Plan de acción contra el microtráfico

Graham Ward, in much the same manner as Hans Urs von Balthasar, “came to theology … through literature”.103 _{After discovering a passion for reading and writing one summer while} still at school, he originally went to study English and French at Cambridge University in the hope of perhaps becoming a novelist or screenwriter, as he writes in an autobiographical essay.104 _{It was here, while working on a third-year essay on the allegorical language employed} by the 17th _{century Puritan writer and preacher, John Bunyan, that he first encountered the}

world of theology. This world captivated him to such an extent that he, with time, decided to change his field of study upon completing his initial undergraduate education. In time, he thus enrolled for his first degree in theology, which ultimately led to a doctorate at Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity, under the tutelage of theologians such as Nicholas Lash, Janet Soskice, Rowan Williams, and Fergus Kerr. While completing his doctoral dissertation, which attempted to bring the ‘Word-theology’ of Karl Barth into conversation with the post- structuralist thought of Jacques Derrida (a project that was inspired by Lash’s annual eight- week course on analogy and religious language),105 _{he was ordained in the Anglican Church.}

It was during Ward’s initial theological studies and later doctoral work, which coincided with extensive involvement in parish ministry,106 _{that he became aware, in his own words, of the}

102 _{Ward, ‘On Being Radical and Hopefully Orthodox,’ 184.} 103 _{Ward, ‘On Being Radical and Hopefully Orthodox,’ 178.} 104 _{Ward, ‘On Being Radical and Hopefully Orthodox,’ 178-9.}

105 _{Ward, ‘On Being Radical and Hopefully Orthodox,’ 180. Ward’s doctoral dissertation would later be published}

as Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), with the main research question being: “How does Derrida’s understanding of logocentrism (and his critique of its pretensions) speak to Barth’s ruminations on the Word of God that is always mediated? And how does Barth’s understanding of Christ as the Word, speaks to Derrida’s investigations into différance and negative theology? How, with these two people, might we approach the perennial philosophy of religion question of the language of theology in a new way?” See the Introduction (1-10) for his description of how this project “took fire and spread from the flow of molten ideas that kept each student [in Nicholas Lash’s course] fanning the air for breath” (1).

106 _{Ward describes his time in parish ministry, while also working on his project on Barth and Derrida, as follows:}

“In the meantime I had been ordained and was working as an Anglican curate in a large civic church in Bristol; by day I visited the bereaved and couples wanting their child baptised, and by night I was trying to clarify how Barth’s Redephilosophie differed from that being advocated by the Patmos group (with which he had passing acquaintance). [This] double practice – of practicing theology and writing it – became very important… My time at Bristol as a curate … raised for me an abiding question: what is the task of theology, for whom is it speaking and to whom?”. See Ward, ‘On Being Radical and Hopefully Orthodox,’ 180-1.

“abstract, even idealist levels, towards which most systematic theologies were being pitched”.107 _{Ward found that many systematic theologians of the last few centuries, including,} at times, someone like Karl Barth, “seemed to be building … great cathedral[s] that hovered above our heads”, without taking proper account of, or engaging with, the contexts from which and to which they spoke.108 _{At the time, this realisation also came to be shared by a number of} other up-and-coming British theologians, and together they began searching for alternative ways of thinking about and doing theology, under the guidance of mentors such as Nicholas Lash and Rowan Williams.109 _{This search led to certain mid-20}th _{century French and German}

Nouvelle theologians, such as De Lubac, Daniélou, De Certeau, and, our main interlocutor in this study, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who, a generation earlier, similarly recognised and spoke out against what Daniélou called the “rupture between theology and life”.110 _{It also prompted} them to re-visit patristic and medieval voices, who had inspired and undergirded the Nouvelle theologians’ thought. These thinkers, they found, contrary to many representatives of ‘modern theology’, did not pit the creaturely against the divine, and did not see the natural world as being devoid of any transcendence (as several liberal theologians were doing at the time), but rather espoused a sacramental and incarnational worldview, where creation analogically participated in and expressed (definitely in the person of Christ) the reality of the divine. They realised that this opened up a myriad of new possibilities for the theologian to think about, explore, and engage with, the realm of creaturely existence.

This reaction against ‘modernity’ and its theologies, and the turn to Nouvelle Théologie and early patristic and medieval thinkers, would, in many ways, lay the foundation for the emergence of Radical Orthodoxy, in whichever way it is to be construed. However, from very early on it became clear that, while Ward and his contemporaries such as John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock shared certain theological sensibilities and looked to similar sources, they would not have the same emphases in their work. Milbank and Pickstock’s respective projects, as shown above, would have a strong genealogical focus and include abundant excavation work on the theologies of the late Middle Ages and thereafter. Ward’s writings, on the other hand,

107 _{Ward, ‘On Being Radical and Hopefully Orthodox,’ 184.} 108 _{Ward, ‘On Being Radical and Hopefully Orthodox,’ 184.}

109 _{For some interesting insight into how British theology in the last quarter of the 20}th _{century “started to}

rediscover its roots in the past and to build bridges between Western and Eastern tradition of Christian Orthodoxy” – a process in which Rowan Williams played an essential role – see the preface to Johannes Hoff’s book, The

Analogical Turn: Rethinking Modernity with Nicholas of Cusa (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), xiv-xxvi. See

also the interview Rupert Shortt conducted with Rowan Williams in the London Times Literally Supplement, which is part of the collection God’s Advocates: Christian Thinkers in Conversation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 1-23. Cf. also Ward, ‘In the Economy of the Divine,’ 118-9.

110 _{Jean Daniélou, ‘Les Orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse,’ Études 79, no. 249 (1946): 5-21 (here 6),}

as quoted and translated in Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 2.

would be much more immersed in and engaged with the complexities of the contemporary world, and attempt to bring Christian Orthodoxy, in all its spiritual and intellectual richness and, importantly, diversity,111 _{into critical conversation with the embodied and encultured} realities of our everyday existence, while constantly interacting with other academic disciplines that are usually tasked with investigating these realities (whether it be evolutionary biology or the political sciences, immunology or film studies, neurology or art history). This would be done by actively embracing an analogical and participatory understanding of the relationship between creation and its Creator (in continuity with Patristic theology, Aquinas, and the Jesuit thinker, Erich Przywara, to whom we will shortly return); emphasising the radicality of the incarnation of Christ, an event which he describes as “the Godhead’s greatest and most gracious accommodation to our creatureliness”;112 _{and, on account of the two previous points,} recognising that all words from God, including the Word spoken in Christ, as well as all words about God, are mediated through creaturely reality and human language, and cannot therefore be divorced from the contexts in which they emerge. Ward would also continuously accentuate, in accordance with especially early patristic theology, that Christian doctrine is liturgical in nature, and should come to express itself through real, embodied practices in the world. The retrieval of certain aspects of the theological tradition that have often been neglected or discarded in the past, such as an ‘analogical worldview’, an emphasis on the ‘scandal of the incarnation’, and a rediscovery of the performative and liturgical nature of Christian doctrine, would thus enable Ward to move past the dualisms underlying a considerable amount of ‘modern’ theological thought, in order to engage anew with the realm of creation and everything that it contains, in relation to the transcendent God.

When one reads through Graham Ward’s oeuvre, it can immediately be seen that this last word, ‘engage’, features very prominently in his work. From the beginning of his theological career, he constantly uses it to describe what he is trying to do in and through his writings,113 _{and over} the years, he increasingly comes to refer to his larger theological project as an attempt at a ‘culturally engaged’, or simply ‘engaged’ systematic theology114 _{– a description that is also}

111 _{For more on Ward’s understanding of ‘orthodoxy’ – as “an ongoing set of interrelated activities as Christian}

faith seeks understanding of the articles which compose that faith” – see his essay ‘Receiving the Gift,’ Modern

Theology 30, no. 3 (July 2014).

112 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, xii.}

113 _{It is interesting to note that this word, ‘engage’, prominently features in the introductions or prefaces of almost}

all of Ward’s books. For only one example, see Graham Ward, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1-11, where he speaks of the way in which should “engage” with the world and other academic subjects, such as “social, political and cultural theory, cultural anthropology, philosophy, hermeneutics [etc.]”, 2. He notes that the burden of this book will be to give a description “of that engagement”.

114 _{See, for example, Ward, ‘On Being Radical and Hopefully Orthodox,’ 185; The Politics of Discipleship:}

currently being used to frame the four-volume dogmatics that he is working on, of which the first volume titled How the Light Gets In has recently been published. Given the contested nature of theology as an academic discipline throughout history, as shown above, Ward has decided to devote a section of this first volume of his dogmatics to clarifying exactly what he means when he speaks of an ‘engaged’ systematic theology.115 _{It is to this section titled ‘So} what is an Engaged Theology?’, that we will now turn very briefly, before introducing the life and work of Hans Urs von Balthasar as an example of a ‘culturally engaged’ systematic theologian.

After giving a cursory overview of the ways in which systematic theology has evolved throughout the ages, from the times of the first ecumenical creeds to our present day, Ward commences this programmatic section, through which he hopes to give, in his own words, a “speed-camera shot” of his theological vision, by stating that, in short, a ‘culturally engaged’ systematic theology can be seen and described as a mode of theological enquiry that seeks to relate Christian doctrine to “cultural and social life”.116 _{This, he holds, is done by actively} resisting, and moving beyond, “the set of binary distinctions bequeathed to, and dominating, ‘modern theology’”: distinctions between, for example, the supernatural and the natural, grace and nature, the transcendent and the immanent, and the sacred and the secular.117 _{For Ward, an} ‘engaged’ systematic theology is therefore a “corrective to some of the less benign” changes that have occurred within the field of theology over the last few centuries, changes that have frequently resulted in the created realm being set against the reality of the divine, so that any theological endeavour would, in effect, have to choose between God and the world.118 _Ward holds that an engaged systematics is not interested in merely upholding certain abstract, propositional truth-claims about the divine – propositions that are ‘disembedded’ from creation and the contexts from which, and to which, the theologian speaks – nor in “imitating the dominating secular modes of reasoning of the day”, without any concern for the theos in ‘theology’, as regularly happens, for example, in certain strands of modern biblical scholarship.119 _{Rather, it deliberately sets out to transcend these dualist paradigms, by focusing}

of Experience,’ in Radical Orthodoxy, Annual Review I, ed. Neil Turnbull (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2012), 51-74 (especially 51). See also the interview with Graham Ward, ‘The Academy, the Polis, and the Resurgence of Religion: An Interview with Graham Ward,’ by Brandy Daniels, The Other Journal, An

Intersection of Theology and Culture. The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, November 18, 2008.

Accessed July 5, 2018. https://theotherjournal.com/2008/11/18/the-academy-the-polis-and-the-resurgence-of- religion-an-interview-with-graham-ward.

115 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 115-136.} 116 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 115-6.} 117 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 119.} 118 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 116.} 119 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 116.}

its attention on what it sees as God’s continual “operations of redemption in and through the materialities” of our embodied and encultured lives on earth.120 _{In an engaged systematic} theology, the whole created world is pervaded by, and constantly being transformed through, the transcendent God’s ever-persistent self-communication of love, which is definitively expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Creation therefore asks to be studied theologically, that is, with reference to its source and end, the triune God. While working, in continuity with the writings mentioned above, with a deep sacramentalism and incarnationalism, and constantly recognising the mediatory nature of all God-talk,121 _an engaged systematic theology is indeed interested in, and attempts to engage with, everything that ‘is’, much like the theologies discussed earlier in this chapter. From its own specific “locatedness”, it constantly sets out to investigate and make theological sense of all of the socially-, politically- and culturally-embedded realities around it in relation to God and God’s Word.122 _{Nothing can be excluded from, or be seen to stand outside of, its theological enquiry,} as it is convinced that every inch of creation comes from, and analogically participates in, God,123 _{and moreover is receptive to, and is being transformed by, God’s redemptive Word,} who, in Jesus Christ, became flesh and, even today, is “continually given” to and for the world, through the working of the Spirit.124 _{This also makes it a decidedly interdisciplinary enterprise.} With explicit reference to the first questio of Aquinas’ Summa, as disused above,125 _Ward emphasises that an ‘engaged’ systematic theology constantly seeks to draw upon, learn from, and adopt the language and knowledge of, other academic disciplines, in its attempt to discern, grasp, and appreciate more deeply, the “good and graceful hand of God’s providence” in the world.126 _{Quoting John Webster, Wards argues that by “entering the terrains of other} disciplines”, and learning to use their language (always with great humility),127 _{an ‘engaged’}

120 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, ix.} 121 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 123, 127.} 122 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, ix, 130.} 123 _{See Ward, How the Light Gets In, 289-90.} 124 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 130.}

125 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 140. See also Ian Warlick’s interview with Ward, where he says the following}

with regards to the first questio of Aquinas’ Summa: “There is, for Aquinas, the sense that Theology, now he wouldn’t put it like this it’s not just the queen of the sciences, but it’s [also] the whore of the sciences. Queen of the sciences in so far as it caps them all but whore in so far as it has to trade on them all. Theology has no language of its own because we have no object that we can just simply claim. God isn’t an object in the world, so theology always has to borrow its language from other things”. Ian Warlick, ‘Post-secularity, Hegel and Friendship: An Interview with Graham Ward,’ Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosophy, Politics 1, no. 1 and 2 (August 2012): 333-48 (here 334).

126 _{Ward, How the Light Gets In, 140, 142.}

127 _{See Ward’s essay, ‘Adam and Eve’s Shame’ (and Ours),’ Literature and Theology 26, no. 3 (September 2012):}

305-322. In this article, Ward focus on the “fear [that] haunts all those involved in interdisciplinary research: the fear of being exposed as a dilettante”. This fear, or even shame, he holds, can, however, operate positively. According to him: “The lurking fear of a shameful exposure can ensure that as far as possible we approach the other discipline with what is, hopefully, an intellectual integrity formed in our own disciplinary training. It may

systematic theology does not “leave the domain of the Word behind, but continues to trace its full scope”.128 _{This is also true for the world of the arts, Ward holds, where God’s Word often} comes to expression in the most unexpected of ways, as seen, for example, in Serge Bramly’s photoshoot, INRI, or Bill Viola’s video installation, Emergence.129

For Ward, an engaged systematic theology also then has an explicitly ethical emphasis. According to him, the central reason why it, in fact, attempts to engage theologically with the whole of creaturely existence and enters into conversation with other branches of knowledge and the world of the arts, as described above, is to try and discern how we ought to live and faithfully follow Christ in the world. It is therefore not only concerned with “intellection” and “ratiocination”, as this would lead, once more, to a form of “excarnation” (to use Charles Taylor’s notion), but also with embodied actions on the world stage.130 _{Ward asserts that, in a} ‘culturally engaged’ systematic theology, Christian ‘doctrine’ is treated as a “verbal noun”, as something that needs to be “made known”, as something that can and should be performed in real-life contexts.131 _{It encourages a way of acting in, amidst, and in response to, the realities} of everyday life, as God’s Spirit gradually changes our ‘hearts of stone’ into ‘hearts of flesh’,132 and we come to learn, with others, what it means to live like Christ in the world today, while knowing that, even in our shortcomings and failings, our lives remain hidden with Christ in God, as Paul writes.133 _{For Ward, an engaged systematics ultimately thus leads to an imitatio}

Christi, to a life of discipleship, where the truth of Christ is not only confessed, but also performed through certain embodied practices, so as to engender God’s salus in and for a world that is desperately in need of it.

Much more could be said about Graham Ward’s notion of a ‘culturally engaged systematic theology’, especially with regards to the importance it attaches to ecumenism, liturgy, and the practice of prayer, all of which are discussed at length in this initial section in his book, How the Light Gets In. At this point, however, it has hopefully already become clear that this