3. Immersed in the Tradition: Historical Theology
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Immersed in the Tradition: Historical Theology
DURING THE FIRST part of my career as a theologian, I focussed on historical theology, seeing this both as a valuable end in itself, and at the same time as an essential preliminary to theological engagement with present-day concerns. So what is historical theology? Though often misunderstood simply as the study of the history of theology, historical theology is actually about grasping how theology has been done in a specific historical context. How does this context shape the questions that are asked, and the answers that are given?
Although I had lost faith in Marxism as a totalizing worldview by this stage, I remained acutely appreciative of its usefulness as a tool of historical analysis, and maintained contact with writers in this tradition. For example, I formed an intellectual friendship with the Polish Marxist philosopher and intellectual historian Leszek Kołakowski, author of the magisterial Main Currents of Marxism, who settled in Oxford after being thrown out of Poland for publicly criticizing Marxist orthodoxy. I organized an international symposium on his work at Oxford in October 2007 to celebrate his 80th birthday.
So what insights might Marxism bring to historical theology? Here’s one. Marx’s comment of 1852 cannot be overlooked by any serious theologian: ‘People make their own history, but they do not make it as they please under circumstances of their own choosing, but under circumstances that already exist, given and handed down to them.’ Marx’s point is this: whether we like it or not, we do theology within an inherited and limiting historical context, precisely because we are culturally and historically embedded. Our historicity limits our options.
Theology cannot avoid being influenced by the historical context within which it is undertaken. Historical theology may be primarily concerned with the history of theology at any given point; yet it is secondarily about understanding how the challenges, assumptions, and resources of that historical moment shaped and limited those theological formulations.
The theologian of today can benefit from the riches of the theological tradition; yet this tradition clearly needs to be interpreted rather than simply restated, on account of the disparity between its original context and its present equivalent. I later found this point expressed rather well by Emil Brunner: ‘There is indeed an evangelium perennis but not a theologia perennis . . . The gospel remains the same, but our understanding of the gospel must ever be won anew.’ My substantial intellectual investment in historical theology was thus not a nostalgic retreat into the past to escape the present; it was learning how things had been done in the past, to help me do them better in the present. The challenge is to frame the truths of faith in today’s languages and concepts, without trapping the gospel within those languages and concepts.
Historical theology taught me that most of today’s theological questions were asked – and answered – in the past. New questions do need engagement, such as those arising from Darwin’s theory of natural selection and Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Yet it is as if there are a set of questions about God, Christ, and human nature to which we keep returning, hoping to refresh our theological vision and make fresh applications. This led me to realize the value of a deep immersion in the history of theology: it opens up a new world of possibilities for the sympathetic evaluation and retrieval of ideas and approaches that have been prematurely declared to be redundant or outdated.
Now this is not a new idea; many sixteenth-century theologians, for example, saw themselves as rediscovering the insights of patristic writers such as Augustine of Hippo and finding new ways of applying them to their own unsettled age. It is, however, a timely idea, as it allows us to affirm that we stand within the flux of history, and can learn from what has happened before us without being trapped in the past. It gives us a sense of historical location, so that we can see ourselves as standing within an ongoing tradition of reflection and interpretation, in which some degree of continuity with the past is both assumed and valued. This point is made neatly by C. S. Lewis: ‘Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.’ Lewis’s remarks help me frame both myself and the theological enterprise in a broader and deeper context.
It is also important to note that some theological developments turn out to be inappropriate or unhelpful, and thus requiring correcting and redirecting. As I understand it, theology is critical and conservative, in the best senses of both terms, putting everything to the test and holding on to what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). This can mean interrogating some theological ideas concerning their foundation and validity. For example, does the classic early Christian idea of the impassibility of God represent an inappropriate accommodation to Hellenistic philosophical prejudices, and thus require reconsideration? As I pointed out in my 1990 Bampton Lectures at Oxford, the discipline of doctrinal criticism remains important in preserving theological integrity, and ensuring that Christian theology is not trapped within or determined by the contingencies of any historical mindset or cultural location.
Yet historical theology can too easily treat theologians as historically-located idea-generating machines. Theologians, we must remember, are human beings, with passions, aspirations, and concerns. For this reason, I have come to value – and to write! – theological biographies. In exploring the lives of writers such as Emil Brunner, C. S. Lewis, and T. F. Torrance, I have come to understand something of the problems they identified, the solutions they advocated and how they developed them, and the difference this made to them. It is a reminder that theology is an historically located and personally embodied activity on the one hand, and a personally transformative enterprise on the other. Biographies are not about abstract thoughts; they are about embodied minds that are thinking.
So how did this ongoing engagement with historical theology shape my theological outlook? There are four points to note here.
1.It helps me to see myself as standing in a long tradition of reception and interpretation of something I discovered, but did not invent.
2.It encourages me to learn from those who have wrestled before me with the interpretation of the Bible and the articulation of core themes of the faith.
3.It invites me to see myself as responsible for passing on this heritage to the future, not by passively repeating it, but by actively engaging and developing it.
4.In exploring how the ideas and approaches of other theologians were shaped by their historical location, I have to reflect on how I might myself be the prisoner of my own historical context and my personal history, and how can I hope to transcend this.
I thus see myself as part of a community of exploration, engaged on a shared journey of discovery. We can learn from those who have travelled this road before us. As I see it, I have to work things out from within the flow of history, in dialogue with others who have made that journey before me, and who are now making that journey around me. We have to allow – perhaps even expect – that they may have seen something that we have failed to see through inattentiveness, or refused to see through prejudice.
Some words of Marcel Proust come to mind here: the ‘only true voyage of discovery’, he suggested, is ‘not to travel to new landscapes, but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others.’ Perhaps the greatest gift of historical theology is to allow us to see the gospel through the eyes of others, thus enriching and extending our own theological vision.
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Karl Marx, Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Otto Meissner, 1869),
Emil Brunner, ‘Toward a MissionaryTheology’ (Christian Century 66, no. 27 (1949): 816–18; quote at 816).
C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2.
Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
Marcel Proust, La prisonnière (Paris: Gallimard, 1925), 69.