Theological Reading

There are some anonymous works of theology and some works that are not by the person who is credited with the authorship. It may surprise you to learn than no scholars at all believe that what your translation of the Bible possibly calls, ‘the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews’ was written by Paul, that is the person who wrote the Romans, Corinthians and Philippians. It may also surprise you to learn that scholars are divided on the question of whether this same Paul wrote the epistle to the Ephesians. There is also a debate about whether the gospel of John, the letters of John and the Revelation of John were all penned by the same John, or whether we have one, two or three Johns on our hands here. The same point can be made about the prophesies of Isaiah, though the consensus here is that in this case there are three different books written by three different authors, whom the scholars call, for want of more imagination, First Isaiah, Second Isaiah and Third Isaiah.

When it comes to Ezekiel and Jeremiah we can be confident that the single voice of a single prophet is being heard, though we might not be quite so sure that the Lamentations of Jeremiah are necessarily of the same Jeremiah, and might it be that some of what is attributed to Ezekiel or Jeremiah might have been originally said by one of their disciples, or someone close to them who took a similar view. It's important to remember here that none of the prophets wrote books. What they did was say things, they prophesied, and other people wrote their words down, and not necessarily very soon afterwards, and not necessarily with foolproof memories or with purely objective intent. When it comes to the five books of Moses we can be extremely confident not only that Moses was not the author but also that the books were fabricated over a long period and draw together different kinds of material originating with different writers and communities for different purposes.

Despite the many mysteries that surround the authorship of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures there is not a strong tradition of anonymous authorship in Christian theology. Most of the texts that are taken seriously are by known authors and in many cases we know significantly more about them than their names. We often know when they lived, when they wrote, something about the circumstances of their life and the responsibilities they carried and decisions they took.

There are, we might parenthetically note, a few exceptions to this absence of anonymity. The first is an anomaly. Pronouncements from the Vatican come in the name of the Pope, but the Pope is not just the person who happens to be the Bishop of Rome at the time but a much more significant representative and authoritative figure. So while each Pope will give a certain stamp to the documents issued in their name during their pontificate, they have not written those documents in the same sort of way that a theologian will have produced their work.

A similar point arises with statements of one kind or another issued in the name of Anglican churches, including the Church of England. These churches are no less enthusiastic than the Roman Catholic Church on publishing statements, but even if they are the work of a single author, which these days is most unlikely, they will not be issued in the name of that person, but in the name of the House of Bishops or the General Synod or whatever. Quite how one is supposed to read such statements is not entirely clear to me. I suppose that they are meant to carry an authority that is greater than any individual author. And yet it is not clear to me how they get vested with this authority, or what this authority is meant to imply for my use of critical faculties when reading them. In fact, such statements tend to excite my critical faculties and sense of suspicion rather more than essays and books where the author’s name is plainly disclosed.

The third kind of text that is traditionally anonymous are the prayers of the Church – that is, the written parts of the church services, or 'liturgy'. It always surprises me that while hymnbooks carefully give the name and dates of the hymn-writer and the composers of tunes, official prayer books draw a veil of anonymity over the authors. This might be because they are actually the work of a committee, but I don’t think this is always the case or whether it is, in fact, the reason. Personally I would like to know more about who has written the words that I am expected to say, whether as a priest or a member of a congregation. I feel I would relate to the words more warmly - I would connect with them more as a person if I knew that they were written by someone real and identified - even if that person did get the help of some friends or colleagues in polishing it up. Everyone who has ever read the acknowledgements section in a book knows that the name of the author on the front doesn’t carry the same implication of individual work as the name at the top of your most recent written examination. So I would like to see prayer-writers get the same amount of credit – and risk the same degree of opprobrium – as hymn-writers. That sounds like fairness and transparency to me.
 

With all this in mind I want to name four contemporary authors who seem to me to write in an accessible way that has the integrity of genuine exploration – that is in a real sense an exercise in ‘faith seeking understanding’ or to put it another way ‘seeking to understand faith’. What these authors have in common on my list is that I feel that you could read any of their books as both a preparation for theological study and as an exercise in theological study. My ‘anything by’ authors are: Karen Armstrong, Herbert McCabe, Jonathan Sacks and Tom Wright.

Karen Armstrong was for seven years a Roman Catholic nun. After she left she wrote a book about her experiences and it became a best seller. She studied English Literature at Oxford after she left and since then has been a tireless student of religion, a champion of religious liberty and a campaigning journalist and broadcaster. She has written books about the Buddha, Mohammed and a ‘biography’ of the Bible. Some of her books are quite long not least A History of God (1999) and her more recent The Case for God (2010). Armstrong is a great writer who it is impossible to read without pleasure and learning.  I think The Case for God is tremendous and would encourage you to get your hands on a copy. There is a lot to read in it, and if you do get through it you will be exceptionally well informed when you begin your course of study.

Herbert McCabe died in 2001 but I at least still think of him as a contemporary person. He was a Dominican friar, like Thomas Aquinas, and it is by reading McCabe, in my view, that you can get closest to the approach and brilliance of Aquinas theology, which in McCabe’s hands is no ivory-tower set of speculations but the most practical and down to earth theology imaginable. In recent years a number of collections of his sermons and talks have been punished and any of these would make a good next step. As with the best of the Thomist approach (that is the approach of those who follow Aquinas) McCabe often turns your ideas upside down. He never leaves his sense of humour behind when writing theology, and that for me is an important factor. Theology isn’t just a matter of argument and conclusion but also wit and imagination – and this comes across in McCabe. Try God Matters, or God Still Matters, or God, Christ and Us.

Jonathan Sacks was Chief Rabbi of Great Britain for over twenty years and is well known for his broadcasting. He recently won the 'Templeton Prize' which is awarded to someone who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension. He has written a number of medium length books that manage to combine a deep wisdom with genuine challenge to the assumptions all too easily made in a world dominated by a secular mindset. He has written about issues such as community and money and violence. He is very interesting as a person who seeks to explain the lessons both of the Scriptures as he reads them, and of traditional religious practices as they are lived today by members of his community. The relevance of his writings is far wider than a Jewish audience but he also offers a great example of how a contemporary Jewish thinker sees and seeks to challenge the world. Why not try his most recent book, Not in God's Name.

I have already mentioned the difference between N.T. Wright and Tom Wright. Don’t let me stop you having a go at any of the N.T. Wright books, but you won’t find that they are in any way light or easy going. They are however astonishing in their depth and in their implications and have had a huge impact on New Testament scholarship – not least the interpretation of Paul. As Tom, however, this most energetic of authors has produced not only a full series of accessible commentaries on the books of the New Testament but short and medium length books on a number of matters that you can hardly fail to find interesting. To begin with you might like to look at Simply Christian which is his homage to C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and his rather more challenging Surprised by Hope. The titles of these two books hint at his admiration for C.S. Lewis, and while the first one is a fairly gentle introduction the second one has some genuine surprises.