Healing Fractures in Contemporary Theology

Peter John McGregor, Tracey Rowland, Peter John McGregor, Tracey Rowland

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781725266087, 9781725266094
• eBook ISBN: 9781725266100
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Since Vatican II, the key question that has developed in Catholic theology, often unstated or unrecognized, is, what is theology? The thesis presented here is that contemporary theologizing is "fractured" in many places and to varying degrees. These fractures can vary in seriousness between theologians, and a particular theologian may suffer from some fractures but not others. The fractures addressed here are between -theology and spirituality-theology and philosophy-theology and liturgy-the literal and spiritual senses of sacred scripture-theology, preaching, and apologetics-theology and ethics-theology and social theory-dogmatic and pastoral theology-theology and the "koinonial" Christian life-theologians and non-theologians- the generation gap between Gen X and Millennial/Post-Millennial Catholics, and -theology and the Magisterium. For each of these, an attempt is made to examine the symptoms, give a diagnosis, and write a prescription.

1

Theology and Spirituality

Peter John McGregor

If someone were a member of an Introduction to Theology class at a seminary or university, the most simple definition of theology that he or she would be likely to hear would almost certainly be St. Anselm’s dictum fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. Or a person might be told that, based on the etymology of the term, theology is the “word about” or the “study of” God. Or one might be directed to read the first question in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, there discovering that sacra doctrina is a science that is based on principles revealed by God.1 Or a more contemporary definition proposed might be something like that of Karl Rahner’s, that theology “is essentially the conscious effort of the Christian to hearken to the actual verbal revelation, which God has promulgated in history, to acquire a knowledge of it by the methods of scholarship and to reflect upon its implications.”2 Or another might be that of St. John Paul II, that theology “is a cognitive process through which the human mind, illuminated by faith and stimulated by love, advances in the immense territories that divine Revelation has thrown open before it,” and is “a science through which the Christian’s reason, which receives certitude from the light of faith, by reasoning strives to understand what it believes, that is, the revealed mysteries and their consequences.”3 Having said this, one thing that all of these definitions of theology have in common is that they can give the impression that theology, while it involves revelation and faith, is at its most fundamental level an exercise in discursive reasoning.

In contrast, Joseph Ratzinger has drawn attention to the ancient Greek use of the word θεολογία (theologia) to designate, not a human science, but the divine discourse itself. For this reason, the Greeks designated as “theologians” only those who could be regarded as instruments of the divine discourse. So, Aristotle drew a distinction between θεολογία and θεολογιχή (theologiche)—between theology and the study of theology, between the divine discourse and human effort to understand it. Pseudo-Dionysius used the word “theology” to designate Sacred Scripture—the discourse of God rendered into human words.4 According to him, Scripture alone is theology in the fullest sense of the word. The writers of Sacred Scripture are theologoi, “through whom God as subject, as the word that speaks itself, enters into history.”5 Thus the Bible becomes the model of all theology, and the biblical writers the norm for the theologian. Because theology is ultimately the word which God speaks to us, it can never be a merely “positive” science, but rather a “spiritual” one. Even when studied in the academe, theology must be studied “in the context of a corresponding spiritual praxis and of a readiness to understand it, [and] at the same time, as a requirement that must be lived[;] . . . just as we cannot learn to swim without water, so we cannot learn theology without the spiritual praxis in which it lives.”6 It must include “the necessary self-transcendence of contemplation into the practice of the faith.”7

Here Ratzinger is saying something more than that theologians need to be prayerful people. The spiritual praxis to which he refers is something more than being faithful to prayer, or even that it must be a theology “on one’s knees.”8 It is a praxis within which theology “lives,” and “a requirement that must be lived.” One must understand this spiritual praxis, this “spirituality,” as something more than one’s prayer life, or a particular “spirituality” identified as “Benedictine,” “Franciscan,” “Dominican,” or “Carmelite.” It is contemplation that is put into practice, that is, it is theoria that is put into praxis.

It will be the contention of this chapter that a “fracture” is to be found in much contemporary theology between what Ratzinger calls the “positive” and the “spiritual” aspects of this theology. This could also be expressed by the statement that much contemporary theology is “despiritua...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Theology and Spirituality
• Chapter 2: What Is Philosophy?
• Chapter 3: Theology and Philosophy
• Chapter 4: Theology and Liturgy
• Chapter 5: The Literal and Spiritual Senses of Sacred Scripture
• Chapter 6: Theology, Preaching, and Apologetics
• Chapter 7: Theology and Ethics
• Chapter 8: Theology and Social Theory
• Chapter 9: Dogmatic and Pastoral Theology
• Chapter 10: Theology and the “Koinonial” Christian Life
• Chapter 11: Theologians and Non-Theologians
• Chapter 12: The Generation Gap between Gen X and Millennial/Post-Millennial Catholics
• Chapter 13: Theologians and the Magisterium