Graham Tomlin / Words About God: Theology as Worship, Reform, and Witness

09/10/22 • 22 min

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For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

"If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."

"Words make worlds," says one of my podcasting heroes, Krista Tippett. Ask any poet, priest, or politician, and they'll agree. Language does have that power, for better or for worse.

But whatever power our words have to make a world that we can then ourselves inhabit—that power is drawn from the archetypal Word—the Word made flesh, by whom all things are made and in whom all things are held together, and for whom all tongues confess.

So this simple definition offered by Bishop Graham Tomlin, that theology is just "words about God" is actually quite expansive. When our words about God are directed first toward God, but then toward the church and the world, theology lives up to its purpose of worship, reform, and witness. Graham Tomlin is President of St. Mellitus College and author of many books of theology and Christian spirituality. He recently completed his tenure as Bishop of Kensington and now leads the Church of England's Center for Cultural Witness. He joins Matt Croasmun today for a conversation about the meaning and potential of theology. Thanks for listening.

About Graham Tomlin

The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington. He served a curacy in the diocese of Exeter, and among past roles he has served as Chaplain of Jesus College, Oxford and Vice Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, where he taught within the Theology Faculty of Oxford University on Historical Theology, specializing in the Reformation period. He was closely involved in the foundation, and was appointed the first Dean, of St Mellitus College, a position he held for the first eight years of the College’s life, before being made Bishop of Kensington in 2015. He has spoken and lectured across the world, and in 2016 was awarded the Silver Rose of St Nicholas, a global award recognizing a significant contribution to theological education and learning. He was very involved in the response to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. He is married to Janet and has two married children and three grandchildren. He is a keen follower of various kinds of music and sport, suffering a lifelong addiction to Bristol City Football Club.

Show Notes

The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington.
What's going well with theology
Theology connecting in the church; the church as context for theology
Spiritual theology deepening and nurturing human life
Ellen Charry and thinking about eudaimonia in theological context
Challenges to theology
Fragmentation
Three audiences for theology: God, Church, and World
Audience 1: God. Theology as prayer and worship
Audience 2: Church. Theology as reform and referendum, enabling the church to be the church
Audience 3: World. Theology as witness, declaring what life looks like, seen through the lens of the gospel.
Theology for the World: Pluralism and Secularity
"If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."
Religious studies and objectivity vs subjectivity in studying religion
Lived experience and inhabiting faith to understand it.
Theology's connection to every other academic endeavor
Theos, Logos: Words about God
God as the source of our being and the one to which we return.
Three aspects of Theology: Worship, Reform, and Witness
The God who reveals himself to us
Thinking holistically about the world
Engaging heart and mind
About St. Mellitus
Theology in the church doesn't mean dumbing it down or removing academic seriousness.
Theologians with a passion for the church and see the connection between theology and Christian life.
Churches don't always see the need for theology; they stay pragmatic.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Graham Tomlin
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

"If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."

"Words make worlds," says one of my podcasting heroes, Krista Tippett. Ask any poet, priest, or politician, and they'll agree. Language does have that power, for better or for worse.

About Graham Tomlin

Show Notes

The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington.
What's going well with theology
Theology connecting in the church; the church as context for theology
Spiritual theology deepening and nurturing human life
Ellen Charry and thinking about eudaimonia in theological context
Challenges to theology
Fragmentation
Three audiences for theology: God, Church, and World
Audience 1: God. Theology as prayer and worship
Audience 2: Church. Theology as reform and referendum, enabling the church to be the church
Audience 3: World. Theology as witness, declaring what life looks like, seen through the lens of the gospel.
Theology for the World: Pluralism and Secularity
"If you don't really understand religion, if you don't understand faith, if you don't understand theology, you can't really understand the modern world."
Religious studies and objectivity vs subjectivity in studying religion
Lived experience and inhabiting faith to understand it.
Theology's connection to every other academic endeavor
Theos, Logos: Words about God
God as the source of our being and the one to which we return.
Three aspects of Theology: Worship, Reform, and Witness
The God who reveals himself to us
Thinking holistically about the world
Engaging heart and mind
About St. Mellitus
Theology in the church doesn't mean dumbing it down or removing academic seriousness.
Theologians with a passion for the church and see the connection between theology and Christian life.
Churches don't always see the need for theology; they stay pragmatic.

Production Notes

This podcast featured Graham Tomlin
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Previous Episode

Matt Croasmun / Nourishing Mutual Encounter: Food, Meals, and the Hunger for Home in the Gospel of Luke

Food and meals are hidden in plain sight throughout the Bible, providing a background context for Christian spirituality and flourishing. Matt Croasmun joins me on the podcast today to talk about his new book co-authored with Miroslav Volf, The Hunger for Home: Food and Meals in the Gospel of Luke. For them, a meal is a site of nourishing mutual encounter. It's this definition of a meal that makes that riddle work I think. It's also incredibly illuminating (and even delightfully surprising, really) to consider how that nourishing mutual encounter—a meal—provide a context that spans thousands of years and the whole of human history from creation to fall to redemption. It can all be understood as a site of nourishing mutual encounter with God, family, neighbor, world—everything. From the fruitful multiplying of living creatures to the forbidden fruit—from the passover seder, manna from heaven, water from the rocks, and feasts in the fields—to the Lord's table prepared before our enemies, turning water into wine, multiplying loaves and fish—from the Last Supper before the Crucifixion, and the final wedding supper of the Lamb. It's all a meal that we hunger for always; it's a meal that wherever we are, we're still home.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

About

Matt Croasmun (PhD, Yale University) is Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He is the co-author, with Miroslav Volf, of For the Life of the World and The Hunger for Home and directs the Yale Life Worth Living Initiative. Follow him on Twitter @MattCroasmun.

Show Notes

Buy the book: The Hunger for Home: Food and Meals in the Gospel of Luke (Enter 17FALL22 for 20% off + Free Shipping)
What is home?
What is hunger?
Jesus fasting in the wilderness: "One does not live by bread alone..."
The human needs bread that is not only bread.
Word and world is one thing. Allow your bread to become an encounter with the creator of all good things.
Life, staying sustained, and feasting
Material life, sustained by the life of the Lord
False choice: word or bread. It's actually one thing, issuing from the mouth of the Lord.
Sinners at the Table: "The only kind of meals are meals among sinners."
"Sinners all."
Jesus dines with sinners because he's a doctor who comes to heal sinners. We dine with sinners because we're all patients of that doctor.
Rich and Poor at the Table
The eschatological feast
The Rich Man and Lazarus
The Unjust Steward (or, The Dishonest Manager)
"We're looking for homes to be invited into. And it may be the poor who have these homes."
Mutuality
Leveraging houses and the wealth they represent for entry into homes.
The Last Supper / Eucharist
"Made known in the breaking of bread"
The Road to Emmaus: "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel."
Jesus as the ultimate Bible Study Leader: "The best bible study ever."
The eucharist is making sense later.
Recognition: It wasn't the bible study with Jesus on the road. It was the meal.
Norman Wirzba, Food & Faith
"Made known in the breaking of bread"

Production Notes

This podcast featured Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Special thanks to David Aycock and Baylor University Press
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Next Episode

Adam Eitel / Character As Authority: Theology as a Lived, Embodied Experience

"Somewhere is better than anywhere." (Flannery O'Connor, as quoted by Wendell Berry in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community) Today, Christian ethicist Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School) sits with Matt Croasmun for a conversation on ethics and theology. Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Together, he and Matt discuss the demands of teaching and learning theology on personal character—holiness even; the relationship between ethics and theology; the locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics; and the rooted, framing question, that animates Adam Eitel's writing and teaching: "What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"

About Adam Eitel

Adam Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School.

Show Notes

Teaching theology as a vocation
"Authority is linked to character"
Instruction in holiness
The millennial demand for personal character to matter in academic authority
Formation
"I see my work as a professor of Christian ethics as a theological vocation."
Millennial entitlement, juxtaposed with vulnerability
Theology as a lived, embodied enterprise
The lines between the personal and the pedagogical
Problems for Christian ethics
It's hard for Christian ethics to stay theological
Can Christian ethics appropriately express social criticism?
"The temptation for Christian ethics to bracket the theological commitments, that fund a specifically Christian moral imaginary."
Dichotomy between tradition and critique
"So we end up sawing off the branch that we're sitting on..."
Declaration of Independence's "All men are created equal." as both the impetus for reform and the object of reform.
"When we're doing theology, when we're doing ethics, we are always looking backwards in some respect, concatenating texts, bringing their different manners of speaking together and to, in order to see what can now be said on the basis of what's been said, that doesn't require an uncritical attitude toward the text or the social arrangements they endorse."
Locatedness and situatedness and particularity of Christian ethics
"What sort of life does the Gospel enjoin?"

Production Notes

This podcast featured Adam Eitel and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give