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Notes for pirates and adventurers

God is the teacher of theology, but this book will also help, says John Saxbee

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Divine Teaching: An introduction to Christian theology
Mark A. McIntosh

Blackwell £17.99 (978-1-4051-0271-1)
Church Times Bookshop £16.20

I RECALL my theology professor chiding a persistent truant with the challenge: “If you can’t be bothered to attend my lectures, the least you can do is buy my book.”

Of course, there has never been any shortage of university teachers publishing their lecture notes. The problem can be that the result is neither a textbook nor a workbook, but a somewhat unsatisfactory hybrid. And, on balance, I am afraid that this introduction to Christian theology fails to avoid that trap.

This is a pity, because at the heart of it all is a timely plea for theology to be about what God teaches us about Godself, rather than what theologians teach others about God. The clue is in the book’s title. Theological teaching is “divine teaching”, and only human hubris can reduce it to just another academic discipline.

Mark McIntosh, an Episcopalian priest, is Professor of Systematic Theology and Spirituality at Loyola University, Chicago, where he has taught for 15 years. Or, rather, where he has been taught, because the premise of this book is that the real teacher of Christian theology is the author of everything that exists — God.

The book is in two parts, and it is unusual in so far as the first part concentrates on what studying theology can do to people. To be a theologian is a “strange calling”, which is best described in terms such as adventurer, pirate, mystic, and sage. True theological insights are gifts from God, and we risk falling prey to fantasy or fanaticism whenever we trumpet them as human achievements. Even non-believers have to accept that when they do theology, they are exposed to the object of their study, and they risk being changed, or even converted, by the experience.

This is a welcome challenge to those who want to separate faith from beliefs, so that in studying the latter they can remain immune to the former. But it does claim a unique status for theology, which modern academics will find disturbing.

The second, and longer, part of the book tackles particular teachings that Christians have come to believe, beginning with salvation as the dynamic whereby God teaches us most dramatically and effectively, and leading on into the trinitarian life that God lives, and the consequential life we should, and can, live as creatures made in God’s image.

These three topics — salvation, divine life, creaturely life — are treated according to the same pedagogical pattern. First, we are taken on a tour of the issues at stake, so as to orientate ourselves. Next we are provided with summaries of landmark contributions by leading theologians. Finally, we are helped to find a way through current challenges and concerns as an exercise in what McIntosh calls “theological path-finding”.

He proves to be a succinct and sure-footed guide, who constantly tries to engage us as companions on the way rather than lecture us from an ivory tower. But when he invites us to do a bit of work for ourselves, or tests us to see how much we remember from last week (sorry, the last chapter!), we can feel a little patronised.

Thomas Aquinas is the theo-logical play-maker here, with Augustine and Barth never far away. But it is interesting to note that, after Thomas, the writer cited most often in the index is Rowan Williams.

What sets this book apart from other introductions to theology is its insistence that God is the author of all knowledge about Godself, with salvation as the reality that opens a window into God, and theology as a God-given adventure that will challenge and change all who try it.

No doubt we would have been better off attending McIntosh’s classes, but at least we can buy the book.

Dr Saxbee is Bishop of Lincoln.

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