Reading Theology

Abstract

In what follows, I want to consider some aspects of the nature and functions of theology, and in particular to reflect on the ways in which theological thinking is informed by reading the enduring textual deposit of the Christian tradition. The act of reading has, of course, lost some of its innocence at the hands of modem theorists: what we might once have considered a relatively uncomplicated affair is now-rightly-an object of busy scrutiny, literary-critical, hermeneutical, philosophical, socio-political. A theological inquiry into the nature of reading is both necessary and lacking (recent Christian “readerresponse” theory, for example, says almost nothing theological about what readers and reading are). But my present concerns are more restricted. Here I want to try to make a theological case for giving high profile to texts in the intellectual life of the Church. However, I want to begin somewhat tangentially, by reflecting on a couple of passages which are central to the philosophical rather than the theological canon of modernity.