Tyler Roberts / Taking Theology Seriously: A Perspective from Outside Christian Theology

04/09/22 • 22 min

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

Over the past two centuries, colleges have slowly replaced theology departments with religious studies departments. But what happens when theology becomes religious studies? It can produce a more neutral, observational approach that might not fully appreciate the normative claims of religious adherents and their values, commitments, and beliefs.

A careful historical and objective study of religious history and the dimensions of religious practice are deeply valuable. But engaging religious texts and voices without a serious appreciation for the normative elements—that is, the things about a theological or religious idea that means your life would have to change—that would be a problem. It would evacuate the true substance and meaning of theological claims as they're experienced by religious adherents. But it would also fail to form students of religion and the humanities in a way that poses significant challenges to their own lived experience. For living a life worthy of their humanity.

Today, we share a conversation between Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun from November 2016. Tragically, Roberts died at the age of 61 on June 3, 2021. He was Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College. In this conversation, Roberts reflects on the contribution of theology to the humanities, the role of religious studies in a critical examination of theology, and the importance of appreciating the kinds of theological and moral claims that can change your life. May his memory be a blessing.

Show Notes

What happens when theology becomes religious studies?
Is serious appreciation missing?
How does theology contribute to the humanities?
What is going right in Christian theology?
Scholars like say what they do ‘is not theology,’ but they have the wrong definition of theology, according to Tyler
“We who care about studying religion have ‘dropped the ball’”
“It’s helpful to the Church to have external critique”
Theology as a straw man
What could theology be saying to those outside of the field?
“The line between theology as data and theology as something else is pretty blurry”
Theology reveals how self-critical religious people are
“More interestingly to me is how those of us in religious studies, perhaps the academy more broadly, can learn how to think from theologians”
‘Critical ascent’
The humanities can raise great questions, but can they articulate normative positions?
Theology and credulity
“It’s seemingly either/or, either you’re going to be critical, or you’ll believe anything”
How religious people appear credulous in the eyes of the secular
But in actuality, theology charts out how we come to our beliefs
“There’s nothing particularly blind about this”
Hermeneutics of suspicion
Students are very good at pointing to the limitations of a text
But how can we engage in texts in ways that make students think about their own lives?
“That’s a much harder task, and it’s one that many students, I find, aren’t that comfortable with”
It’s hard!
“Humanities is about reading not just what was true for the author, but what is true for me”
“How can we take these texts as real options for us?”
Christian theology has an important role to play in the pluralistic conversation
How does someone think constructively and critically at the same time? How theologians can teach us that
Obituary: Tyler Roberts (1960-2021) (Political Theology)

Production Notes

This podcast featured Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Luke Stringer
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

Show Notes

What happens when theology becomes religious studies?
Is serious appreciation missing?
How does theology contribute to the humanities?
What is going right in Christian theology?
Scholars like say what they do ‘is not theology,’ but they have the wrong definition of theology, according to Tyler
“We who care about studying religion have ‘dropped the ball’”
“It’s helpful to the Church to have external critique”
Theology as a straw man
What could theology be saying to those outside of the field?
“The line between theology as data and theology as something else is pretty blurry”
Theology reveals how self-critical religious people are
“More interestingly to me is how those of us in religious studies, perhaps the academy more broadly, can learn how to think from theologians”
‘Critical ascent’
The humanities can raise great questions, but can they articulate normative positions?
Theology and credulity
“It’s seemingly either/or, either you’re going to be critical, or you’ll believe anything”
How religious people appear credulous in the eyes of the secular
But in actuality, theology charts out how we come to our beliefs
“There’s nothing particularly blind about this”
Hermeneutics of suspicion
Students are very good at pointing to the limitations of a text
But how can we engage in texts in ways that make students think about their own lives?
“That’s a much harder task, and it’s one that many students, I find, aren’t that comfortable with”
It’s hard!
“Humanities is about reading not just what was true for the author, but what is true for me”
“How can we take these texts as real options for us?”
Christian theology has an important role to play in the pluralistic conversation
How does someone think constructively and critically at the same time? How theologians can teach us that
Obituary: Tyler Roberts (1960-2021) (Political Theology)

Production Notes

This podcast featured Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Luke Stringer
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

undefined - Aristotle Papanikolaou / Russian Christian Nationalism and Eastern Orthodoxy (and How Culture Wars Contributed to the War in Ukraine)

Aristotle Papanikolaou / Russian Christian Nationalism and Eastern Orthodoxy (and How Culture Wars Contributed to the War in Ukraine)

"Real wars always begin with culture wars." Theologian Aristotle Papanikolaou discusses Eastern Orthodox perspectives on war and violence; the impact of Communism on Eastern Orthodox theology; the complicated ecclesial structures of Eastern Orthodoxy, where bishops, patriarchs, and nation-states interact in unpredictable ways; he reflects on Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and Ukraine, the ways Christianity is enmeshed and caught up in the authoritarian, nationalist regime under Putin, and the idea of "Russkii Mir" (the Russian world), which has come to motivate and justify a great deal of violence and aggression in the name of peace and unity.

About

Aristotle Papanikolaou is Professor of Theology and the Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture at Fordham University. He co-directs the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, and is author of The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy and has edited several volumes of Eastern Orthodox theological and political perspectives.

Show Notes

The long, complicated relationship between Eastern Orthodoxy and Communism in the former Soviet Union
David Bentley Hart on Orthodoxy and Communism (NYT article)
Eastern Orthodoxy on the ethics of war (book: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on War)
What's a patriarch? What's a patriarchate?
What does that mean for autonomy and power?
How does Ukraine factor in Orthodox patriarchates?
Autocephalous Ukrainian Church
2022 Sunday of Forgiveness sermon. Kirill states: Russia promotes traditional values, Ukraine led astray by western liberals and Nazis.
How does theology function in this conversation?
"Russkii Mir" as a political idea: we're one people with a common heritage
"To be Russian meant to be Orthodox."
Russian "Democracy"
Heresy of "Russkii Mir"
"A God given mission to save Ukrainians from themselves."
Theology of History
Formal and Material levels
Christian faith is a trans-national faith
Greece: "So in your country, are you Orthodox?"
Saving Ukrainians
Long-term implications
Dynamics within Orthodox Church
The hope for reconciliation: "that will take decades in my opinion"
Culture wars
Visit Public Orthodoxy online
Visit Fordham's Orthodox Christian Studies Center

Production Notes

This podcast featured theologians Aristotle Papanikolaou and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Image Credit: An Orthodox church in Malyn, Ukraine, northwest of Kyiv, destroyed by Russian warplanes. Miguel A Lopes/EPA, via Shutterstock
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

Luke Bretherton / (Un)Common Life: Secularity, Religiosity, and the Tension Between Faith and Culture

Jesus's teaching to be in but not of the world (John 17:14-15) has gone from a mode of prophetic witness that could lead to martyrdom, to bumper sticker ethics that either feeds the trolls or fuels the tribe. We're in a moment where the ways that Christianity's influence on culture—and vice versa—are writ large and undeniable. And yet, how are we to understand it? How are we to live in light of it? How does that relationship change from political moment to political moment? In this conversation, ethicist Luke Bretherton (Duke Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun to reflect on the purpose of theology as a way of life committed to loving God and neighbor; the essential virtue of listening and its role in public theology; the interrelation between Church and World; the temptation to see the other as an enemy to be defeated rather than a neighbor to be loved; and how best to understand secularism and religiosity today.

Show Notes

Do you call yourself a theologian?
“You can't understand the water you're swimming in without understanding something of the theological frameworks that have helped shape it”
Where does the idea that our contemporary context is secular come from?
“The world is as furiously religious as ever”
People think that our modern age is like a shower, that we can just “step into the shower and be washed clean from the foul accretions of superstition and step out enlightened, rational men and women,” but we're actually in a ‘jacuzzi’ of ideas
The internet and plurality of opinion
What happens when we step away from the institutional framework of the Church?
“Who tells the children what Christianity is, who tells the children, what Islam is?”
Do you actually want to show up on a Sunday?
Then tension between believing and belonging
Sacrality and its many guises
“The many forms of life which we don't necessarily name as religious, but they're functioning in that way”
How do we name them?
If you talk to an atheist, they feel marginalized in this country, but if you talk to an Evangelical Christian they feel the same way
“Everyone feels under threat, whether you're a humanist or an atheist or a Christian or Muslim”
“But if you take the victim view, it generates a failure of imagination, a failure of patience, and a failure of paying attention”
Churches talk a lot about how to speak but not about how to listen
“What does Christian listening look like in a pluralistic context?”
Learning something about God by talking to an atheist
Listening is pointing to what is already there: “We point to what Christ and the Spirit are already doing. And it is a privilege is to participate in that.”
What is truth?
“It is how well you love God and neighbor. And the apprehension of the truth is measured by the quality of the relationships”
“So, I think faith begins with hearing and listening first”
What’s right with theology?
How can we have a synthesis of tradition and critique?
Having a sensitivity to political order and whether it is constructive or destructive is theological work
Epistemic humility and interdisciplinary study
The beauty in becoming aware of what you don’t know
What is the state of the field right now?
The overemphasis on the hermeneutics of suspicion, and the world as it is versus the world as it should be
Cynicism and redundancy
“If all we’re saying is that wolves eat sheep, well, we kind of knew that already”
What is a realistic hopefulness? What does ‘the world as it should be’ feel, taste, smell like?
What is the purpose of theology?
It “articulates what it means to heal a particular form of life in the light of who we understand God to be”
“There shouldn't be an over-inflation of what theology, as a technical act, does. But neither is it nothing”
“It is a cultivation of a faithful, hopeful and loving way of being alive”

About Luke Bretherton

Luke Bretherton is Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Before joining the Duke faculty in 2012, he was reader in Theology & Politics and convener of the Faith & Public Policy Forum at King's College London. His latest book is Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Eerdmans, 2019). His other books include Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship and the Politics of a Common Life (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which was based on a four-year ethnographic study of broad-based community organizing initiatives in London and elsewhere; Christianity & Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities o...