Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Bringing Theology to Life

Serendipity always makes me wonder why – where and what is the gift of the present moment? Where is the invitation? Aussie blogging friend Simon Carey Holt reflects on the kind of theology that it “practically impractical”, and more significantly (and this is the serendipitous moment for me) he references one of the most influential books I’ve read, Robert J. Banks’ Redeeming the Routines: Bringing Theology to Life. My copy being the original Australian published edition, titled All the Business of Life: Bringing Theology Down to Earth (1987). This PDF of the outline of a course that Banks is facilitating later this year in Singapore gives you a good sense of his theological range.  

“Banks,” Simon notes, “addresses the struggle of theologians to get really practical: 

‘A theological analysis of an issue may be clear and accurate, but what about the prescription for dealing with it? All too often this is very general. Only rarely will the theologian provide an operational model for what might be done and offer practical recommendations or examples drawn from first-hand experience. We are left up in the air, tantalized by a vision of what is possible, but without the means of realising it.’ (Robert Banks)… 

Banks again:

‘If you ask a representative sample of churchgoers whether faith and life ought to be in harmony, they will answer with a resounding ‘yes’. The rub comes when you put the question in a specific way, in relation to a particular aspect of work or area of responsibility. For example, if you are a homemaker and I ask you whether your religious convictions should influence the way you bring up your family and relate to your neighbours, you will probably nod your head in agreement. But then if I ask you whether these convictions have as clear and direct an influence on the kind of house you have, area you live in and the means of commuting you use, you will probably pause to think.’ 

Simon continues: “When it comes to practice, perhaps theologians–perhaps all of us–struggle to get particular because to do so scrapes too closely to the bone…” 

There’s a lot of Banks’ approach in how I think Simon does theology. Like Banks, Simon “exegetes the
everyday biblically” and over the years I’ve gotten the sense that Banks has been both a friend and a mentor to Simon as he’s worked “between the two horizons of Word and world.” 

If you’ve never read Banks you should. Start with the book highlighted above. And, if you can secure a copy, read the Simon Holt and Gordon Preece edited festschrift The Bible and the Business of Life (the Amazon link has the “look inside” option so you can see the contents page etc), an outstanding collection of essays written to mark Bank’s 65^th birthday. Simon and Brenda (not “Benda” as the typo in the author attribution suggests), his wife, have a wonderful jointly written essay titled: Verandah’s and God: A Personal Reflection on Spirituality and the Built Environment. Its great!

You can read Simon's full post, here.  

The Prophets and the Environment

I received an interesting set of notes recently: the Eco-Justice Notes. It features a reflection that links Walter Brueggemann’s reading of “The Prophets” to environmental and ecological issues. It’s worth a read. It’s written by Paul & Jane Barru. Here’s an excerpt: 

“…Walter Brueggemann gives us that gift in his brand-new book, "The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word." Brueggemann breaks open a reading of prophetic oracles where unavoidable consequences are more important than direct punishment. 

In this fresh reading, the bad news of the prophets is not that God will come in a dramatic and unexpected way to smite us, but rather that God will not intervene to protect us from the inherent consequences of our pervasive sin. 

Such a prophetic word about consequences is painfully relevant in this time of ecological devastation. We know full well what we are doing wrong -- warping the climate, polluting the biosphere, destroying habitat and pushing species into extinction, exhausting scarce resources, exploiting livestock and workers, seeking our own comfort and privilege at any cost to our neighbors or descendents. 

The biblical style of prophecy tells us the distressing news that, when we so blatantly violate God's intention for creation, the expected consequences will follow. 

Brueggemann writes about the prophetic "therefore" which connects cause and effect, "a connectedness that dominant imagination believes, with its power and wisdom and wealth, it can overcome." He draws examples -- from Hosea, Amos, Micah and Isaiah -- where, in legal terms: 

‘The 'therefore' stands between an indictment and a sentence. The indictment is a recital of the commandments that have been violated ... The sentence concerns the dismantling of creation. ... The daring 'therefore' makes a connection that depends on a robust creation theology. The argument is that a violation of the commandments of Sinai results in the collapse of creation.’ 

The "therefore" expresses a creation theology because it recognizes the interconnectedness of all of creation, of humans and the rest of creation together. It proclaims that all of creation is ordered and structured to work well within the shape of God's shalom, and that it will not function when shalom is violated…” 

You can read the complete reflection here. 

Theology: "Self-consciously and robustly Christian, and comfortable in its own Christian skin"

This from a recent issue of the UK publication Anvil, part of an interview with theologian Miroslav Volf:

“Anvil. What do you see as the future trends or trajectories of theology — particularly from a global perspective?

Miroslav Volf. I don’t know, I don’t pretend to be a prophet. First, I would like to see theology be self-consciously and robustly Christian, and comfortable in its own Christian skin, not be defensive, but celebratory, highlighting the beauty of the one who lies at the centre of Christian theology, Christ who is “the key,’ as my colleague Kathryn Tanner argues in her recent book. At the same time, I would like to see theology open to learning from others, secular thinkers and thinkers from other religions. Second, I hope that theology will pick up real issues that move people, that touch their lives, that express both their afflictions and their aspirations. I hope theology could take critical issues of the day up and shed on them the light of the Gospel. It ought to foster knowledge and love of God and neighbour, and make it plausible that such life is a life of true human flourishing…”

 

Hunger, Love and the Postmodern Apocalypse.

I found fascinating a short reflection by Carl Raschke, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver, and who writes regularly on religion, Christianity, culture, and postmodernism. He’s titled it: Hunger and Love - The Logic of "Late Capitalism" Unwinds into the Postmodern Apocalypse. 

Here’s some excerpts: 

"...In Civilization and its Discontents – a text that figures such as Derrida and Deleuze, for example, tend to cite – Freud sums up what might be called the “secular eschatological” implications of his lifelong work with the following quote from the German poet Schiller: “hunger and love serve as the gearworks of the world.”  

… Our increasing consumption and production of “significations” rather than material commodities - i.e., Baudrillard’s distinction between the “hyperreal” and the real – would solve that problem, so we were told… 

… Baudrillard a generation ago playfully characterized the hyperreal as the order of “processing simulacra”, of self-generating significations in the form of commodity images, fantasies, political and social ideas, collective idealizations, and so forth.  He argued that these idealizations take on a life of their own, and that we become increasingly unaware that they do not somehow rest on any tangible base stratum of things, a theme popularized in such movies as The Truman Show and The Matrix.   

But, more importantly, we do not recognize their generative and addictive power to guarantee what our senses assume is “really” real.  Hence, the expression “hyperreal”, which according to Baudrillard is “more real than real.”    The triumph of hyperreality in our time can thus be considered a reversal of the old order of repressed desires, which Freud diagnosed, in the sense that their purely virtual character now function as a whole new form of “repression” or unconsciously displaced meaning… 

… The “crisis” Marx predicted [in Capital], which actually did not come ironically until the early twenty-first century after communism itself had crashed and burned, would be a result, Jameson implied, not so much of the complete “immiseration” of the working class through capitalist expropriation of the value of their labor, but the transmogrification of labor itself into aesthetic trivialities and human consciousness itself into a whirl of  frivolous enjoyments (think mall shopping or cable television), the endless production of new commodified intensities propelled by insatiable sexual appetites (think contemporary art and internet porn),  the raising of compulsive triviality and narcissistic emptiness to the level of the pseudo-sublime (think Facebook)… 

…As the slow motion apocalypse of the global system of empty significations (i.e., “late capitalism”) gathers momentum, hunger returns.    Not only the hunger for food, but the hunger for significations that are not hyperrealities, that are not pure differentia.  A hunger for a meaningfulness that is truly transformative and “sustainable”… 

…We pollute our spirits with the subtle hyperrealities we have no idea are no longer real at all.  The love of God satisfies the hunger and environmental hysteria of the postmodern soul, but it is a love that does not come through the endless natterings of the “symbolic order,” let alone the political as well as the religious preachers of completely virtualized fantasies of a new heaven and earth, of a redemption that can be carried out through out through social media theater, through nothing but private and collective gestures, posturing, or signifying inanities. 

 The apocalypse that is at hand is the apocalypse of a real God who really loves us and really loves through the real love that we show in deeds rather than our gestures, our placing of our hearts along with our bodies in the space of those who desire love, who desire intimacy, closeness, and relationship.  The love of God is inseparable from the love of neighbor (and even more so the love of child, spouse, significant other).  

The second commandment is no Baudrillardian simulacrum.  The true parousia of Christ (“Behold, I am coming soon”) is not “deferred” Derridean avenir. 

Hunger and love.  The real is relational and the relational is real.   It is NOW!” 

You can read Raschke’s complete article here. 

Liminal Spaces and the Healing-Transformative Work

Andrew from Australia, a good friend, brought Alan Niven to dinner on Saturday evening. We hadn’t met Alan before and we all had a wonderful evening: great food, great wine, and great conversation. Both Andrew and Alan are paid theologians – both have a very practical bent to what they do; both are engaged in the ordinary and the every day. Alan’s focus is: “Pastoral and Family Studies. His teaching covers ministry formation, pastoral care and counselling, marriage and family studies, grief and loss, violence and abuse, preaching and worship, and pastoral leadership…” 

Cambridge has become a fascinating “way station” over the years – some wonderful people have dropped in. Two more did on Saturday. 

Any, here’s an excerpt from a short essay Alan wrote a little while ago: 

“…A liminal moment in ritual is created when you separate yourself from the ‘known’, the group you were part of, or the state of being you were comfortable in, and participate in and perform a ritual action. Following this action we re- enter, are reincorporated into or rejoin whatever the social system was, but we are now different. 

Pastoral theological reflection is... 

Such reflection is that liminal moment where you are aware of theory on the one hand, and you can feel the practice in your memory in almost a “body” way (for the senses and emotions are all there) yet you have suspended judgment because you have not yet allowed them to dance together to form something new - either a reframed theory or an amended practice. They must affect and inform each other. 

It’s more than a cognitive-behavioural exercise because liminal space is the arena and playground for God and the space where ministry and Christian identity begin to form and firm up. It is the point where we are most accessible, vulnerable, open, resistantly receptive (the paradox I have used illustrates that we still have choices and God is not in the business of coercing us) or obviously wrestling with some new truth which is beginning to dawn. 

We may use prompts like: 

“What’s going on for you now?” What’s being challenged here?” “What might be behind the -- anger, pain, tears, clenched fists, quiet silence, smile, resigned sigh or whatever?”

These will be the instruments that sift, probe, dig, or scrape, in the liminal moments where theory collides with, or sneaks alongside, practice or vice versa. 

There are potentially huge shifts within this liminal space: 

Anger at the stubborn Elder can become the signpost towards a growing compassion for the old worn out paddock bull who (God forbid!) may just be as insecure as we are:

Assertiveness can be sown in the fertile ground of, surprise surprise, confessions of weakness and failure rather than strength;

The long, bitter curse of infertility may be reframed as the cross of vocational blessing. 

[Loneliness, as an example, becomes an invitation not to make others responsible, but rather to discover your deepest self; to reconnect with the real you – instead of running away from that conversation. Invitations to transformation and growth are embedded in all human experiences. Alan's reflection argues for that reality – Paul] 

Theological reflection therefore creates the space for grace where theory meets practice…” 

While wordier, the way I’d articulate the last sentence is “reflection (including theological)… slowing down, meeting with a counselor or spiritual director, writing, sharing with a friend (the list goes on) creates space (Rowan Williams might call it “breathing space” cf his wonderful contemplative reflection: Writing in the Dust: After September 11) for grace and the ordinary and the everyday to be woven together, and the deep (and often quiet) transformative work to be done.  

You can read Alan’s full essay –  “Just Do It”: Misreading Nike – Why Liminal Moments in Theological Reflection Have to be so Painful (2 pages / PDF) here. 

We Need More Theology, Not Less

“A genuine Christian radicalism cannot be built upon woolliness of belief, vague liberalism, or the assumption that theology and dogma do not matter. Theology is highly toxic and nothing could be more disastrous for Christian rebels than the kind of ‘theological striptease’, which divests itself of as much belief as possible. When we are confronting monsters, we need all the theological and spiritual resources we can get. We need more theology, not less” (p.76).

Kenneth Leech, Anglican Priest. Taken from “English Rising” in Prayer and Prophecy.

If you weren't familiar with Leech, I'd recommend Prayer & Prophecy (link above) and Leech's own 1992 published (62-page) Subversive Orthodoxy (if you can track down a copy) as starting points. All of the themes in Subversive Orthodoxy are grounds in his practice, and weave themselves through all of his books in one form or another. 

 

Mission, the Limitations of Descriptors, and Sexuality

Jonny Baker recently drew attention to a paper written by good friend Steve Taylor. “…A delightful piece on the emerging church” Jonny declares! (here). And he’s right; it’s a really good piece of thinking & writing. 

It gets at some important issues and questions around church and the way churches change, adapt, engage culture, and “make do” in culture. It gets at the importance and significance of “translatability… [as] the characteristic One-size does not fit all. So, Steve highlights Andrew Jones belief that “the emerging church actually comes in [at least – I think there’s more permutations - Paul] “ten different types” (here). Damn, I’m disappointed I missed Andrew and only discovered later that he was only 20-minutes drive from where I live!). It could have been a meeting of a tallskinnykiwi & a shorter, stockier prodigalkiwi. 

It underlined for me some important issues, and the need for some comments I made last week in a meeting I was a part of. Comments, in part, around my not liking the term “fresh expressions” of church because of the tendency it has to back conversations into a corner; and our tendency to simply "import" it into a very different context without a missiological and interdisciplinary contextual framework native to this land and its cultures. More to unpack, but not in the limited space available in this blog post. 

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from Steve’s paper (and his post plus an update since the original) and I hope you’ll read it, reflect on, and talk about the implications that flow from it for the Church (in the West) more generally, and for your own denomination and local expression of church. 

Steve writes, under the following sub-heading:

Emerging Church? 

…Garry Deverell, in the August 2009 edition of Cross Purposes, in an article titled “‘Emerging’ Church and ‘Alternative’ Worship” [PDF], began a discussion on the relationship between the emerging church and the Uniting Church. He offered a thoughtful and thorough response to the work of one emerging church thinker, a visitor to Australia named Wolfgang Simpson… 

The question raised by the emerging church is thus not, Is the emerging church a new slice of the denominational pie? Nor can it be a misplaced desire to return to peel of layers in order to return to some pristine version of the “original, early church pie”. Rather, the emerging church is shaped by the question of what form— in our unique environment, the season that is this new millennium—the church will take. [Brian] McLaren also notes that just as new rings  [like the rings of a tree] can only be built on existing rings, so the future of the church, and of each denomination, can only be built on its uniquely ecclesial history… 

What Brian McLaren’s image does is invite us to move beyond ecclesial pigeonholing and instead to consider the question: What does it mean for (______________insert denomination) to emerge (grow a unique ring) in this current season? Which, it seems to me, is the question that is the heart of what it means to be Uniting (as against a “United” church). We are charged with an open commitment to “emerge”, always, in light of the unique history that is the Uniting Church in Australia. 

Global Church in History?

However, one concern with McLaren’s metaphor needs to be named. It is a warning heard in the writings of English theologian Colin Gunton, who wrote:

In the West ... ecclesiological discussion in our time nearly always centres on, or degenerates into, disputes about clergy and bishops, the result being that the question of the nature or being of the Church is rarely allowed to come into view. 

In other words, while for the first thousand years of the life of church, the church actually found emerging expression in three continents—Asia, Europe and Africa—it has been too easy for most Western discussion of the church to simply draw a straight line from Jerusalem to Rome to Europe…” 

So ends the quote from Steve’s essay, however, also worth a read, and in the same issue of Cross Purposes as Steve’s article is an excellent one by William ('Bill') Loader focusing on Sexuality in the World of Jesus and the Future. The methodological link is closer to Steve’s essay than you might think.

Here’s the last section of Loader’s piece: 

“…I have chosen to focus on the issues of sexuality more familiar to most, leaving much unsaid about the rest, including economic exploitation of sex whether through pornography or prostitution, including the sex trade and effective slavery; issues of nudity in practice and art; abortion, surrogacy, fertility treatments, opposition to contraception, undoing the mistake of a celibate priest- hood, and much more I acknowledge that for some the reaffirmation of ancient prohibitions provides stability and security in a constantly changing world where human reassessments rarely escape human foibles and fallibilities. I am not persuaded that the old cloth is adequate to mend the new patches, though, if I may play with the symbols, 

I think the old wine is more than worth preserving I have argued, indeed, that there are insights embedded in our ancient heritage which actually do us good service in deconstructing its own strictures which survive on its ancient landscape and enable us to rebuild on our own, sometimes reaffirming the old, sometimes of necessity reconstructing to incorporate new materials which new knowledge and life experience bring. The future is then best served, neither in re-erecting ancient tents and tenets, nor in bulldozing the past into oblivion, but in engaging and embracing our tradition, as much as we do in our liturgies and sacred rites and sermons, to remain connected to what drives and inspires them, and that, not as nostalgia, but in the faith that the God who meets us when we are most in touch with love calls us into the future with hope. Then the future of Christianity is likely to be also good news for sexuality, a goal its story has but rarely achieved…”

 

(Organisational) Culture and Unreflective Cultural Formation

Today I want to hold together two separate ‘reflections’ by two different people. One ‘reflection’ is from an interview; the other is from a recent blog post. 

First up, Len Hjalmarson (from this post): 

“…Reading a dissertation last week and reflecting again on the nature of culture. One of the biggest impacts on my thinking about the Gospel in the past few years was prompted by reflecting on the nature of culture – thanks in part to writers like James K.A. Smith, Charles Taylor, and even Derrida and Simone Weil. When we answer the question, “what is culture” and then “what is God’s relationship to culture” we begin to shape lenses and assumptions that impact the way we approach and read Scripture…

…I’m thinking this morning about Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership. Schein defines organizational culture as “a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaption and internal integration, that worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems” (Schein 2004:17).

When Schein consults with an organization to analyze its culture, a critical step prior to attempting to lead change, he moves through three different layers. He starts with the top layer – the artifacts – those elements of culture that are easy to observe but hard to interpret. Next, he examines the stated values of the organization. These values are “stated,” because it is a rare organizational culture that always lives out its ideals…

…Schein recognized that values are our aspirations, but may not yet cohere with the group’s basic underlying assumptions. These tacit assumptions, then, are the group’s culture and ethos. They represent the third layer – the roots. The roots are underground, hidden until — what? Until we examine our practices. We measure our practices against our stated values. When these two do not cohere – when they disagree – we can make a reasonable guess that our operating assumptions need to be examined. Pull up the roots. What is really growing down there? It’s at this level that ideas like Charles Taylor’s on “social imaginary” become very helpful. (Or Colin Greene’s thoughts in Metavista – what are our core narratives? James K A. Smith has been working at this level in his books)…” 

And the second is from the aforementioned Jamie Smith (you can read the full interview here): 

“…I guess I’m working on multiple fronts.  A lot of my work has been on “postmodernism” (including my editing of the “Church and Postmodern Culture” book series).  This is where I’m trying to take my expertise in European philosophy and use it to help Christians understand cultural shifts and the impact of ideas on contemporary culture—again, with the goal of thinking carefully about the shape of Christian practice.

It was this that gave rise to my “Cultural Liturgies” trilogy, of which Desiring the Kingdom is the first volume.  In a way, I can plot the trajectory to this project from chapter 7 of my earlier book, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy and the chapter on Foucault in Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? In general, I think Christians have operated with a reductionistic notion of “culture”—reducing it to the level of ideas—and failed to appreciate the affective dynamics of cultural formation.  That can be both detrimental and a missed opportunity.  It’s also part of why Protestants—and evangelicals in particular—have been largely unreflective about the formative role of worship.  So the second volume, tentatively titled How Worship Works, is going to explore what I’m calling the “mechanics” of liturgical formation by exploring an analogy between literature and liturgy, drawing on research at the intersection of literature and cognitive science.  The third volume will focus on politics: the wager there is that thinking about the politics in terms of liturgy changes the debate.  In doing so, I ultimately hope to respond to Jeffrey Stout’s critique of what he calls the “new traditionalism” (Hauerwas, MacIntyre, Milbank) in his very important book, Democracy and Tradition…”

 

Jamie Smith on Classical Christian Education

Paul writes – In October 2010 Jamie Smith recorded some thoughts on Christian education, the role of educators, and many of the themes which he explores in his very good book Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. And for those of you who didn’t see his Ottawa (Oct. 2010) lecture Beyond A/Theism: Postmodernity and the Future of God his response at the Geneva School, Orlando to the question on Postmodernism & Classical Christian Education is an excellent snapshot of the ground covered in his larger Ottawa lecture. 

You can find the 45-minute interview with Smith on Classical Education (Orlando, Oct. 2010) here. The interview is also broken down into each question / response – slightly annoying when you listen to the full interview, but the quality of the responses is worth it.

Educationalists and thoughtful ministers will find it a useful lecture and if you’re a university chaplain, you’ll also find it interesting too, and I suspect it’ll take you to some diverse places conceptually.    

 

Miroslav Volf and Pope Benedict XVI

Paul writes – I recently read an interesting interview with Croatian-US theologian Miroslav Volf. You’ll find the full interview here (this links to part 2, but in it is the link to part 1). At many points I thought of the really useful work of Rene Girard (and those who’ve creatively built upon his work: James Alison, and to a lesser degree someone like Richard Rohr (cf. his DVD The Spiral of Violence). If you wanted a really useful and accessible introduction to Girard, I’d recommend Discovering Girard by Michael Kirwan SJ.).  The two books by Volf woven into the interview are his latest Allah: A Christian Response and an earlier book, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World. Both of which are extremely good and I recommend both.

Meantime here’s an excerpt: 

"...DAVID: Readers who have followed news of interfaith relationships through the years are surely asking themselves: Why is anyone still debating this issue of whether we share one God? The single largest Christian denomination in the world, the 1-billion-member Catholic church, settled this question in a document in 1965. Then just before the year 2000, John Paul II again wrote about how urgently he hoped people would realize that the three faiths founded by Abraham—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—worship a common God. Many Protestant denominations have similar statements. Why do we still need books like “Allah”? 

MIROSLAV: In part, people still are debating this because there is this image of who Muslims are, and who their God is, from the media. The media consistently report on Islam in relation to incidents of violence. The question keeps arising: Can we square our concept of God, which Christians think of as a God of sheer love, with the idea that God might be a part of violence.

DAVID: And Pope Benedict XVI also raised that question in his 2006 talk at Regensberg that touched off a new debate about this issue. Do you think Benedict is trying to roll back the earlier affirmations? 

MIROSLAV: Benedict did not deny that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, but he did starkly raise differences. So, here was the top leader of the majority of Christians in the world, one of the most theologically learned human beings in the world, raising different angles about our understanding of God. The question remains, then. 

DAVID: But, are you saying that Benedict may actually backtrack on the famous 1965 declaration and declarations by John Paul II? 

MIROSLAV: I think that Benedict is less irenic toward Islam. I think he still does affirm 1965, but I think that he feels it is important to describe differences between Christianity and Islam. John Paul II was a bridge builder toward Muslims and felt it was important to describe similarities. But, in many areas of Benedict’s work, he sees himself as strongly consolidating orthodoxy. He’s been known as a watchdog of orthodoxy as a theologian. So, he raises these questions of difference. 

Then, another factor in the world now is that we are in a situation of conflict. If you are someone who has determined to resort to animosity and violence, then I think it’s very hard not to exaggerate differences in our fundamental values. In a sense, hatred needs to emphasize difference so it can appropriately latch itself onto the object of our hatred. Violence needs difference so it can unleash itself. That’s why Jews were called vermin in the Holocaust. That’s why Tutsis were called cockroaches in Rwanda. Emphasizing difference precedes violence. We need to see each other as alien in order to unleash our hatred in violence…” 

And finally, Benedict XVI has a new book out, a sequel to his Jesus of Nazareth (pub. 2008), Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection.

 

From an Amazon reviewer:

“…In Pope Benedict XVI's second volume of "Jesus of Nazareth" the Pope continues to explore the life of Jesus. This time it is from Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem until the time of his Resurrection. His purpose for writing the book is stated in the introduction, when he says, "I have attempted to develop a way of observing and listening to the Jesus of the Gospels that can indeed lead to personal encounter and that, through collective listening with Jesus' disciples across the ages, can indeed attain sure knowledge of the real historical figure of Jesus." … 

…The current state of biblical studies in most of Christianity is still heavily dependent upon the historical-critical method of study. This method is really a compilation of various methods of trying to look into the past to examine the Biblical text in light of what we know about them during the time they were written. It tries to understand, as best as can be done, what the human authors of Scripture understood about the world, culture, themselves, God, etc. to draw out the meaning of the text. 

Benedict XVI stated in volume I that the method is limited in what it can do for us, because it remains a method, which leaves "the biblical word in the past". It also does not approach the text with the eyes of faith, but with a critical eye. This means that it is very limited in the scope of what it can do for us and it cannot bring us to a real encounter with a God who comes to us as a Living Word today.

Because of these limitations inherent to the historical-critical method, the Pope believes it has "yielded its essential fruit", even while it is indispensably helpful for a study of the Bible. 

With this in mind, Benedict sets out to help us see the historical figure of Christ through the eyes of faith. This faith should be informed by the historicity of the Gospels, but never devoid of seeing Christ as He should properly be seen - not merely a figure of the past, but someone who is alive and present to us today. This takes faith…”