Doctrine, Truth and Pluralism: upcoming unit at Pilgrim Theological College

 

This unit is being run on six Fridays across July, August, September and October. See below for details about:

The issues in the church that background the contemporary study of doctrine

Dates and topics

Reading list

For enrolment information contact the registrar of Pilgrim Theological College at study@pilgrim.edu.au .

Background

As in churches across the world, debates in the Uniting Church about marriage and VAD are the latest in a long-line of topics which have raised many questions and generated deep anxieties about doctrine. And they won’t be the last! At one extreme it is said that doctrinal constancy is an essential marker of maintaining Christian identity: doctrine can’t be changed. At another extreme it is argued that changing doctrine is simply a response to the movement of the Spirit: changing doctrine is not a problem. Both those positions obscure the complexities and fruitfulness of Christian doctrine. The focus on specific issues and decisions also obscures the ongoing general work that doctrine performs in liturgy, mission, activism, preaching, prayer and discipleship.

Against these background factors, this unit explores in detail critical questions about doctrine which inevitably come to the surface when churches make key decisions and/or when they make truth claims:

• What is doctrine and what does it do?  
• Does doctrine suppress the Bible’s theological diversity?
• Why, how and should doctrine change?
• Are doctrine and belief the same?
• Does doctrine adjudicate between different beliefs or does it help us navigate between them?
• Can doctrine be transferred from one context to another?
• How can damaging doctrines be recognized and corrected or abandoned?
• How does doctrine enrich the human experience of God?

Our rhetoric about ‘unity-in-diversity’ can do only so much theological work, but it can be strengthened by a well-developed and creative discourse about doctrine. This unit introduces the key contemporary, wide-ranging and lively global discussions about Christian doctrine. 

Dates and Topics:

July 30

AM:    When churches decide: anxieites about doctrine in an age of spirituality, pluralism, post-truth and same-sex marriage

PM:     Origins, history and genres of doctrine

August 6

AM:    Contemporary debates: are doctrines propositions, expressions, rules, prompts, catalysts of experiements?

PM:    Doctrine, Bible and Context: not a question of which comes first, but of how they spiral around the living Christ

August 13

AM:    Doctrine as wisdom: on not confusing the work of doctrine wih the discipline of systematic theology

PM:     Doctrine beyond the intellect: doctrine, the emotions and prayer

September 10

AM:    Case Study 1: Creation

PM:    Laudato si': putting doctrine to work at a time of crisis

September 17

AM:    Case Study 2: Anthropology

PM:    Willie James Jennings' The Christian Imagination: race and learning alertness to doctrinal distortions

October 10

AM:    Doctrine in the global church: source of continuity, innovation, disagreement and difference all at once.

PM:    Doctrine in denominations and in the local church: doctrine in worship, formation and activism.

Summary Reading List

Cocksworth, Ashley. Prayer: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: T&T Clark, 2018.

Chan, Simon. Pentecostal Theology: An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. Blandford Forum, Deo, 2011.

Charry, Ellen T. By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Helmer, Christine M. The End of Doctrine. Louisville: WJKP, 2014.

Green, Gene L., Stephen T. Pardue and K.K. Yeo. Majority World Theology: Christian Doctrine in Global Context. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Higton, Mike. The Life of Christian Doctrine. London: T&T Clark, 2020.

Kim, Grace Ji-Sun and Jenny Daggers, eds. Reimagining with Christian Doctrines: Responding to Global Gender Injustices. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.

Rodgiruez, Ruben Rosario. Dogmatics After Babel: Beyond the Theologies of Word and Culture. Louisville: WJKP, 2018.

Thomasson-Rosingh, Anne Claar. Searching for the Holy Spirit: Feminist Theology and Traditional Doctrine. New York and London: Routledge, 2014.

Tonstad, Linn Marie. God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude. New York and London: Routledge, 2016.

Vanhoozer, Kevin. The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. Louisville: WJKP, 2005.

Volpe, Medi-Ann. Re-thinking Christian Identity: Doctrine and Discipleship. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

Zahl, Simeon. The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Uniting Church Theology and History - Intensive at Pilgrim Theological College, Feb 15th -18th and 20th

This year Pilgrim Theological College and United  Theological College will be co-operating in the presentation of their respective units, "Uniting Church Theology and History" and "Uniting Church Studies"  in mid-February (see dates below).  Dr Damian Palmer and I will be leading the teaching, assisted by a variety of other presenters from various parts of the UCA. We'll be live-streaming into each others' classrooms and facilitating interaction between our respective cohorts of students.

We are very intentional about taking these units beyond being simply opportunities for denominational induction and/or enculturation. Instead, we are wanting to see them as a chance to explore the Uniting Church - its theology and history, its emerging identity, and its changing role and diverse places in Australian society and religion - as a topic of tertiary-level academic enquiry. 

Relative to other 'mainline churches' (itself a designation which invites scrutiny), the UCA has a relatively short history. In many respects, and properly so, it is still a work in progress. Nevertheless, it has also now been around long enough to have generated significant amounts of critical reflection, commentary and debate. There is much to study and evaluate. 

For logistical reasons we can only do four of the five days together. The fifth day will be in our separate cohorts exploring slightly distinct themes. On those first four days we'll cover the UCA's historical and theological roots, the content and status of its Basis of Union, and the various church-shaping debates and decisions about: 

• women's ordination;
• being a multicultural/intercultural church
• its colonial entanglements, the covenant with the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress and the adoption of the 'Revised Preamble'; 
• sexual diversity and same-sex marriage; 
• innovation and tradition in liturgy; and
• its profile in matters of social justice.  

The following sketches the particular issues/questions/approaches we'll be exploring on the final day in the Parkville cohort.

1. The various histories of the Uniting Church

The UCA's history can be told in a wide variety of ways: telling the stories of its theological disputes, charting and interpreting its numerical decline; appropriating the multitude of local congregational histories; assembling the various academic publications of the UCA Historical Society or those which have marked the various anniversaries of the UCA. After canvassing some of these, this session will focus on William Emilsen's 2019 biography of Charles Harris, a key early First Peoples' leader in the UCA. His story (as told by Emilsen) is powerful personal story, but indirectly it also tells a story of the hopes, achievements and failures of the UCA. 

2. What is 'Uniting Church theology,' how is it produced and by whom, where is it found and what is it for?

In a formal sense, Uniting Church theology is that which is affirmed by the Assembly, the Council with "determining responsibility" in matters of doctrine (glossing over, for now, the distinction between theology and doctrine). Less formally, it is also what is preached by its preachers, articulated in its justice statements, and embodied in its mission etc. This session will explore the tensions and possibilities between these formal and informal theologies, noting how neither can be easily mapped by the frequently invoked but blunt and largely uniformative categories of 'liberal' and 'conservative.' There will be a special focus on what theology is actually for, noting the ways the different groups in the UCA (activists, pastors, deacons, preachers, community services, academics, administrators, and leaders - all of which categories being further differentiated by age, gender, culture) have different expectations of theology. Does the force of these diverse expectations shape the UCA's theological work? How does the UCA's theological work measure itself by the confession of Christ's lordship? 

3. Locating UCA theology in contemporary global theology

The UCA's founding theology - and its confessional, missional and Christologically-based features - was shaped by and in the mid-twentieth century European-centred ecumenical atmosphere. Emerging from that environment it was already alert to the post-Christendom context the West's churches were then entering (and there are definite post-Christendom impulses already evident in the Basis of Union). But the ecumenical diversity of the mid-twentieth century has given way to a more radical diversity of 'global Christianity' with its accompanying theological diversity generated by attention to race, colonialism, gender, religious pluralism, climate change and poverty. What sorts of conversations are possible between the UCA's founding theology and these contemporary theological movements? And what does the rise of new global Christian traditions mean for the Uniting Church's received ecumenical impulses?

4. The UCA's pilgrimage in contemporary Australian Christianity and society

If the global Christian landscape has changed in the last 50 years, so too has the Christian landscape in  Australia. This landscape is characterised by: 

• a significant decline in Christian allegiance (slightly slowed, but not arrested by the 'growing' churches); 
• the swap in social and political influence between the churches once considered marginal and those once considered central;
• the growing cultural and linguistic diversity of Australian Christianity;
• the churches' collective complicity in child sexual abuse;
• the disproportionate presence of the churches in community services 
• the growing public profile of other religions; and
• politically-charged debates about the relationship between 'Australian' identity and the so-called "Judeo-Christian tradition."

For the UCA, as one of the forms of Christianity that has moved from near the centre to towards the periphery, this context is potentially an opportunity to vigorously explore and develop two images from the Basis: the "strange way" of Jesus Christ and the character of the church as "pilgrim people." Both images are related to the summons from the Basis for the church to be nothing less and nothing more than an "instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself."  They also raise internal questions about what forms of Christian community actually justify the definition of "congregation," the scale and responsibilities of the UCA's inter-related councils, and the dependence on inherited property and occupied land (the latter in terms of both Christian stewardship and the UCA's commitment to First Peoples' sovereignty).

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Dates for Uniting Church Theology and History / Pilgrim / Parkville: 15th - 18th and 20th February

Pilgrim website:pilgrim.edu.au 

Enrolment info: registrar@pilgrim.edu.au

Dates for Uniting Church Studies / UTC / Parramatta: 15th - 19th February

UTC Website: utc.edu.au 

Enrolment info: studenta@nswact.uca.org.au