[This continues from the posting ‘NT Wright – where to begin?’, my response to the FD Maurice lectures, given by Tom Wright Feb-March 2006 – see below]
The Bishop of Durham:
Well, so it’s one sort of power-play (disclosing that my reading is in service of my tradition) or another sort of power-play (not disclosing it and thus being cunning). Welcome to the wonderful world of Nietzsche! The readings I am proposing are in fact often very critical of my own traditions, and I live with that tension much of the time.
I think what you have your finger on is the fact that these are the FD Maurice Lectures at a half- (but not fully-)secularized department, in an increasingly (but not utterly) secularized university. In that setting, the problem of a private Christian language is very real, and I have spent my entire adult life trying to avoid such a thing (speaking only within the in-house world, rather than across the wall to the world outside)…
Knight:
Dear Bishop Tom,
…I began to think about you in more Church terms as a result of reading the impressive piece you addressed to your clergy on the state of play after the Windsor report. There you were talking like a Church-man and bishop. It seems to me that one can also do that to a degree in the university. I do not think that there is a simple contrast to be made between Church and secular audiences, or that well-argued Christian theology is simply a private language. When a law lecturer or medic talks in public, he or she talks like a lawyer or medic, from the assumptions, and using the conceptuality of their profession, but this does not make theirs a private language. We do not insist that they find some value-free domain and neutral language in which everything they say is instantly comprehensible to every member of the public. We are all aware of the appropriateness of the vocabulary and conceptuality of each distinct area of expertise. These two vocations require long apprenticeships: not everything can be immediately seen by the public or comprehended by those only at the beginning of that apprenticeship.
The same is true for Christian discipleship, another form of expertise. In this life, lived by faith, not everything is comprehensible all at once (Christians can point out that this is not only true of the Christian life, but of any life and lifestyle – again, demonstrating that the Christian hermeneutic is more sophisticated than the modern, not less). We argue for the truth of what we say, by demonstrating the plausibility of the Christian faith – that it is productive of real insight. This does not mean that we cannot point out that it requires an apprenticeship (indeed is an apprenticeship). We can freely concede that what Christianity is, is not entirely clear from the outset – it is an adventure.
The Christian tradition is a good tradition, and we can say this in public, and it is good for the public forum that we do so. My musings on this point are owed to the remarkable Reinhard Hütter (at Duke, ‘Suffering Divine Things, and more recently ‘Bound to be Free’) and to Bernd Wannenwetsch, who after the departure of O’Donovan and Webster is now Oxford’s finest (‘Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens’ OUP 2004).
Hütter and Wannenwetsch insist that we learn through tradition (this is the point that modernity is in denial about) and that the right tradition (relating to the distinct Christian citizenship and form of life) makes us free, mature and human, reconciled by God to one another. The Christian tradition doesn’t do this all at once, but it does embark us on a long hard course of paideia, in which baptism is an important milestone.
On the secular v. religious issue, one aspect of O’Donovan’s argument is crucial: the secularizing impulse is not opposed to Christian theology only, but is rubbishing the Western tradition as a whole. It not only finds Christianity problematic, it is no willing to see any part of the Western intellectual tradition (Plato, Aristotle – founders of the Academy) as a living tradition, which we have to remain in conversation with in order to flourish. This is the sort of secularizing that we are now seeing in universities. Only the Christians can point out that moderns equally talk their own in-house, private language, that by flattering us, encourages us to think of ourselves as consumers, accountable to no one. The issue is that Christians (I at least) are so well absorbed by that language of modernity that we don’t forget that it is a merely sectional language, that excludes those whom God does not exclude.
Why should a bishop be reluctant to speak from the Church in the university? I only ask you this because you are a powerful advocate of the plausibility of the Christian gospel – and precisely so a (God-given) assert to the university, as much as the Church. Few enough of your colleagues can make any contribution within the university. But every bishop can remind the university that it can only aspire to be a real public square if it properly considers the claim of the Christian tradition, understood as a demanding apprenticeship.
In all this, I am not getting at you at all, but musing appreciatively, grateful for the opportunity to think these things through with you. Despite all my understatement I hope you feel my real gratitude for your life’s work
Many thanks
DK
[I hadn’t realised what a lot of splendid teaching material there is on the NT Wright Page – see the ‘Wrightsaid’ pieces, for instance]
