Reshaping the teaching of theology

Approximately five hundred years ago, Juan Luis Vives, a revered Renaissance namesake, in his treatise “De disciplinis”, wrote” complained vividly about the state of the subjects at the university of his time and saw the need for reform. Improvement is always necessary, and today as well.

Some limitations and shortcomings of academic life

Academic life has virtues and defects. Like all things human, it has the virtues of its flaws and the flaws of its virtues. If I am very nice, I may also be quite slow. And if I am a very efficient and executive person, I may not be very nice.

The great virtue of academic life is that it gathers, synthesizes and transmits knowledge, which is an extraordinary benefit. But it always does so in a limited way; first of all, because of the difficulties of human transmission, which is not done by cable, but from person to person, requiring on the one hand to explain oneself well and, on the other, to have the desire to learn, and the minimum intellectual skills to understand and treasure what is received, as well as to be able to pay attention to it. This is not so obvious today.

There is another important academic flaw, well expressed in a famous quote from Albert CamusBefore, philosophers thought about truth, now people think about philosophers“ (note in ”Notebooks“ at the end of 1935). In fact, Camus comments there on a phrase of Étienne Gilson: ”The search for truth has been replaced by the history of philosophy“. It is the passage from direct language to indirect language. When the testimony of truth disappears in the classroom, because we no longer speak of the truth of things, but only of the (indirect) truth of what one or the other has said about things.

In fact, all subjects tend to acquire a historical form with their more or less standard programs (because they copy each other a lot): their obligatory references, their topics of historical discussion, their best-known authors. All these more or less simplified materials become clichés, which are repeated as in a primer, generally losing their connection with the real basis that gave rise to them. The virtue of accumulating erudition brings with it the defect of losing real connection.

In philosophy, ethics and logic are very notable examples. When ethics is taught, it is no longer intended, as Socrates intended, that people improve, but only that they learn the historical contents of the subject. And the same thing happens when teaching logic: it is not intended that the student acquires thinking and synthesis skills, but only that he learns the history and topics of the subject. Of course, it is not excluded that, by some unknown path, this may help him to be better or to think better, but this is not what is consciously intended in teaching.

The case of theology

In the case of theology, academic practices also invite a certain asepsis. To remain in historical affirmations that are, or seem to be, more certain and “objective”, because affirmations of faith can seem to be personal opinions, of a private nature and not sufficiently justified. For example: it is certain that St. Augustine believed and spoke a lot about the Trinity. But I do not need to confess that I believe in the Trinity to deal with this historical topic. It may even seem more rigorous and scholarly for me to limit myself exclusively to historical and objective statements about what he said. St. Augustine on this topic.

In reality, the affirmations of faith are by no means “private”, but are possessed by the Church, by divine revelation and assistance, which has historical foundations. But this can be difficult to accept by those who do not have faith, of whom there are many in academic life. It is not strange, therefore, that in many places, “objective” or historical (and indirect) teachings are preferred. But theology, as is repeated without problem in introductory courses, is defined as the “Science of faith”. Consequently, where faith is not present, there is no theology, but religious thought or history of ideas. And this happens in many faculties.

Like philosophy, theology also has paradoxes in its scholastic traditions. For example, Christian morality can be defined as “living in Christ,” and this is the title of this section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. But moral subjects are not designed for the student to learn to live in Christ or to follow him, which is the way of Christian morality. Nor are they intended for them to become teachers of this path for others. They are designed to transmit the history of the subjects, with their historical references and problems, which have shaped these subjects.

The matter is more shocking with the core subjects. The subject on God or the Trinity is not generally designed to really introduce one to the mystery of God, which would lead to fascination and adoration, but rather conveys the set of historical problems that this subject has accumulated in its history. Something that rather distances than brings us closer to the mystery. And the same happens with the subjects on Jesus Christ: they are not oriented to the adherence of faith to his person, but to the knowledge of the problems, which, with the passing of the years, are more and more, and tend to occupy all the space of the subject. By the way, some of the last preaching of Raniero Cantalamessa (17.III.2023), who knew how to make a living theology, are very luminous in this sense.

Manuals and manualistics

The University was born with theology. And the subjects of theology that we know today took shape gradually from the sixteenth century when the “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas was used as a textbook. Francisco de Vitoria began to use it in Salamanca in 1526. As the “Summa” is so extensive, the commentary extended over several courses. And the topics into which the “Summa” is divided were distributed by courses. Thus, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the separation of the areas of theology and the agenda and topics of each subject was established, and the manuals of each subject were written. And so they have reached the twentieth century. This can be called manualistic theology.

That theology, in force until the fifties of the twentieth century, had a very clear method. It thought, like Aristotle, that truth is formulated in propositions, in theses. The manuals were presented in a very orderly manner by subject and each subject had its theses; that is, affirmations of faith that were sustained and proved with arguments of theological authority: recourse to Scripture and tradition and above all to the Magisterium, represented especially by the famous compendium written by Enrico Denzinger, a basic reference book. Each subject provided an ordered set of proven theses. It was a rigorous method, even if it was used in a somewhat stereotyped way.

Generally, they were presented as manuals made “ad mentem Sancti Thomae”, according to the mind of St. Thomas. That is, they did not necessarily represent the exact thought of St. Thomas, but something done in his own way. The manuals were quite similar because they copied each other a lot. They had a rigorous method (somewhat simplified), and were doctrinally sound, orderly, summarized (somewhat skeletal) and quite didactic, but dull and with few cultural and contextual references.

Changes in education

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the theology of the Church Fathers was rediscovered, biblical studies were developed, historical studies were enriched and theological reflection developed immensely. It was a very rich and abundant material with other perspectives. The old manuals could not incorporate it and disappeared everywhere, leaving large gaps, which were filled more or less improvised. Syntheses and renovations are not improvised, they take centuries.

Many manuals have already been written, but they still do not include or summarize the enormous richness of the theology of the 20th century, nor do they have a rigorous method that justifies the construction of the subjects, apart from general considerations. Besides, in the 20th century, some subjects have been added, which are now indispensable. For example, fundamental theology, ecclesiology, ecumenism and the theology of the liturgy, in addition to all the biblical, patristic and historical subjects (history of the Church, history of theology).

There is a debate going on right now in the Church as to whether it might not be better to go back to just St. Thomas and, in general, to the Church of the 1950s. But it is a utopian option, for many reasons. Staying only in the field of theology, it can be said, first, that the above was a rather retouched St. Thomas. Secondly, that St. Thomas would have chosen, without hesitation, to incorporate the “new” contributions, as he did in his day, gathering the best from everywhere.

If we want to do a theology “ad mentem sancti Thomae” today, we must do what he did and with the discernment of faith with which he did it. In reality, “going backwards” is unfeasible. The faith of the Church has its reference in Christ, who is its foundation and cornerstone, that is its fidelity, but, in the rest, it adapts itself to the circumstances and needs of the time. It happened in the time of St. Thomas and it is logical that it also happens now.

The challenges of synthesis

The immense amount of “new” material brings us to another aspect of the problem: it is necessary to build subjects that have the proportion of the student. That is to say, one cannot offer an immense, accumulated and disintegrated erudition. The average learning abilities of students are the measure of what can be offered in all subjects and in education as a whole, as Ortega y Gasset brilliantly proposed in his lucid lecture on “The Mission of the University”. We must also take into account new challenges, such as the massive use of artificial intelligence and students' attention deficits, which require more dynamic and direct teaching.

Syntheses do not happen by themselves and it is not enough to accumulate the material. It requires a lot of work and a sense of proportion. Among other things, theology today must have, as has been said, a more testimonial and personal tone aimed at helping the listener to increase his Christian adherence (faith) and to be able to propose it to a world that has moved away (evangelization).

Specialization

The new academic demands for specialization, which have come from the area of positive sciences, add new difficulties, which are new challenges. The positive sciences deal with matter which is very divisible into quite clear fields, although they are all related to each other because the whole universe is made of the same thing and in a single process. But there is room for a very high degree of specialization.

The human sciences, such as psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics, linguistics, the sciences of religions or ethnography, do not function in the same way. Nor do the humanities: history, literature, fine arts, philosophy and theology. Because they are not based on extensive matter, but are the work and expression of the human spirit. They require a good knowledge of a philosophical or humanistic anthropology, in order to adequately take into account the human phenomena proper to each discipline. And they cannot be cultivated without syntheses and very strong overall visions.

The spirit is much more intense and concentrated than matter. If you don't know a little of everything and in a synthetic way, you can't go deeper into anything. It is only in the historical and physical aspects that one can concretize as much as one wants. To do rigorously the history of the economy in a village of the XVIIIth century, almost no overview is necessary (although it will be a poor history). I remember having seen (with perplexity) a doctoral thesis on the movement of the Teruel food market in 10 years of the 19th century. The economy has something to do with the movement of sacks in warehouses, but it depends much more on the movement of ideas and aspirations in human heads.

In the case of theology, unity is even more necessary. For, as is repeated in all the introductions to theology, “theology is one” because it is based on revelation and its history, and the center of revelation, and therefore of faith, is Jesus Christ our Lord. As Romano Guardini so happily showed in his book “The Essence of Christianity”, there is nothing Christian (nor properly theological) if it does not refer directly to the Lord. It is an essential question of method.

We have given the example of the Trinitarian theology of St. Augustine. To work on it alone (specialization) it is not really necessary to have faith. It is enough to gather quotations from St. Augustine and from the infinite secondary literature that has dealt with the subject. But if this reflection is not based on living faith in Jesus Christ, it does not leave the realm of the history of religious thought.

The four references that form the framework for reformulating the method and teaching of theology today:

• to the immense theological wealth contributed in the 19th and 20th centuries;
• to the center of theology, which is faith in Jesus Christ;
• to the student's possibilities for learning;
• and to the needs of Christian life and of the evangelization.