It certainly gave me a fuller picture of his background. For example, I had not realized that he began his monastic life at St Sophrony’s Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex, nor that he spent 13 years in religious broadcasting in France before becoming a parish priest in Switzerland. Although the programme is only half an hour long, it manages to convey something of his humility, gentleness, and sense of humour.
If you are interested, you can find it here on YouTube.
One of my jobs as a copy-editor was to deal with any oddities in a Word document that might cause problems for the typesetter. Once upon a time, this effectively meant stripping out virtually all the formatting and replacing it with textual codes (e.g. <H1> to indicate a top-level subheading). Latterly, typesetting programs became much better at coping with Word styles, so this aspect of my job was more a matter of making sure that the author had applied styles consistently throughout the document.
But there are still occasions when one comes across something that needs to be stripped out. One of those annoyances would be the automatic graphic lines that Word is so good at creating (just type three dashes and press Enter) in even the oddest places (I have occasionally come across them in the middle of a set of footnotes!). The first time I encountered one of these, which an author had inadvertently created between a couple of paragraphs, I spent hours trying to delete the thing.
Once you know what to do, it only takes moments to get rid of the offending line:
The blurb on the back of the book describes it as ‘a radical call to return religious reflection to ordinary believers’.
Clayton begins by reciting the by now familiar story that Western society is in the midst of a fundamental transition – from the so-called modern worldview to what, for want of a better word, has come to be known as postmodernity. This transition presents a major challenge to our theologies, since in one way or another they have been adapted to the modern worldview that has been our cultural context for the past couple of centuries. As the transition gathers pace, our theologies appear increasingly irrelevant and out of touch with those around us.
He suggests that what we need is not merely a restatement of theology in postmodern terms. That would merely perpetuate the academic elitism that has characterized (and marred) theology in the modern era. Rather, we need a different way of doing theology. His proposal is that theology should become storytelling: the telling and retelling of our stories in light of core Christian questions (Clayton lists seven such, though others might want to modify his list). He hopes that in doing so our theologies might become more inclusive, less inclined to divide the Christian community into so many warring camps. If such an approach were successful, it would indeed lead to ‘theologies that can transform the Church’.
Clayton then goes on to ‘theologies that can transform society’. He proposes that we go beyond the liberal/evangelical divide. What he wants is a progressive synthesis of the best of liberalism and evangelicalism – a synthesis he likens to the pragmatic idealism of Barack Obama. Such a synthesis, he believes, would empower our churches to become missional communities, drawing postmodern men and women to Christ and capable of transforming the societies in which we live.
A brief concluding section offers a collection of ‘conversations worth having’: discussion starters intended to foster the kinds of theological dialogue described earlier in the book.
Clayton offers us a bold vision for the future of Christian theologies, clearly written in (deceptively) straightforward language. There is much here that I found myself agreeing with. However, I remain uneasy about a number of points.
Much as I warm to his vision of an eirenic, inclusive way of doing theology, we should not forget that there are times when theology must be exclusive. There are times when it must denounce falsehood in order to protect the integrity of the Church and promote the well-being of those on the margins of society.
I am uncomfortable with his portrayal of the Church of the future because of its implicit endorsement of emergent churches at the expense of older Christian traditions. Such churches stand out because they have shown themselves adept at accommodating themselves to the (emergent) postmodern worldview. While that is no bad thing, this luxuriant new growth will only flourish if the roots are nourished. And that requires an explicit appreciation of Christian traditions of worship and spirituality.
I am also suspicious of some of Clayton’s language. Is the way forward really a (quasi-Hegelian?) progressive synthesis of liberal and conservative? Liberal, conservative, progressive: this is the language of politics not theology. To use the language of secular politics to describe ourselves is to allow those outside the Christian community to define us. And as long as we allow ourselves to be defined by anyone other than Christ, we will struggle to be truly transformative.
And, of course, there is his suggestion that change can and should be managed. I’m sorry but Christian leaders should not be in the business of change management. That smacks too much of putting self in control. Ironical that there should be such a chapter in a book that also contains a chapter on ‘a theology of self-emptying for the Church’!
Philip Clayton has succeeded in producing a thought-provoking little book on what it means to do theology in a postmodern era. Read it: you won’t agree with everything he says, but the book will make you think.
I have long favoured Karl Popper’s slogan, ‘there is no such thing as an uninterpreted observation’. Science never merely follows the evidence, nor is scientific knowledge merely deduced from mythical theory-neutral observations. On the contrary, all observations are theory laden; they are shaped by prior theories/guesses about the way the world is, which determine what counts as evidence and what observations are of interest to us.
From time to time, I come across people who make the valid point that spiritual experience is much broader than whatever we might experience within the confines of religious worship. However, there is a danger in this generous view of spiritual experience: it is all too easy to slide towards the view that all experience of the transcendent is somehow spiritual. For examples of the sort of thing I mean, see Peter van Ness’s Spirituality and the Secular Quest: almost anything from art appreciation to scientific enquiry, from surfing to sex can be described as spiritual.
In response to this point, I am inclined adapt Popper’s slogan to spiritual experience: there is no such thing as an uninterpreted spiritual experience. Experiences of transcendence or of ecstasy are relatively commonplace. We feel awe at the majesty of nature; we are moved to tears by a work of art. Sex, drugs, (rock and roll) – all have the power to create ecstasy. And human beings have for millennia found nature, sex, and drugs to be potent sources of spiritual experience. But whether/how we see such experiences as spiritual requires something more; it depends on the interpretative framework through which we view them. For example, a convinced secular humanist will see in a drug trip only altered brain chemistry.
What initially made me think this way about spiritual experience was an interview with a Buddhist monk that I heard some years ago. He had been brought up as a Roman Catholic before converting to Buddhism in young adulthood. Imagine his surprise when as a result of intense spiritual exercises he began experiencing visions of the Virgin Mary. His teacher wisely pointed out to him that this was only to be expected because his unconscious was attempting to process the experiences he was having in terms that were already familiar to him.
One of the things that the world’s religions do is to offer competing frameworks to help us make sense of our experiences of ecstasy or transcendence. Of course, this means that one religion’s spiritual experience may be dismissed by another as a simple case of overindulgence or anathematized by a third as a case of demonic possession.
As a Christian, I am primarily interested in whether and how my experiences of transcendence might be interpreted as the activity of the Holy Spirit. How might we determine whether the Holy Spirit is active in a particular situation, experience, or relationship? As it happens, the New Testament offers a handy set of guidelines for discerning the activity of the Holy Spirit: the Spirit is present and active wherever there is a growth in ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Galatians 5:22f.).
Here is a striking passage from Sr Joanna Reitlinger’s brief memoir, ‘The Final Days of Father Sergius Bulgakov’, which to the Orthodox mind at least is suggestive of sanctity rather than heresy:
From early morning on Saturday, I sat by his bed and was struck by how his face constantly kept changing expression, as if some mysterious conversation was being carried on. The expression of his face reflected an intense inner life.
Muna, Father Sergius’ daughter, came that morning, and I drew her attention to how the expression of his face kept changing. After twelve o’clock, all four of us stood around Father Sergius. His daughter left, and no one else came.
Not only did his face keep changing, but it was becoming more luminous and joyous. The expressions of agonizing concentration that would previously occur from time to time were now completely replaced by a childlike expression. I did not at once notice a new phenomenon on his face: an amazing illuminatedness. But when I turned to one of the others standing around him in order to share some impression of mine, one of the others suddenly said: “Look, look!”
We were witnesses to an amazing spectacle: Father Sergius’ face had become completely illuminated. It was a single mass of real light.
One would not have been able to say what the features of his face were like at this time: his face was a mass of light. But, at the same time, this light did not obliterate the features of his face.
This phenomenon was so extraordinary and joyous that we nearly cried from inner happiness. This lasted for about two hours, as Mother Theodosia, who looked at her watch later noted. That surprised us, for if someone had told us that the experience had lasted but a single instant, we would have agreed with that too.
The light on Father Sergius’ face apparently remained. For us, compared with what had been, this was not so noticeable. But there were sensitive people and close to him who, when they came to see him, said: “Father Sergius is giving forth light.”
(From Sergius Bulgakov: Apocatastasis and Transfiguration translated by Boris Jakim (New Haven, CT: Variable Press, 1995), pp. 45–46)
In this volume, Sigurd Bergmann offers a very demanding re-exploration of theology in light of the environmental crisis. The title suggests that the book is about the role of the Holy Spirit in setting creation free; and a glance at its contents might lead to the gloss – free to participate in the life of the triune God. But such a summary would be entirely inadequate to convey the sheer scope and complexity of what Bergmann has packed into fewer than 400 pages. His own summary of the book runs to 7 pages and no fewer than 28 theses!
Since this is a contextual theology of the environment, Bergmann begins with the context, namely, the altered understanding of nature in modernity and the ecological challenge that is presented to theology. Environmental scientists (and many others) will be surprised to discover that the problem areas he focuses on are not such things as pollution and climate change. Instead he chooses to concentrate on the problematics of ecological discourse. The challenge to theology appears to be how can we speak adequately about the natural world. He notes that, to date, theologians have responded to the challenge in one of three ways: conjunction (a flat refusal to integrate theological and ecological discourse), syncretism or critical integration.
Having outlined the context of his study, Bergmann moves on in Part Two of the book to his main dialogue partner, the church father Gregory of Nazianzus. This part consists of two chapters: ‘The Context of Cappadocian Theology’ and ‘Gregory’s Theological Interpretation of Creation Set Free’. In the first of these, Gregory is shown to have been himself a contextual theologian who struggled to formulate a theological response to problems that have parallels with the present day. In the second, Bergmann expounds Gregory’s theology under four headings: sociality, movement, suffering, and spirit. This chapter is unquestionably the centrepiece of the book, making up as it does nearly a third of the text, in which Bergmann offers a painstakingly detailed survey of Gregory’s understanding of creation as set free by the triune God. It makes for a fascinating introduction to one of the most important theologians of the early church. However, one does wonder how Bergmann arrived at the schema into which he fits Gregory’s theology. It is not clear that the schema comes from Gregory himself and the neatness with which it fits into Bergmann’s larger project suggests that this reading of Gregory owes a great deal to the questions Bergmann brings with him from his survey of the ecological challenge. To be fair to Bergmann, this is no mere postmodern ransacking of a text in order to create a theological bricolage in response to a modern problem. On the contrary, he approaches Gregory’s texts respectfully with his questions.
Part III is entitled ‘Cosmology as Soteriology—a Constructive Correlation’ and consists of three chapters. Chapter 4, ‘Correlating the Interpretations of Late Antiquity and Late Modernity’ uses the schema developed in Chapter 3 to explore how modern theologians have addressed the challenges of ecology and compares their responses to those of Gregory. I felt that this chapter tried to do too much. Specifically, Bergmann seems to be working with too many modern dialogue partners (I noted at least a dozen in a 70-page chapter). The result is that he is forced to write in a condensed, even cryptic manner heavily laden with unexplained technical terminology. If Chapter 3 was the centrepiece of the book, Chapter 5 is Bergmann’s constructive proposal. Entitled ‘Considerations from the Perspective of Liberation Theology’, it proposes an ecological expansion of liberation theology. The main text of the book finishes in a strangely anticlimactic fashion with a chapter on ‘Methodological Considerations’ in which Bergmann considers criticisms of various theological approaches to correlation and justifies the method he has adopted in the book.
I began the book with high hopes that here at last was a serious theological response to the environmental crisis. By the time I reached the end those hopes had transmuted into a strange ambivalence. On the one hand, I think this is an important study. It is stimulating and suggestive because full of valuable insights and perhaps even more so because it raises more questions than it answers and points intriguingly at lines of enquiry that one might pursue further. But on the other hand, it is a very frustrating book. This is largely to do with the impenetrability of the English translation. Contrary to what is suggested on the back cover, this is not a book that ‘will appeal to thoughtful pastors’ or ‘educated laypeople’ for the simple reason that they won’t understand half of it. Indeed, I suspect the text will try the patience even of theologians who are familiar with the subject. The environmental challenge is an urgent practical, ethical challenge – perhaps the most urgent challenge the human race has faced to date – but this treatment feels too cosy, too academic, perhaps even too complacent. Ironically for what aspires to be a liberation theology, I can’t help feeling that the entire tenor of the book privileges theoria over praxis. On the basis of what I have read here, I shall certainly be looking out for more from Bergmann – hopefully he can be persuaded to follow this work up with a practical liberation spirituality of the environment.
[This review originally appeared in ESSSAT News.]
A review of Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Pre...
