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Doing Theology in English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Nicholas Lash
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The text of a brief report presented to the Upholland Theological Consultation of April 1984, at which Fergus Kerr OP gave the paper which we published in June.

Introduction

Nine years ago, the editor of The Month invited me to reflect on the state of English Catholic theology. In preparation for this Consultation, therefore, I turned back to the article I produced on that occasion and asked myself: how much has changed?

By and large, I think, very little. Others of you are better placed than I am to comment on the state of theology in seminaries, colleges of education, and houses of study of religious orders. In the universities, the Catholic contribution has continued to grow quite impressively (at least so far as numbers of both staff and students are concerned). But these resources of largely lay theological competence continue, I think, to be insufficiently appreciated by the Church in this country. (I have the impression that the theological preparation for the Liverpool Pastoral Congress illustrates this neglect.)

Where the publication of original, scholarly, creative work is concerned, we are still nowhere near making a contribution proportionate to our resources. To be blunt, I have especially in mind here a problem which I call ‘the reticence of the religious’—who have not, for the most part, even the excuse of vows of silence! On the other hand, in the very important area of high level popularisation, we owe a great debt of gratitude to Michael Richards for his series Introducing Catholic Theology.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 65 , Issue 771 , September 1984 , pp. 354 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Nicholas Lash, ‘English Catholic Theology’, in The Month, October 1975, pp. 286 289

2 David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, London 1981, p. 5.

3 On the historical question, cf. Congar’s still informative article ‘Théologie’ in DTC, and W. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, London, 1976.

4 On this distinction, cf. B.J.F. Lonergan, Method in Theology, London 1972, p.133

5 Cf. Nicholas, Lash, ‘Performing the Scriptures’, in The New Testament as Personal Reading. ed. Ronan, Drury, Springfield, Illinois 1983, pp.7-18Google Scholar

6 Cf. Nicholas Lash, ‘What Might Martyrdom Mean?’ in Suffering and Martyrdom in the New Testament, ed. William Horbury and Brian McNeil, Cambridge 1981, pp. 183 198.

7 Cf. e.g. B.J.F. Lonergan, ‘The Transition from a Classicist World-view to Historical mindedness’, in A Second Collection, ed. W.J.F. Ryan and B.J. Tyrrell, London 1974, pp.1 9.

8 ‘Functional specialities’ are said to be ‘distinct and separable stages in a single process from data to ultimate results’ (Method in Theology, p.136; cf. p.126).

9 Method in Theology, p.132, my stress. 1 have tried to substantiate this criticism in ‘Method and Cultural Discontinuity’, in Looking at Lonergan’s Method, ed. Patrick Corcoran, Dublin 1975, pp. 127 143.

10 ‘English Catholic Theology’, p. 288.