review for us the history of Jewish Christian relationships. She also offers a profound critique of how a simplistic reading of some New Testament or Patristic texts have had tragic consequences for Jews. Mary Boys then offers a very carefully constructed model of bible reading and Christian religious education which will help us heal the historic injustices Christians have inflicted on the Jewish people. She teaches us how to re-read those problematic texts, and to understand what those texts might be saying to us today. The sub-title of the book is "Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding." It is a magnificent example of reappropriation as retrieval, critique and transformation.
What Mary Boys has done for the theology of Jewish/Christian relations, Margaret Farley has done for another topic Just Love. Margaret Farley surveys attitudes toward sexual relationships historically and cross culturally. She then examines what the Bible offers to such a reflection. But the heart of her book is a retrieval of the central place the virtue of justice has in the Christian tradition. A chapter titled "Just Love" is an example of constructive theology. She asks what demands a profound understanding of justice will make on virtuous sexual relating. I found this chapter profoundly helpful in elaborating a Christian sexual ethic; an ethic which exemplifies retrieval, critique and transformation. Just Love is an excellent example of constructive theology.
A final example is Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God. For many years, Elizabeth Johnson has been my favorite example of a theologian who honors all three parts of the reappropriation project. In this book Johnson "maps the frontiers" of how the understanding of God has been affected by world events in the past fifty or sixty years. Each of ten chapters is a profound essay on how contemporary constructive theology is shaping, and sometimes reshaping, the ways in which we experience and imagine the sacred mystery within which we live our lives. Each chapter involves retrieval, critique and transformation.
Passing Over as a Theological AdventureWhen speaking to a class about the reappropriation project, a faculty colleague asked me if I inherited only my own tradition? Was I not inheriting an increasingly pluralistic and globalized experience of world religions and cultures? And so, I added a fourth task to the reappropriation project. In the present context of a pluralistic, even globalized world, reappropriation as retrieval, critique and transformation, needs to be done in conversation with the other, with the larger world. As a Theologian-in-Residence, doing theology in a state university, I could not avoid the fact that our world is consciously pluralistic. If Nicolas Lash was correct in his view that doing theology is "watching your language in the presence of God," my task as a Catholic theologian in a state university was "watching my (theological) language in the presence of the other." I was deeply influenced in my view of doing theology in the public world by David Tracy of the University of Chicago's Divinity School, and by John Dunne of the University of Notre Dame.
In The Analogical Imagination David Tracy developed at length the idea of interpretation as conversation with a classic. This model is based on the belief that the encounter with a classic, whether textual or otherwise, models the elements of good conversation. Though particular in its origins and in its expressions, a true classic, including the religious classic, is able to speak across cultures and across generations. The classic raises perennial questions and offers solutions worthy of consideration. Conversation begins when the reader is engaged by the questions raised in the classic and its proposed responses to those questions. We need not agree with the proposed solutions, only that they are serious and worthy of our consideration. Good conversation is like the play of a game. The world of the classic and the world of the reader come together to open up new possibilities for living. In this situation insight happens!
Such a model of interpretation makes a mutually critical, mutually enriching, mutually transforming conversation possible in a pluralistic society. In this way, the non-religious person would expect some enlightenment from an encounter with religious classics, just as the religious person would expect some enlightenment from classics which are not overtly religious. Some such mode of respectful, civil conversation across cultures and traditions seems absolutely necessary for the peace and well-being of the world.A further step in this conversation is what John Donne called "passing over." To "pass over" in John Dunne's sense is to shift one's standpoint in order to experience as well as possible the world of another. In passing over, one suspends judgment, at least temporarily. One's purpose is not judgment but understanding of how the world looks from within another's world. Of course, as with any journey, one returns changed, in ways not always known. Communication has happened on a deep level, and with it mutual and respectful critique, enrichment and transformation. Passing over may be motivated by one's desire for authentic conversation, and/or it may be part of one's religious journey in a pluralistic world, one's odyssey to the true self!
What does it mean to do theology? It may mean many things to many people. I hope the examples I have given show that for many contemporary men and women, doing theology is a skillful, systematic, critical, poetic and evocative reflection on the experience of a religious tradition, usually by a person within that tradition, and done in dialogue with the other.
Joachim Viens was the Director of the Theologian-in-Residence Program from 1974 until 2007, which was housed at Blessed John XXIII University Parish in Ft. Collins, CO. He was also an affiliate, then an assistant professor of religious studies at Colorado State University.Some readings referred to in the text.
Boys, Mary C. Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding, Paulist Press, Mahwah, N.J. 2000.
Dunne, John S. The Reasons of the Heart: A Journey into Solitude and Back Again into the Human Circle. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1978.
Farley, Margaret A. Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, Continuum, New York, 2006.
Johnson, Elizabeth A. Quest for the Living God: Mapping the Frontiers in the Theology of God, Continuum, New York, 2007.
Miles, Jack. God: A Biography, Random House, New York, 1995.
Schneiders, Sandra M. Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. Revised and Expanded Edition. Crossroad Publishing, New York, Revised and Expanded Edition, 2003.
Schneiders, Sandra M. The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture. Second Edition. Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1999.
Tracy, David. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1981.