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The Future of Christian Theology

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

This is a challenging and stimulating book, but I suspect more for the theological student than the practising minister in a pastoral setting. That may be a pity because Ford writes eloquently and passionately about the practice of theology in the twenty-first century. He claims to write for the ‘theologically interested reader’ and not just the academic and his stated aim is to see how theology in the current climate can be creative and wise.

The words ‘creative’ and ‘wise’ certainly sum up Ford himself as lecturer and writer. I enjoyed his view of both the Bible and theology as ‘story’ and ‘event’ that embraces both a narrative and the great themes of light and life, power and glory. He writes of the key place of affirmations of faith and of the questioning and exploring which must go alongside them, and I was struck by the insistence that our affirming of faith depends on the prior speaking of the divine voice. He rightly demonstrates that this is not solely an individual enterprise, but that that there is a collegiality in our conversations – in the church, in the way that they are expressed and lived out in society and in our engagement with other faiths. A paragraph in this chapter provides a good example of Ford’s eloquent style: “The task of a Christian inter-faith theology is therefore first of all to be a genuinely Christian theology that has attended to other faiths…The effects of this attentiveness are often hard to identify, but it is also evident when this dimension is lacking” (p. 143).

We would do well to heed Ford’s advice in his chapter 9 on “Becoming a Theologian” where he counsels: read and re-read slowly; be apprenticed to wise readers and reflect on yourself as a reader (p.174-5).

There is plenty to reflect and meditate on in this book. It would feed the mind and gladden the spirit of a minister who took a day out of a busy pastoral ministry to stop and think, and it might just do some good to do that.