The Craft Of Theology

An author's family fascinates me. In this case the author is Jesuit Cardinal Avery Dulles, Roman Catholic theologian, grandson of a Presbyterian minister and nephew of the fifth CIA Director of Central Intelligence (and its first civilian head), Allen Welsh Dulles. Book titles also fascinate me, especially when one seems to echo another. In 1963 legendary spymaster Allen Dulles published THE CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE (ISBN 1-59228-297-0). Three decades later, nephew Avery published THE CRAFT OF THEOLOGY in 1992, added to in 1995. Is there a connection? I really don't know -- yet. *** Both are fine books. Both make a case for the transparency and "learnableness" of one's professional craft: intelligence, theology. Avery Dulles's message is not complex in outline, though it is dense in detail. For a century and a half before the Second Vatican Council (1962 - 1965) the way Roman Catholic theology was officially done was called "Scholastic," essentially the way of the High Middle Ages, and especially of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1249). Rooted in the thought categories of Aristotle and the pre-printing press ways of medieval university classrooms, the Scholastic method was to state a general principle (e.g. "there is no salvation outside the church"), give a "state of the question" including the history of the principle's coming to be and opinions pro and con of its truth. The lecturer or writer would then defend the principle against all attacks and move on to conclusions rigidly deducible from the principle. If there were six interpretations of a principle, in Scholasticism only one would be right. Once the teacher proved his point, the other views had to be false. *** By contrast, Avery Dulles in THE CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE argues that propositions and principles are indeed important. But they are best grasped through "models." And if there are six good models, then we must use them all simultaneously and not reject five of them altogether simply because we prefer one above the rest. Dulles had taken a similar approach in his book MODELS OF THE CHURCH (1974, ISBN-10: 0385133685). *** Dulles goes on to generalize this method and contrast it with the Scholastic way which it has rapidly replaced. Avery Dulles notes that many post-Vatican II Catholic theologians have rushed wildly off in all directions at once, applying various models with abandon. The craft of theology is in danger, he argues, of becoming unmoored. He makes a case for his own favored approach: creating as he goes a theology of communication. By this he means stressing the ways God chooses to communicate with his creatures and they with him. Not just through Scripture and ritual but through the natural world all around us. It is full of clues that God invites us to solve. -OOO-