Thinking The Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context

by Douglas John Hall (Editor)

"As the Christian movement nears the end of its second millennium, it faces a crisis that could not have been anticipated at the close of the first thousand years—or, indeed, by most of our own great-grandparents. …

"Since the most conspicuous dimensions of the waning of Christendom have to do with material decline (the decline in church membership and active attendance of Sunday services, the decline in financial and physical prosperity, the decline of influence in high places), such analyses as there are usually belabor the obvious: something drastic is happening to the churches! …

"Throughout most of its long history, Christianity has not required of its adherents that they should think the faith. The historical accident of its political and cultural establishment 15 centuries ago… ensured that a thinking faith would be purely optional for members of the church. …

"But thought-less faith, which has always been a contradiction in terms, is today a stage on the road to the extinction, not only of Christianity itself, but of whatever the architects of our civilization meant by 'Humanity.' Only a thinking faith can survive. Only a thinking faith can help the world survive! "

from the Preface

Genres: Theology

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Douglas John Hall was an Canadian emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and a minister of the United Church of Canada. Prior to joining the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies in 1975 he was MacDougald Professor of Systematic Theology at St Andrew's College in the University of Saskatchewan (1965–1975), Principal of St Paul's College in the University of Waterloo (1962–1965), and minister of St Andrew's Church in Blind River, Ontario (1960–1962).

Reviews

[Chris Halverson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hall consistently articulates the faith in ways that engage my mind and pull on threads of thought in a gentle way that help me trust in Jesus.

[JD Veer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stunning beginning. It is a large work, but a worthy work, able to be both critical of liberal theology and conservative theology.

[Pastor2112 · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Christianity is a historical faith, and we are the inheritors of a tradition” (22). Our task is to contextualize theology for our current generation. “Every new generation of the koinonia is required—not by external authority but by the inherent claims of the gospel as such—to live in an ongoing dialogue with that tradition, and to preserve what is true, beautiful, and good within it” (22).

We are called to think, do, and be. Thinking is a discipline, a learned behavior. It is the act of a disciple. “Discipleship… is the decision, taken not once but constantly renewed, to explore in depth the meaning of the message in which Christ is central. Discipleship is submission to the discipline of understanding… it is the assumption of the posture of one who is willing to “learn” (discere)” (65).

This thinking is done within our own historical, cultural, and socioeconomic context. The gospel is not a flight from the world, but an engagement with the world. “Faith is the grace-given courage to engage that world. Theology is a disciplined reflection and commentary upon faith’s engagement. Theology therefore is contextual, and that by definition” (74). We must wrestle not only with what is occurring in our host culture, but also, with what these occurrences are doing to the human spirit. For example, we no longer live in a culture where people are “consumed by their guilt before God and the prospect of eternal damnation” (98). Our anxieties have more to do with meaningless and despair than existential guilt before God. “We are not so much afraid that we do not measure up to a transcendent canon of human righteousness as that there are no transcendent standards of goodness, beauty, or truth beyond our own lingering desire that such standards might exist” (98).

Put simply: “contextuality in theology means that the form of faith’s self-understanding is always determined by the historical configuration in which the community of belief finds itself” (84). There is no “immaculate expression of the faith, preceding every concrete articulation of it” (85). Theology is human work. “[A]ll of our statements about God are conditioned. They are conditioned not only by our historicity but also by our limited intelligence and our sinful inclination” (85). This does not lead to foundationless relativism because Christians are not “wholly abandoned to the spirits and whims of the moment. They are inherited a tradition, a ‘common heritage’” (86). To become too narrowly focused upon our own immediate social setting betrays the long-range questions of the greater tradition. The pursuit of relevance that “retains out of the long tradition only what seems pertinent to the moment, and disposes of the rest… will have nothing of its own to bring to the analysis of its host society… it will become indeed little more than a religious variation on existing opinions and mores” (112). “[G]enuine contextuality in Christian theology (as distinct from a concern for immediate ‘relevancy’) implies a continuing dialogue with the tradition” (117).

However, contextual theology is a daunting task – it is “probably the most difficult dimension of thinking the faith… Can one ever know one’s own era? How can the disciple community determine “what time it is”? How, standing within the here and now, is it possible to say something true about the character of the here and now?” (131)

Yet, Jesus calls us to this task: “Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” (Luke 12:56-57). “Decision concerning the nature of ‘the present time’ belongs, in short, to the condition of discipleship” (132).

We must not abandon the task of contextual theology. “What may seem to be preoccupation with the Eternal thus frequently turns out to be the evasion of the Eternal-in-Time” (99). The God-who-is-for-the world, revealed in Jesus Christ, is the “God-who-is-with-us” now!

“Without losing sight of this universal impulse of the divine work, we are required to satisfy its quest for the fulfillment of the particular” (148). We must not allow the universal to insulate us from the particulars. Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, when turned into a “general law” or “concept”, is easily “used to avoid the (disturbingly specific) neighbor as to love and serve him or her” (149). Concepts must not serve to intellectually detach from time and place. “The proper end of the concept—which is an abstraction from particularity—is to return its creator to the particular, with a more profound comprehension and commitment” (150).

[Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may be biased because it directly relates with one of my projects, but this is a great work on contextual thought and method through the lens of theologia crucis. It avoids the arrogance typical of his discipline. That said, his writing tapers off near the end, and the last chapter is altogether unnecessary.