Sinful theologians

Two weeks ago, which is, like, ten-thousand years in blog time, Halden observed that even skirt-chasing, hard-drinking, bourgeois theologians sometimes speak the truth in spite of themselves--like Caiaphas did. Adam Kotsko retorted that theologians, as a class, are no more sinful than the laity, and further, theologians should be evaluated solely on their intellectual prowess and ability to critique the church's preaching and discipline.

Hmm...

The problem with the people on Halden's book shelf is not that they're theologians. It's that they're famous. It's hard enough to keep your head about you when you're a lowly community college professor whose students have a crush on you. It's even harder when you wind up on the cover of Time magazine. The material with which theologians work doesn't exempt them from the same temptations that politicians or movie stars face, but it may provide them with a little more immunity. With the exception of Paul Newman, I can't think of an actor who died happily married. Famous theologians probably handle the ego inflating aspects of their profession better than other professionals do.

I wonder if the time and effort it takes to be first rate in any field almost inevitably results in an interior imbalance that breeds bad behavior. Is there only so much heart and soul and brain power to go around, and if true greatness demands it all, then maybe there's not enough left to cultivate a healthy marriage, or habits of hospitality? Then again, there are plenty of non-achievers out there who are also womanizers, crack heads, or emotionally abuse their children. What's their excuse?

It seems like there's a general agreement in the comments that there's a gap between church and academy; the only disagreement is, Whose fault is it? Ivory tower, whoremongering intellectuals; or the materialistic, vapid laity?

On the one hand, I'm not sure we need to assign blame. It's fine with me if the sermons I hear don't sound like papers presented at an AAR meeting; in fact, I would prefer that they not, and I would frankly dread membership in a congregation that resembled an AAR event in any way, shape or form. At the same time, somebody needs to be doing theology at a highly refined and rather inaccessible level of learning that may or may not trickle down over a long period of time in the "dumbed down" mode of sermons and curricula.

Put differently, my brother-in-law and his wife are both civil engineers. I don't need to know the ins and outs of statics and dynamics in order to enjoy living and working a building that can stand up straight and not fall down. But there had better be somebody out there who does know that stuff backwards and forwards. I'd like to be one of those people one day in the field of the history of doctrine.

I'm going back and forth on Adam's fear of

a kind of “Donatism for theologians” that would amount to little more than an ad hominem argument — by and large, theologians are perfectly capable of carrying out their theological duties while committing adultery or skipping church.

If one criterion of a theologian's competence is critique of the church's preaching and discipline, isn't the trade-off a willingness to be subject to the church's preaching and discipline? It's the principle of "The measure you give will be the measure you get," and "Those who teach will be judged with greater strictness." If the theologian's task is to convey knowledge of ideas to students, then I suppose that Adam's right, but if the theologian's task is to form students as Christians, then it seems like there'd be much less tolerance for slippage between words and deeds.

To put it differently again, I am not sure if an adulterous theologian is like an MD who smokes (incongruous, but not so much as to stop me from being his patient), or an attorney who embezzles (who should be disbarred).

In the end though, I keep going back to my own experience with a seminary professor who later left the seminary because of accusations of some type of sexual misconduct (not with me, I should be clear). I wouldn't trade what I learned from him for all the tea in China. Whatever he did or didn't do doesn't invalidate the wisdom he gave me, even though the incongruity was especially high, given that he was in the pastoral theology department. Furthermore, hardly anybody who taught me left  academic life for such reasons, and I suspect it's not just because they were never caught.

Comments

[Marvin]

Someone who was having trouble posting comments emailed me this:

Interesting and well thought out. I still remember a day in ethics
class that left us all aghast, after our professor ran down a list of
eminent theologians and all the misconduct they had been involved in
(Yoder, Barth, Tillich, etc.). It was as if all the theological air
was sucked out of the room.

I share with you the conviction that I wouldn't trade what I've learned
from some of my profs for "all the tea in China." I suppose I come
down a litter harsher, though. My favorite professor, who teaches
Christian history and patristics, was my favorite because when he
talked about virtue and caritas and so forth, you took him seriously
because he very obviously lived that way.

On the other hand, one of our professors who was known for his
passionate defense of pacifism, was to all appearances in everyday
life, a jerk. It was hard to hear "love your enemy" from him, when he
came off as such a jerk (despite him being brilliant).

The theologian's task is formative, not just informative. Like
philosophy as the Greeks knew it, theology is not merely a discipline
but a way of life, a way of living with God. This is experiential
knowledge, not just intellectual. "Faith without works is dead." So
it is with theology.

[Marvin]

I think that the above statement, "The theologian's task is formative, not just informative" is where the argument ought to be joined, and not at such statements in the comment thread at Halden's blog like, "If I don't understand what you're writing, then you must not be a good theologian."

http://www.inhabitatiodei.com/2009/10/08/doing-theology-with-caiaphas/#comment-11430

The latter is just a dumb statement. To repeat, I would understand little if anything that was said at an American Society of Civil Engineers meeting, but I'm very glad that somebody can carry on conversations like that, both at the theoretical and applied level.

But back to the informative versus formative thing, my impression is that academics sharply disagree about which it is, and someone would do us all a favor if they'd debate the issue for us in a way that didn't descend into anti-intellectual, ad hominem attacks.

[Lee]

I think there's an interesting question about the nature of theology underlying this. In other disciplines, we assume that scholarly work can be carried on pretty much irrespective of the personal virtues of scholars (although, even here, scholars have to exhibit at least the virtues of being a good scholar: honesty, scrupulousness, fairness, etc.).

But part of theology's current identity crisis, it seems to me, is that there aren't clear criteria for what counts as progress in the field. Historical scholarship is one thing: it's pretty clear, in principle, what it means to get a better handle on, say, what Barth thought about election. But theology "proper" seems much more elusive: are we talking about getting a better understanding of God? How do we know when we've done that?

[Camassia]

There is something rock-star-like about some of these theologians, and I don't think it's just when they appear on the cover of Time. I've met so many Christians whose faith journey goes something like "I grew up in a Christian environment where I was taught to believe one thing, and then I went to college and everything changed." For some that means leaving the faith, but for those who remain it often seems to mean falling in love with some particular theologian or clique of theologians. For Protestants, the seminaries often seem to be more denominational than actual denominations are, in the sense that they produce a bunch of people who believe the same things.

In other words, theologians seem to be formative whether they want to be or not. This also, as you point out, opens them to more temptations than your average person.

I don't really have a dog in the fight over ethic boundaries, but I do think that comparing a thinker's theories with the realities of his life can be useful in seeing how well the theories can actually be applied to reality. You may remember in Peter Brown's biography of Augustine, he says that the Donatists staked their position on keeping recanters out of church, but some of their bishops had themselves recanted during the persecution, so it was probably more a matter of personality politics. That strikes a pretty hard blow to the Donatist position, in my opinion -- a harder blow than Barth's marital behavior does to his position on the Incarnation, for instance.

[NJL]

I would say that the theologians task is the pursuit and preservation of the truth, in which case their personal failings are not particularly relevant to their role as a thinker. However, their personal life may be relevant to their particular occupation, such as teaching, since they are charged with both the education/formation of students and being a representative of the school for which they are employed. But if they are dead, I see no problem. Dead people are always convenient allies, because they can't embarrass you in any new ways.

I'm a lot more scandalized by some of the things Luther and Calvin wrote and advocated than the sexual lives of Barth or Yoder. Even Bonhoeffer's participation in the plot to kill Hitler gives me more puase. But I'm not about to wholly throw any of them out. A strong enough doctrine of depravity will go a long way.

[John]

Hi, Im from Australia.

Theology is highly over-rated and it never really changes anything---it cant change anything. Theologians are the now ruling pharisees.

It is all brain generated language games and really no more profound than a Dagwood Bumstead comic strip.

Please check out a set of essays which give an Illuminated radical (that is going to the root) critique of all the usual religious pieties and dogmas.

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-religion.aspx

Plus an essays on ethics

http://www.dabase.org/p9rightness.htm

Critical essays on Christianity

http://www.dabase.org/proofch6.htm

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/jesusandme.html