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"There is no respected forum today where theologians gather… Too often theological scholars in seminary speak only to each other … The contemporary situation is a new challenge."

Theological Reflection in an Uncertain Age
By Charles Shelby Rooks

Recollection concerning religion and theological education, earlier in this century tends to be highly selective. The period after World War I to the 1 960s is regarded by many as the golden era of American theological education and the height of theological reflection and homiletical creativity. Union and Yale with their impressive faculties seemed models of what a seminary should be like. Take the decade of the fifties. It was especially blessed. In it Americans witnessed the greatest spurt of church growth and attendance in this century. Denominations like the United Church of Christ rushed to build churches in burgeoning new suburban communities, thereby creating a demand for large numbers of new professionals in ministry. Names such as Ralph Sockman, George Buttrick, Fulton Sheen, Robert McCracken, Billy Graham, and a host of others were familiar to the general public whether it attended church or not. Remembered now, the middle of this century seems an idyllic era for American religion from which we seem since only to have gone down-hill.

We have forgotten, however, that the decade of the fifties was a troubled time also. It was a war decade. From 1950 to 1953 the U.S. was in combat in Korea. In 1955, President Eisenhower agreed to send military advisors to South Vietnam, and in 1959 the first US troops were killed in Vietnam. On the educational front, the Supreme Court's Brown decision of 1954 directing desegretion of public schools was quickly followed by massive resistance in public schools and finally, in 1957, by the sight of federal troops on the steps of Central High School in Little Rock.

Charles Shelby Rooks is President of the Chicago. Theological Seminary. An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, he was for many years Director of the Rockefeller Theological programs. An educator and a churchman, he is a member of the Editorial Council of Theology Today. Dr. Rooks was one of the first to give support and encouragement to the emerging black experience in both church and society.

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Theological education had its own seeds of unrest H Richard Niebuhr described the seminaries in 1956 as being in a quandry, and wrote:

Perhaps it is a mistake to say that the first impression given by the theological schools is one of multiplicity and indefiniteness of purpose. The first impression many observers receive is one of inertia and conservatism. ¹

It is clear, therefore, that much recent nostalgia for the fifties, and even for the twenties in some places, involves selective memory which is not faithful to the whole truth.

Selectivity of the human mind makes the contemporary task of theological reflection and formulation both important and difficult .John Roth and Frederick Sontag point out that:

Theologians in America may be worse off than other intellectuals. Not only do they face an identity crisis as Americans, but there is widespread uncertainty over the present status of theology and as to whether it can have a healthy future in an American setting. ²

That certainly is one part of the truth of this decade. The identity of all Americans, indeed of each institution they have developed for the ordering of society, has been sharply questioned. The other side of truth, however, is that the questions and doubts about the validity, of the theological enterprise seem largely to have subsided as this decade draws to an end. The mood presently is more largely institution conserving, with the hope perhaps for reform from within preserved, but with little of the rhetoric of revolution, destruction, and complete rebuilding which we became accustomed to hear. Perhaps the revolutionaries have only gotten older, the flame gone out of their desperate inner fires. Nonetheless, the uncertainty which Sontag and Roth describe continues to haunt theology, and, in an uncertain age, the task of theological reflection remains both important and difficult.

I

Let me articulate briefly three assumptions I hold before going farther .Two are drawn from Paul Tillich (1) I believe that the heart, sinew, and muscle of theological education is theological reflection. Tillich puts it this way "A theological system is supposed to satisfy two basic needs the statement of the truth of the Christian message and the interpretation of this truth for every new generation."³ We may quarrel with the conclusions. Tillich himself drew from that definition or with the need for developing a system as such, but my assumption is that basically seminaries are involved in educating persons who can state

¹ Niebuhr, H. Richard, The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry, New York Harper and. Brothers, 1956, p. 95.
² Sontag, Frederick and Roth, John K. The American Religious Experience, New York Harper and Row, 1972, p. 6.
³ Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951 Vol. 1, p.3.

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convincingly the truth of the Christian message and interpret that truth effectively for this generation In this sense, every seminary graduate is viewed essentially as a kind of theologian.

(2) I assume that theological reflection is primarily a function of the church rather than a function of the university or of society in general. Tillich's words are "Theology, as a function of the church, must serve the needs of the church. "⁴ In the past twenty years there has been some sorting out of the differing roles of university departments of religion, denominational theological schools, and university divinity schools. While those differing roles are not yet everywhere accepted, most people in academics understand something of the difference .What has not been clarified, however, is the role of the seminary for theological reflection within the church I will comment on that later. Suffice it now to say that many denominations are discovering new ways of "doing theology," as the phrase used to be, and seminaries no longer have a monopoly on this task of the church, if indeed they ever had.

(3) My third assumption is the theological seminaries are also involved in something besides the education of persons for church leadership, and that something is very important .Such education indeed may be the primary purpose of all schools, but seminaries which view themselves so narrowly fail to serve the full needs of the church. For instance, Julian Hartt, in his book, Theological Method and Imagination, describes three motives for the theologian (a) defense of the faith, (b) exposition of the doctrines, and (c) rationalization of the Christian vision of the world.⁵ Those motives-I would call them tasks-are related to the preparation of persons for ministry and mission. They serve the needs of the church. They are, however, specific tasks in themselves. They involve the seminar not just with the church, but also with the whole world of expanding and exploding knowledge, and with political systems, social experiments, economic orders, etc. The interchange between the seminary, with its capacities for theological reflection, and all these tremendously varied forces in our world is thus a most important task, and one for which the seminary is perhaps best suited in the life of the church.

II

With those assumptions in mind, let me go on now to face the difficulties of theological reflection in this uncertain age. Those difficulties are complex, and every theological professor would probably have a personal list. They are in fact mixed blessings. That is, although the issues are serious, they are sometimes like the "good news-bad news" stories that used to go around. Perhaps twenty years from now someone

⁴ Ibid. p. 3.
⁵ Hartt, Julian N., Theological Method and Imagination, New York Seabury Press, 1977, pp. 4f.

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will look back longingly at the decade of the seventies and recall only the good news part of the picture. In order to be faithful to the whole picture, however, let me attempt to color in both the happy and the sad news concerning the difficult task of theological reflection today.

(1) All the heroes are dead. That's bad news because of the American propensity for hero worship, and our seeming need for heroes in order to survive. The fact is there is no one on the scene today who can command the attention of both the church and the society as did Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, or Karl Barth .The capacity to command both attention and a following is the missing ingredient in theological education today. At the very least, this is bad news because heroes have usually inspired confidence that someone at least has surveyed the scene and has answers .If we simply go in the hero's direction, all will be well. It doesn't really matter very much that the heroes. I have named were all very different in the method and content of their reflection. At least they convinced Americans of their certainty -even when they were not so certain themselves

I would not deny my personal sorrow that all the heroes have died. One of the tragedies of American life in 1979 is that practically the only heroes are sports figures. While I am an avid sports fan, such events are diversions rather than the essence of life It is true, however, that heroes are very useful. Each human society requires energetic, creative, imaginative leaders who can capture our vision and hold aloft the banner of what we should be.

The mixed blessing of our time, the good news, may be that the vacuum of hero leadership gives us all an opportunity to chart new areas .After all, the Protestant principle of the priesthood of all believers makes hero leadership suspect anyway. And the fact is there are a good many able, competent, often exciting persons around who may not be well known in either the church or the world, but who see clearly the necessity for theological reflection to be a corporate task of the church rather than the solitary rumination of individuals and their band of followers.

(2)There is no acknowledged forum for theological reflection in either the seminaries or the church. There was once a time when scholars in theological schools hoped that the American Academy of Religion would be the umbrella under which a forum for theological reflection could be maintained. The bad news is that this does not now appear likely to be so. The Academy is dominated today in both numbers and attitude by persons in university departments of religion Its primary concern is the academic study of religion, or perhaps more properly, religions. We cannot deny the importance of that task, but it is different from the work of theological reflection defined by Tillich or described by Julian Hartt. Thus even though a good many aspiring and established seminary professors are currently members of the AAR,

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receiving their academic good conduct medals from participation in that forum, there is no adequate place in the Academy for their needed interchange.

The situation is somewhat like the predicament of black scholars around 1970. In an effort to further their own understanding of the work of black theologians, they gathered first as a section meeting at the AAR. They discovered very quickly that their purposes could not be served in this manner .Other persons with other agendas were always trying to intrude, and it was exceedingly difficult to focus attention on issues of primary concern to this little band of modern black pioneers. The result was the formation of their own Society and its separation from the AAR.

The fact is that there is no respected forum today where theologians gather to discuss "the truth of the Christian message and the interpretation of this truth for every new generation. " Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, such discussion is not engaged in even within departments of a single theological school. Theological reflection too often consists today of individuals writing articles or books which in turn produce other articles or books reacting to what has been previously written. It is clear that the written word is a necessary ingredient of theological reflection and can carry that reflection abroad in somewhat fuller ways than face-to-face dialogue, but that is still a solitary rather than corporate enterprise. And when this becomes almost the sole means of interpreting the truth, serious questions of breadth of insight must surely be raised. Unfortunately, there seems nothing on the horizon to provide a new forum for theological reflection and discussion in America. With the heroes gone, there are not even persons around whom discussions can gather.

(3)The priorities of the Association of Theological Schools in the US and Canada exclude at major responsibility for theological reflection. The Association is now about fifty years old. It is diverse in its membership, crossing the Canadian-U S border, and including Protestant and Catholic schools, as well as diversity of size, theology, and affiliation within those faiths. For at least the past fifteen years, the Association has been attempting to accomplish two things which sometimes seem to conflict: (a) to act as an accrediting agency, examining the seminaries regularly as to whether they meet minimum standards of education agreed upon by this diverse body, and (b) to provide programs which aim to improve the quality of education in member schools, presumably so they, can stand the examination process better, although that does not appear to be a consciously articulated objective.

The new priorities of the Association, adopted at the 1978 biennial meeting, place primary emphasis upon the institutional maintenance function embodied in the accrediting process. The program function has been almost eliminated because of the Association's financial problems. There is an uncertain future not only for faculty and staff development

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programs, but for "Readiness for Ministry," etc. Some have questioned the wisdom of such program activity at all for an accrediting agency. Whatever the response to that issue, it is clear that ATS does not view itself today as having specific leadership responsibility for fostering theological reflection and discussion except through faculty grants to individuals. Few activities are promoted or contemplated by ATS which might at the very least help to clarify the dimensions of the theological task for today.

It is possible, of course, that theological discussion and debate could destroy the Association, given its highly diverse and often passionate constituencies. That is a danger not to be taken lightly. The other side of the coin, however, is that if Tillich's definition of theology has any validity for the present, the Association ignores the task of providing leadership for creative theological reflection among its member schools at the peril of those very schools and itself. Rather than a danger, the good news is that present circumstances provide an excellent opportunity for ATS to meet a real need whether that results in long-term program activity or not.

(4) Theological seminaries have lost their prestige and preeminence in the church as significant places for theological reflection. In the United Church of Christ, for example, ministers and other leaders of the church see themselves as doing theology, and understand that for the health of the church theological reflection must occur in a variety of places, of which the seminary is only one and perhaps not the most important. One seminar on the "Theological Task of the Church," sponsored last year by the Office of Church Life and Leadership of the UCC, consciously committed itself to foster theological reflection in all the places church members gather: at local, regional, and national levels. The particular content of this theological reflection is both proposed and already engaged in. It involves discerning the relationship between faith and action in our time. Thus, social activity of any, kind by the church must find its basis in the content of the faith.

A good many Christians believe the priesthood-of-all-believers concept imposes upon every Christian this responsibility to relate action specifically to faith. In that sense, therefore, every Christian is and must be a kind of theologian. The danger, of course, is that the historic content of the faith may be lost in the pressure of concern about the present, or that human selectivity of memory or just plain ignorance may destroy the wholeness of Christian truth. In many ways, theological reflection in the church can be both danger and opportunity. Whichever it may be, the role of theological reflection in an academic setting needs both to be carefully articulated and related anew to the total reflection of the church about faith and action.

(5) The realities of contemporary American pluralism make theological reflection and discourse difficult. From the very beginning,

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religion in this country has been plural in both life-style and fundamental convictions. The land was not settled by one group with a single outlook Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Dutch in New Jersey, Anglicans in Virginia, Roman Catholics in Maryland-all these indicate a religious pluralism from the onset, albeit under the banner of Christianity. Those circumstances make the United States different from most nations. During the past two hundred years America learned to make accommodations with that pluralism, and to develop pride in preserving freedom of individual determination. In the past twenty years, however, pluralism has threatened the unity of the nation. New groups have aggressively sought entry into the earlier accommodations which they now discover left them out. Blacks, women, Hispanics, First Americans, the new Ethnic Europeans, and Pacific Americans beat loudly on the door of the American dream demanding entry as full partners.

These differing and often competing groups base a good deal of their demand not only on the principles of democracy drawn from America's documents, but also upon an examination of the fundamental bases of their existence, and especially their peculiar and particular religious beliefs and traditions. They are more concerned with the particular of theological reflection then with the universal. And they are appalled that the establishment in theological education, mostly white and male, seems apparently unconcerned with the interpretation of the truth of the Christian message for their condition in this generation.

This continuing situation seems to make contemporary theological dialogue and discussion difficult if not impossible. The truth is, however, that theological reflection has had to adjust to new conditions from the Apostolic Period to the present. Pluralism, therefore, could be a tremendous new opportunity for the breaking forth of new insights into the truth of the kerygma. But that opportunity will not be realized solely on the basis of present theological discourses in both the seminaries and the church, disjointed and separated from each other as such discussions are presently. The bad news is the situation itself, the good news is the opportunity for a charting of hitherto unexplored seas of theological reflection.

(6) Both the contemporary language and method of theological reflection may, be problematic for future discourse. Scholar theologians have created a language and method that are obscure to ordinary folk in the church. I know that this language bears meaning to scholars, but its intelligibility and technicality makes it mysterious without transmitting a sense of worth to those outside the guild. If the church is to exercise its responsibility to make theology the basis for acting, formal theological language and method must be better adapted to the church's needs. Too often theological scholars in seminary speak only to each other or to their peers in the university, and everyone else wonders what the noise is about.

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Even more serious, however, is the issue of the appropriateness of current theological language and method for discerning the truth of every human condition. For example, a decade ago blacks sought to understand the peculiar nature of their being and its differences from other American experience. That objective led them to question whether the language and methodology of Euro-Americans, encumbered with all the trappings of the Western mind, could ever be adequate to fully explore the combined African and American content of the black American heritage. They were uneasy that Western categories and assumptions might not permit pertinent exploration of other basic convictions about human existence, and they wondered aloud if it may not perhaps be necessary in this age at least to ask if more appropriate language and method can be found. After all, language is more than just words. It represents the spirit, the essence of a people. How can the language of one people be entirely appropriate to understanding another people who perceive themselves differently?

The unfortunate fact is that blacks have not moved much beyond asking that question. It is a haunting question, nonetheless, and First Americans, Hispanics, and women have begun to ask similar questions. It is, however, a situation which indicates both difficulty and opportunity, both good news and bad, for contemporary theological reflection.

III

These six points demonstrate the important task of theological reflection today not only in church and seminary, but with regard to America's self-understanding as a nation. They, demonstrate also how difficult that task is in an age of great uncertainty. The six points I make only begin to explore the issues. But the truth historically about the Christian Church is that is has faced a combination of challenge, adversity, and difficulty in every age. The contemporary situation is a new challenge to the theologians in the seminaries and the church to be even more persistent, creative, energetic, and committed in exploring the truth of the Christian message for this generation, and to find new means to do that collegially with each other.