Each topic would involve the questions: what issue/s were the theologians involved trying to tackle, what did they present (in much summary form) and what were the consequences of what they presented. This would be a theology course, and yet involve some background of, let's call it, theological sociology. These would be the headings of a course, biased towards England/ Europe with US theology input and somewhat Anglican too, but not exclusively (and updated):
- Introduction session
- Karl Barth - neo-Calvinism
- Emil Brunner - up and down
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer - on to secular theology
- Reinhold Niebuhr - pragmatism
- Paul Tillich - ultimate questions
- Rudolf Bultmann - demythologising
- Hans Kung - all rounder
- Modern theologians - summary
- Victorian Oxford Movement and after
- Victorian Evangelicalism and after
- Essays and Reviews
- Traditionalisms from the past (eg Thomist theology, Anselm, Puritans, etc.)
- Background and shadows - summary
- 1938 Church of England Doctrine Commission
- Honest to God and Debate - metaphors and mixing Bultmann, Tillich and Bonhoeffer
- The Myth of God Incarnate - meanings of myth
- Theology of David Jenkins - using Barth and Bonhoeffer
- Evangelical reactions - National Evangelical Anglican Congress (NEAC) 1967 and after
- Feminist theology - Sallie McFague and Rosemary Radford Ruether
- Faiths - John Hick and exclusivists, inclusivists, pluralists and universalists
- Postmodern theology - nihilist textualism and Radical Orthodoxy
- Movements summary
- Theological issues for the future
Of course such a structure does lend itself to a more complex treatment, and such a course could have a higher level method too. Each week someone makes a short presentation followed by discussion, and during the course half way through can ask each person to do a little writing on a subject of interest at which sessions are made available for presentation and discussion. The best way to do this in a church setting would be on a rerun of the structure but using deeper resources and tackling the issues again having done the basic course right through. Indeed the structure allows for continuing education, multiple runs and specialisation into one or two topics.
4 comments:
No room for Moltmann?
I knew this would happen. The idea is to inform people who are aware of Robinsons, Jenkins, Cupitt, and put them into context. You get the background in the modern theologians, and the background to the background, and the controversies, and some around, and the ways to the future.
Well, for what it's worth, I was noticing that process theology (Hartshorne, Cobb, Griffin) does not seem to be on the list either. I guess everyone can nitpick about their favorite theologian not being included on that list, of course.
Elsewhere has come the comment of no post-colonial theology, no after the holocaust theology, no liberation theology, and that this is as comprehensive as high level training in spread...
The idea is that we have these controversies in the recent past, and that there are main signposts and backgrounds, and it is a rather narrow English perspective too, and I was thinking I could take Emil Brunner out (a moderating of Barth) and even Niebuhr - but these are individuals who've set up the modern perspective...
It could be fiddled with all over the place of course.
I suppose there needs more place for science, politics, world, even ecology (though partly in Sallie McFague), and the experience of loss of deity (as in holocaust, modern thinking). This is a two year programme!
I welcome these comments. I'll do a revised list later, I think.
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