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Academic Theology in Pastoral Perspective
By Ellen T. Charry

"In our secular age, guidance from any source but self is disdained, the notion of centering one's life in anything-perhaps especially God--appears a bit eccentric, and public discourse is dominated by anger and adversariness. In this atmosphere, Christianity constitutes a refreshing and needed alternative because it does not simply celebrate human life but seeks to transform human persons through the grace of God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit."

THE AGENDA for theological renewal today remains what it has always been: to interpret the grace of God in Jesus Christ to the present generation. Now that Christianity is disestablished and the general populace more familiar with secularism or modern expressions of paganism than with Christianity, theologians should undertake to demonstrate that the apostolic faith has the resources for and presents the promise of a version of human selfhood that is both dignified and honorable.¹ In other words, knowing and loving God should again locate people in the world. Then God's grace could again become the foundation for rescuing individuals from the extreme materialism, consumerism, self-absorption, and disregard for public morality that dominate our culture as it did in ancient times. This essay will argue for the need and possibility of this sapiential (and soteriological) direction for theology.²

Two challenges currently face Christian theology. One is to its authority, the other to its moral integrity. Since Eusebius first gave voice to the idea of Caesaropapism and Constantine legalized Christianity, Christians have dreamed that Christ would vanquish all nations, bringing global peace and harmony in the wake of the cross.³ Although some still cherish a hope that it be otherwise, first modern

Ellen T. Charry is Assistant Professor in Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Her essay on "The Moral Function of Doctrine" appeared in the April, 1992 issue of THEOLOGY TODAY.

¹ This formulation of my project was suggested by my colleague William S. Babcock after patiently listening to my ideas for this essay.
² The article joins a gathering chorus of voices calling for theology to reclaim its practical task of shaping persons as Christians. A survey of the history of the loss of practical theology and the range of current interest in its reclamation is Randy L. Maddox, "The Recovery of Theology as a Practical Discipline," Theological Studies, 51 (1990), pp. 650-672. My formulation is distinguished only by placing the need for theological renewal in the context of current criticisms of Christianity's moral integrity.
³ See Athanasius' De Incarnatione Verbi, para. 51-52.

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statehood, secularism, the awareness of the power of other religious traditions, and now moral criticism brought against Christianity by women, Jews, and other marginalized communities render Christendom a reality whose time has passed.

Increasingly, Christianity will be an intentional form of piety selected from among other options or in contrast to the spiritual vacuity of the marketplace. The result should be a leaner and more agile church, a more theologically educated and focused laity, and a more reflective and flexible leadership. Theology is pressed to rise to the occasion. The commendation of reclaiming theology's sapiential vocation at this time coheres with a vision of intentional Christian discipleship that should result from Christianity's transition from an assumed harmony with the culture to a tolerated minority status somewhat out of step with the dominant culture.

The task of theological renewal opposes one significant trajectory of theological history and responds to one occasional but persistent theme. The trajectory may be called the overpowering of sapiential theology, with its overtly pastoral agenda as articulated in the patristic age, by academic theology, beginning with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the work of Abelard, Lombard, and Thomas and triumphing with the modern university. The occasional theme is a critique of Christianity's moral integrity in the works of Julian the Apostate, David Hume, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Contemporary adaptations of these critiques suggest that secularism or sophisticated forms of modern polytheism (for example, goddess feminism) may be judged either morally superior to or at least less oppressive than hegemonic monotheism instanced by Christianity.

I

Patristic theology is the primary model for sapiential theology. And the most forceful representative of the Western tradition, and the one later challenged by academic theology, is Augustine. His thought grounds the subsequent history of Western theology on the debate on the nature of theology. The controlling concept of Books XII-XIV of the De Trinitate is Augustine's distinction between scientia (rational judgments on the acts of God) and sapientia (delight in the grace of God).⁴ Book XII:1-4 identifies two higher (i.e., distinctively human) capacities of consciousness according to their methods. Knowledge judges temporal things, while wisdom delights in eternal things (XII:4). Knowledge, the more active capacity, includes three classes of thought: experiences acquired incidentally and stored in memory for later recall; abstract ideas acquired intentionally and imaginatively played with subsequently to produce new ideas; and judgments on temporal things by universal, unchanging norms, so that "something of our [mind] is subjoined to [everlasting meanings]" (XII:2). Although

⁴ Citations to the De Trinitate are to the translation by Edmund Hill, OP (Brooklyn:New City Press, 1991).

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knowledge judges temporal things, it is never disjoined from divine guidance. Wisdom, by contrast, is given short shrift at the outset. It too is a form of human knowledge, but given to "contemplation of eternal things" (XII:4).

Quotidian and religious life require both rational judgments and contemplation, which are explicated in Books XII and XIII respectively.⁵ So it is unclear whether knowledge and wisdom are two ways of knowing, judging, and enjoying or different things known, earthly and spiritual. His discussion must be followed closely as he unravels his own puzzlement.

I Corinthians 13:12 ("For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face") suggested to Augustine that knowledge implies contemplation of God, while 1 Corinthians 12:8 ("To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge") distinguishes the two. Augustine found the answer to the apparent contradiction in Paul in Job 28:28, which becomes the proof text for his elaboration of the scientia-sapientia distinction (XII:22, XIV:1, 15): "Behold wisdom is piety, while to abstain from evil things is knowledge." From this verse, Augustine assigned devotion to wisdom and rational judgments to knowledge. From this point on, one important task of knowledge will be to make moral judgments in accordance with the cardinal virtues, since knowledge is capable of rational normative judgments. Wisdom (which he calls the intellectual feature of the mind), by contrast, will be constituted by love and worship of God that makes us truly happy and blessed (XII:25; XIII:2; XIV:I) and finally able to share in God (XIV:15). Wisdom does not judge of, but delights in, God because it knows of God's gracious deeds from Scripture. So, judgments regulate our conduct and guide our thinking, while contemplation brings happiness through a relationship with God.

Augustine carried the distinction between scientia and sapientia into theology proper and greatly expanded the province of knowledge by examining the prologue to the Gospel of John (XIII:1-4). Verses 1-5 stimulate devotion to eternal things, while verses 6-13 convey historical knowledge that falls under the rubric of scientia: temporal matters.

Augustine insisted that "all these things that the Word made flesh did and suffered for us in time and space belong, according to the distinction we have undertaken to illustrate, to knowledge and not to wisdom" (XIII:24). Scientia then, includes moral judgments as well as historical knowledge of the life of the incarnate Word from Scripture, and the faith in that scriptural history that leads to purity of heart (XIII:25). That is, for Augustine, faith is rational knowledge. It is important to see that Augustine's distinction between knowledge and wisdom has nothing to do with later scholastic distinctions between reason and faith.

⁵ Although Augustine tells us he has divided the books this way, in reality the distinction is not so neat.

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What we moderns have come to regard as the deposit of revelation, and might consider knowledge of divine things, Augustine considered knowledge of temporal things because Christ lived in history. This includes much of what has been considered the subject matter of theology proper in the Western tradition. In short, for Augustine, although scientia judges nontheological matters, it also includes theological judgments: the whole cognitive enterprise of critical reflection on the witness of the church. Thus, knowledge is the faith that is believed, but also the rational means by which that knowledge is grasped, "the knowledge of absolute certitude, and proclaimed by knowledge of self (consciousness)" (XIII:3).

Sapientia has another task and method. Its goal is to bring happiness and its means is love (XIII:2). It is an essentially pastoral ministry. For Augustine, as we know from the Confessions, resting in God is the key to happiness. Contemplation, or delight in eternal things, is not tied to the later monastic disciplines that seek to still the emotions apart from the world but is the love of God that comes as a reaction of gratitude only after knowledge of God's grace is properly grasped. Augustine described sapientia (contemplation) variously as piety, worship, and love of God (XIV: 1; XII:22). Just as human affection only results from knowledge of and experience with the beloved, love of God is based on knowledge and experience of God's energetic care on our behalf, "for no one loves what [one] is totally ignorant of; but that, when unknown things are said to be loved, they are loved in virtue of things that are known" (XIII:26).

In short, Augustine's distinction between scientia and sapientia was between knowing about God's grace and loving God as a result of that knowledge, the former being cognitive, the latter being affective knowledge.⁶ Knowledge and contemplation are interdependent; Christians require both. Indeed, he argued this explicitly: "Our knowledge is Christ and our wisdom is the same Christ. It is he who presents us with truth about temporal things, he who presents us with truth about eternal things" (XIII:24). Rather, the Christian story provides the possibility for moving through temporal knowledge of Christ from revelation to enjoyment of Christ. "That the only-begotten from the Father is the one who is full of grace and truth means that it is one and the same person by whom deeds were carried out in time for us and from whom we are purified by faith in order that we may contemplate him unchangingly in eternity (XIII:24)."

Augustine's distinction that knowledge deals with temporal and wisdom with eternal things is misleading, because the divine economy pertains to both. Faith in God's saving work in Christ is the prepara-

⁶ The classical Greek distinction between action and contemplation-as if it were a distinction between active and passive-is quite misleading. Contemplation is inactive only in the sense that it does not engage in rational judgments; knowledge is more active only because it makes rational judgments.

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tory knowledge needed to move to the higher realm of love that brings happiness.

Sapientia is the response of loving God once the mind "is able to remember and understand and love him by whom it was made.... In this way it will be wise not with its own light but by sharing in that supreme light, and it will reign in happiness where it reigns eternal" (XIV:15). Sapientia is not information about God imparted to the believer but the capacity to share in God. But what then is sharing in God?⁷ On analogy with remembering and loving temporal things, sharing in God turns out to proceed in the same manner as does sharing in other human kinds of knowing (stated in XII:22) it is a progression from remembering, to understanding, to grateful love (XIV: 18).

Sapientia is practical because it turns the believer outward.

But when the mind loves God, and consequently as has been said remembers and understands him, it can rightly be commanded to love its neighbor as itself. For now it loves itself with a straight, not a twisted love, now that it loves God; for sharing in him results not merely in its being that image, but in its being made new and fresh and happy after being old and worn and miserable. (XIV: 18)

Here is no passive, withdrawn notion of contemplation. indeed, grateful love of God is the only basis for proper relationships among persons and a healthy understanding of self

Augustine had concluded Book XII with a clear statement that although both functions of human consciousness are important, "it is not hard to decide which should be preferred and which subordinated to the other" (XII:25). Indeed, the whole force of his explication of the Trinity is to induce his reader to climb ever higher into the realm of devotion without ever abandoning the judgments of knowledge.

In sum, Augustine's distinction between knowledge and wisdom comes down to a distinction between the knowledge of faith and the wisdom of love, and the greater of these is love. It can only be built upon the knowledge of faith. Indeed, the knowledge of God's gracious deeds gained from Scripture is the means to loving God (sapientia). Together the knowledge and love of God constitute proper Christian piety.

Today our situation is vastly different. Professional theologians are trained in universities or university-oriented doctoral programs guided by secular scholarly norms. They often see their task as articulating the

⁷ In his introduction to Abelard's Christian Theology, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948), J. Ramsay McCallum argued that Abelard's position on the independence of reason as a tool of Christian theology challenged Augustinian realism, "the theory that universals are real things ultimately present in the divine mind and imparted to human minds by intuitive illumination" (40). Universals are not constructions of our minds but fundamental constituents of reality given to us by God. We have already seen an example of this realism in Augustine's assertion that we make normative judgments on temporal things because we have recourse to eternal norms by being somehow subjoined to that which is above the human mind.

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structure of the Trinity or of Christ or of the logic of salvation as set forth historically, or as clarifying the grounds for and mechanism of faith on the human side. Rarely are these tasks harnessed to the goal of sapientia as Augustine understood his own pastoral responsibilities. From an ecclesial perspective, the current situation is out of balance. The immediate origin of this imbalance lies with the Enlightenment and the modern university. But its roots extend back at least to the twelfth century.

II

This is not the place to trace fully the fate of Augustine's balanced model of human consciousness and its role in subsequent theological construals. But three pivotal moments in the medieval period that established theology as an academic discipline as opposed to a simple obedient piety are notable. It should be observed that, of course, none of these theologians intended to sever knowledge from piety. Though Augustine was bent on inculcating Christian piety in a pagan world, the medievals assumed Christendom and so cherished academics. They all worked in monastic or ecclesial settings in which piety perhaps was anti-intellectual, indeed, even as some Christian communities today prefer unreflective piety to intellectual rigor regarding their faith. Medieval academizing of Christian theology was an attempt to keep the faith intellectually supple and firm. At the same time, they could not envision theology undertaken from the secular perspective of modern academic theologians whose personal piety may be predominantly cognitive and who are disengaged from the cure of souls.

Peter Abelard's Christian Theology took a step toward the disengagement of scientia from sapientia in his defense of the Trinity on the basis of sound logic against the dialecticians who "follow the evidence of their senses," without recognizing that the divine dimension of human reason permits a pious yet rational defense of the doctrine.

With the clear caveat that rational speculation on the divine nature speaks only in analogies, "transferences of language and parable-like codes," Abelard attempted a logical definition of the Trinity, thereby claiming that rational analysis not only supports the testimony of traditional authorities but itself yields knowledge of the Trinity. Abelard's entire analysis stands on scientia. He opened the door to establishing theology on an academic basis that finds its hope in reason without necessarily leading on to love of God.

Just behind Abelard stands Peter Lombard, the master of the Sentences, who organized theology scientifically. A crucial move in his new direction for theology lay in rehabilitating scientia from under Augustine's subordination of it to wisdom and the introduction of speculation (intelligentia) as a legitimate theological enterprise alongside scientia and sapientia. The main text he had to confront was Books

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XII-XIV of the De Trinitate.⁸ Lombard suggested a new task and method for theology that broke with the Augustinian tradition, arguing that knowledge nourishes and strengthens piety in its own right and with its own vocabulary (III:1:3). Indeed, he criticized Augustine for cutting knowledge off from promoting piety and discouraging the active contribution scientia has to make to intelligent Christian theology (IV:1:5). In essence, Lombard laid the problem of antiintellectualism in theology at Augustine's feet.

In making his case for an intellectually vibrant theology, Lombard introduced a third term into the discussion: intelligentia (understanding).⁹ He defined intelligentia as active knowledge pertaining to invisible and spiritual things in the temporal realm, marking it off from Augustine's definition of sapientia that contemplates eternal truths, now understood in a monastic context (IV:2:1), and from scientia that administers temporal affairs (III:2:2). His new term thus combines the rational judgment on historical matters of scientia with the intellectual grasp of eternal matters of sapientia to provide a cognitively invasive tool for penetrating rather than aiming for delight in the spiritual realm. He pleaded for the admission of intelligentia and the upgrading of scientia (now understood more philosophically than historically) in the ranks of Christian theology on the ground that as gifts of the Holy Spirit poured into believers, philosophical reasoning would enhance contemplation and delight in the Creator and created invisible beings (III:3:1). Although it had no standing in its own right, this philosophical turn laid the foundation for thinking that sapientia now required rational inquiry that reforms and supports piety (III:2:2). With Thomas Aquinas this new theological scaffolding would triumph.

I have suggested that Lombard's criticism of Augustine may rest upon an understanding of the distinction between scientia and sapientia skewed by an exaggeration of the gap between action and contemplation, giving the mistaken impression that Augustine opposed intellectual acuity in theology. From another perspective, Lombard criticized Augustine for promoting love of God over rational speculation on eternal matters, the precise opposite of modern criticisms of the Bishop of Hippo!

On either view, it is evident that Lombard took a further decisive step in securing the intellectual integrity of Christian theology. To be sure, his effort was designed to enrich and nurture piety through intellectual clarity and precision. But once detached from monastic ideals and assumptions, and eventually placed in a secular context, the pursuit of theological knowledge and understanding took on a life of its own, apart from its ability to nurture piety.

⁸ The key text is Book III, sec. 35 chs. 1-3. 1 am deeply grateful to John Van Engen for finding this passage for me and reviewing my interpretation of it.
⁹ This is not really a new term. Augustine used it to distinguish sapientia, "concerned with intellectual cognizance of eternal things, from scientia, the rational cognizance of temporal things," suggesting different methods of penetrating different objects of knowledge (XII:25).

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The last moment in the subordination and eventual eclipse of sapientia to be noted here comes from St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas was eager to present Christian theology as sacred doctrine able to absorb all partial truths into an objective scientific system that could be mastered academically. Like Lombard, he argued for innovation in theology and needed to justify his philosophical enterprise in order to counter fears of new intellectual currents and modes of thought. He did so by arguing that rational theology does not oppose but adds to sapientia and would not threaten faith. By now, the distinction between reason and revelation, both of which Augustine considered aspects of scientia, as the two primary forms of knowledge of God, had replaced Augustine's categories of scientia and sapientia.

In 1:1:art. 6 of the Summa Theologiae,¹⁰ Thomas surpassed Lombard and argued that sacred doctrine is a form of sapientia, despite the fact that it is acquired by study and not infused by the Holy Spirit. Sapientia and scientia are not, for Thomas, precisely what they were for Augustine. The tradition of wisdom that Thomas sought to displace is judgments made out of conviction, the habitus of virtue by which one makes correct judgments. The new type of wisdom has broken completely with Augustine. It is based not on gratitude in response to knowledge of divine grace, but on objective judgments resulting from disciplined study, "as one who is versed in the science of morals can judge of virtuous actions even though he is not virtuous." Thus, it became possible to make accurate theological judgments without being confessionally caught up in the faith. Here is the focal point at which Thomas severed knowledge from piety. He was bolder than Lombard, who insisted that knowledge and understanding were salutary for faith because they were gifts of the Holy Spirit. Thomas insisted that whereas wisdom, a gift of the Holy Spirit, judges by inner inclination, or instinct, or a desire for virtuous action, "this doctrine, on the other hand, judges in the second way, since it is acquired through study, even though its principles are received through revelation." In short, Thomas divorced theology from its embeddedness in the faith of the scholar and made room for agnostic or secular theologians. Thomas vanquished his most illustrious Christian mentor, rendering sapientia irrelevant to academic theology.

Thus, Aquinas dissolved Augustine's distinction between knowledge and wisdom as the distinction between knowledge and love of God and set subsequent theology on a path that took academic theology to be objective knowledge independent of the knower's disposition, or relation to the material learned, or even confession of Christian faith. Here precisely is the gateway by which sapiential theology gave way to academic theology, the point in the history of theology at which clarity of mind eclipsed devotion of the heart.

The trail away from the Augustinian balance of knowledge and love

¹⁰ I am grateful to William S. Babcock for pointing me to this text.

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of God leads from Abelard's claim for the autonomy of theological reasoning, to Lombard's enhancement of piety by speculation, to Thomas' severing of objective knowledge from the faith of the knower. The more recent portion of this story, the rise of the modern university and the resituating of theology as a modern academic discipline, is better known. It is omitted here for want of space.¹¹

III

The occasional theme that parallels the eclipse of sapiential theology is the moral critique of Christian faith, sometimes undertaken by Christian apostates. Again, three such texts will be noted as background for understanding the breadth of the tradition in which the current wave of objections from multiculturalist and ethnic ideologies and liberation theologies stand.

The earliest voice is emperor Julian the Apostate, who ruled a mere two years in the mid-fourth century, during which he rehabilitated polytheism on moral grounds. Julian's arguments against Christianity are recorded in his treatise Against the Galilaeans, fragments of which are preserved for us by Cyril of Alexandria.¹²

Julian argued for the moral, political, social, and artistic superiority, as well as the truthfulness, of polytheism over monotheism. He used Pentateuchal texts to point out that Hebrew scriptures present God as afraid of and seeking protection from humans, as wrathful, punitive, and petty, selecting for election only the Jews and abandoning pagans to false Gods for millennia. Judeo-Christian religion is scored for having produced no worthwhile statecraft, medicine, jurisprudence, philosophy, or liberal or fine arts to compare with those of the Roman Empire. Additionally, Jewish law is brutal and harsh, while polytheism, with national gods who cooperate with the national character of each group, allows for genuine diversity among peoples, rather than pretending to a universality of law that is unrealistic and repressive.

Current criticisms from specific ethnic and racial communities follow Julian in his objection to monotheism's intolerance for local custom and culture and means of national self-expression and selfgovernance. The suggestion that African American, Latino, or Native American culture now replace or transform Christian beliefs, recalls Julian's preference for polytheism because it promotes cooperation among local gods, national character, and local laws. On this view, as on Julian's, each community is to be oriented around its own history, culture, ethnic identity, and religion. The difference is that the cultures Julian advanced were not grounded in histories of oppression and suffering. Like Julian, however, the objections are raised by people schooled in the Christian tradition.

¹¹ See Maddox, "The Recovery of Theology," and David Kelsey, To Know God Truly (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1992).
¹² Julian Ill, translated by W. C. Wright, (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge: Harvard, 1923).

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David Hume, perhaps an inadvertent protege of Julian's, launched the first modern secular attack on monotheism in his treatise on The Natural History of Religion (1757).¹³ Hume argued that both polytheism and monotheism are projections of human fear and insecurity, yet criticizes each for different failings. Polytheism, out of its tolerance for divergent thinking, authorizes corrupt ideas and practices and offers immoral role models that condone sexual improprieties. At the same time, it is socially salutary because it tolerates diversity of ideas and practices and through readily accessible gods, encourages "activity, spirit, courage, magnanimity, love of liberty, and all the virtues which aggrandize a people."

Monotheism, by contrast, ostensibly sets forth a perfect moral model of justice and benevolence but promotes social intolerance and violence. Christianity does not even truly promote the moral values it claims to encourage. The praise and flattery owed to the supremely sovereign God of Christianity are but pious hypocrisies designed to ingratiate the believer with the deity while terror and hatred of God reign within the heart. And the fear of God promotes "the monkish virtues of mortification, penance, humility, and passive suffering as the only qualities which are acceptable to [God]." In short, polytheism is life supporting while Christianity is life denying. Here is a point at which some modern-day feminists might applaud Hume's path-finding work.

Hume also echoed Julian's censure of the Jewish and Christian doctrines of election, concluding that such a God who elects only a few, and capriciously at that, is "odious, a hater of souls ... a cruel vindictive tyrant, an impotent or a wrathful daemon rather than an all-powerful, beneficent father of spirits." He concludes that polytheism is less damaging to the human psyche and morals than is Christianity that has "divinized cruelty, wrath, fury, vengeance and all the blackest vices."

Hume finally advocates a civil religion that promotes civic and familial virtue based on natural and contractual obligations that enhance the commonweal. Religious practices obscure the fact that "the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures," a sentiment echoed by many Christians today. With Hume, the battle to assert the moral superiority of modern secularism over religion had begun.

The next major assault on the moral integrity of Christianity came with Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ(ian) (1888).¹⁴ Unlike Julian and Hume before him, Nietzsche was not bothered by the intolerance for divergent thinking prominent in Christian history. On the contrary, his criticism came from the opposite direction. Nietzsche objected that

¹³ In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1992), pp. 105-182.
¹⁴ In The Portable Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1954),pp.569-656.

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Christianity promoted class equality that was inimical to human excellence: the achievement of nobility, graciousness, health, and beauty. In this regard, current moral criticisms of Christianity gain strength more from Julian and Hume than from Nietzsche.

But another aspect of Nietzsche's critique does fuel current discontent. Nietzsche attacked the very center of Christian faith: its analysis of the human condition. Christianity judges that all human persons are mired in sin, and need to be redeemed by God. Nietzsche judged this to be anti-life. Embarrassment at the human failing caused Christian theologians to relocate value and goodness away from earthly and human things and to despise human pleasures: energy for life, marriage, science, politics, indeed all sorts of earthly pleasure and happiness. The fact that this judgment has been disproportionately brought against women-and by men, of course-is the reason some women today are deeply alienated from Christianity. Nietzsche argued, with Julian, that the Christian judgment is psychologically destructive for everyone, for it undercuts the drive for power, selfpreservation, and control over one's life while it exalts suffering, helplessness, and even promotes poor hygiene! In short, for Nietzsche, Christianity favors "chandala morality" over the "noble morality" of the upper classes. It glorifies weakness, sickness, and a hatred of earthliness. The doctrines of grace, redemption, and forgiveness, he says, undercut one's sense of responsibility for one's actions.

Current criticisms, for the most part then, are not novel, although their ties to specific gender, ethnic, and racial groups constitute a new twist on recurrent themes. As each fresh wave of criticism has been levelled at the faith, thoughtful theologians have sought to address the concern. Some have sought to protect the tradition with rearguard actions that seek to deflect or undermine the criticisms. Others have sought to meet the criticisms directly. Denominationalism in the seventeenth century, and the ecumenical and interreligious dialogue movements in the twentieth, all attempt to meet the Julian and Humean criticism of the intolerance of Christian theology in local or global perspective.

Some feminist, African American, Latino, and other critics of Christianity are currently offering post-Christian alternatives for their own groups. And even should Christians decide to leave the faith community to seek refuge in their own culture or history, remaining Christians would still have to acknowledge the criticisms raised by the disclosure of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and the like, in the Christian tradition. Christianity has not always been conducive to the psychological well-being of all persons. The challenge to Christian theology is, as Nietzsche framed it, to demonstrate that Christian faith, at its very heart, and not only in its moral preachments, promotes the dignity and honor of human personhood.

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IV

Perhaps the greatest challenge to academic theology is to reclaim its practical calling to champion grateful love of God and thereby allow the grace of God to shape human personhood, as Augustine hoped it would, without sacrificing academic rigor. Theology is called both to demonstrate the truth of the gospel and to persuade that "for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven."

To be sure, the greatest of academic theologians have kept practical concerns firmly in mind. Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich come immediately to mind. But the current want of theological giants and the rigorous demands of academic life have enabled some strands of theological scholarship to drift away from concern for believers' salvation. Now the changing circumstances of late twentieth century society call upon academic theology to engage the general culture on behalf of the "power of God for salvation" (Rom. 1: 16).

In our secular age, guidance from any source but self is disdained, the notion of centering one's life in anything-perhaps especially God-appears a bit eccentric, and public discourse is dominated by anger and adversariness. In this atmosphere, Christianity constitutes a refreshing and needed alternative because it does not simply celebrate human life but seeks to transform human persons through the grace of God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. At a time when many social institutions appear morally endangered, and persons flounder intellectually, morally, and spiritually, the Christian theological tradition and the Christian community generally hold the promise of being both a guiding and a transforming agent of persons and institutions along the lines of God's highest hopes for creation. This means not only that theological renewal must redress issues of Christian malpractice against specific groups, but it must also confront the degradation of human personhood by the crassness of popular culture. This constitutes a moral and psychological agenda that cannot be neatly separated into concerns for the oppressed and exhortation to the privileged, for moral and psychological wholeness are inseparable and affect everyone. Together they constitute human excellence.

In this essay, I have commended two themes for renewal of the apostolic faith that I understand to be for the sake of the Church in its responsibility both to its members and its wider mission in the world: that theology become both more sapientially and more aretogenically sensitive.¹⁵ By sapientially sensitive I mean, not a return to Augustine's precise understanding, but more generally a retrieval of theology's duty to promote grateful love of God while critically assessing the

¹⁵ I have reluctantly decided to suggest a new word to represent the moral and psychological dignity and honor which Christianity encourages. Aretogenic comes from the classical Greek word arete, excellence or virtue. I do not restrict it to the amenities of the Greek nobility as was the case in ancient Greece, but employ it in a broader sense to suggest the nobility of human life including both moral and intellectual responsibility and psychological wholesomeness.

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church's witness to the faith. By aretogenically sensitive I do not mean attending to the goals of secular self-help or assertiveness movements that generally lack a doctrine of sin and focus on self-expression, but more specifically to attend to the shaping effects theological doctrines ought to have-along with sacraments, liturgy, hymns, and preaching-on crafting human personhood. Theological renewal should face both problems together, for addressing the sapiential issue apart from the aretegenic issue would release theology from its responsibility to persons in the world and their hopes for eternal life. Yet to address the aretegenic issue apart from the sapiential issue would encourage theologically vacuous therapeutic communities. The challenge is for the apostolic faith to capacitate believers to desire and delight in God so that their dignity, relationships to persons and things, and visions of human excellence and a just social order stem from that delight.

A possible misunderstanding of this approach to theological renewal would read it as supporting a pre-critical piety seeking to turn back the Enlightenment, a form of piety still deeply ensconced in many Christian communities. That is emphatically not what I am suggesting. In the first place, it would be a profound betrayal of Augustine's program of balance between knowledgeable judgments and love of God that serves as the model for this suggestion. And nothing would serve the church less than a reintroduction of the anti-intellectualism the medievals fought to eradicate. Indeed, anti-intellectualism has always been a temptation for the Christian faithful that its scholars must combat. But some styles of critical scholarship have created fundamental distrust of the tradition that undermines faith, perhaps even in the name of supporting it.

By the retrieval of theology's practical task I do not mean sentimental or popularly written theology, but theological scholarship that is academically rigorous and Christianly interested such that the norms and criteria of scholarship guided by the Enlightenment might be brought into a constructive alliance with practical theological scholarship aimed at the formation of human persons as Christian.¹⁶

A broader way of stating this proposal is to suggest the retrieval of a patristic theological norm into contemporary theology. Traditionally, the overriding concern has been for the criterion of truth understood as coherence and intelligibility on the grounds of intellectual honesty. Recently, justice is increasingly being proposed as a norm for judging theological adequacy. But in the patristic age, and the tradition of

¹⁶ Truth as interested in the moral formation of persons hails, of course, from Plato and Aristotle. More recently the notion of disinterested scholarship has been called into question by Gadamer and Ricoeur in philosophical hermeneutics, Thomas Kuhn in science, Alasdair Maclntyre in moral philosophy, and Andrew Louth and Alister McGrath, along with a host of narrative theologians in theology. Biblical studies is turning from what is behind the text to the text itself, although seeing historical and rhetorical criticism as mutually exclusive options is ill-advised: the question is one of balance. The pastoral concern of Patristic theology has been established by K. E. Kirk, Gerhard Ladner, and Rowan Williams, to name but a few.

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Greek philosophy from which it drank deeply, truth was never divorced from goodness. I have argued here that, subsequently, truth and goodness have become divorced with serious consequences for Christian theology. The question of the salutarity of Christian theological formulations as a dimension of the truth of God they convey is embedded deep in the Christian story whose aim, after all, is the salvation of humankind.

A Christian notion of salutarity asks after the benevolence of God and the psychological and moral wholeness and well-being of individuals and communities in the light of faith in the triune God. Contemporary psychological insights into wholeness and integrity may elucidate how salutarity functions, or malfunctions, in various Christian theological proposals. But for Christian theology, salutarity is constituted by acceptance on faith of the goodness of the Christian kerygma itself, constructed as it is out of the variety of apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:13-21 is an early example explaining the work of Christ.

The norm of salutarity normed by the triune God is irrepressible. Christians have always assumed that God is good and promotes goodness. And it is questionable whether formulations of Christian belief that fail to conform to the standards of goodness established in the compassion, care, and comfort of the triune God and in the missions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit witnessed generally in Scripture and tradition ought to be judged genuinely Christian. Salutarity is and ought to be the foundation of the doctrines of creation, election and redemption, the norm of human personhood, and the foundation of the body of Christ.

Reclaiming salutarity as an important component of truth as a norm for judging the adequacy of theological statements will not be easy or necessarily popular. What is salutary may be in tension with other theological assumptions like the justice and power of God. But in Reformation and subsequent theology, there is precedent for making these hard choices. Theologians as different as John Wesley and Karl Barth, for example, both rejected Calvin's doctrine of double predestination, which strove mightily to protect the omnipotence of God, one suspects because of the shadow of cruelty it cast over God and the despondency it bred in believers. It might even be argued that Luther launched the Reformation and, in his search for a compassionate God, established justification as the central Christian doctrine on the grounds of salutarity.

In sum, in the patristic age, as well as the theology of Paul, truth and salutarity were never divorced from one another. Over the course of centuries, a concern for intellectual credibility gradually broke apart the bond between truth and goodness. Today, both church and society need to reclaim the wholeness of Christian theology that recognizes that Christian faith is distorted when it becomes detached from life and behavior. Christian theology in its classical formulations assumed

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that the knowledge of God was in the service of the love of God and a properly ordered self in relation to persons and things follows only upon a properly ordered relationship to God. Reclaiming the sapiential and aretogenic dimensions of Christian witness judged by whether the doctrines promote goodness may assist the tradition again to find its voice amidst the cacophony of late twentieth century life.