Rupert Shortt is the religion editor of The Times Literary Supplement, which puts him in the ideal position to conduct these fourteen interviews with leading theologians. He knows just the right questions to ask, prompting each contributor to outline his or her thought and comment on the current state of theology. Each edited interview runs to around twenty pages. Four of Shortt's conversations engage two writers together, in one case a husband and wife, and in the others an older theologian alongside a younger pupil. Here is contemporary academic theology presented with energy and excitement. No theology student or graduate, or member of the clergy, could fail to learn from it. It reads like a bibliography of contemporary theology annotated by the authors.
A number of common convictions become obvious, most prominently that the future of theology cannot lie with liberalism. Instead, we have here something like an open-minded orthodoxy that upholds the Bible and the Fathers as the wellspring of Christian theology. This rejection of the liberal position could become wearisome through repetition; it does not, largely because the contributors describe the evolution of their thought in biographical as well as abstract terms, often with considerable candour. At times these stories can be genuinely moving. We are not spared the struggles, but neither is there any lack of humour.
Sarah Coakley and Christoph Schwöbel, who discusses current interest in the doctrine of the Trinity, represent systematics and doctrine. Coakley's interview highlights a revival for systematics, but also a new emphasis. She argues that theology must range widely and comprehensively, but that no system can presume itself to be the last word.
Janet Martin Soskice brings philosophical theology (and considerable compassion) to bear on rationality, language and human experience. Alongside her we have Alvin Plantinga and Christopher Insole on the philosophy of religion. David Burrell, in an excellent survey of contemporary Thomism, provides an illuminating comment on how these approaches differ: ‘the tendency of philosophers of religion is to think that their categories will work everywhere and there's no need to transform them to talk about God’. In contrast, Burrell casts Thomas as a philosophical theologian, ‘the stellar example of how someone, in trying to use philosophy to search for the truth of our faith, will have to transform ordinary philosophical categories’. He pays particular attention to how we need to recast notions of causation in the light of the doctrine of creation.
If Burrell is right, then it is the approach of St Thomas (rather than that of the philosopher of religion) which wins out for most of these writers. We sense here a renewed confidence in the Faith, and the desire to let it transform other disciplines and patterns of thought. This is familiar territory for John Milbank, who is joined by a pupil, Simon Oliver. Especially valuable here is Milbank's concern to refine his position carefully in response to criticism, including a consideration of the weaknesses in St Thomas's rationality – not what we immediately expect from the father of Radical Orthodoxy. Several other writers refer to Milbank's work, almost all favourably, and these comments by one interviewee on the work of another add coherence to the book as a whole. Amongst the other contributors, it is perhaps J. Kameron Carter on black theology and Tina Beattie on feminist theology who bear closest comparison with Milbank. Both insist that theology must go beyond dialogue with the traditional guardians of black or feminine identity. There must also be a transformation of identity by the Gospel.
Stanley Hauerwas provides a characteristically bracing case for putting character and practices of life at the centre of theological ethics. With his younger colleague and apologist Sam Wells on hand to fill in the gaps, this chapter provides a particularly thorough survey of his thought. David Martin (on Christianity and society) lines up, broadly speaking, as an advocate of Niebuhrian pragmatism, against Hauerwas, for whom this blunts the priority of the Gospel. Martin's prose is particularly polished, amongst interviews which are already highly literate. This might cause us to wonder how much pre-publication processing they have been through. Also addressing theology and public life, Miroslav Volf situates himself closer to Hauerwas than to Martin. His reflections on identity and non-violence witness to a profound dialogue between the Gospel – learnt in Pentecostalism – and his experiences in Communist and post-Communist Yugoslavia. His interest in ecumenism is shared by many of the contributors.
Oliver and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan are assigned political theology, although there is a consensus amongst the writers interviewed here that all theology is ‘political’(and ethical). Often, as in this chapter, this involves an inter-faith, and especially Islamic, dimension. As two of the more Protestant contributors, the praise which they reserve for Roman Catholic social teaching is all the more telling.
Only occasionally during these interviews does Shortt call for further explanation. Generally it is not necessary. Perhaps the face-to-face conversation lends itself to clarity. In chapters such as Jean-Luc Marion's ‘Continental perspective’, this clarity is a sheer joy. Anyone who has tackled his God Without Being will be grateful for the concise, lucid summary he provides here. Along with the majority of contributors, he puts ‘gift’ at the heart of the contemporary theological agenda, along with a related rejection of Scotist ‘Univocity of Being’(that is, approaching theology with a concept of Being prior to God and the world or, more practically speaking, conceiving of God as a thing).
In the opening chapter, Rowan Williams argues that the impulse for theology comes when ‘some profound puzzlement has shaken up frames of reference’. Contemporary life might therefore lead us to suppose that the world is ready for theology again. Williams also suggests that the most persuasive place to glimpse theology is in the contours of a transformed life. With its biographical approach, this excellent book provides more than mere glimpses.
