Theology Course

Some months back I referred to a theology course I wanted to do. It is still very much under production, but the first ones have been done. Online is a syllabus page that is basically a menu, but they are all individually listed under theologians in the Learning/ Religion area. the resource paper for each and a summary only, the actual course has questions and clarifications, and a task. There will be some piloting of some of these, and this activity will be part of the St Mary's In-Depth Theology Group. The idea is that such a course is accessible to any reasonably intelligent church person, and that such theology should not be the preserve of academia. It may be, however, that I am not the best person to do it, or that this goal is an impossibility, because the material remains at too high a level. Still, without trying we won't know.

The first session just introduces theology and ethics, but then we get to a sort of starting point for modern theology, which is nineteenth century liberalism, where theology took from other emerging academic specialities and understandings, such as history as progress and social science. When you listen today to evangelicals going on about liberals, those who are called liberal usually follow some theology or combination that was set by the modern theologians that was actually anti-liberal. It was not just Karl Barth who was anti-liberal: they all were, but all then accepted biblical criticism and academic knowledge. Things have become so backward that what was not liberal is now counted as liberal: the moderns rejected subsuming theology with culture and produced a protected area for a theological essence.

My own position in this is irrelevant for the course, other than a desire to open up theology: but for the course I just work out the theologies and see how they connect. As it happens, as regards the moderns and before, my own position is probably closest to that of Ernst Troeltsch, who was a liberal in every sense, although mine is updated; of his sociology of religion categories applied to the Churches (and indeed theology) my stance would be that of his oft forgotten 'Mysticism', a post-Enlightenment individualist approach to religious belief in a setting of a voluntary collection of people who come together for religious practice. I'd modify this slightly towards using a pathway liturgy and received tradition, but not much.

Here is the list as it now exists, and is subject to change as it goes along.

1. Ethics and Doing Theology Today
2. Mainly Nineteenth Century Theological Liberalism (Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Harnack, Troeltsch)
3. What Became Narrative Theology: Karl Barth (1886-1968)
4. Towards God and Secular Theology: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
5. Theological Correlation: Paul Johannes Oskar Tillich (1886-1965)
6. Demythologising and Keeping a Distinctive Christianity: Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976)
7. Pragmatism and the Supreme Sacrificial Ethic of Jesus: Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)
8. Modern Theologians - Building Blocks
9. Anglican Controversy: Essays and Reviews
10. 1938 Church of England Doctrine Commission
11. Honest to God and Debate - Metaphors and Mixing Bultmann, Tillich and Bonhoeffer
12. The Myth of God Incarnate - Meanings of Myth
13. Theology of David Jenkins - using Barth and Bonhoeffer
14. Traditionalisms from the past (eg Thomist theology, Anselm, Puritans, etc.)
15. Victorian Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism
16. Evangelical reactions - National Evangelical Anglican Congress (NEAC) 1967 and after; the rise of fundamentalism
17. Comprehensive: Hans Kung
18. After the Shoah and a Theology of Suffering: Jurgen Moltmann
19. Theologies of Liberation with Politics and Radical Education
20. Eco-Feminist theology: Sallie McFague and Rosemary Radford Ruether
21. Classics and Conversation: David Tracy
22. Faiths: John Hick and Exclusivists, Inclusivists, Pluralists and Universalists
23. Real Absence and Back to Transcendence: Raw, Cold Theology and the Poet
24. Postmodern Theology: Nihilist Textualism and Radical Orthodoxy
25. Theological Issues for the Future