Faith seeking understanding: the renewal of Christian thinking - Cover Story

Christian Century, June 29, 1994 by John B. Cobb, Jr.

THEOLOGY AS the serious activity of faith seeking understanding or self-conscious Christian reflection on important issues has disappeared from many churches. While some members of these churches still engage in theological reflection, theology no longer plays an important role in the church's life. It exists on the periphery, tolerated but not employed in making basic decisions. I am speaking of those churches that once considered themselves "mainline" and that continue to serve a large segment of middle America. What I say may apply to some other churches in some respects, but I am not referring to the Korean, African-American, conservative evangelical or charismatic churches.

By churches I mean both the congregations and the bureaucracies, hierarchies and conferences through which they govern themselves. For convenience I am not including the seminaries. However, the disappearance of theology from the churches is partly the result of its decline in the seminaries and partly the cause of that decline. Theology has been relegated to professional specialists and increasingly abandoned by them as. well.

The rise of "religious studies" has played its role in limiting the place of theology. This term refers to the study of religious phenomena that takes place in most university and many college departments of religion. It brings to bear on these phenomena methods that have been developed by anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and historians. Honed in secular universities to fit the general ideology of the university, this approach now dominates much graduate education in religion to the extent that many of the students from whom seminaries draw their faculties are educated in this way.

Thinking about the Christian faith and the church in the interest of the liberation of particular oppressed groups is a second approach that has replaced the kind of theology I am referring to. Those who base the call for liberation on their Christian faith do remain theological in my sense. But others make the commitment to liberation primary and employ Christian teaching and communities for the sake of this liberation.

A third activity that has drawn off a good deal of energy from theology is the critique of the Christian heritage. Though this activity can be closely related to either of the first two approaches, it can also be distinguished from them. The criticism may be aroused by the awareness of the depth of anti-Jewish teaching in the tradition and its continuing power for evil. Or the long history of repression of the body and sexuality may excite censure. In the context of faith seeking understanding, such criticism characteristically moves on to repentance and theological change. But much of the critical activity does not understand or present itself in this theological way.

A fourth nontheological style of work in seminaries involves the advancement of the traditional academic disciplines. The work of many biblical scholars, for example, is shaped much more by the state of their discipline and its new methods than by the Christian faith of the scholars. Christian identity is largely bracketed in this process; it is emphatically not a requirement for participation in the academic guild. The work of these scholars is not theology as I have defined it.

Theology as faith seeking understanding or intentional Christian reflection on important questions is largely relegated to the professors of systematic theology. Some of these continue to pursue the task vigorously, but others devote their time to studying and teaching the thought of others or sharing in some of the approaches listed above. Some defend classical positions without clarifying what these mean for life and action in our very different world. The work of faith seeking understanding, especially if we think of this as the kind of faith that operates in the mainstream of the oldline churches, is at the periphery of seminary teaching.

MUCH THE same point could be made if "theology" were defined more literally as reflection about God. Because religious studies and the biblical and historical disciplines employ only those methods and approaches that are approved within the university,, they cannot speak of God. While they can talk about what the people or texts they study say about God, they themselves cannot affirm anything about God. For the university, God is not a factor in what happens in the world. Scholars may share their private beliefs at times, but they cannot allow these to influence their teaching.

Those who are primarily committed to liberation of criticism are themselves in some tension with university norms. They are also more likely to concern themselves with images of or language about God than with God. Hence, once again, the direct task of theology is left to the systematic theologians, not all of whom are comfortable with taking it up. To affirm God and to think of God as in any way explanatory of events in the world is to place oneself outside the university ethos. On the other hand, if the theologian takes serious account of the many reasons why God is excluded from the university, her or his work is not likely to be well received in the church.