Brian Hamilton

Learning to Listen

The discipline of historical theology is, for people like me, truly a discipline. My inclination is nearly always combative, always polemical, so that writing a paper devoted simply to understanding what someone else said seems boring and mostly useless. Who needs me to write a paper explaining what Michael Sattler said when they can just read Sattler? He’s undoubtedly said it better than I can. So even when I do intend to write a historical paper, I feel compelled to preface my reading with some contemporary issue to which my analysis will contribute. That’s not always bad, of course; it’s certainly the necessary way of letting older thinkers speak to contemporary debates. But the approach also lets contemporary debates frame the issue in a way almost certain to muffle the deepest contribution of the author in question, on the level of categories and presuppositions.

Historical theology at its best is a discipline of listening, of submitting oneself to a text in order truly to understand both the questions and the answers being proposed. The temptation of the argumentative scholar is always to read only deeply enough to find support for what you want to say, then to be done. The historical theologian rather has the patience to sit with a text for a while before saying anything, learning to think like the author and anticipate her moves. It’s like coming to know a friend, as I’ve said before of reading anything, so to more truly understand, more deeply learn, and more helpfully critique.

31 August 2007 |
tags: History, Method