Materially Dispossessing the Troubled Theologian

Linn Tonstad’s paper, ‘(Un)wise Theologians’, identifies a theological approach that puts pressure on its ability to handle its materiality sufficiently in a number of ways. However, following the trajectory of Tonstad’s discovery of “the deformations to which theology is susceptible in the university” and elsewhere, a supplementation is required to specify where its thesis needs more rigorous development. Firstly, the paper’s argument locates what Tonstad describes as “self-securitization and self-assertion” in a form of a subjectivity characterisable as a docility making possessive form of divine givenness, and it draws the papal encyclical Fides et Ratio into Tonstad’s critique of the theology of John Webster to make this case. Secondly, Tonstad’s appeal to the reparative mode of contextualisation necessitates a differentiation to be made between modes of what is commonly called ‘contextual theology’ since there are forms that shelter under this umbrella term that echo the subjectivity of that which Tonstad uncompromisingly critiques. Thirdly, while ‘(Un)wise Theologians’ only lightly indexes a reparative direction properly “chastened” theology, a kenotically interrogative sensibility may prove to be sufficiently capacious for the critical conduct of “theological therapy”. If so, then it can function to constantly trouble the theological in an appropriate manner without flight into a premature dematerialised fixation point.