This makes me feel so much better... David Bentley Hart points out that theologians should never have holidays, really:
...theology requires a far great scholarly range than does any other humane science. The properly trained Christian theologian, perfectly in command of his materials, should be a proficient linguist, with a mastery of several ancient and modern tongues, should have a complete formation in the subtleties of the whole Christian dogmatic tradition, should possess a considerable knowledge of the texts and arguments produced in every period of the Church, should be a good historian, should be thoroughly trained in philosophy, ancient, medieval and modern, should have a fairly broad grasp of liturgical practice in every culture and age of the Christian world, should (ideally) possess considerable knowedge of literature, music and the plastic arts, should have an intelligent interest in the effects of theological discourse in areas such as law or economics, and so on and so forth. This is not to say that one cannot practice theology without these attainments; but such an education remains the scholarly ideal of the guild...
He's right of course... theology is a meta-discipline in many ways. Very interesting to think about in the light of current debates about theological education.
7 comments:
...and, of course, should be proficient at footnoting citations...
;-)
And then you add in the bit about every Christian being a theologian, and perhaps the enormity of the task makes your stuff on martyrdom even more important!
Its funny that software engineers say the same thing about their discipline. In my first few years working as a consultant software engineer I worked on software systems for a high powered laser lab, an opthamology clinic, a financial risk management system and a tectonic plate shifting model. Of course I wasn't trained in any of those disciplines, I had to learn their specialties "on the job". Looking at things like Bibleworks, and the new BibleCrawler from our very own Michael Stead it seems that software engineering even straddles theology on occasion.
It should probably go the other way as well. I would have thought theologians would have had something to say about certain technological advances, particularly where technology touches on the problem of what it means to be human: robotics, nano-robotics, artificial intelligence, genetics and biology for example. You could probably add these to your list of sub-specialties for the theologian (or at least some of them) as well.
OK... I admit. I've been up all night trying to think of a good example.
Anyway. One thing I've been reading about in connection with studying Calvin for my project is the relationship between the will and the intellect. I've learned that it has been an ongoing problem in theology since at least Scotus, probably Aquinas (though I need to look into that), and that the solution that one posits to this problem will have a big impact on what you believe Christian faith is.
Now... my example. Should theology turn to neuroscience for help in this area? There is work being done to map the dependence and function of different parts of the brain and how cognition and volition relate. Perhaps we can solve an age old problem here by empiracle methods? Perhaps, even irony of ironies, science can help to define faith?
Sorry... I know I'm waaay off the original topic now. I'll retreat back into my Calvin and let everyone else get back to the original discussion.
Given all of those things... they should be old!
While I know he is talking about scholarly attributes, yet the most important attributes are missing: a love of God, a devoted student of the Scriptures, participation in the life of the church and witness of the church. For Luther the true theologian must suffer!
Does that make DBH the only theologian?
Glad to have found you parson down under!
Post a Comment