Derek - wow. Great stuff. It gives me a good start on some teaching I have to do next month on the Desert Fathers, Advent, etc. Do you have an opinion about Kathleen Norris's new book on Acedia?
Also - something I heard from a wise person once: If you try to recite the 7 deadly sins from memory, the one you have the hardest time remembering may be the one you need to look at. This can be both hilarious and sobering. Which in my experience also describes a lot of the experience of ascetical theology.

KATHY

Thanks, Kathy!

I've heard of Norris's new book but haven't had a chance to read it yet. As with many folks, her Dakota and Cloister Walk were important introductions to the monastic path for me during college in Minnesota. I find much in her works I agree with and generally even what I don't agree with I find thought-provoking.

I've heard that before about the seven deadly sins too--but repressed it... :-D

Excellent and elegant, Derek. Something to share.

A very interesting article, especially in its treatment of ascetical theology. At the same time, some of this troubles me. For years I taught a year-long course in systematic theology in several very different parishes and invariably these courses brought thoughtful adults into the church and were the catalyst for many adult baptisms. Recently a former ambassador called me from California and mentioned that he thinks often about the issues we discussed in one of these courses 25 years ago. Others recall these explorations into systematic theology from the early 60's. So, I take exception to the notion that systematic theology is boring. Only teachers of the subject are boring. And there is the further problem that theology is not much in vogue or practice these days. I recently remarked in a sermon that if you want to know the sound of silence, try having a conversation about theology with an Episcopal clergyman. When I emerged from seminary theology was very much part of the public dialogue. We read and discussed Barth and Tillich and Bonhoeffer, and Jacques Maritain, and Berdyaev, John A.T. Robinson, Paul van Buren, Thomas J.J. Altizer, and many others. There was public controversy about the doctrine of the Trinity especially after Jim Pike passed judgment on that doctrine as "excess theological baggage." I had theological discussions with filling station attendants at midnight. It was exhilarating. So I cannot stand idly by and have systematic theology demeaned as boring. It is only boring to those who do not wish to engage its challenging concepts in a dynamic way. I do not suspect this of the writer; but he needs to be careful about offering justification to those too lazy to engage and teach a great body of very rich thought about ultimate matters.

Phillip,

I wouldn't characterize systematic theology as boring--I happen to enjoy it. However, I enjoy it toward application in ascetical theology of the type Derek describes here. I think often systematics tends so to the theoretical that most have a hard time seeing what the dogma of the Holy Trinity has to do with everyday living. Thankfully, the Rule of Benedict, for one, is an example of practical and practicable Trinitarianism. Some systematicians in our time have returned us to the interconnection of dogma and life. I think of Catherine LaCugna, for example.

Christopher Evans

Phillip,

So, I take exception to the notion that systematic theology is boring. Only teachers of the subject are boring. And there is the further problem that theology is not much in vogue or practice these days. I recently remarked in a sermon that if you want to know the sound of silence, try having a conversation about theology with an Episcopal clergyman.

Ok--I'll grant you these points and admit to a certain degree of rhetorical excess.

I do think that systematic theology is a field that is hard to teach well. Once you get beyond the basic doctrines most systematicians inevitably begin filling in the gaps or fleshing out the field with recourse to philosophy. Without a good grounding in modern philosophy most modern theologians prove either very hard going or will be misunderstood. Furthermore, the philosophical underpinings tend to move the discourse away from embodied practicalities and towards rarified intellectual navel-gazing.

The heart of systematics, the basic doctrines of the faith, are simple, are not boring, and need to be taught much more often than they are...

Derek,

I probably am not qualified to speak to "most modern theologians." In fact I am not even sure who they are. But theologians like Hans Kung, for just one instance, can write about theology at great length and never be pedantic or irrelevant to the living of the Christian life. My inclination is to think of theological interpretation and proclamation as, at best, an obscure undertaking, if not a lost art.

Years ago we had the very best continuing education series for clergy ever in the Diocese of Newark. We brought such folks as Hans Kung, Krister Stendahl, Mortimer Adler (How to Think about God), Ann Douglas, Reginald Fuller, et.al., and we had a very lively dialogue about theology. Today, should I have the occasion to put together another such series, it is very hard to say who might be invited. If there are any great theological minds or scholars who like exploring theological ideas out there, I do not know who they are.

Making theology largely an exercise in philosophical ideas and obscure and uninviting seems to me to be owning up to a generation that has lost its theological vitality.

I am aware that there is currently a lively interest in expressions of theological truth in ascetical writings, but I have not given up on other theological explorations and hope someday before I die to find some who wish to have a serious go at exploring systematics in earnest.

However you live the Christian life, however you like to acquire information and understanding of the faith we profess, it is grounded on some understanding of the realities to which it points and on which it is based. And, as my fifth grade teacher once pointed out to me when I raised my hand too quickly,"If you cannot say it, you do not know it.'

Derek, forgive my doggedness; I am an old and unrepentant Ph.D. from Emory, formed in the I.L.A.

Ah--and there may be our fundamental disagreement...:"If you cannot say it, you do not know it.'

I very much admit to being in the same camp as Thomas a Kempis:

What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? Vanity of vanities and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone.

I don't just live in "a generation that has lost its theological vitality", I live in a generation who seems generally clueless about what it means to be Christian period. I'd rather address that first, then move on to the higher reaches.

That is, I'm not advocating Christian anti-intellectualism (which the Thomas quote leans toward when taken out of context) but insisting that milk be served before the meat.

The great truths of Christianity cannot be apprehended by thought alone--as the great systematicians agree--and many of folks I meet and teach need basic catechesis before moving to systematics.

For what it is worth, my courses in basic systematic theology are just that, basic catechesis. And the hunger for that kind of exploration is evident in the dialogue that ensues.

Part of the confusion in our exchange may be from my experience in and desire for theological explorations among those who have already read widely in theology and enjoy expanding their grasp of its many meanings, and, on the other hand, the activity of teaching theology and exploring its meanings with those who are seeking to deepen their existing rudimentary knowledge or teaching those who have had little exposure to it.

I will grant that we have a generation unexposed to this body of knowledge, and care must be taken to teach only as it is appropriate. On the other hand, I find little interest in theological exploration among the reverend clergy. That is another matter altogether.

Not just "little interest," but a lack of curiosity. How can we not be curious about the nature of God and God's dealings with humanity?

Phillip and Derek,

I've used Olivier Clement's *Roots of Christian Mysicism* with three different parish study groups and have found it a resource that draws theological practice and theological coneptualizing together powerfully.

The title is a translator's odd fancy. Clement's original French was caled *Sources* and that title fits the book much better. He's made a broad, compelling synthesis of Christian teachers from the first six or so centuries, mostly, but not entirely Eastern church.

A.M. Allchin sent me to the book a dozen or more years ago, and for a year after I got it, I just browsed, seeing where my copy would fall open until I found a quotation I'd never read before, and then taking some good reflective time with another wonderful paragraph or two of one or another early Christian theologian at his/her (yes, we're short on 'hers'.

About a third of the book's substance is remarkably well chosen quotations from theologians of the church's first half millennium, theologians for whom spiritual practice and praying/thinking with the mind in the heart were givens.

As I read (others have said this too), I sense were watching a seasoned patristics teacher offering us all his most compelling and revealing notecards from reading these early teachers. He's made collage of them. But it's more than an anthology of quotations - Clement with broadly contemporary sympathies gathers, orders, and synthesizes his massive body of quotations to provoke really good conversations about classic Christian doctrine.

Two of the three settings where I was teaching from *Roots*, included a substantial number of previously unchurched participants. It took some encouragement to get the group through the fist chapter (and I told people this up front and asked them to talk to one another through it with phone calls and emails). Then they began to love it. The initial encouraging emails became an active list-serve discussion of what they were reading.

Clement brings systematics and ascetical theology back to their origins where they were inseparable.

I see that Phillip quoted himself about having a theological conversation with an Episcopal clergyperson...

"I recently remarked in a sermon that if you want to know the sound of silence, try having a conversation about theology with an Episcopal clergyman."

Clearly this interesting dialogue between some clergy-people and some non-clergy-people proves that claim to be at least untrue in this one case!

Keep up the conversation, wonderful!

As a recent seminary graduate, I believe that there is a great hunger for learning theology - and in all of its wonderful manifestations (even the sometimes "dreaded" systematic theology)! Lord knows we need it.

Thanks for your offerings here!

Peace,

Peter Carey+
http://santospopsicles.blogspot.com