Do you believe every academic discipline should exclude technical language? e.g. Astrophysicists shouldn’t use words like parsec, redshift and singularity. I don’t think Galileo used these words in his writings.
I’m all for calling out deliberate obfuscation, and agree that there’s a lot of it in theology where (it seems to me) unclear writing sometimes reflects unclear thinking, but surely most disciplines evolve their own vocabulary? If you’re discussing Pauline pneumatology it’s useful not to have to write ‘St. Paul’s beliefs about the Holy Spirit’ every time!
My main point is that the whole point about the article is theology and parish life, so you can hardly use technical language if you want to encourage the pews. Yes, I think you should say ‘St Paul’s beliefs about the Holy Spirit/salvation’ when trying to reach a wider audience (the pews or the parish). I could wax lyrical about the tendency of groups to invent and use language which excludes those outside the group, but it should be obvious to everybody? Since when was theology restricted to academics? That is the whole point. Some of you seem to be… Read more »
C.S. Lewis was well known for his insistence on using language that ordinary people could understand (although, being an academic, he was well able to use that language as well). Somewhere in his writings he suggests that every ordination exam should include a requirement to take a passage from a standard book of theology and translate it into non-technical language that ordinary readers could understand. Failure to be able to do this, he says, should mean failing the exam.
I’m wondering why you don’t think ‘doctrine’ and ‘salvation’ are words that are part of the same obscure (in this case Latinate) vocabulary.
And I wonder also how accessible the phrase ‘wax lyrical’ might be to those for whom English is not their first language, or whose reading age is not especially high. We can all attend to our words – and we can all miss the obvious.
Soteriology will be taken seriously when theologians in the academy are found in the posture of the saved, and pneumatology seen as having relevance when the Spirit disrupts the armchair theologian’s comfort.
It seems to me that the point being made is that the professional theologian’s vocabulary is only relevant when it is clearly rooted in the christian experience of salvation and inspiration. He is not using technical jargon, he is talking sensibly about it.
They are completely appropriate words when addressing a blog for people who are ready to take time over such things. Rather beatiful words too
Francis James
10 hours ago
All professions do indulge in jargon, that is true. However, it is well known that jargon & fashionable catchphrases can be used to mask lack of real content, and the less they are used the more thought has gone into the work.
Martin Hughes
6 hours ago
Mind you, the problem is uninterest, not disinterest, a very different thing
Martin Hughes
6 hours ago
I was mentioning on another thread my experience, which has stayed with me for many years, of a fellow student who exploded out of Anglicanism into atheism on discovering the discrepancies between the two accounts of the Incarnation. I wonder if enquiring minds should be a little prepared for the difficulties that they will encounter as they take some steps towards scholarship. Many years later I asked a friendly clergyman who had just preached on John 21 whether the doubts over the status of that chapter should be mentioned and he replied that people get upset if you say things… Read more »
Martin Hughes
5 hours ago
Thank you for drawing attention to Evagrius Ponticus. I’ve looked him up. He doesn’t exactly say that ‘if you pray, you’re a theologian’ though that might indeed be true. He says ‘if you pray truly’ and that means if you pray in the manner he teaches you will be a theologian. This is prayer with a certain detachment of mind and I suppose that to appreciate this teaching you need some existing appreciation, at least at the pop philosophy level, of Plato and the Stoics
Much to commend in Jarel Robinson-Brown’s article.
But he still falls into the trap and uses technical jargon.
Soteriology – doctrine of salvation
Pneumatology – theology of Holy Spirit
I had never come across those words before. I don’t think St Paul used those words when writing Romans.
He must surely have used soteria, neuma, and logos in his writings!
I have no idea, like most I read his writings in English! I thought St Paul also wrote in modern English?
Yes indeed, but he and his readers spoke Greek and those are Greek words. In other words, he used words from the vernacular.
Pneuma?
Indeed.
Do you believe every academic discipline should exclude technical language? e.g. Astrophysicists shouldn’t use words like parsec, redshift and singularity. I don’t think Galileo used these words in his writings.
That’s because Galileo didn’t know about redshifts or singularities, and his estimates of distances to stars were out by several orders of magnitude.
Famously he did know about heliocentrism. Many people would tell you they’ve never heard of that, but would know that the earth goes around the sun.
Commend- approve of
I’m all for calling out deliberate obfuscation, and agree that there’s a lot of it in theology where (it seems to me) unclear writing sometimes reflects unclear thinking, but surely most disciplines evolve their own vocabulary? If you’re discussing Pauline pneumatology it’s useful not to have to write ‘St. Paul’s beliefs about the Holy Spirit’ every time!
My main point is that the whole point about the article is theology and parish life, so you can hardly use technical language if you want to encourage the pews. Yes, I think you should say ‘St Paul’s beliefs about the Holy Spirit/salvation’ when trying to reach a wider audience (the pews or the parish). I could wax lyrical about the tendency of groups to invent and use language which excludes those outside the group, but it should be obvious to everybody? Since when was theology restricted to academics? That is the whole point. Some of you seem to be… Read more »
C.S. Lewis was well known for his insistence on using language that ordinary people could understand (although, being an academic, he was well able to use that language as well). Somewhere in his writings he suggests that every ordination exam should include a requirement to take a passage from a standard book of theology and translate it into non-technical language that ordinary readers could understand. Failure to be able to do this, he says, should mean failing the exam.
I’m wondering why you don’t think ‘doctrine’ and ‘salvation’ are words that are part of the same obscure (in this case Latinate) vocabulary.
And I wonder also how accessible the phrase ‘wax lyrical’ might be to those for whom English is not their first language, or whose reading age is not especially high. We can all attend to our words – and we can all miss the obvious.
What J R-B wrote was
Soteriology will be taken seriously when theologians in the academy are found in the posture of the saved, and pneumatology seen as having relevance when the Spirit disrupts the armchair theologian’s comfort.
It seems to me that the point being made is that the professional theologian’s vocabulary is only relevant when it is clearly rooted in the christian experience of salvation and inspiration. He is not using technical jargon, he is talking sensibly about it.
They are completely appropriate words when addressing a blog for people who are ready to take time over such things. Rather beatiful words too
All professions do indulge in jargon, that is true. However, it is well known that jargon & fashionable catchphrases can be used to mask lack of real content, and the less they are used the more thought has gone into the work.
Mind you, the problem is uninterest, not disinterest, a very different thing
I was mentioning on another thread my experience, which has stayed with me for many years, of a fellow student who exploded out of Anglicanism into atheism on discovering the discrepancies between the two accounts of the Incarnation. I wonder if enquiring minds should be a little prepared for the difficulties that they will encounter as they take some steps towards scholarship. Many years later I asked a friendly clergyman who had just preached on John 21 whether the doubts over the status of that chapter should be mentioned and he replied that people get upset if you say things… Read more »
Thank you for drawing attention to Evagrius Ponticus. I’ve looked him up. He doesn’t exactly say that ‘if you pray, you’re a theologian’ though that might indeed be true. He says ‘if you pray truly’ and that means if you pray in the manner he teaches you will be a theologian. This is prayer with a certain detachment of mind and I suppose that to appreciate this teaching you need some existing appreciation, at least at the pop philosophy level, of Plato and the Stoics