Abstract
An analysis of presidential addresses to the Canadian Theological Society (CTS) since 1990 provides a snapshot of methodological and constructive issues in the discipline. Critique of modern or postmodern frameworks for theology, attention to context, and the reflection on the commitments of the theologian emerge as key methodological themes. Self-reflectively Canadian themes are surprisingly rare. Constructively, many addresses advocate for theology’s ethical mandate.
Introduction
In this paper, I seek to advance understanding of the recent history of the Canadian Theological Society (CTS) and its prospects for the future through an analysis of its presidential addresses from 1990 through 2016. 1 CTS is a relatively small scholarly society whose primary activity is its annual scholarly meetings that since 1969 have been held with what is now called the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (previously the “Learneds”). Attendance at CTS annual meetings ranges from 50 to 100 depending on where in Canada they are held. Founded in 1955, CTS is a member of the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The president is elected from among the membership and serves for one year. 2
In 1954 James Thomson, Dean of Divinity at McGill University, circulated a letter inviting individual scholars to a meeting the following year to discuss the formation of a “Canadian Theological Society.” He wrote: “There is no society to bring together men and women who are interested in the study of theology” (Fennell, 1985: 410). The reference to women is noteworthy, as the eight persons who did assemble at Emmanuel College in Toronto to establish the Society were all men, and it was not until the election in 1980 of Joanne McWilliam Dewart that a woman served as president. Perhaps already at its founding, the CTS saw for itself a role in advancing the theological contributions of women and other historically marginalized voices.
Thomson continues: “We are living in a time of revived theological interest, and few would deny that the time has need of it. Should there be a place in our national life where theology becomes a subject of mutual concern and communication?” (Fennell, 1985: 410). His letter further suggests that it is the development of scholarly societies to serve other university disciplines that necessitates a theological society. Reference to the study of theology and communication implies that the methods and norms emerge from discussion and debate within a discipline. That “the time has need” of theology also implies a mandate of public relevance.
At the time of CTS’s founding, a high point in the liberal Protestant establishment in Canada, serving the “national life” was not necessarily exclusive of serving the needs of the Protestant churches. Nearly all participants at early CTS meetings were mainline Protestant, with Catholic and Orthodox members joining years later. During Thomson’s term as CTS’s first president, he was also elected Moderator of the United Church of Canada. According to the earliest constitution of the society I could locate, its purpose is “to promote interest in the study of theology in Canada” (Canadian Theological Society, 1984), 3 implying a mandate more oriented towards public engagement than rigorous original research.
The presidential address of a scholarly society is its own peculiar genre, and as such, offers an important perspective into the assumptions and aspirations of the scholars who comprise the society. They are typically occasions for taking stock, for speaking in a general way about the discipline or the academy, identifying gaps or problems, or making methodological proposals to the discipline or the academy. While they often reflect the particular research agenda of the president in some way, they are not typically technical presentations to specialists. Rather, as moments of disciplinary self-consciousness they serve as a barometer of priorities and debates within a discipline. Even a president who presents original research typically does so in ways that draw out its significance for a wider range of scholars.
Two noteworthy studies of presidential addresses have been conducted by Donald Wiebe (1997, 2006). On the basis of his analysis of presidential addresses of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), he concludes that the AAR remains committed, problematically in his view, to a religious and/or theological agenda, despite its claim to advance a strictly scientific study of religion. While Wiebe says little about the surely complex relationship between the content of a presidential address and the programs of a scholarly society, let alone the academic work of its members, his approach generally assumes such addresses to be representative of the ethos of the organization. While leaders are elected to carry out particular administrative functions, they may also be seen to embody something typical, even exemplary, about the discipline itself. He goes so far as to draw conclusions about the official aims of the AAR in light of its elected leadership (Wiebe, 2006: 692–693).
Unlike those of Wiebe, the brief analysis by Patrick Gray (2006) of presidential addresses to the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is not driven by an explicit methodological agenda, but rather, like the present study, reflects more generally on the character and culture of a scholarly society. He notes that some presidents do take the opportunity to present results of specialized research while others speak, and write, more broadly on disciplinary issues of abiding interest to members. Gray notes that disciplinary shifts are evident only in hindsight, and thus a long view is required to determine which statements are prescient. Some addresses may seem unremarkable now if only because they have since become widely accepted in the field. Other addresses have become classics in their published form such that their origin as SBL presidential addresses has been largely forgotten.
The stakes are lower for a small society like CTS, which, unlike the AAR and the SBL, is not the defining scholarly society in its field. An analysis of CTS presidential addresses may be more revealing about CTS than about the discipline of theology as a whole. In my analysis, I will be asking three questions, reflecting the three words in the organization’s name. First, what do these speeches say about the nature of theology that CTS embodies and advances? Secondly, how do these presentations reflect particularly Canadian contexts and agenda? Thirdly, what do these addresses tell us about the character of CTS as a scholarly society?
Several caveats are in order. This article is not an account of the past few decades of theology in Canada, or of Canadian theology. Such an undertaking would likely refer to CTS within the ecology of theology in Canada, but would need to be much broader in terms of scholars, themes, and institutions. Secondly, I am not specifically delimiting what is meant by “Canadian.” My analysis does not ask about where persons were trained, where they teach, nor what their citizenship status may be. Furthermore, I do not analyze or assess the body of work of any of the CTS presidents, many of whom have extensive records of publication, teaching, and supervision of graduate students.
Fourteen women and thirteen men served as CTS presidents from 1990 to 2016. I have obtained copies of the speeches of all but two past presidents—Doris Dyke and Peter Slater. 4 Of the twenty-five manuscripts I analyzed, fourteen were published in academic journals, and eleven sent to me by the authors as unpublished manuscripts, some in near publishable quality, and others in rougher note form. 5 All but two of the authors were associated with Canadian institutions at the time of their presidency—the exceptions being Canadians teaching in the US. 6 More than half are mainline Protestant, one third Roman Catholic, and, in the case of Jay Newman, there is one “Jewish philosopher of religion from Brooklyn” (1991: 235). 7
I. The Nature of Theology
I do not approach these texts with a ready-made definition of theology, but recognize that the methods, norms, and sources of theology are contested, and that the nature of theology is itself a substantial theological issue. Nevertheless, following Nicholas Healy’s important programmatic essay, I attend to theology’s character as both critical and creative (2009: 24). 8
One way of categorizing the addresses is to draw a distinction between those which are primarily methodological (how to do theology) and those which are primarily constructive (what the content of that theology ought to be). Of course, such a distinction has to be handled lightly, since a methodological address such as Ellen Leonard’s (1990), in which she argues for greater attention to be paid to women’s experiences as a source for Christological reflection, is also an argument about Christology itself. Yet, Leonard’s primary concern is with how to proceed with the task of theology. On the other hand, Donald Schweitzer’s address (2007) is a constructive proposal about how to understand God’s relationship with creation. While it proceeds in a particular way—arguing that resources in Bonaventure and Jonathan Edwards can supplement and correct Jürgen Moltmann’s promising but problematic formulation—method itself is not an explicit concern of the paper. It is an intervention in particular theological debates.
There are also several presentations that propose a normative theological or religious vision. Brenda Appleby (2004) speaks to the importance of churches learning how to have respectful conversations on divisive ethical issues. Her concern is not with the arguably narrower question of how to conduct academic theological discourse but with how to do something more basic in the Christian life. In that sense, her address, and others like it, are primarily constructive in orientation. Using this framework, about half of the addresses I analyze are primarily methodological and half are primarily constructive, though in what follows I will trace methodological themes and constructive themes throughout all of the addresses.
Methodological Themes
Four major methodological themes emerge from my reading of these addresses: first, interpreting the shifting frameworks of modernity and postmodernity; secondly, critical attention to the contextual character of theology; thirdly, relating ancillary disciplines and sub-disciplines of theology; and finally, reflection on the vocation of the theologian.
First, several presidents speak to the antidotes theology may offer, or must offer, in the wake of modernity. John Franklin positions his own recommendation of a postmodern theological aesthetics over against the Cartesian quest for epistemological foundations in the knowing subject and abstract reason. Franklin argues that the failure of these frameworks, especially as they have led to a culture of disengagement, renders a theological aesthetics attentive to participation, transcendence, and beauty, an “agenda for our times” (2007: 5). An interpretation of the ills of modernity, especially the privatization of religion, the separation of spirituality from economics and politics, and the hegemony of established perspectives, leads Lee Cormie (2011) to document and laud the irruptions of historically marginalized voices in theology. Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd (2008) argues that social gospel-minded activists like herself must root out modern sensibilities that undergird their work. It was the social progressives of their day who supported and ran the Residential Schools, in part because their modern notions of human identity and of enlightenment Western culture blinded them to the harm they were causing. 9 Marilyn Legge (2000) interprets hegemonic global capitalism as among the most recent of modernity’s destructive offspring.
These theologians welcome the multiple and shifting identities that have been made evident by postmodern perspectives. For Cormie, it is the promise of a Pentecost of new voices; for Shepherd, greater attention to social justice; for Legge, the creation of communities in which ambiguity, diversity, and plurality help shape resistance to global capitalism (2000: 6). James Olthius’ address, a poetic vision of “Sojourning Together in the Wild Spaces of Love,” celebrates the postmodern possibilities opened by the failure of totalizing reason and absolute power. The postmodern “non-self self” is to be celebrated for its exposure of the illusion of the Cartesian self. Yet Olthius cautions that the visions of Mark C. Taylor and Jacques Derrida are not yet the answer, since their wanderers are without home, vision, or purpose. Rather, it is the Christian promise of love as gift that holds the possibility of “a re-centring of the self in relations of love in community” (1995: 47).
In a different vein, Michael Bourgeois (2009) warns against the excesses of some postmodern visions. In fact, “postmodernism” as a framing category is not prominent in addresses after 2009. With an extended interpretation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi as point of departure, Bourgeois argues that postmodern attention to imagination, story, and the human construction of meaning may be swinging the pendulum too far away from history, science and the material world. The Christian doctrines of creation, redemption and eschatology ought to orient theology to deeper engagement with the material realities of the time and space that God creates and loves and the scholarly disciplines that speak about these realities. For example, evolutionary theory calls for a thorough rethinking of the Fall as the origin of sin; an account of theology and science as independent and separate spheres of inquiry is inadequate, on theological grounds. Yes, we tell stories; but we ought not to untether them from what Martel calls “crude reality.”
Speaking at the end of the 20th century, George Schner maintains that theology has not advanced much beyond the illusory hopes that were before it at the ends of the 19th and 18th centuries. These hopes might be characterized by “pronouncements of the end of most everything modern—no subject, no objectivity, no language which refers, no stable history, no ultimate ground, no grand narratives…pronouncements which originate from a radical exercise in freedom, the modern self against the modern self, [which is] in fact an illusion of freedom” (2001: 34).
In various ways, modern theology turned to philosophy to define the epistemological conditions under which it may proceed. Kant’s program of criticism and construction asserts that knowledge must be limited to the “logical…application of the structuring activities of the mind” (Schner, 2001: 39). Discourse about a purported act of God such as the resurrection of Jesus must therefore be a human construction for some noble human purpose—for example, to authorize the sayings of Jesus or his moral example or social program. For Schner, such modern moves have resulted in a proliferation of illogical and ideological discourses, rooted ultimately in the attempt to preside over God, and over our human condition.
Hegel rejected Kant’s claim that the conditions of knowledge can be deduced apart from tradition and culture. Yet, Schner argues that Hegel’s systematic integration of self and world overstates the case. It emphasizes the human process of invention, and appeals to the university as the cultural safeguard for knowledge about God as Spirit. In the Speeches, Schleiermacher “tried to secure a place for Christianity by retreating into the interior of the pious soul” (Schner, 2001: 50). The corruption associated with religion, especially the institutional church, occurs when this pure interior immediacy of religion is given form in language and social structure.
Schner is troubled by the conclusion he draws from this analysis: theology has become a discourse about the human which measures Christian claims according to externally generated standards of reason, or more commonly, social programs. For Schner, theology in such a mode exercises an illusory freedom to the extent that it presumes human control over discipleship and fails to be receptive to and speak about particular acts of God. It fails to speak about Jesus Christ if it does not acknowledge that Jesus presides over his own identity. It fails to identify the love which abides if it does not drive the disciple towards “the inevitably messy business of the church and the everydayness of love of neighbor” (2001: 52).
Douglas Harink’s presidential address (2001) was dedicated to the memory of George Schner, who died several months prior to its delivery. With Schner, Harink calls for a theology with the capacity to speak about God’s apocalypse; that is, a theology to speak about God’s decisive action in and through Jesus Christ. He notes that while theology has largely rejected the “larger gods of modernity”—the quest for foundations in universal rationality, for example—it has too often opted for the smaller, ostensibly less violent, gods of postmodernity. Such gods include the “many theologies of human experience, now not universal experience, but the experiences of individuals and groups” (Harink, 2001: 12). However, the apocalyptic gospel according to the Apostle Paul is neither modern nor postmodern, and neither liberal nor evangelical. According to Harink, it is a “theology without foundations, a theology which depends on no other warrant or ground than the public display of Christ crucified” (13).
By calling for a theology which is a discourse about God, and specifically God’s decisive action in Jesus Christ, and not a discourse about the human, Harink makes an implicit critique of many CTS presidential addresses. Contextual theologies risk being only about context, and failing to speak about God. Attending to conditions of knowledge of postmodernity risks being only about the human knower. A marked contrast with Harink is found in Heather Eaton’s (2007) eschewing the term “theology” to describe her own enterprise. She speaks rather of religious responses to ecological crises, specifically informed by a deep understanding of evolution. Any theology of creation would imply that the science of evolution must be positioned within a religious framework, which she rejects. It works the other way; religion itself emerges from the evolutionary process (2007: 26–27). Thus, it is the natural, and human, world that is ultimately revelatory. Ethical orientation emerges from that immanent frame of reference. Despite Eaton’s rejection of the label “theology,” her project raises the prospect of theology outside of the boundaries of traditional Christianity. While “Christian” has long been the assumed modifier of “theology,” there is nothing in CTS’s core documents that precludes the exploration of theologies of other religious, spiritual, or non-religious traditions.
Eaton and Harink agree that modernity’s narratives of progress and control ought to give way. For Eaton the answer is attention to an expansive yet immanent cosmos and the human within it, while for Harink the answer is the interruptive and irreducible particularity of God’s action in Jesus Christ. Each would likely charge that the other’s approach re-inscribes a narrative of control.
The contextual character of all theology is a methodological theme throughout many of the addresses. Marilyn Legge’s definition of theology’s task—“interpreting Scripture and tradition in a particular historical situation of believers” (2000: 4)—necessitates an account of theology’s locatedness. The disruptive task of theology is to resist modes of thought that do not “admit many contexts, for example, the mutual implication of religion, gender, race, class, and eros” (4).
Ellen Leonard examines the tension between the universal significance that Christology claims for Jesus Christ, and the fact that the experiences of women in particular have not shaped the formulation of the doctrine. She calls for an inclusive Christology, which “must hear the silent cries of women through the ages and from all parts of the world” (1990: 281). She begins with an identification of her own social location as a middle-class, white, anglophone Canadian woman and acknowledges that she has not adequately heard the voices of francophone, native, immigrant, and poor women in her own country (268). She critiques the patriarchy within the tradition and proposes that three areas of experience—female embodiment, female oppression, and female interrelatedness—ought to inform a re-imagined Christology. In conclusion, Leonard argues that an inclusive Christology will be closely linked with an inclusive anthropology and an inclusive ecclesiology. Reading her text today, one notes that she assumes a fairly fixed account of gendered identity, yet she also questions essentialist assumptions within feminist discourse.
A decade later, Anne Marie Dalton’s address (2000) wrestles more specifically with the theological task in light of violence against women, and the tension between essentialist and deconstructionist approaches to the gendered body. Her methodological intervention is to propose a more nuanced account of the body in the first instance through an analysis of the Christian tradition’s denigration of women’s bodies. Secondly, she finds that within that ambiguous tradition, there are particular elements that may be retrieved in moving towards a more just and empowering theology of the body. Liberatory moments may be recovered in the rituals of initiating the bodies of women and men into the Body of Christ, and in the ways that women mystics and saints resisted, at least to some extent, the cultural scripts that were written for them.
Eric Beresford reflects on one particular context for theology—public debates about ethical issues. He observes that in order to be heard in public debates about biotechnology, for example, “theologians felt they had to cease to appeal to theological categories, but as they did so their voices inevitably became less distinctive” and therefore less interesting (2003: 7). Yet, in the context of such public discussion, Beresford encourages churches to recognize that they have distinctive contributions, which he frames in terms of offering particularly rich descriptions of human life and human motivations and drawing on the churches’ long history of seeking to build sustainable moral communities.
Finally, Allen Jorgenson’s recent address is the only one to reflect explicitly on theology in the context of Indigenous–Settler relations, though passing references to Indigenous persons, and the legacy of residential schools, are noted by some others. Jorgenson describes an experience he had on a reserve in Treaty Six territory (Alberta), listening to John, an elder, who was leading a circle for Indigenous inmates at a minimum security prison. John explained that Indigenous spirituality does not have a story about a Fall. “[T]he human is born whole, and stays whole by walking in a good way—keeping ceremonies that mend the ruptures of our life—so as to die whole. There is no original sin, and no consequent need for redemption in the Christian sense” (Jorgenson, 2014: 67). In light of his own Lutheran convictions about human sinfulness and the need for redemption, Jorgenson takes his task to be to learn from John as well as from Martin Luther as he re-reads key scriptural texts. Jorgenson takes seriously the Indigenous conviction that the human is not separate from creation, and finds in Luther the concept of Adam as imago mundi—the world in miniature. With an account of the human as both imago Dei and imago mundi, and skin as “humanity in the mode of liminality” (79), Jorgenson finds resources to attend to the continuities and discontinues that arise. More generally, he frames his theological exploration in terms of the need those who are settlers have “to learn to live with our Indigenous hosts, and from them…to learn to live with the land” (80).
The third methodological theme that arises, engagement with theological sub-disciplines or disciplines ancillary to theology, is treated by just a few presidents. The most notable instance is Mary Schaefer’s case for the vital contributions that liturgical theology has to make towards theology’s critical mandate. Since liturgical theologians work in a space between concrete congregations and systematic theology, they are especially well-positioned to detect ideologies at work in the church’s life (1997: 471). As already noted, John Franklin (2007) advocates that theological aesthetics be given a greater role in theological education and research because it speaks both to contemporary interest in transcendence as well as to social/political action. Much of Heather Eaton’s presentation (2007) discusses the science of evolution, and maintains that its particularities are of crucial importance for those working on religious responses to the ecological crisis. Doug Harink’s address (2001) makes an appeal for theology’s engagement with particular developments in biblical studies, the “new perspective” on Paul, and interpretation of Paul as an apocalyptic theologian.
Harink’s address also touches on a fourth methodological theme, which is the vocation of the theologian. What does it mean to engage in the theological task? How is theology embodied by those who practice it? How are our theological agendas set? Harink, and several other presidents, include in their speeches some narrative account of their own journeys as theologians—in his case a decision to pursue systematic theology as a graduate student, rather than New Testament studies. Lee Cormie (2011) noted his movement, theologically and geographically, from a pre-Vatican II conservative American Catholicism to a Vatican II-renewed Canadian Catholicism. Cristina Vanin (2016) traced her own personal and professional interest in ecological questions alongside key developments in Catholic theology, from skepticism encountered when proposing a dissertation on the work of Thomas Berry to Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’, now a permanent part of the church’s official social teaching.
Jay Newman, the self-described Jewish philosopher from Brooklyn, said this: “I believe the presidential address to a society of theologians should in some way deal with the present status of the theological vocation, so I have chosen as my subject the question of how contemporary Canadian theologians can best understand and deal with various challenges to them by their rivals” (1991: 235). Newman examines the rivalry first from co-religionists who are not theologians but jockey for denominational or institutional influence, and secondly, from scholars who are promoters of secularism. Newman exhorts members of CTS to take up a particular challenge: to recognize that the theological task is to contend with rivals by “finding the right words” (242), and to promote intellectual positions in a variety of scholarly and public settings that are worthy, “even at the expense of having to promote [themselves] in the process” (243).
The role of commitment in theology, the theme developed by Pamela Dickey Young, is a way of naming context, of course, and thus the themes in my analysis are by no means exclusive. Young begins by identifying her own commitments, and then shows how they are related to a more general account of the theological task. She is committed to Christianity and to feminism in a way that requires her as a theologian to be both critic and interpreter. As a feminist, she employs a hermeneutic of suspicion, intervening in the Christian symbol system where justice requires it. She affirms that such critical engagement is demanded of her also as a Christian. As a Christian theologian she is committed to interpreting all of reality in terms of Christian symbols that must be credible, coherent, and non-contradictory, and thus always articulated anew in each time and place. Yet as a disputational discipline, Young argues that theology cannot simply be what is “true for me”; it seeks to state not “my Christian witness of faith, but the Christian witness of faith” (Young, 1993: 175). Thus, the theologian navigates the tension of recognizing and embracing her commitments as essential tools, while striving not to be simply the sum of those commitments but to speak truly about God.
Finally, Doris Kieser’s deeply personal reflection on a year of loss, including the deaths of family members and friends, offers much on how experience, emotion, reason and relationships come together in the person of the theologian. As the demands of the profession—research, productivity, a tenure file—all weighed down on her, a broken ankle on top of everything required her to simply stop. She asks, “What does a scholar do, then, when words fail her? When overcome by death, I found it best to remain silent” (2013: 6). Kieser then describes a practice of doodling, pen on paper, which occasioned and mediated an openness to God’s love. Healing would come only by reception of the Holy Spirit’s work in the form of the love and care provided by others. In this crisis of scholarly identity, she sees a vital distinction between theology as a tyranny of the word—publish or perish—and the humanizing possibility of engaging “in the scholarship of being” (11). Notably, her turn to personal experience was simultaneously a turn to God. She concludes: “Deliverance would not have come by a quantitative analysis of pages and words. It came by the heart, into which God’s love has been poured out through the Holy Spirit” (17). In such a light, theology is necessarily both a discourse about God and a discourse about the human person in relation to God. The theologian is not only the one who speaks about particular realities but also finds and interprets herself as a subject within those realities.
Neither the contextual character of theology nor attention to the person of the theologian are particularly controversial within the discipline, though such conclusions are the result of arguments made over several decades. Yet, the particularities of context and the conditions of theological production remain themes for refinement and debate. Whether theology is a discourse that attempts to speak about God or rather about religious human beings may well demarcate distinct theological methods. At the same time, Kieser indicates a way of integrating the approaches, and Eaton points to the imperative for theology in a scholarly society with some public mandate to push its own disciplinary boundaries beyond traditional Christian frameworks.
Constructive Themes
In terms of the constructive approaches manifest in these presidential addresses, the classical loci that receive the most attention are the doctrines of creation, Christology, and theological anthropology. However, the most pervasive constructive concern is that of ethics.
Among those who treat the doctrine of creation, Donald Schweitzer’s argument (2007) for a particular construal of the God–world relationship is notable for not being oriented towards ethics. The ethical and ecological orientations of Cristina Vanin, Heather Eaton, and Harold Wells may be compared in terms of their dialogue partners and constituencies addressed. Vanin (2016) primarily analyzes the papal encyclical Laudato Si’. While she explains how the document is a breakthrough in magisterial teaching and Catholic theology, she also treats the calls for action as resonating for a wider Christian and indeed human audience. Eaton (2007) speaks in even broader terms, drawing on the science of evolution as a constructive resource for what she calls religious responses to ecological crises.
Harold Wells’ presidential address is primarily an exercise in critical and constructive Christology. He asks which account of Jesus Christ enables Christians to address ecological questions most faithfully, and names his commitment to a liberative, feminist, and ecological hermeneutic of Scripture. He engages and criticizes Sallie McFague’s proposal for the world as God’s Body as insufficiently Trinitarian, and ultimately one in which salvation is sought not from God but from the kosmos (Wells, 1999: 59). Rather, pointing also to problems with Karl Barth’s “Humanity of God” formulation, Wells turns to the Gospel of John’s account of Jesus as the “Flesh of God,” and to the Pauline letters. Significantly, Wells’ address is only one of two papers in 27 years in which the constructive proposal is explicated primarily as a reflection on Scripture. 10 That the Word became sarx (flesh), a term which implies the “vulnerability, corruptibility and mortality of creaturely life” (62), means that God’s saving work extends to all creatures, and the transformation of all creation. In Wells’ ecological vision, the human is decentred within the groaning of the whole creation, then re-centred as a steward. There is indeed a call to response, but not as if “it is we who, in lordly fashion, hold all things together” (66). Rather, according to him, the grace of God in Jesus Christ frees and empowers human beings to truly be creatures.
Theological anthropology is the sphere of Allen Jorgenson’s constructive proposal (2014) for humans as imago Dei and imago mundi, a formulation re-oriented by an ethical concern for receptive relationships with Indigenous persons. Kathleen Skerrett (2012) revisits Reinhold Niebuhr’s account of original sin, thereby rethinking human agency and, simply, the human. Her purpose is to consider how the Christian tradition can imagine and inspire shared political freedom, a vision with broad ethical relevance. Skerrett sketches out four figures of original sin—the wanton, the addict, the pervert, and the deviant—the agencies of whom are ensnared by the compromised freedom produced in liberal democracies. She recommends four practices of freedom to resist the pathologies of these figures, respectively: formation, devotion, liturgy, and purpose.
Marilyn Legge contends that what is at stake in doing theology is whether one “live[s] out God” (2000: 15). Theology and theological education must be oriented towards liberative action. She envisions a “new global commons” as an inclusive and life-giving web of communities in resistance to the destructive power of global capitalism. Legge is especially concerned with the critical role of churches and post-secondary educational institutions in fostering and realizing this vision. Robert Fennell provides biblical/theological foundations for the work of social justice, organized around the themes of Christology, theological anthropology, and eschatology, which ultimately shed light on “the common Christian quest for the common good: for liberation, hope, and life abundant” (5).
Brenda Appleby (2004) situates the debates within the Anglican Communion on what, at the time, were described as same-sex unions, and the ordination of homosexual persons, among other issues. Using a typological approach and case studies within the Anglican Communion, she recommends ethical discernment as engagement in which differences are not glossed over but various parties also recognize their partial perspectives on the truth.
The addresses of at least a dozen CTS presidents since 1990 may be understood as advancing a particular moral vision. Cythnia Crysdale’s concern is about the ambiguous character of boundaries. New biotechnologies enable the crossing of boundaries between species, even human and non-human, which raises serious ethical concerns, while the crossing of other boundaries, such as interracial marriage, ought to be celebrated. Drawing from case studies in ecological science, the Bible, and rituals that invoke the divine/human boundary, Crysdale advocates an ethic of risk and rejects an ethic of control. “[C]rossing boundaries with the intent to control, to dominate, or to avoid suffering are the most destructive” (2002: 396). We humans must recognize our finitude and the complex web of relations in which we find ourselves, but also the possibilities of transformation that attend the crossing of boundaries in openness and vulnerability. Alyda Faber draws from novelists and artists, psychoanalysts and political theorists, atheists and Christian theologians to gesture toward an ethics of exposure in which “we are exposed to God and God to us” (2010: 1). Such an ethic is one of attentiveness to wretchedness and abundance, and characterized by practices such as generous receptivity, tending the radical ordinary, and speechless vulnerability.
All theology may be understood as implicitly practical in the sense that some account of God and the world created by God will have implications for how humans ought to act and speak within such a world. As nearly half of the speeches by CTS presidents since 1990 explicitly develop particular ethical positions, one can note the prominence of themes such as human vulnerability, receptivity, and the renunciation of control. Listeners and readers are challenged to resist the certainty and mastery that characterized modernity, and embrace their finitude and vulnerability in community with other persons, as with all of creation. Yet, many of the presentations are vague about how particular calls to action addressed to a scholarly society might be received and enacted by church communities, or by the wider society. Unlike scholars addressing fellow scholars with proposals for how to better interpret or reconstruct theoretical issues within the discipline, calls to particular ways of life necessarily go beyond those who listen to the presentation. While CTS presidents may indeed present similar ideas in church, classroom, or public settings, the question of whether CTS itself has a role in promoting theological, and ethical-theological, discourse beyond its membership is a question about its implicitly public mandate that it ought to consider.
While many things are missing from these addresses, it would be inaccurate to assume such lacunae imply a lack of interest among members. Yet, given its prominence in recent theological discourse, I was surprised to find no more than passing references, and one paragraph in Leonard (1990), concerning the atonement. I was also surprised to find no engagement with ecumenism as a theme. Newman (1991) briefly lauds the ecumenical orientation of the society, but also chides the society for the ways it politely skirts tensions between denominations. Some addresses clearly emerge from particular ecclesial contexts—Anglican, United Church, and Roman Catholic, especially—yet wrestle primarily with internal tensions and developments. Does this imply a certain indifference to the scandal of Christian division, or is it that given other ethical concerns, the concerns of ecumenism are just not that pressing? Finally, there is a curious lack of reflection on Scripture, on the authority of Scripture as a source for theology, or on the question of authority more generally. While it is difficult to know how to interpret an absence, it does seem that attention to contemporary contexts has displaced a focus on Scripture as a primary constructive source. Just how Scripture ought to be received and interpreted in this new changing disciplinary landscape requires focused attention.
II. Theology in the Canadian Context
Speeches by leaders of a scholarly society with “Canada” in its name, might be expected to interpret the Canadian context and its significance for theology. Surprisingly, not one framed their address in such terms. A handful of authors made brief reference to their situatedness in Canada, but many did not. A recent edited book on Feminist Theology with a Canadian Accent asked contributors to consider the following possible themes: the land, regional awareness, language, First Nations spiritualities, Canadian ethnicities, multiculturalism, ecumenism, multifaith, Quebec, Canadian Women’s Literature, Canadian women and the arts, and the social gospel (Beavis et al., 2008: 12–13). 11 Most of these themes do not appear in the presidential addresses. The work of Canadian novelists such as Joy Kogawa and Yann Martel are featured, but so are many more non-Canadian writers. Neither multiculturalism nor the Quebec/francophone reality are developed. Indigenous spiritualities, and the treaties that relate to the land, are discussed in one address. Theologians Gregory Baum, Mary Jo Leddy, and J.S. Woodsworth are noted, only in passing. Bernard Lonergan, the Canadian theologian once described by Time magazine (22 January 1965) as a theologian of the stature of Thomas Aquinas, receives not even a footnote.
It is not in reference to the “national life” understood in primarily social or political terms, but rather with reference to particular churches, that one finds more overtly Canadian content. Brenda Appleby (2004) examines the particularly Canadian context within which Anglican debates over same-sex issues were unfolding. Eric Beresford (2003) comments on the particular ways in which Canadian churches, as well as individual Christians, are speaking and ought to speak on matters of Canadian public policy. Two United Church of Canada congregations, one in Toronto and one in Winnipeg, are case studies for Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd (2008) as she reflects on how a church might prepare to engage multiple identities in its ministry and mission and be transformed in the process. The United Church’s Social Gospel tradition is referenced by several presidents.
Two collections of essays on theological education in Canada published in recent decades (Barter Moulaison, 2009; Brown, 1998) 12 also feature surprisingly few references to the relationship of the social or political context of Canada to contemporary theological education, though several essays do examine particular post-secondary institutions in Canada. The notable exception is Jean-Guy Nadeau’s analysis of how Quebec’s movement from “colonialism and strong public religiosity to secularism and a new religious plurality resulting from immigration” (2009: 55) shapes the theological landscape there. Thus, even when authors are asked to write out of or to the Canadian context, they seem reticent about doing so explicitly.
An unscientific review of the titles of papers presented at CTS meetings in recent years indicates a more self-consciously Canadian agenda than the presidential addresses reflect. 13 Several papers and panels related to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Indigenous–Settler relations in Canada have been presented in recent years. Certainly, CTS may be Canadian in so far as researchers reflect a wide range of concerns, and engage with many interlocutors from the US, the UK and elsewhere. But it is also the case that theology is contextual whether it is self-consciously contextual or not. Thus, it may be that the ethos of CTS reflects a Canadian perspective even when the explicit topics addressed do not.
Jay Newman’s outsider perspective may be helpful. Newman exhorts members of the society to take up a challenge: to recognize that the task is to contend with rivals by “finding the right words” (1991: 242), and to promote intellectual positions that are worthy, “even at the expense of having to promote themselves in the process” (243). He also implies that the reluctance to do so is a Canadian characteristic. A contentious approach may not be natural for many Canadian theologians. There is not a culture in the CTS, at least not in my experience nor in the record of presidential addresses, of establishing one’s credentials by taking down another member’s position. CTS appears to foster a culture of deliberation unlike the more polarized political and intellectual culture in the United States. Yet, it may also be the case that members of CTS seek their own echo chambers, and disengage when presented with a theological approach profoundly different from their own.
III. Theology in a Scholarly Society
These presidential addresses give some indication of the character of the society to which they were presented. First, none of the presidents really addressed CTS as a society, advocating for a particular structure, practice, or ethos. Secondly, the themes of the addresses are difficult to categorize; the preceding analysis remains somewhat awkward and imposed. Thirdly, there is very little sense of a sustained conversation over time within the society.
These observations suggest that CTS is not a primary affiliation or point of professional identification for many if not all of its leaders, let alone its members. Those active in CTS are also active in a number of other scholarly circles, some of which may be primary in terms of research agenda or ecclesial affiliation. Many members come and go, perhaps attending or presenting at CTS conferences occasionally, or for specific periods within their careers. Research presented at CTS, by the president and by members, most often reflects ideas the refinement and contestation of which has happened elsewhere. Presidents assume, correctly in my view, that in speaking to CTS they are not speaking to “the discipline” as a whole, but rather to a somewhat eclectic group of graduate students, professors, researchers and ministers that either live in proximity to the meetings or who have found institutional support to attend.
The difficulty in identifying themes and trajectories in CTS presidential addresses highlights the occasional character of theological production within this small scholarly society, even in addresses which are prepared specifically for that setting. It is, rather, a sampling, a representation, of theology, but not programmatic or agenda-setting in the way that Gray (2006: 171) judges some SBL presidential addresses, such as Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s on the ethics of interpretation (1988), to have been. Taken together, and with some notable exceptions such as Douglas Harink’s reference to the legacy of George Schner, the CTS addresses do not evidence particularly dynamic, contested, or sustained conversations within the society.
Theological topics appear on the programs of at least two other scholarly societies that hold meetings in conjunction with Congress—the Canadian Society for Study in Religion (CSSR), and the Canadian–American Theological Association (CATA), formerly the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association (CETA). 14 Theological papers at CSSR tend to be philosophical or social scientific in orientation, while those at CATA tend to be evangelical and confessional. While CTS has collaborated with both on joint panels and joint lectures, it also has an opportunity to advance some specific agendas, including the development of theologies in dialogue with Indigenous spiritual traditions, other-than-Christian theologies, and public engagement with theology in Canada. The latter echoes an aspect of CTS’s founding mandate, which in the present era may be realized as a forum for examining the place of theology in public universities, advancing public understanding of the critical and creative potential of theological thinking, and developing theological pedagogies.
One commitment underlying this study of CTS presidential addresses is my contention that theology ought to be more intentional about the concrete particularity of the institutions and communities within which and for which it is produced. A “turn to the particular” has characterized recent theological discourse, especially that which has coalesced around ecclesiology. With respect to ecclesiology, various authors and institutions have advanced the integration of empirical methods, especially ethnography, with theological reflection. 15 That discourse seeks to correct and balance an overly abstract, ideal, and doctrinal approach to the church, with a more human, messy, and grounded account of concrete churches; both the ideal and the concrete are the concern of ecclesiology. The turn to the concrete is a welcome development and ought to be applied to the discourses and practices of a scholarly society.
The agency of CTS as a deliberate community of scholars is most evident in the gender mix of the presidents. There has been a tradition, instituted in the late 1980s, of alternating between men and women as presidents. Thus, even though gender equity does not exist in the discipline of theology in Canada, either among those teaching in post-secondary settings or among those appearing on CTS programs, CTS has been deliberate about women’s voices speaking from positions of elected leadership. The prophetic exhortations of Ellen Leonard and others about the imperative for theology to reflect the voices and experiences of women is being intentionally realized, in part, through the office of CTS president. At the same time, CTS is only beginning to address the overwhelmingly white Euro-Canadian character of its membership and leadership. 16
Conclusion
The preceding analysis has a series of theological presentations for its object, a somewhat more traditional set of theological data than, for example, participant observations. I have not begun to consider many of the profound and mundane factors that determine the kinds of persons who engage in the work of CTS, let alone those who are elected to serve as president. CTS itself is a relatively minor institution within the theological landscape in Canada; preliminary conclusions sketched are in no way definitive about “theology in Canada” but rather, indicative of one disciplined way to take a pulse of the theological agenda in one scholarly setting. An analysis of course syllabi would be an even more instructive means of naming the actual functions and priorities of theology. Yet, as theologians participate in particular theological conversations, they will be well-served by finding disciplined ways of delineating, interpreting, and engaging the discursive and institutional spaces in which they find themselves.
As a volunteer-led society in its seventh decade whose primary activity is an annual academic conference, CTS is unlikely to make major changes in its mandate, membership, or ethos. Nevertheless, on the basis of the analysis above, I make several constructive suggestions to CTS leadership. The society ought to position itself as an important forum for the development of theologies explicitly interpretive of and constructive in response to Canadian contexts. Indigenous–Settler relations, Indigenous theologies, theologies of land, theology and migration, Canadian multiculturalism and other themes will rise in prominence. This is related, in part, to an embrace of the original, implicitly public, mandate of the society to stimulate and promote interest in the study of theology in Canada. A second set of suggestions, while seemingly contradictory, are held together by a call for a more deliberate debate about the nature and scope of theology itself. On the one hand, CTS can foster and support theology’s mandate to speak truly about God, grounded in scriptural frameworks and traditions, even while remaining as attentive as possible to context and experience. On the other hand, CTS already includes members and ought to seek more whose interests extend beyond the boundaries of Christian theology, and should therefore position itself to explore comparative theologies, and theologies and ethical visions of other religious and spiritual traditions. Yet, rather than confessional Christian theology and wider theological discourses proceeding as separate self-contained conversations, this scholarly society ought to promote vigorously critical and constructively engaged encounters among proponents of these approaches. Thus, Jay Newman’s call (1991) for CTS members to find the right words with which to contend with rivals in scholarly and in public settings remains a prescient one.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Appendix—Canadian Theological Society presidential addresses,1990–2016
Full bibliographic information is provided in the list of References. The date on the left indicates the year the address was delivered.
2016: Cristina Vanin. A year with Laudato Si’.
2015: Robert Fennell. Theological foundations for social justice: Another world is possible.
2014: Allen Jorgenson. Beyond Luther’s Imago Dei: Imagining a modest humanity.
2013: Doris Kieser. Death, doodling, and deliverance: A theology of the brokenhearted.
2012: Kathleen Skerrett. Post-secularism and the return of original sin: The wanton, the addict, the pervert, and the deviant.
2011: Lee Cormie. New heaven and new earth.
2010: Alyda Faber. Abundance and wretchedness: Theology as ethics of exposure.
2009: Michael Bourgeois. And so it goes with God? Story and history in Christian theology.
2008: Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd. Shifting identities and the church: A postcolonial challenge to missiology and ministry preparation.
2007: John Franklin. Exploring the threshold: Theology and the aesthetic.
2006: Heather Eaton. The revolution of evolution.
2005: Donald Schweitzer. Aspects of God’s relationship to the world in the theologies of Jürgen Moltmann, Bonaventure and Jonathan Edwards.
2004: Brenda Appleby. Sustaining engaged encounters: Committing oneself to respectful conversations in situations of ethical diversity and conflict.
2003: Eric Beresford. Private words addressed to you in public: Speaking theologically in the context of public policy debates.
2002: Cynthia Crysdale. Crossing boundaries: Virtue or vice for the twenty-first century?
2001: Douglas Harink. “Apocalyptic without reserve”: Relearning theology through the letters of Paul.
2000: Anne Marie Dalton. The challenge of violence: Toward a theology of women’s bodies.
1999: George Schner. Waiting for Godot: Scripture, tradition and church at century’s end.
1998: Harold Wells. The flesh of God: Christological implications for an ecological vision of the world.
1997: Marilyn Legge. Inside communities, outside conventions: What is at stake in doing theology?
1996: Mary Schaefer. Lex orandi, lex credendi: Faith, doctrine and theology in dialogue.
1995: Doris Dyke [neither title nor manuscript is available].
1994: Peter Slater [neither title nor manuscript is available].
1993: James Olthius. Crossing the threshold: Sojourning together in the wild spaces of love.
1992: Pamela Dickey Young. Theology and commitment.
1991: Jay Newman, The theologian’s rivals.