[1] I was intrigued to receive Douglas John Hall's theological autobiography because his is a name I have long been aware of, but about whose life and theology I knew virtually nothing - except from a couple of small things he wrote ages ago. I was conscious that he was a Canadian but other than that I was a tabula rasa when I started reading, and so by reading was asking him to impress himself on me.
[2] I set off into Bound and Free on the western side of the
Atlantic a few days before leaving for new work in England, the
land of my birth and ordination, after three stimulating decades in
the United States as a priest of the Episcopal Church. Bound and
Free became one of my companions on this transitional journey.
Given how stressful such an experience can be, I was anxious
concentration would be difficult, and that I would be stretched
further than an addled mind in motion could bear. My fears were
unfounded, and the experience of reading Douglas John Hall turned
out to be enjoyable in the midst of one of the more trying of
life's episodes.
[3] I have always been attracted to writing with a biographical
flavor so found this, Hall's personal story and theological
journey, engaging and at times challenging. While I am still not be
entirely sure of his aim when he set out to write the book, the
perspectives he brought to his life's journey forced me during an
chapter of great personal change to learn fresh insights from
someone with a different standpoint than my own, and who has
theologically responded to the faith within the culture in ways I
have not.
[4] An influence on my early years in ministry in the 1970s was
the Anglican missionary statesman and evangelical leader Canon Max
Warren. It was Max who encouraged this then wet-behind-the-ears
twentysomething to insure biography and autobiography always
figured prominently in my reading. He believed sensibilities are
sharpened from attempting to discover what shapes a diversity of
lives, and then applying the lessons to our own attitudes and
experiences. Bound and Free fits well into this category. Pondering
Hall through his life and times, and in light of the various
influences that molded his perceptions, I was led to helpful
personal insights, and he helped me unwrap some of the dynamics of
the theological world a couple of decades before I starting
emerging to theological adulthood in the last Sixties and early
Seventies.
[5] However, I have yet to work out what sort of book this is!
Yes, it is autobiographic, but with the twist that Hall's personal
story is interwoven with the consequences of that lifetime spent
exploring the faith, and his yearning for the church today to be
more overtly theological - a conviction with which I heartily
approve. This juxtaposition of storytelling and Hall's theological
odyssey is helpful because it enables the one to enlighten the
other. If the Christian faith has a strong incarnational flavor,
then it should be natural to want see how a theologian's
convictions and the circumstances of his life edify one
another.
[6] Knowing something about Hall's life has helped me understand
his theology, just as when a graduate student I was only able to
make any sense of the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher when I knew
enough about his life to put his seminal thought into context. As a
result, I agree entirely with Hall that there is much happiness to
be found in "the sheer grace of God as it is mediated through the
lives of other people" - whether they are kin or the Augustines,
Luthers, Barths, or Brueggemanns of this world (page 30). By
outlining the context that has shaped him, Hall gives us insights
into both his soul and his personality, and this shed light on his
theologizing.
[7] Then the more I read of Bound and Free the more convinced I
became that I would very much enjoy a day spent in this man's
company. This impression was reinforced by the jolly photo of him
on the back cover. If such a day were ever to happen I suspect
the conversation would be stimulating, we would probably find we
have a lot in common despite the fact he is the best part of twenty
years older than I, but when we got down to the nitty-gritty of
faith, belief, and conviction, then we would have to agree to
differ.
[8] I did not set out with any particular desire to
differentiate myself from Douglas John Hall, but as he outlined his
pilgrim's progress it was easy to see that he had been shaped by
events, people, and ideas that meant that each of us had taken a
significantly differing path. He is right when he says that he has
been "a participating witness in many changes in social, religious,
and ecclesiastical self-understanding, some of them watershed
changes" (page 31), his response having moved him from
neo-orthodoxy down a more 'progressive' road. Under the tutelage of
the likes of Neibuhr and Tillich, he embraced the principles of the
cultural transformation that marked the Fifties and Sixties, and
these became the touchstone against which he still measures what is
going on today.
[9] In this book Hall is giving us an idea of how and why his
Protestant theology has developed as it did, and from this flows
his own pressing concerns about the state of mainline Protestantism
in 21st Century North America (and further afield). But
what troubles me is that he seems to absolutize the principles of
his own more formative years, and then keeps projecting them onto
all that happens and is believed from then on. Early on he writes,
"one does not become a serious theologian until one has experienced
the freedom to pursue the promptings of the divine Spirit without
always looking over one's shoulder to see whether 'the authorities'
approve" (page 18). I think I know what he means, but wonder
whether he actually ever managed to disentangle himself from those
'authorities' who were his own mentors and teachers.
[10] I scribble in the margins of books as part of my own debate
with the author, and flicking through my copy of Bound and Free I
find myself increasingly drawing attention to Hall's willingness to
sit loose to more catholic understandings of cardinal Christian
doctrine in favor of the insights of those who shaped him. On page
119, for example, where he talks about what he believes is
centuries of misunderstanding of sin, I write that his grasp of sin
seems to owe more to Paul Tillich than it does to Scripture. On
that same page he also shows a distinct distaste with any theory of
the atonement that might have a substitutionary flavor.
[11] Indeed, throughout the book there is more than a touch of
disdain toward those whose understanding of the nature and
authority of Scripture was until relatively recently in the
mainstream of Christian, and especially Protestant, believing. I
get this sense that Hall would be genuinely pained if you told him
such a thing to his face, but there lurking in the background is
the implication that if you are going to delve deeply into the
Christian faith and its relationship with the culture and the world
around it, then inevitably you are going to move beyond more
historic understandings of the faith - which he assumes are held
because they have been inadequately examined.
[12] Reading this book was a bit like watching a movie whose
soundtrack is not quite in sync with the pictures on the screen. I
often found myself having to double back and reread something
because as I had gone along I realized that while Hall was using
the same words I would, often meaning something different by them.
I put this down to the fact that Hall reads the Christian story
through the lens of the mid-Twentieth Century, and is willing to
embrace the perceptions that grew from this approach to
believing.
[13] Hall wants to get back to this as the golden age of
theology. This is not far enough back, for I would suggest that if
we are to abide by Reformational principles then the most cogent is
that of ad fontes, returning to the roots, which are the Scriptures
themselves - and the Scriptures seen within the context of insights
and interpretation that have grown up through the Fathers,
Reformers, and in every intervening century.
[14] I love Douglas John Hall's passion for life and theology. I am sure that if I met him I would delight in him as a person. However, this book leads me to the conclusion that theologically he is trapped in a bit of a time warp.
© May 2008
Journal of Lutheran Ethics
Volume 8, Issue 5