Tradition Enquiry for Theological Studies, Part Eight: The Church on the Public Square--Challenges for Public Theology
The concern of Public Theology is that theology
remain in and be for the public rather than be isolationist and distinctively
ecclesial. It is concerned that theology focus on the public character
of truth, not the esoteric nature of Biblical revelation. It
requires of theologians that they be more ‘statesmen-philosophers’ than
Christian teachers.[1] The
opposite of Public Theology would be H. Richard Niebuhr’s first of five
possible relationships of ‘Christ’ (i.e., the Church) and culture: Christ
Against Culture.[2]
The relevance of this essay lies in the appeal of
Public Theology in both the West and the Majority World. In the West,
Liberal Theology sought to universalise Christianity such that its message was
not unique and esoteric. The fundamentals of Liberal Theology were the
fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of mankind, and the infinite worth of the
human soul. Note the omission in this of any reference to Christ, any
uniquely Christian convictions, and any reference to the Church.
Christianity is absorbed into the public discourse, shedding its cultural and linguistic particularities. Add to this the
thrust in Liberation Theology that theology should be theological reflection following, not
preceding, social activism in the name of social justice, and one has a theology
considered relevant for the public while the Church disappears like the moon
with the rising sun.
Outside the West, concern for relevance for the
context proceeded along two trajectories. On the one hand, the real,
practical needs of society had little time for speculative, systematic
theology. Theology needed to be ‘public’ in the sense of responding to
human suffering. On the other hand, postcolonial societies seeking to
find dignity in their own cultures sometimes sought contextual theologies that
treated historical theology as a European (or 'Western')
product. Consequently, both for the West and for the Majority World, a
Public Theology has seemed more fitting than Biblical, Systematic, and
historical theology.
This essay, however, points out several significant
problems with Public Theology and argues, on the contrary, that the way
for the Church to engage the public realm is for it to develop and maintain its
own identity and to do so publicly. It is to be the Church on the
square, not lose its identity in the changing concerns or values of the public square. Jesus'
images of the Church as salt, a city on a hill, and a light (Matthew 5.13-16)
are presented within the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), a sermon outlining
an ethic for the unique community of the Kingdom of Heaven that follows Jesus in
discipleship. Precisely by adopting this distinctive identity will the
Church make a public witness.
Public Theology can be described in terms of the
audience, context, agenda, relevance, and method employed. As such,
it is a type of theology. It is not, therefore, a practical and relevant
outworking of our uniquely Christian theology for a wider (public)
audience, in a political or social context, addressing a common agenda relevant
to a society’s pressing needs, and employing objective, social-scientific
methods of research. That is, it does not begin with Christian
theological and ethical convictions that create an agenda for the public square but is thought to respond to the agenda of the public square, and to do so along publicly agreed terms. When it comes to Biblical engagement, a public theology is less interested in a hermeneutic that seeks to determine the meaning of texts in their contexts than to identify readers' responses to the text and endorse them as 'their truth'. Nor is it confessional, since then one would have to allow special revelation and specifically Christian beliefs. Nor does public theology want to work from a Christian narrative or communitarian ethic, since that ropes off Christian ethics from public ethics. Nor is it a type of applied theology, where uniquely Christian convictions and practices are applied to specifically Christian ministry and
missions. In other words, Public Theology actually transforms
Christian theology into something else.
Regarding the audience, Public Theology does not confine itself to the Church. David Tracy, for example, suggests that there are three ‘publics’: society at large, the Academy, and the Church.[3] These three publics produce three theologies, but, he argues, they can be 'correlated' (a term earlier used by Paul Tillich regarding how human existence might correlate with Christian revelation by the former posing questions that the latter answers). The correlation of the three theologies aims to produce a theology that is deemed to be accessible to the wider, pluralistic audience. A systematic theology produced for the Church draws on uniquely Christian resources, such as the Bible, which one might say poses the questions human existence fails to ask.
However, a further
question needing to be answered is how the Bible is to be
used or interpreted. Tracy keeps the use of Christian or other religious resources
as public as possible. Thus, different religious convictions and
practices develop around so-called ‘classics’, with Jesus as a primary
‘classic’ for Christianity. Reflection on various such classics in
different religions allows inter-faith dialogue. How different this is from theology
understood as interpretation of an authoritative, inspired canon of
Scripture.
Furthermore, Public Theology has little interest in the Church’s history and traditions. Its value of being relevant involves a focus on contemporary times and current contexts. Like Liberation theologies, it is suspicious of theory and emphasises the importance of engagement in urgent actions. Theology thereby becomes revolutionary activity, with Christians joining other groups in public protests, revolts, or even riots under the same banners as other groups, such as 'social justice'. The Biblical text, moreover, is demoted in relevance to being a tool for reflection and rhetoric, not an authoritative canon directing a community. Singular texts become banners, and terminology is coopted for the public cause. It is not deemed revelatory as divine Word but as what initiates dialogue, and what is authoritative is the community itself that reflects on it. This is quite contrary to how the Bible has been understood throughout the centuries, even when Scripture was read allegorically and for a 'fuller meaning' (sensus plenior). When Scripture was read that way, meaning was still guided by the full canonical teaching, the Church's interpretation, and the Church's established theology (such as the regula fidei). In the present context, many have objected to a literal meaning of texts, either because they philosophically or hermeneutically deny it is possible to uncover or because they consider it 'low-brow' and therefore dismissible out of hand. More likely, they do so because such a reading of texts does not fit their revisionist agendas.
Moreover, Public Theology
understands the Church as one contemporary, religious community among others facing
present-day challenges and coming up with solutions. What came in the past for the Church, either in Scripture or through its history and theology, is thought of as a depository of various and even contradictory examples from which the present
‘community’ (rather than Church) might draw. Even with this mild interest in Christians’ original texts
and their history, the community directed by a Public Theology continuously
orients itself to the issues and language of the public square and
intentionally avoids esoteric or partisan considerations.
In response to this approach to theology, George
Lindbeck suggests that ‘it is the text … which absorbs the world, rather than
the world the text.’[4] The text is its
own authority, not a tool for theological expression or a collection of
examples from which to draw positive and negative lessons. In
advocating a use of Biblical and Christian examples for public discourse, Bryan
Massingale, advocating on behalf of Public Theology, says,
For Catholic
theologians, one does public theology by appealing to those Catholic persons,
texts, and symbols that possess a classic character. I suggest that among these
would be people like Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and Thomas
Merton (the latter two effectively invoked by Pope Francis in his address to
Congress in the fall of 2015); the gospel parables of the Good Samaritan, the
Last Judgment, and the Rich Man and Lazarus; and the image of the Kingdom
(Reign) of God. These are among the persons, texts, and symbols whose
transcultural resonance could ground normative discourse on matters of public
concern to those who do not share Catholic faith convictions.[5]
Classic theology, however, understands examplars of
the faith through an understanding of the faith itself, an understanding
obtained by other means. Scripture is
the fountainhead and authority for theology, and the Church has provided a rich
history of interpretation in response to current issues and circumstances but not determined by them. Moreover, Public Theology allows
people to pick and choose their heroes for the day and interpret their relevance loosely to fit the situation, whereas
the canon of Scripture forces interpreters to engage all its content and pose questions and provide answers to the situation.
Thus, Public Theology’s theological method
is also highly problematic, even if it comes across as more practical and understandable because it is responsive to the present context and familiar to the present audience. Scripture is a canonical text, speaking a clear
message to its contemporary context, and requires interpretation by later readers. That interpretation entails discovery of the original meaning for genre in which this is crucial for interpretation, understanding the wider and canonical implications of the meaning, and seeing the significance for various audiences and the application for various situations. It is not a collection of answers from which a contemporary community might pick and choose. The
text is the context into which the contemporary community locates itself. Rudolf Bultmann infamously argued that, for Scripture to be relevant, it must be 'demythologised', meaning that the theological affirmations at odds with 20th century, European elites needed expunging. On the contrary, we come to believe the Scriptures and 'demythologise' our faithless culture.
Nor is Scripture merely generative revelation,
producing a new context from which a theology might be extracted by means of
generalisations and abstractions, only to be reapplied as the contemporary
community sees fit. The method of theologising must not be
abstracting from the Biblical context and recontextualising in the current
context but contextualising the current context in the Biblical
context. Lindbeck further argues, theologising requires an
intratextual approach rather than the abstracting, extratextual approaches so
often promoted. Unfortunately, he considers a 'propositionalist tradition' at odds with his cultural-linguistic approach to doctrine when there is no necessity to do so and when it undermines how New Testament authors read the Old Testament. Still, the rest of his criticism is worth quoting:
The believer,
so an intratextual approach would maintain, is not told primarily to be
conformed to a reconstructed Jesus of history (as Hans Küng maintains), nor to
a metaphysical Christ of faith (as in much of the propositionalist tradition),
nor to an abba experience of God (as
for Schillebeeckx), nor to an agapeic way of being in the world (as for David
Tracy), but he or she is rather to be conformed to the Jesus Christ depicted in
the narrative. An intratextual reading tries to derive the
interpretive framework that designates the theologically controlling sense from
the literary structure of the text itself.[6]
By locking theology to the literary structure
of the Biblical text, theology cannot become an ideology, and the mode of
theological enquiry will be interpretation, not appropriation. However,
Lindbeck’s focus on the narrative structure of the text unnecessarily rejects the specific commandments of the
Bible. The Bible is rich in genre for good reason, and narrative is only one genre. The Biblical authors understand the Bible as God’s Word and
ethics as never less than a matter of obedience to God’s commands. Lindbeck, as noted already, opposes an understanding of theology as cognitive-propositional, favouring
instead a cultural-linguistic conception.
Yet one could hardly say that this is consistent with the Biblical
authors themselves. Textual interpretation
allows a public engagement and discussion outside esoteric communities forming
their own cultural-linguistic bubbles. There
is much more to the Bible—and to the Church’s historical theology—than faithful
practice of a metanarrative or indwelling of more minor narratives. Interpretation of texts can be public precisely
because it accepts objectivity—there is a true reading of a text apart from and
corrective of readers’ misinterpretations. Yet
public reading stops where the community asserts that the texts are the Word of
God and authoritative and true. Lindbeck is, in my view, helpful in responding to the Liberal understanding of doctrine as always only metaphorical for universal, human religious experience, but he unnecessarily sided with a subject version of theology with his cultural-linguistic approach to doctrine. He nevertheless raised a serious challenge to Public Theology.
Public Theology’s failure to produce an ecclesiology is another result of a theological method that promotes the public square. Its methodology privileges the social sciences rather than theology, and theology is understood in non-confessional ways. Inter-religious dialogue, political activity, human rights, multicultural enrichment, and social justice call for sociological analyses to which the Church as a meaningful people may or may not make a contribution. In fact, the public square pressures the Church to be 'relevant' in every way, whether in dropping too 'churchy' worship in favour of 'seeker-sensitive services', altering its theology and ethics to suit 'modern' people, or abstracting and generalising its beliefs so that they are no longer particular and peculiar to Christianity and are thereby open to other worldviews. Thus, as to the agenda of Public Theology, any ecclesial or confessional identity is thought to distract attention to the public good, interfaith dialogue, and coexistence for multicultural and multi-faith communities. Public values, universal principles, and common virtues are sought as the motivation for and clarification of ‘social justice’ or ‘the good’ for all society. Faith communities bring their people and contributions to the public projects rather than stand out distinctly.
Lindbeck, on the contrary, insists that doctrine is
inseparable from its cultural and linguistic understanding of life.[7] From
a Biblical perspective, Israel’s unique identity as the people of God in
covenant relationship with Him, and the Church’s particular identity ‘in
Christ’ produce an understanding of relationship to the public square that does
not dissolve their distinct identity but enhances it. The Church
stands out as salt and light in the world (Matthew 5.13-16). The
unique narrative of God’s people produces a unique people with a unique set of
convictions, practices, and devotion.
The concerns of Public Theology are important to
engage. Yet we must ask, ‘How should Biblical, orthodox, Evangelical
scholars approach theology in regard to matters of audience, context, agenda,
relevance, and method?’ For me, not only the content of theology but
also our approach to doing theology arises from Scripture. I might
add that Christians also value the rich history of interpretation in the Church
Fathers, the Reformers, and the Evangelical (orthodox) movement. What
emerges is a uniquely Christian theology. The audience of Scripture
is the people of God. The context of theology is Scripture itself,
not only with its narrative but also with its entire content as God speaks to
us. From Scripture comes the agenda for
theology. Scripture is relevant not simply because it is applicable
to various contexts but especially because it is itself truth. Thus,
the method of theological enquiry is not so much applying but listening and interpreting. The Church is itself a community of interpretation,
just as the synagogue was and is for Judaism.
How, then, does the Church engage the
public? It decidedly must not engage the public by dissolving its
identity in the public square, like salt in water. This would be the
case of a public theology that correlates theologies for society, the Academy,
and the Church (so David Tracy). Jesus’ image of His disciples being
the salt of the earth was intended to mean that they were to have a sharpness
of taste (Matthew 5.13). Tasteless salt is good for
nothing. It should be thrown out and trampled underfoot. We
might note that salt itself does not lose its saltiness, it does so by mixture
with other material (like sea salt and sand, for instance). The Church’s public presence is not in its
shared identity with the public sector but in its distinct
identity. It contributes to the public situation precisely because
it is not the public’s understanding and solution. Jesus continues
to make this point with another image: being a city on a hill that stands out
to the entire region (v. 14). Or the Church is to be a light on a
stand that enlightens the entire household (v. 15). The Church is to
be salt, a city on a hill, and a light in the house with its observable good
works (v. 16). It does not have to be a majority presence or align
itself with the majority; precisely because it is a different witness, it stands
out and in that way provides something relevant for the majority stuck with its own questions and answers. The world is capable of recognising the
Church’s works as good, but it is the distinctive identity of the Church as
God’s own people that makes it possible to do Christian good works. That
identity is formed by the Church’s devotion to God in worship, theology, and
obedience.
Theological Education as Tradition Enquiry
Tradition Enquiry for Theological Studies, Part One: Method and Curriculum
Tradition Enquiry for Theological Studies, Part Two: An Integrated Theological Task
Tradition Enquiry for Theological Studies, Part Three: Tradition Enquiry and Contextual Theology
Tradition Enquiry in the Evangelical Tradition, Part Seven: What is Evangelicalism?
[1] So the initial description
of ‘Public Theology’ by Martin E. Marty, “Reinhold Niebuhr: Public
Theology and the American Experience,” Journal of Religion 54.4
(1974), pp. 332–59.
[2] H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ
and Culture (New York: Harper, 1951). The other paradigms
listed by Niebuhr are: Christ above culture, Christ transforming culture,
Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ of culture. Public
theology envisions ‘Christ’—the Church—so in synch with culture in social
justice that disappears into the public good.
[3] E.g., David Tracy, The
Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New
York: Crossroad, 1981); David Tracy and John Cobb, Talking About God:
Doing Theology in the Context of Modern Pluralism (New York: Seabury,
1983).
[4] George Lindbeck, The
Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (London:
SPCK, 1984), p. 118.
[5] Bryan N. Massingale, ‘Theology in the Public Sphere
in the Twenty-First Century,’ The Journal of the College Theology Society (8
Nov., 2016); online: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/horizons/article/theology-in-the-public-sphere-in-the-twentyfirst-century/395F1735C195F6EB368AD1AB42FC66C3 (accessed
14 October, 2024). He is following David Tracy, The
Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1986), p. 108.
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