Sean the Baptist

On the train the other week I spent a happy couple of hours reading Douglas John Hall's mini autobiography and reflection on the vocation of theologian and teacher. A couple of quotations caught my eye. The first argues that theologians are needed:

"It may well be ... that as they face more realistically thee effective sidelining, the churches will also turn more intentionally toward the teaching ministry. ... In that case, the currently rare and random emergence of theologians dedicated to the church will have to be supplemented by a deliberate attempt on the part of ecclesiastical leadership to encourage and support persons in their midst who manifest qualities necessary to the teaching ministry. It may be, too, that more congregations, synods, or other ecclesiastical groupings will seek out theologians who for a longer or shorter period of time could help them find their way into the new and confusing world in which the community of faith has to live and bear its witness." Douglas John Hall, Bound and Free: A Theologian's Journey (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 9.

On BUGB Council we have in recent years appointed a Chaplain for every set of meetings. Isn't there also a case for appointing a theologian each time. What about a theologian for each Assembly? What about a theologian appointed within the structures of BUGB? What would it means to have someone at the heart of our life as a Union of churches who we set "free" (to use Hall's words) to "discern the sign of the times and determine how these can be engaged and changed by the gospel" (23)?

Just in case you are tempted to think that Hall's understanding of the theologian's vocation is too narrowly ecclesial or fideistic, here is another quotation that struck me:

'Surely, to be a Christian theologian reall is to open oneself - or, more accurately, to find oneself being opened - to everything: every testimony to transendence, every thought and experience of the human species, every wonder of the natural order, every reminiscence of the history of the planet, every work of art or literature, every motion picture, every object of beauty and pathos - everything under the sun, and the sun, too!" (26)

If you have never read any of Hall's work, I suggest you get hold of The Cross in our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) as a starter. This is explicitly contextual theology for those of us fortunate enough to live in the affluent west.