ABSTRACT
As this section of the book makes clear, Christian theology works with and within traditions. In practical terms, this means that doing Christian theology involves reading and working with texts (and other materials) from the Christian past. What we do will be recognizably Christian theology if, and only if, it is recognizably in conversation with Christianity’s past. The conversation with tradition is, of course, generally recognized as a conversation in which critical questions can and should be asked. Theology develops, at least in part, through the process of question and argument. To that extent at least, tradition is always questionable. As discussed elsewhere in this volume, carefully articulated disagreement, the interrogation of assumptions, acknowledgement of the participants’ different contexts and how they provoke different claims, and other features of any good argument about an important topic, all properly form part of theology’s conversation with tradition. However, staying with the analogy of a conversation, we can all think of circum-
stances in which we would find ourselves unable to continue a conversation on easy or peaceable terms, treating a conversation partner as a fellow participant in the search for truth – even if he or she were saying important things. What if the conversation partner, in the course of presenting his or her ideas, consistently defends practices or attitudes that you find deeply abhorrent ? What if the conversation partner appears not to be prepared to talk to you – on peaceable terms, or at all? Or what if the conversation partner consistently attacks, misrepresents, or advocates violence against your friends and neighbours? And – what if you then find yourself stuck in a room with that person and unable to avoid hearing, at least occasionally, what he or she says? Anyone who reads or works with the texts of Christian history confronts this
problem. You do not need to be anti-Christian, or an advocate of radical reform to Christian theology, to recognize the manifold ethical and political wrongness in Christian tradition – both in the history of Christianity itself and in the texts that bear witness to and shape that history. Especially since the middle of the twentieth century, numerous readers of Christian tradition have drawn attention to theologicallyjustified sexism, racism, anti-Judaism and colonialism – to name but a few of the
most prominent examples (some of which are dealt with at more length elsewhere in this book). These are, or should be, of concern to everyone who tries to work with and within Christian tradition – not just to those who identify themselves with groups who have suffered Christian history’s wrongs. So how can or should theologians make use of traditions that include ‘texts of
terror’, practices of exclusion, problematic ideologies, collusion with horrendous evil, and the rest? And what is involved in Christian theologians doing justice to their questionable inheritance – working with and within tradition? Are we forced to ignore or explain away the ethical and political problems we find in the texts we read, in order to continue working faithfully within a tradition? Or should we be expunging certain texts from our ‘lived traditions’ altogether, ceasing to read or converse with them? If we can reject utterly some recent versions of ‘Christianity’ – as, for example, Christians worldwide rejected the pro-apartheid churches and theologies of late twentieth-century South Africa – could we ever do the same with older texts that are more deeply embedded within the tradition, but that carry equally problematic ethical implications? And if so, how would we deal with their multiple and ongoing effects within Christian traditions and communities? Before exploring these questions, I want to draw attention to a wider issue that
arises when we start to look at tradition in this way. Doing theology is, we often say, an activity that involves and engages the whole of a person’s life – emotions, experiences, and lived relationships, as well as intellectual and religious formation. That is easy to say, but difficult to handle. It means, for example, that theology is not a very safe ‘conversation’, and the risks are not the same for everyone and are not evenly distributed. It means, moreover, that theologians have to learn to handle the affective dimension of their work – how the texts we read may evoke deep emotional responses in us. When you study Christian tradition, you may find yourself looking at texts that you simply cannot go on reading, let alone draw into a productive conversation. Or you may find yourself in an uneasy negotiation between your deep love for a text and your deep discomfort with some of its assumptions or claims – an uneasy negotiation perhaps comparable to conversations I remember with a close friend, much older than I, who was consistently and unthinkingly racist. I suggest that acknowledging the many ways in which texts affect us and others – emo-
tionally, socially, aesthetically, and so forth – is part of good reading and shapes good reading. A ‘felt’ response to a text is not necessarily something that needs to be confined to an introductory paragraph or an embarrassed footnote. There are some things in theological texts that should (for example) horrify or disturb a reader, and there is no loss of rigour in pointing this out and exploring why. At the same time, as we will see, doing theology requires you not only to acknowledge a ‘felt’ response, but to reflect on it in the wider context of theological work – the context of a God-formed community. This in turn means that the issue of how to read questionable traditions demands
a response that is itself theological and ethical. We will return to this point later.
