tant theologians, on the other hand, are bound solely by the
word of God and think under their own responsibility. They
do, however, have the aid of the faithful witnesses who have
gone before them and of their church’s profession of faith.
Many Protestant theologians work within a confessional
dogmatics that derives its norms from the creedal documents
and classical writings of their churches. In our time we find,
for example, Werner Elert, Paul Althaus, and Edmund
Schlink among the Lutherans, and Auguste Lecerf and G. G.
Bekouwer in the Reformed church.
Since its beginnings Anglican theology has endeavored
to integrate three tendencies and has been unwilling to aban-
don completely any one of them: a traditional and “Catho-
lic” tendency (Fathers, liturgy, episcopate), a Protestant and
Puritan tendency, and a rational and critical tendency (histo-
ry; in extreme cases, certain “modernist” theses). One or
other tendency may dominate in a given age or in a particular
author but without excluding the other values and while en-
deavoring to remain in a via media. Thus a writer like Rich-
ard Hooker (d. 1600) resists the Calvinist tendency but re-
jects a number of Roman positions (papacy, transubstan-
tiation) and remains closely associated with the political
structure of the nation. After him it is the “Caroline divines”
who are the classical authors of Anglo-Catholicism, which
was revitalized in the nineteenth century by the Oxford
Movement (1833–1845). In the interval, however, the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries had been marked by a ra-
tional and liberal current of thought (Latitudinarianism),
and then by the “evangelical” movement (John Wesley,
Methodism). After 1860, rational criticism began to be
heard, but this was also the time of the Oxford Movement
and ritualism; the second half of the century saw the appear-
ance of great scholars now classical in biblical and patristic
studies. In the twentieth century, Anglican theology has fo-
cused chiefly on Christology, on the vital ecumenical ques-
tions of the day (church, ministry), and on the problems of
modern society. On the whole, Anglican theology is a theolo-
gy that always seeks a balanced outlook. It endeavors to ex-
press the realities of Christian existence but without pressure
from a Roman-style teaching authority.
THE PRACTICE OF THEOLOGY. Theology is discourse
through which believers develop and express the content of
their faith as confessed in the church; to this end the theolo-
gian uses the resources of the culture and focuses on the ques-
tions asked by the mind of the time. This activity involves
the theologian, who is first of all a believer, in a series of intel-
lectual operations, such as those analyzed by Bernard Loner-
gan (d. 1984). The theologian’s starting point is the witness
given to God’s revelation of the divine plan and mystery in
the Bible, tradition, and the current life of the faithful; the
theologian attempts to lay out, explain, and communicate
the rich and complex content found in this witness. In addi-
tion to the labor required in handling the great mass of data,
theologians face two major difficulties. (1) How are they to
express supernatural mysteries when they have at their dis-
posal only concepts and terms from our earthly experience?
(2) How are they to overcome the dislocation between an-
cient testimonies that reflect histories and cultures no longer
ours, and the needs and desires of our own day?
The answer to the first question is to be found in analo-
gy. Certain terms contain an inherent imperfection and limi-
tation: the Bible calls God a “rock,” a “lion,” a “fortress.”
These are metaphors expressing not the being of God but
God’s relation to us and the divine manner of acting. The
Bible uses such language because it is concerned primarily
with what God is for us and we for God. Other terms, howev-
er, do not inherently, or in their very notion (ratio), contain
any imperfection, even though they exist only imperfectly in
us: being, intelligence, wisdom, goodness, truth, substance,
person, and so on. These terms are open to infinity. They
can be applied to God, although we do not fully understand
the nature of their existence in God. In the case of many of
these concepts and terms, however, only positive revelation
allows us to predicate them of God. Without revelation we
would not have thought of applying to God such terms, for
example, as father, son, and generation (for a discussion of this
last, see Thomas’s Summa contra gentiles 4.11).
The answer to the question concerning the dislocation
of past and present is supplied by hermeneutics. This enables
the theologian to express the meaning of a traditional state-
ment in the language of the day and in response to present
needs. But in the form hermeneutics takes today it is not re-
stricted to the expressing of traditional statements in the lan-
guage of contemporary culture and in response to its needs.
Nor is theology a body of knowledge organized on the basis
of an objectivist reading of the revealed “given” (scripture,
dogma, tradition); it is not what Dietrich Bonhoeffer criti-
cized, even in Barth, as “revelational positivism.” The act of
theologizing is an act of interpretation that actualizes the
meaning of revelation, the event that is Jesus Christ, and the
church’s experience, and makes these relevant to contempo-
rary believers. The danger in this process is to introduce the
subject into the object in such a way that we substitute our
ideas and questions for those of God. Hermeneutics can turn
into a way of evading the authority that imposes itself on the
subject. Was there not something of this in certain of the
moral and allegorical readings of scripture by the early Fa-
thers? Texts, after all, intend to say something. A text is not
simply a stimulus to an existential decision (the demytholog-
ization program of Rudolf Bultmann). And there are certain
objective norms—dogma, the ecclesial community’s profes-
sion of faith: “The living tradition whose agent is the inter-
preting community defines a hermeneutical field that ex-
cludes erroneous or arbitrary interpretations” (Claude
Geffré). It is true, however, that the inheritance is open to
rereadings which are not simply repetitions.
Theology as science. Theology claims the status of a
science, and this claim is supported by its publications and
its place among the university disciplines. Its status as a sci-
ence is justified (1) because it has a specific object given to
it by the foundational events of Christianity, which were his-9138 THEOLOGY: CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY