Abstract
For those who knew Elizabeth Templeton, this collection will not disappoint – and for those encountering her for the first time, undoubtedly it will stimulate and delight. Elizabeth was something of an enigma. She was unknown in much of the wider academic theological community, since she was effectively a freelance theologian with a modest output in monographs. Perhaps best known is her first book, The Nature of Belief, published under her maiden name, Elizabeth Maclaren. In Scotland, internationally and in ecumenical circles, she was well known, and she was one of a small number of non-Anglicans invited to address the Lambeth Conference twice – in 1988 by Robert Runcie and in 2008 by Rowan Williams.
Alongside Hulbert and Matheson, the book has five subeditors covering its six sections. Richard Holloway introduces six pieces on Christ and culture. Templeton’s refusal to disengage with the world is paramount here. She writes of the ‘dialectical art of theology’ and throughout this entire volume her spirited style and originality in content breathe through the text. The most swashbuckling piece here is her open letter to Professor Tom Torrance, castigating him for his ‘sclerotic articles’. She notes her profound debt to Torrance – ‘you spoke unforgettably about the generality of the Incarnation as God’s catching up our humanity into his own life, embracing, judging and transforming us’ (p. 19) – but later she notes: ‘the God of these articles is so much less generous and flexible and world-loving than the God you helped me to find credible’ (p. 22). This whole section sets the scene for Templeton’s world-embracing theological creativity.
Charlotte Methuen introduces the next section: ‘Making sense of theology’. In autobiographical snippets we read of Templeton’s own periods of agnosticism. Referring to apologetics, she points to the need to step firmly into unbelievers’ shoes: apologetics is as important to us ourselves as to others! Her means of engagement with those outside the theological academy is attractive too, including a belief game of ‘snakes and ladders’. Tim Duffy introduces ‘The common life’. On the significance of ‘faith and order’, Templeton notes that such theological reflection is there to articulate ‘how this common life is not accident or mere human construct, but gift and invitation … in the communion of God’s own life’ (p. 109). She is sharply critical of the yawning gap, still unbridgeable, between ‘faith and order’ and ‘life and work’ in the World Council of Churches and elsewhere. Her quotations from other thinkers and poets are both surprising and illuminating.
Alastair Hulbert edits the section specifically focusing on ecumenism. There are moments here and elsewhere where Templeton can lapse into an assumed and uncritical liberalism: her sermon commenting on the WCC Canberra Assembly comes close to this. Elsewhere, however, she is anything but accepting of tired liberalism. Her address to the 1988 Lambeth Conference is challenging and highly original. She offers a critique of the regular Anglican diet of Scripture, tradition and reason but also applauds a stronger embracing of dispersed authority. Lesley Orr introduces the penultimate collection on ‘Living, loving and dying’. Her introduction to the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly’s report on sexuality is superb, but her summary of the Hastie lectures is too compressed and concise to be useful. On bereavement, in the context of sexuality and spirituality, she leaves us with the quote of this volume: ‘Hearsay though it is, I want to affirm that dying of a broken heart is an appropriate response to the death of someone loved.’ Finally, Rowan Williams’ epilogue introduces ‘On being the Church’. Here, another classic address to Anglicans offers sharp challenge, while ‘The weakness we are learning’, an essay beginning with Alasdair Maclean’s incomparable poem, encourages dialogue with paganism and points to the implications of postmodernism for theology and the Churches.
Templeton’s life included more than its own fair share of tragedy, as we learn – sufficient to leave anyone broken-hearted. For the rest of us, part of that tragedy was to lose Elizabeth from our number at what we now consider to be a prematurely young age: at least we have this casket of theological treasures bequeathed to us.