Theologian as Doctor of the Church
"Doctor of the Church" is, of course, an official designation of honor and authority conferred by the Roman Catholic Church. But both Luther and Calvin (the latter especially) held a more generic sense of this as the office of the theologian. That is one charged with the duty of studyung, teaching, and explicating the doctrine of the Church. Regrettably, this office is not officially recognized by my connection (PC-USA) as an ordained office in the sense that Calvin commends. Thus, most Presbyterian theologians are not in fact ordained, and therefore not meaningfully under the authority of the Church. Put rather crudely, most contemporary theologians are freelancers of a sort.
As someone undertaking MDiv study en route to PhD study who hopes to become a Doctor of the Church in the sense held by Calvin, this concerns me. I hope that someday the situation might be different. Perhaps the PC-USA, or Protestants in general, ought to create an order of theologians akin to the Jesuits, Dominicans, etc. This came to mind recently as I've been reading through Barth's PROTESTANT THEOLOGY IN THE 19TH CENTURY. Barth himself is a compelling example of someone whose theology, like that of the Fathers, was developed in the midst of ongoing pastoral ministry.
In general, this text has surprised me. I was expecting something more in keeping with the tone of his famous "Nein!" to Brunner. Perhaps an earlier companion volume to Milbank's THEOLOGY AND SOCIAL THEORY. But instead, the text is perceptive and nuanced. An example of close and charitable readings of theologians with whom he deeply disagreed. The chapter on Schleirmacher is particularly exemplary. Which brings us back to the issue under discussion. Consider the following description of Schleirmacher.
"And we cannot overlook the fact that he (Schleiermacher) felt himself responsible for the interest of the Christian Church in this very field of learning (theology and philosophy), in answering the question of truth which was directed also at Christian preaching...We cannot be mindful enough of the fact that Schleiermacher was not one of those theologians who are in the habit, under some pretext or other, of dissociating themselves from the most difficult and decisive theological situation, that in which the theologian, without security of any kind, must prove himself solely as a theologian. I refer to the situation of the (person) in the pulpit. Schleiermacher did not only not avoid this most exposed position, but actually sought it, throughout his life, as the place of his 'own office' (i.e. the office of the theologian, or the Doctor of the Church)."
Thus my questions for those of us who are inclined to pursue a more professorial expression of vocation: 1) Do we think this description of the theologial office and its decisive locus (the pulpit) is valid? 2) If so, does our personal practice reflect this? 3) If so, does theologial education (particularly the "academic track" MTS program) reflect this? 4) What are the implications for our future educational and professional practice?
As someone undertaking MDiv study en route to PhD study who hopes to become a Doctor of the Church in the sense held by Calvin, this concerns me. I hope that someday the situation might be different. Perhaps the PC-USA, or Protestants in general, ought to create an order of theologians akin to the Jesuits, Dominicans, etc. This came to mind recently as I've been reading through Barth's PROTESTANT THEOLOGY IN THE 19TH CENTURY. Barth himself is a compelling example of someone whose theology, like that of the Fathers, was developed in the midst of ongoing pastoral ministry.
In general, this text has surprised me. I was expecting something more in keeping with the tone of his famous "Nein!" to Brunner. Perhaps an earlier companion volume to Milbank's THEOLOGY AND SOCIAL THEORY. But instead, the text is perceptive and nuanced. An example of close and charitable readings of theologians with whom he deeply disagreed. The chapter on Schleirmacher is particularly exemplary. Which brings us back to the issue under discussion. Consider the following description of Schleirmacher.
"And we cannot overlook the fact that he (Schleiermacher) felt himself responsible for the interest of the Christian Church in this very field of learning (theology and philosophy), in answering the question of truth which was directed also at Christian preaching...We cannot be mindful enough of the fact that Schleiermacher was not one of those theologians who are in the habit, under some pretext or other, of dissociating themselves from the most difficult and decisive theological situation, that in which the theologian, without security of any kind, must prove himself solely as a theologian. I refer to the situation of the (person) in the pulpit. Schleiermacher did not only not avoid this most exposed position, but actually sought it, throughout his life, as the place of his 'own office' (i.e. the office of the theologian, or the Doctor of the Church)."
Thus my questions for those of us who are inclined to pursue a more professorial expression of vocation: 1) Do we think this description of the theologial office and its decisive locus (the pulpit) is valid? 2) If so, does our personal practice reflect this? 3) If so, does theologial education (particularly the "academic track" MTS program) reflect this? 4) What are the implications for our future educational and professional practice?
posted by DWL at 2:08 AM
18 Comments:
Derek asks important questions: “Thus my questions for those of us who are inclined to pursue a more professorial expression of vocation: 1) Do we think this description of the theologial office and its decisive locus (the pulpit) is valid? 2) If so, does our personal practice reflect this? 3) If so, does theologial education (particularly the "academic track" MTS program) reflect this? 4) What are the implications for our future educational and professional practice?”
For reasons that will become clear below, let me mention first that TIllich commends this work of Barth’s for several reasons, not least because he says this is the only place where one finds Barth’s ‘theology of the arts.’
1. I read portions of this long ago, and from that I recall Barth making a clear distinction between “office” and its “functions,” a distinction your post does not make explicit. Wainwright alludes to Barth on this: “Barth himself said that after Kant theology could no longer proceed without some awareness of the method of reason it employs. But if it is true to its character as mediator of definite content, taking the form of gift, it must concentrate on the dogmatic task, which is to articulate its specific object, the being and action of the triune God. Systematic theology as a task of Christian thought is therefore best understood as dogmatics which is epistemologically self-aware.”
I think Wainwright has it right. The main functions, I believe, are (1) teaching (clarifying) doctrine in light of the Word, and (2) engaging the church prophetically in its particular space-time context in light of the Word.
Here I want to be explicit in stating my pre-suppositions that (a) the “Word” is the Christ, (b) the Church’s purpose is always to denote the life of the triune God even though we live between the “now” and the “not yet“ and thus will do so only in a fragmentary way (c) the Church knows how to denote the triune God only through Scripture, which is our sole testimony to the “Word”, and (d) all distinctions between tradition, reason, and experience (i.e., the so-called Wesleyan quadrilateral) are false (that is, without real meaning), and thus collapse into the same epistemological problem: the distinction between “Knower” and ‘Known“ means that the Church must always interpret Scripture’s testimony to the “Word” in a particular space-time cultural context, and will do so imperfectly. Thus, we must do theology only in prayer.
Given my premises, the tasks of the theologian can be more simply described as (a) interpreting the Word in context and (b) engaging the gaps between a particular community’s “now” and its fulfillment in Christ at the eschaton (the “not yet”) so that the community continues to live in that tension.
I do not agree that the pulpit is “the decisive locus” for these tasks. That strikes me as a residual bias resulting from a much-needed Reformation era corrective to the idolatrous sacramentalism of the Roman church. But it is an error, I believe, to privilege the pulpit (and the preaching office) over the many other means of grace by which the community encounters the triune God (the means by which we communicate with the Christ and by which Christ communicates with us). To privilege preaching and the preaching office and the archaic form we call “sermon” over other means of grace seems to me to suffer from an insufficient pneumatology: if we believe that the Spirit creates and nurtures Christ’s community within history and provides that community all it needs to dine with Christ in its particular context, then it seems we must be open to new and variegated forms through which the community may encounter the Word most intensely over time. The privileging of the pulpit in our time strikes me as a practice that is overly vulnerable to the same abuses of clericalism that brought about the Reformation, and I believe it is a stance that is insufficiently alert to the Spirit’s dynamic creativity in our midst. In other words, the privileging of the pulpit is insufficiently charismatic.
Barth’s theology of the arts, I think, supports my contention. The arts have always had the essential function of grasping and criticizing the world as we have shaped it. Great art points to the gaps in our between-times life together. Great Christian art asks the questions of life to which the Word is the answer, and thus calls the Church back to its vocation. The sermon is thus perhaps best understood as one (archaic) form of Christian art. But why should we presume that it is the decisive locus of our encounter with the Word in our context, rather than the liturgical arts, the visual arts, the musical arts, the literary arts, or the dramatic arts? None of these ought to be given a monopoly on the theologian’s prophetic task. The right question, I suggest, is “what is most likely to be the decisive locus of the encounter of a community with the Word in our particular context?” I think Hauerwas points rightly to the genre of novels such as Anthony Trollope’s as an important locus in our time. But I would lean even more, in our ministry to those Westerners born after 1965, to those forms capable of carrying our story in images, such as the video and music arts.
2. Methinks the personal practice of most of us reflects excessive privileging of textual arts, such as sermon and essay.
3. Methinks our education at Duke reinforces our error generally, and that the MTS track particularly does so to the extent that it does not require skills in preaching nor engagement in a community of faith. Put another way: Duke does a great job of preparing theologians to discern God’s Word to us in a particular context, but Duke does not excel in training theologians to utter that Word to the Church in ways that are meaningful in our time. The latter weakness is magnified for MTS students due to the omission of homiletic arts as a degree requirement.
4. We must first remember the Rule of Paul: we do not know in advance through whom the Spirit will speak to the community - the charismatic gift of prophecy may be bestowed upon anyone in the community, and certainly not necessarily or exclusively on those licensed to preach. Theologians do not need to be ordained to do their job. But they must live within Christ’s community and not be isolated from it, so that their prophetic Word is spoken in context. Thus, a theologian must contribute to and be immersed in the daily life of a particular faith community, but not necessarily as one ordained to Word and Sacrament. And they must, I think, pray for the charismatic gift of prophecy, a gift in the communicative arts fundamentally planted in the rich soil of an active life of prayer and worship, and developed, like all skills of art, only through mentoring and constant practice. To the extent that Duke does not provide such mentoring, practice, and nurturing of a rich prayer and worship life, theologians must seek these things elsewhere in order to achieve excellence in their tasks.
Craig,
where did this sola scriptura come from? To say that "the Church knows how to denote the triune God only through Scripture, which is our sole testimony to the “Word”" I feel is inconsistent with your pneumatology as explicated in the following manner: "if we believe that the Spirit creates and nurtures Christ’s community within history and provides that community all it needs to dine with Christ in its particular context, then it seems we must be open to new and variegated forms through which the community may encounter the Word most intensely over time."
If the Triune God is only known through Scripture, doesn't that deny an active presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church? I don't want to advocate montanism, but it is your category of exclusivity that I have trouble with.
That being said, this isn't going to turn into just another Wilson disagreeing with Craig response.
The arts point is dead on but also tragic because the search for Christian art reminds us of the desert this world really is, and how much we truly hunger for the Word of God to be present.
There was a Stanley/Ralph Wood essay last year in Religion & Literature that was really good and ended up being the final straw for me that I had no business trying to do Academic theology when there are other forms which the Church is so much more desperate for. Specifically, good fiction, good music, good film, etc., and good means of bringing those to the local congregations.
Wilson, I don’t want to divert us from Derek’s questions, but please allow me to make two clarifications on the point you raise.
1. I think I must amend my comments so that I don’t imply that the Triune God is only known through Scripture, and rather follow Wainwright in saying that the Christ is God’s self address to humankind (God’s ‘Word’), and that Scripture is our sole testimony to that “Word,” a testimony that we comprehend only through the agency of the Spirit. I make this amendment because, like Paul and Calvin, I do believe that all of creation testifies to God’s abundant love for us, although, because of our hubris, we are able to comprehend that testimony only through the ‘spectacles of Christ’ (which, for Calvin, always also implies the agency of the Spirit).
2. No, the doctrine of scripture to which I have alluded is not at all inconsistent with a robust pneumatology. I refererence Acts 9-15, the story of Cornelius thru the council at Jerusalem. By my reading, the example of the early church is paradigmatic in this regard. I believe we find in Luke an underlying premise that God is active and may at anytime be doing something new, requiring an openness to the dynamic nature of life with the triune God. I presuppose a “dialectical synergism” between the active presence of the Spirit that creates the church and the church’s life as a community. The movement of the church lags the movement of the Spirit, but expects and is alert for movement of the Spirit. Acts 9-15 challenges a static hermeneutic that presumes God revealed God’s will for all time and space through the original meanings intended by the authors of Scripture. There is a dialectic between the community’s experience of the activity of the Spirit and its understanding of Scripture.
Thus I advocate an openness to the Spirit’s freedom, along with a radical humility about our ability to comprehend that which is revealed in Scripture. James seems to presume a dynamic hermeneutic that anticipates a fresh interpretation of Scripture in a given time and space that is God’s Word to the community in that moment. This seems to be deeply problematic for those who reverse that process, positing a static meaning to be mined from Scripture and “applied” to contemporary life.
Without denying for a minute the importance of each particular gift of the Spirit, each member of Christ's body, and the reality of the Word spoken from "surprising" places (my favorite example being Balaam's ass): there is a difference between a theologian and an ass. Well, there should be.
Perhaps what Derek is getting at, and I think he's right so to do, is that one particular member of the body, one particular work of the Spirit, is the strange work that raises up a teacher from within and for the church. That's what Paul seems to think, anyway (Eph. 4.11ff). Christ has ascended on high, led captivity captive, and given gifts to men: not least among them, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.
That doesn't mean that God hasn't given other gifts to other members of the body (and we are all members one of another), nor does it mean that God won't ever use an ass to straighten out a new Balaam. Nor is it insufficiently pneumatological, or at least Paul wouldn't have thought so. Some parts of the body are particularly endowed, gifted, set apart, entrusted, dare we say ordained to certain tasks or duties (offices). One such work of the Spirit is the pastor-teacher. And that office has entailed the ministry of preaching since Paul (1-2 Timothy), not Luther.
Derek, I guess I don't know my PCUSA ordination facts, but I was under the impression that Leroy Huizinga (sp?), who graduated last year PhD and is teaching at Wheaton, was ordained and sent to Wheaton to teach theology there. Am I mistaken? Or is that something else besides what you're hinting towards?
Phil, you argue against a point that no one made. No one in this thread has argued, as you seem to imply, against the office of pastor-teacher or against the tradition of setting apart particular persons for particular ministries (such as preaching). You offer a red herring.
The question is not whether an ass can be a theologian, whether a theologian can be an ass, or whether a theologian can speak while seated on an ass rather than standing in the pulpit. The question is whether the pulpit is the decisive locus of the theologian. The spirit of Derek’s question, given Barth’s context and conclusions, is whether one must be in parish ministry and set apart for Word and Sacrament in order to fulfill the tasks of the theologian.
You seem to imply, by quoting my words out of context, that I suggested that the idea of ordination is insufficiently pneumatological. But of course I did not argue against ordination at all. Of course one set apart as pastor-teacher (by which I presume you mean ‘priest’) must be a theologian. But that does not at all imply the converse: that a theologian must be a priest (or must be one set apart for parish ministry). I argue that it is insufficiently pneumatological to insist upon the latter assertion.
I also argue similarly that it is error to privilege the specific form, “sermon,” over other forms through which the community encounters the Word (see Jeremiah/Bonhoeffer). If a task of the theologian, as I have suggested, is to engage the gaps, then it is necessary to seek the best way to do that in context. Preaching is just one tool of the many available. Breaking clay jars is one. Sleeping in a Birmingham jail is another. And I’d add the creation of art like Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Scarlet Letter,” Picasso's mural "Guernica, and Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List“ to the list. All of these forms engage the community with the the Word, but not in sermon form and not from the pulpit. It is insufficiently pneumatological to hold that the decisive tool of the theologian is the form, ”sermon.“ The Spirit is active amongst us creating new forms through which we encounter Christ. What matters is not the form, but the content of that encounter.
You allude to Paul. I infer that you do this in order to suggest that Paul’s commendation of preaching supports the notion that the pulpit is the decisive locus of the theological office. But that argument suffers from its anachronistic nature. While it is likely that the church recognized certain persons as elders and overseers, the practice of setting apart an “order” of priests did not happen for many generations after Paul, and he likely would have condemned the idea of a professional class of non-tent-making priests. And those early priests were set apart not for their preaching, but for their sacramental role. If Steinmetz is correct, the elevation of the preaching office to a professional class did not happen until the 15th century (before Luther) with the Leutpriesters, who were not ordained, but were paid by the city councils to preach. John Geiler von Kaisersberg, the most famous of these, was not at all set apart, but was a secular professor. And John Calvin, by some accounts a decent theologian, was not ordained, nor particularly known for his preaching.
Thus, I suggest that a theologian need not be ordained to Word and Sacrament to fulfill his or her office. The key learning from Schliermacher’s and Barth’s experience is the necessity of deep immersion in a particular community of faith, not ordination to the priesthood. As you make clear, it is not necessary to be ordained to follow the tradition of Balaam’s ass.
It isn't necessary to be ordained to be an ass, of course; what I was implying by my reference to Eph. 4 is that a theologian is not an ass, but is most naturally a pastor-teacher. Well, if by "naturally" I mean what is "normally" brought into being by the work of the Spirit in the church. Which is to say, I think that the normative way to think about the "office" of the theologian is as an extension of the office of preaching, which always already entails within it the most essential task of the theologian, preacher or not: exegesis. And that is not an office nor a role nor task that began with luitpriesters.
Let's take a brilliant example of a true theologian: Ignatius of Antioch. Bishop, exegete, theologian: three names for the same person, office, task. And, wonderfully, what is the only record of his theology we have? Letters. Strangely Pauline.
Or my favorite: Augustine. Letters, letters, letters! Sermons, commentaries, polemical pieces, a handbook for an inquiring soul, the single most monumental work of apologetics ever accomplished, doctrinal treatises, prayers, "autobiography" (again, prayer), a searching attempt of faith to seek trinitarian understanding (again, prayer). A bishop, a theologian.
I could go on, but a little Pelikan will help. He points out that until 600 AD theologians were bishops; from 600 to Luther, monks; and from Luther to the present, university professors. This is a cute little scheme, because you've got Gregory I who's both a bishop and a monk, and Luther, who's a monk and a professor. Well, I think what we're seeing in Barth's very generous comments on Schleiermacher are a heart felt, maybe even spiritually instinctive, desire for the "natural" mode of theology.
Phil,
I appreciate your high view of ordination, but I remain wary of moves that elevate a priestly class above the laity; such moves seem more grounded in our tragic will to power than in Christ's teachings. This is an area in which I am more free church than Anglican, I confess. No doubt our dear friend Ben and many of our anglo-catholic brethren would disagree with my wariness.
But I wonder about your reference to Pelikan. You seem to have the cause-effect parameters confused. You seem to believe that what qualified the heroes you listed to be theologians was their standing as bishops and monks. But I believe it was the other way around. What qualified them to be bishops, monks, and professors was their capacity to be theologians. That is, what all of these shared in common was a high level of education. It is their education that enabled them to be theologians and not their holding of ecclesial offices. Education in their time was a luxury; so, with few exceptions, the men of letters were identical to the church leadership. Augustine and Ambrose were bishops, not because they were great priests (neither was that before being bishop), but because they were educated and had established their authority as teachers in civil society. Clergy were the lawyers and the scientists, as well as the priests and teachers. They were educated. And that is why they were generally the theologians, also.
But that is no longer true. Since the Reformation, education has become increasingly democratic. The capacity to be a theologian, a capacity that requires a high degree of education, is no longer limited to those sons given to the church for holy orders. And thus the capacity to be a theologian is available to sons (and daughters) of bricklayers too ornery to be pastors.
My point is that the normativity you suggest is not given in creation. It is by no means "natural." It is a historical fact caused by factors that are no longer true. Education is surely a gift of the Spirit that transforms our reality, freeing us from such man-made enclaves that we tolerate too long because they seem "natural" because they are all we have known before. Yet old things pass away as we encounter the new creation. The Spirit is indeed making all things new.
There is also Reinhold Niebuhr. He gets a bad wrap (and often, deservedly so) but he pastored for while, did theology in the parish, and then was taken up to teach pastors.
I only bring him up as a kind of modern day schleiermacher.
I have a lot of thoughts on this which have no business entering the blog, but I think Derek is pushing at an important issue but one which we are straddled with at the moment. Academic theologians have to get jobs. Preachers have to get jobs. The biggest temptation I think that the field of academic theology faces is a two-hats technique a la Dale Martin.
We are not ecclesial bodies or the founders of ecclesial bodies. The authority of an academic theologian does not come from the Church but from the academy, just like an anthropologist or physicist. The authority of a preacher who publishes theology does not come from the Church but from the marketing department of his publishing house.
This is cynical, but its a desert out there. Oh, and pastors need to be trained. Whose going to do it? (if anyones interested, I'll email them clifton's paper on a bell hooksian critique of academic theology).
To respond and clarify:
1) While I am a bit reluctant to give up the centrailty of the preached word, I am willing to expand the scope of my question to include other modes of proclamation - sacrament, song, etc. I am so for two reasons. First, all Emergent Church business aside, I think in most congregations (at least Methodist and Presbyterian; but perhaps not Anglican, Catholic, or Orthodox) the sermon is still the primary locus of proclamation. Pastors are still primarily considered preaching. Again, this may not be true of denominations whose ministers are considered priests. And second, I'm Reformed enough to hold onto the centrality ofthe preached word in principle.
2) This being the case, I can retool and rephrase my inquiry. I can expand it beyond preaching and put it this way. Does the office of theologian necessarily entail an active role in the pastoral, sacramental, and/or congregational teaching minsitry. That is, whether ordained or not, ought not theologians to be actively, if not "officially," orient their work in, to, and from the local congregation?
3) The PC(USA) does in fact ordain people to teaching calls. Though the usual protocol is to do so after one has served in the parish. It is a bit rarer, though not impossible, to be ordained straight into a teaching call.
To your rephrasing of the question Derek, I include a Barthian "Ja." Theologians must orient their work to the actual people whom they commune with regularly and for whom their communion ministers. That must be the foundation of theology or else theology becomes just another enterprise of textual hermeneutics. That is the demon that must be avoided. If there is any relavence to the vocation of you speak of, Derek, it has to begin at the the local level, and from there it can move analogically to the Church universal or the other academic departments (as a brand of appologetics, e.g., our personal discussion over Milbank's reading of Badiou).
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Dear Brother Phil,
After reading your latest post (which I don't see here any longer), I think you might benefit from reflection on the distinction between wit and ridicule. One of these unites. It is the better choice.
I am happy to discuss exegesis with you at any time. However, before that I urge you to do a close reading of the actual posts. You seem to be unconcerned with what others actually say and continue to respond wittily to things unsaid. I am not sure if you are being sloppy or simply uncharitable. I experience it as the latter.
I have said all priests must be theologians but it is not necessary that all theologians be priests. You seem to miss repeatedly that distinction.
Your comments about Paul miss the mark, because they respond to an assertion I am not making, and instead put forth your own straw man. I am not at all arguing against ecclesial authority. Of course we need order and order demands structures of authority. However, I am wary of those who seek to claim/extend a monopoly that allows a group to act as administrators of grace. I stand by my “will to power” concerns with regard to those who would claim the charismatic gifts for a particular class.
You argue against education as a criterion for the priesthood, but of course you are knocking down your second straw man. The topic was not qualification for the priesthood. The subject was your assertion that it is “natural” - a word that alludes to categories of creation - that theologians be bishops. My point was that it was not their office as bishop that made them the first theologians, as you asserted. Rather, it was their gifting by the Spirit of extraordinary intellectual capacities that enabled them to be theologians, and that, in turn, caused the correlation between theologians and bishops; there was not a natural monopoly of theology by the episcopate.
In spite of your ridicule, I’ll continue to maintain that education - the development of skills of learning that allow one to grasp and criticize one’s reality - is absolutely essential to the tasks of theology. Here you put forth a third straw man, equating “education” with possession of credentials like MDiv, PhD. But of course no one else made such a connection. So you combine your second and third straw men to make the point that you’d prefer for your priest a fishermen to a smartass Duke grad. Who can argue? But of course that is not what we were discussing. The subject was theologians. And I am insisting that a theologian need not be a priest. And now I also assert that it is their gifting from the Spirit that allows them to grasp and critique reality which in turn enables them to perform their function. So education is indeed an essential blessing that enables the work of the theologian.
Now I want to respond to Derek’s updated query. In the Anglican tradition, it is extremely rare to find theologians who are not also experienced parish priests. I fully endorse that approach and it will be my own in some way. My point here has been to make clear that ordination is not a criterion for the theological function, although the theological function is a necessary part of the priesthood. I also feel it important to remind all of us that the capacity to be a good theologian is not sufficient qualification for the priesthood in our time. A rector must ‘rule’ (per Gregory the Great). The gifts of administration, teaching, nurture, prophecy, and the worship arts are also important. Not all those gifted for theology have those other gifts. Right now, I believe the gifts of administration and teaching may well be the most essential for those of us hoping to plant missional churches as rectors. What’s important to the church, however, is having the gifts of the theologian on the leadership team. When we continue the historical model in which ordination is the criterion for leadership, we reinforce the passivity of the laity, which weakens the church. So again, I say that the essential thing is not that you be ordained - for you may not be gifted for the priesthood - but that you be immersed in the leadership of a parish. I think that is what Wilson is saying, too. And I believe it may be more valuable to a congregation to have a learned theologian serving as a layperson than to have that same person as simply another priest. That is not a historical analysis but an opinion about our current reality.
I think the second part of Craig's post is insightful. I think his parsing of ordination as an office and/or rite of the Church and the gifting and functioning of the theologian is a good one. One that he's pulled through from #1 in his in initial response.
My own sense of this is as follows. I concede the distinction Craig has parsed here. But I have a concern. If the function is not linked to the office, that is the labor of theology to the authority of the Church, I fear theologians and theological schools will not take up the challenge presently under discussion. Unless theologians are somehow ordained by the Church, or recognized and authorized in some other non-sacramental way, I fear the academy will continue to drive the agenda.
Thus, in my own plan to take over the (Presbyterian) world, I think we need some sort of ecumenical order - either lay or ordained - similar to the Jesuits and the Dominicans. An association that would maintain the connection between theologians and congregations, scholarly discourse and missional practice. And they could implement, or better, require theologians and theological schools to incorporate this into their cirricular and professorial standards.
Derek,
The question still is who are you writing for? Who are you publishing for? I mean, Stanley likes to say that he publishes for popular audiences but we all know that that is a joke. (No one quoting Wittgenstein ever publishes for a popular audience.)
So are you writing for the elders of the PCUSA? for the members of the communion? for the members of the local church? for the members of your order?
Why Wilson! Haven't you read anything of Derek's? Obviously he'll be writing for a little ole country church: called the Mensa Fellowship..... :-)
Craig, I removed my post b/c quickly after I posted it I realized I shouldn't have posted it, because it hadn't been written in love. Please forgive me. Peace, Phil
I think theologians must write in multiple "registers," to invoke JK Carter. And this is no different than a pastor having to do so in order to address adults, the sick and dying, youth, and children effectively. The problem is that theologians (myself included) do not usually do so. As Craig puts it I/we write for MENSA.
But I do think writing to MENSA is justified. This is the answer Milbank should have given to the question "Why Badiou?" Answer: because I am a Christian whose profession is academic theology and philosophy. Therefore, as I express my vocation in that arena, I am compelled to engage any and all who are interested in the faith. In short, I write to and about Badiou as a (albeit very proscribed) form of witness.
The problem is to mistake academic theology as normative or primary. Though this is not to invoke the fraught "second order explication of first order proclamation" notion of theology. It is one form of theology and witness. And it is one that needs to relocate itself and its relationship to the congregation.
In fairness to Hauerwas, he's published a number of small volumes that are largely sermons and prayers. Which returns us to the original contention (in both senses) of this post. The sermon is, that is remains, the primary idiom of theology. And more academic theogians (in training) ought to be engaged in the practice of this theological discourse.
Phil,
Thank you. Sparks fly inevitably when warriors prepare on the practice field. Steel sharpens steel. I share your passion.
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