509 - When the Editorial Council Sits Down for a Chat

When the Editorial Council Sits Down for a Chat
By Craig Dykstra

FOR a weekend in mid-September, the Editorial Council of THEOLOGY TODAY came together in Princeton to talk about the journal and about what is happening in theology these days. Our Council is a reasonably diverse group of people whose views, if not covering the whole current spectrum of Christian theological perspectives, range widely enough that one might anticipate some substantive differences among them when they sit down to talk. The diversity of the Council itself reflects something of the nature of what is going on in theology in our time and of the nature of THEOLOGY TODAY itself.

One of the initial topics of discussion was how THEOLOGY TODAY is viewed by the Council members. The journal was strongly commended as a place where people can turn to be kept in touch with what is going on in theology, and to be kept alert to significant new developments in the field and in the culture at large. It was viewed as one of a few publications that do a good job of keeping theologians in academic settings and theologians (both clergy and lay) in the church at large in touch with each other and with each other's concerns. This was recognized to be a distinctive and difficult role for the journal.

Part of the difficulty of this task, however, is the current pluralism of theology. There are so many voices, perspectives, issues, concerns, constituencies of accountability, methodologies and worlds of discourse, and even understandings of what theology is in our time that keeping track of them all, discriminating between the truly creative and valuable and the merely ephemeral, and presenting the most significant fairly and well is a daunting assignment. The shape of the current scene raises an important issue. Should any journal even try to attempt it? Or should a journal like THEOLOGY TODAY stake out a particular turf, express a distinctive point of view, and join the issues as sharply as it can letting the chips fall where they may?

The first issue of THEOLOGY TODAY appeared in 1944. In the middle of the Second World War, it raised a rather distinctive voice which, heavily influenced by the burgeoning neo-Reformation theology, tried to pull at least the mainstream Protestant American church and its theology out of the doldrums and into a decisive encounter with the culture and the world. John Mackay in the initial editorial called theology to take on again its former role as the "Queen of the Sciences"

Craig Dykstra is Associate Editor of THEOLOGY TODAY and Professor of Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary. He reports here on a recent meeting of the new THEOLOGY TODAY Editorial Council.

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and to speak clearly the Word of God to a world gone mad. He had the daring hope that such a voice could actually help the world to recover some measure of sanity, and reform and renew its way of life.

The times have changed. The hegemony of discursive Euro-American theology is disintegrating. The voices of women and of North American black and Asian and Latin American and African theologians have been raised up. Relations between Jews and Christians are undergoing a sea-change. The matter of Christian faith in relation to Hinduism and Islam and other religions is being explored in entirely new ways. The list could go on at some length. What one voice could possibly speak faithfully to the church or for the church, much less for God, in times like these?

And yet, simply reporting and transmitting a cacophany is not enough. On this, we all agreed. We worry when theology in times of confusion becomes encapsulated in academic or cultural enclaves and loses clout in the wider culture. We still believe that theology has something (perhaps many things) to say to a world in pain and travail-though surely by speaking not from some high and lofty place but from within the context of that very world's own complex experience. The theme of "our life in God's light" still holds as a guiding principle, even if "our life" must refer to an almost overwhelming diversity of human experience and even if "God's light" is now refracted through an almost kaleidoscopic variety of lenses.

If diversity of human experience, and the plurality of theological expression that it seems inevitably to bring, are the facts of our current situation, what can a journal such as THEOLOGY TODAY do to provide some measure of leadership in the church and in the world?

Diversity requires conversation and mutual engagement; not simply co-existence. It requires the risk of venturing out on uncharted waters, living with tension, conflict, and even some ambiguity. It requires the continual re-evaluation of truth-claims and the affirmation of identity, both without defensiveness. We hope to work harder and do better, in our pages, at helping people to meet and converse and struggle with one another's situations and convictions.

In practical terms, this means at least a couple of things. First, we expect to continue our habit of doing symposia. But we would like to do more of them that actually engage people in dialogue rather than simply set diverse views side by side. This may mean sponsoring occasional conferences to which authors bring their work, engage one another, and then re-write for publication in the light of the conversation. It may mean symposia that are stretched out more over a series of issues, in order that people may write in the light of articles that have previously been published. It may mean occasionally publishing some articles that result from conferences held under other auspices.

Second, it means providing writers from diverse perspectives a context in which to deal with common fundamental issues. We do not get much beyond reporting if we limit ourselves to articles about what is going on

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in feminist theology, liberation theology, or conservative evangelical theology, etc. Nor is theology advanced terribly far by just discussing "women's issues … peace and justice," and "biblical inspiration" each in isolation from the other. If various participants in the theological enterprise seem simply to stake out their own special concerns and leave the others to theirs, the engagement we need never takes place. Rather, we must find ways to help a variety of participants discuss together the fundamental issues in order to show what differences appear on them when diverse perspectives, assumptions, and methods are brought to bear. We may even find some substantial, and perhaps surprising, agreements coming out of such work. We may, for example, find that "conversion'' is just as important a theme to feminists and liberationists as it is to conservative evangelicals, and that what differences there are among them on this issue may lie elsewhere than we expected. We may want to ask a variety of people occasionally to interpret a common biblical text and see where that leads. Theology in many of its forms has, these days, become virtually preoccupied with discussion of methodological issues. This may have been, and may in some ways continue to be, necessary. But many of us have come to the conclusion that this cannot go on forever, and that we may well make more progress by working as best we can-together and in conversation with one another--directly on substantive concerns of Christian faith and life, even its classic texts and doctrines.

THEOLOGY TODAY has always been concerned with the church-and particularly with pastors and theologically informed lay people. It has never considered itself to be an academic journal in any narrow sense, but one which seeks to serve the whole church intellectually. One of the Council members, a pastor himself, said that what he needs a journal like this one to do is to "keep me theological." The issue is how people who struggle to maintain integrity in ministry can be helped to live through and understand their work and experiences theologically instead of succumbing to a psychologized, sociologized, relativized, consumer-oriented culture. How can they be helped to continue to pay attention to the theological dimensions of every issue, without which each of them stands in danger of being misunderstood? A number of our Council members worried that the theology in which most clergy have been trained during the last several decades does not provide the resources needed for this. And many worry similarly about the theological educations being provided now.

In various ways, the Council's discussion kept returning to this issue. It is a central one, not only because the largest block of THEOLOGY TODAY's readers are pastors in churches and because we have a large and increasing readership among lay people, but also because "keeping theological" is a primary and difficult task for theology itself and for the church as a whole.

It is hard to know even how to describe what "keeping theological" consists of-though most of us seemed to feel we often knew it when we

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saw it. It does not seem to be just a matter of using "theological language" or "God-talk" in one's vocabulary, since such talk can often be used as a device by which to baptize positions one already holds and to name in other, more sanctimonious terms, understandings which have their real roots elsewhere. Still, vocabulary, grammar, diction, style seem to have something to do with it. "Keeping theological" does not seem exactly to mean responding to events and expressing oneself in terms of certain historical figures, occurrences, and traditional interpretations, since this can be true of a petrified traditionalism which is down-right untheological. Still, a lively sense of historical continuity seems an essential part of it. The idea cannot be captured in any one method of thinking which could be learned and applied to all situations, since there are many ways of thinking theologically all of which bear some fruit. Still, it does seem to have something to do with how one thinks about things. Perhaps, "keeping theological" involves all of these dimensions as well as others, but all brought together in an almost unspecifiable way by particular people whose writings-and even lives-are best characterized by such adjectives as "discerning," "profound," "true," even "revelatory."

Perhaps, in the long run, the only way that we can help our readers and each other to "keep theological" is to find and publish writers of such quality as this, people who themselves "keep theological" in whatever it is that they discuss in their writing.

We know from experience that this kind of writing is fairly rare. But it is our task, along with others who care about theology today and are in positions to put writing into print, to search such people out and to encourage them in what they do. Perhaps, we have searched among too limited a population in the past. Perhaps, we have not looked hard enough and long enough in enough places. One of the great benefits of having an Editorial Council is that a larger network becomes open to us, more links to a wider community are made available. And much of what we did over that weekend was to share some names of people we knew that we thought might well write good stuff for THEOLOGY TODAY. We also explored the possibility that the kind of writing that can "keep us theological" may not always come in the form of an essay. We talked about developing further our practice of publishing poetry and of trying to find more of high quality. We talked about occasionally publishing prayers, new hymns, and even liturgies that arise among various people striving to be faithful in various circumstances around the world. And we wondered if there are not more writers "outside the camp" of what we usually call theology who live and think theologically in their own endeavors and who could be for us an unexpected source of help and courage.

This, and much more than there is space to say, is what happens when the Editorial Council of THEOLOGY TODAY sits down for a chat. We plan to continue to meet, annually. Our meetings may take different formats

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from year to year, but we intend them all ultimately to serve you. We thank those who give their time (freely, I might add) to serve on this Council. And we invite you to add your own voices. Let us know when you find something in this journal that especially pleases you. Let us know, too, when we disappoint. And if you have a good idea, the name of a fine writer, a suggestion for some topic or issue you feel we ought to be addressing, help us all to keep each other theological and send us a note.