Theologian Douglas John Hall - "What Christianity is Not"; and, "A Theology of the Cross"

Theologian Douglas John Hall

"What Christianity is Not"; and, "A Theology of the Cross"

Interview by Tripp Fuller

January 16, 2020 

Douglas John Hall is Canada’s greatest living theologian & emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He is a theologian of the cross, a contextual theologian, and a wonderfully articulate one as well. In this conversation we discuss his latest two books What Christianity is Not & Waiting for the Gospel, his love of music, personal interactions with Moltmann, Billy Graham, Tillich & company, and a number of intense theological topics. It was a complete joy to chat with him. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did… and of course share the brew!

Titles By Douglas John Hall - go to link here

Amazon Link

What Christianity Is Not:

An Exercise in “Negative” Theology

by Douglas John Hall

Feb 12, 2013

What really is Christianity? If all the religious packaging in which it is wrapped were removed, what would remain? These were Bonhoeffer’s questions, and they must be ours today—even more urgently! For in many quarters Christianity is being so narrowly identified with some of its parts, cultural associations, and past ambitions that like all militant religion, it represents a threat to the planetary future.

We may no longer speak clearly of the essence of Christianity, as von Harnack and other nineteenth-century thinkers did; but perhaps we may still have a sufficiently shared sense of the kerygmatic core of this faith to be able, in the face of these misrepresentations of it, to say what Christianity is not.

“Those who know the work of Hall will know what to expect in this book: wisdom that comes from long years of faithful discernment, pathos about foolish fickleness in the name of the gospel, and buoyancy because he trusts the God of the gospel. Readers who do not know his work may take this book as an access point. In his critique of idolatrous misconstruals of the faith, Hall is himself a forceful antidote to the dysfunction of our society and to the dismay of the church.”

—Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary

“As one of this generation’s most profound theological thinkers, Douglas John Hall reveals his magisterial grasp of the depth and complexity of the Christian tradition. His elegance [is] matched only by profound understanding of human longing in his presentation of the God of steadfast and loving kindness. He is a master craftsman whose building blocks are the broad themes of systematic theology, which he brings together with his legendary stylish and grace-filled writing.”

—Patricia G. Kirkpatrick, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, McGill University

Douglas John Hall is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology in McGill University, Montreal. He is the author of twenty-five volumes, including two recent offerings from Cascade Books.

—The Messenger: Friendship, Faith, and Finding One’s Way (2011); and Waiting for Gospel: An Appeal to the Dispirited Remnants of Protestant “Establishment” (2012).

Amazon Link

Waiting for Gospel: An Appeal to the

Dispirited Remnants of Protestant “Establishment”

by Douglas John Hall

April 16, 2012

“Christianity, as faith centered in Jesus as the Christ, as it came to be called, got a foothold in the world, and for a vital and vocal minority changed the world, because it proclaimed a message that awakened men and women to possibilities for human life that they had either lost or never entertained. That message the first Christian evangelists (and Jesus himself, according to the record) called euangellion—good news,  or gospel. For its first two or three hundred years, Christianity was largely dependent for its existence upon the new zest for life that was awakened in persons who heard and were, as they felt, transformed, by that gospel; and at various and sundry points in subsequent history the Christian movement has found itself revitalized by the spirit of that same ‘good news’ in ways that spoke to the specifics of their times and places.

“The lesson of history is clear: the challenge to all serious Christians and Christian bodies today is not whether we can devise yet more novel and promotionally impressive means for the transmission of ‘the Christian religion’ (let alone this or that denomination); it is whether we are able to hear and to proclaim . . . gospel! We do not need statisticians and sociologists to inform us that religion—and specifically our religion, as the dominant expression of the spiritual impulse of homo sapiens in our geographic context—is in decline. We do not need the sages of the new atheism to announce in learned tomes (and on buses!) that ‘God does not exist.’ The ‘sea of faith’ has been ebbing for a very long time.”

—from the Introduction

“Douglas John Hall is a treasure, a man I have known whose intellectual depth is matched only by his spirit of kindness. . . . So too is Waiting for Gospel. As people continue to discuss the place of the church in North America leaning on sociology and cultural studies, Doug Hall reminds us that in the end it will be only theology, a lived theology of existential depth, that will help. All the contemporary talk of church in North America has so often failed to provide truly unique and insightful thoughts . . . how God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is encountering people in [their] context, [in their] time. Waiting for Gospel propels us in that direction and therefore shines brightly, giving the reader value upon value.”

—Andrew Root, Olson Baalson Associate Professor of Youth and Family Ministry, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota; Author of The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church (2010)

Douglas John Hall is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology in the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University in Montreal. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Lighten Our Darkness (1976, 2001); Why Christian? (1998); God and Human Suffering (1986); The Steward (1990; Wipf & Stock, 2004); and The Messenger (Cascade Books, 2011).

He has lectured widely in Canada, the United States, Germany, and Japan, and is the recipient of many honors, including the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Union Theological Seminary, the Joseph Sittler Award for Leadership in Theology, and the Order of Canada. 

 

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Notes by R.E. Slater

July 7, 2021

Today marks yet another sad remembrance

[links to coping with grief and loss]

Today marks the sad anniversary of my brother's death who died alone after a terrible losing fight with what many call bipolarism, but technically was a "border-line personality disorder." I remember the calls which came that morning after his death - both incoming and outgoing calls. These prevented anytime for sorrow for most of the week. The conditions of harm my brother had left were too many to recount and the grief that should've been there turned to anger for what he had left, and later relief that this page of family history had finally, horribly ended. 

My lasting impression will be, as it was then, that when he finally took his spiritual life seriously and attempted to repair the disrepair he found himself in it appeared insurmountable. This observation came from his last girlfriend who noted a tone of change three months earlier and who called nearly everyday after his death with some insight or another as she attempted to make sense of the events swarming around her.

Myself, I heard my brother's change of heart when his girlfriend said he was singing in the church pews as if the hymns held more meaning for him than they once did. But the remorse he was dealing would required acts of courage to admit the harm he had done to so many and for so long. The requisite repair to his soul (and to those harmed) which lay ahead prevented any further progress though perhaps some kind could have been made. The truth of it was his actions could not be so easily forgiven. They were too deep to be meaningless.

And so, I imagine it was all too much for his shattered soul for which many had tried to reach out and help in the past but failed... as they all did. In the end he finally let go of his life, leaving without resolution for wife, family, son or daughter, parents, and friends. When he was at his best he was a very good man. But at his worse he was all dark and emotionally charged. The remaining years left to him could never eclipse his malady though he tried through feeble attempts with care givers and support groups. These were long years with many disruptions and set backs. At the last, when he passed, I, like my father, were again left holding the phone to our ears hearing sobbing, anger, harming willful acts, criminal wrongs, and thoroughly unable to heal the unhealable from the mess he left everywhere he went.

The Church is dying in its own beliefs

In many ways Christianity feels like it too is in its own death stages of faith and belief. Once a vibrant, soul-transforming experience, lately its become harming to others; politicized out of proportion to its missionary call to love all and bring into fellowship a circle of healing; and deluded to its inner a circle beliefs, teachings, rantings, pulpiteering, and hunger for bare-knuckled secular power. Its dogmas preach wrath, judgment upon everyone it denounced, and charged insults and vectums upon fantasized enemies. It felt like a very old friend to my former experiences not only with family but with the fellowsips circles I was participating in. Eventually I would step away and seek refuge elsewhere wherever it might be found.

Many of us have been down these roads before listening to family members telling us what they hate about people while blaming everyone for everything they fear or rage against rather than circumspectly looking inwards to see the great anger in their heart refusing to allow any goodness or light in. As if those simple balms would at once be so feared in breaking apart the poisons held for too long inside their heart as to cause personal stress at  the necessary reconstitution, patching, and removing of personal toxins held within, coupled with a humble spirit donned with ears and tongues of contrition, listening and healing.

What is the Gospel? What is the Gospel's

Meaning, Message, Mystery?

So too today's church is in deep trouble. It is not repenting for its apostasy nor is it willing to listen to a society attempting to befriend it and trying to speak reason to its outrageous beliefs and demands. The church is no longer a safe have for fellowship and love, but self-isolating islands of fierce congregants thrashing out at the world at its post-Christian and posts religious communities embracing all cultures, races, religions, and genders. To these communities the conservative church rages against them calling down hell and abomination upon all... not unlike what some of us have suffered at the hands of our so-called superiors, societal members, unkind neighbors, hard-hearted friends, and so forth.

Yes, today's church has changed and become as secular as the society it designs to preach against. But to those of us who see beauty everywhere and in everything; who have hope as we slough through pits of vipers and muds of deep soulful suffering; we work to resist and effectively speak the gospel of Christ to those minds and hearts which can truly hear. Who are willing to hear regardless of church affiliation or not. To this we call down the power of the Spirit to help us engage a wicked world - whether church, evil, or death-eaters blinded and blinding to all about them.

Speaking Christianity is hard

The object of Christianity’s search is not an object but a living subject. How can we speak of knowing God when we cannot even describe the people we think we know best? There must be a kind of modesty in Christianity when we speak of God. This is so with any discipline, be that of a philosopher, scientist or theologian. Each can only speak modestly of the subjects they study because such subjects are so vast, so infinitealtogether, so mysterious.

The thinking Christian is connected with the deep traditions of the church. Christians are the inheritors of a long, long tradition spanning many cultures and eras. Our conversation has been going on for 2000 years (Jesus), nay, 4000 years (Israel re Yahweh). This vast tradition is full of contradictions; its dialectic is wonderfully oblique; its many religious beliefs confounding, confusing, and deeply entangled. We must become students not only of the Scriptures, but of the church's traditions, its philosophers behind the tradition's theological beliefs, and society in general at every level, in every era, in close contextuality with itself.

Moreover, we must ask the questions which are underneath the questions we are not asking. To neglect the philosophical foundations residing underneath the many theological structures of the church is to miss the meaning of God and Gospel altogether. 

Suffering is a major theme of the Church and its beliefs

One key theme of the church is suffering. Theological study must necessarily involve itself with humanity's suffering if a Christian faith is to understand anything about God at all.

Suffering is a mark of a holy cause when approaching the why's and wherefore's of God's abidance with humanity. The education of theology must then walk with the world, acknowledge and experience its suffering, and see with God's eyes the deep needs so many bear and endure.

A theology of the Cross ties Jesus to humanity in its most basic elements. Through humanity's suffering. For Moltmann, his theology of hope came out of his theology of suffering. For him, contextuality is the most profound key to understanding the Christian hope amid its deepest sufferings.

Jurgen Moltmann's titles on hope - click this link here

Also for Moltmann, his theology of the church had to come to terms with the great amount of suffering his church had caused the world during its Nazification era that had spanned decades. To do this his second series of books addressed the Crucified God.

Jurgen Moltmann's titles on the Crucified God - click this link here

The church generally prefers its gospel to be hopeful and loving rather than seeing itself as the cause of suffering and harm…. But in the great historical movements of the church it has ended up too often on the side of inhumanity, pillage and rape, blaming, scapegoating, harming, and killing, all in the name of Christ...

To hear more... listen to the podcast provided by

Tripp Fuller in his interview with Douglas John Hall.

R.E. Slater

July 7, 2021

Amazon Link

Bound and Free: A Theologian's Journey

by Douglas John Hall

Written by North America's premier theologian, this book takes the measure of contemporary theology and urges theological renewal for our more secularized and pluralistic age.

Amazon Link

The Messenger: Friendship, Faith, and Finding One's Way

by Douglas John Hall

This is a book about the importance of mentors in the lives of the young. But rather than developing the theme of mentoring theoretically, Douglas John Hall demonstrates its significance quite personally, autobiographically. In his twentieth year and hoping to study music professionally, Hall met a young minister whose "different" Christianity both surprised and intrigued him. In the end, this friendship altered the course of his life.

The book traces the story of this friendship of more than half a century, and the impact of the times upon the lives of its two principal figures.

Douglas John Hall

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The Reverend Douglas John Hall CM
Born	1928 (age 92–93) Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada
Spouse(s)	Rhoda Catherine Palfrey ​ ​ (m. 1960)​
Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Christianity
Church	United Church of Canada
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Western Ontario Union Theological Seminary
Influences	John Coleman Bennett Emil Fackenheim George Grant Reinhold Niebuhr Paul Tillich
Academic work
Discipline	Theology
Sub-discipline	Constructive theology
Institutions	St. Paul's United College St. Andrew's College, Saskatchewan McGill University

Douglas John Hall CM (born 1928) is an emeritus professor^[1] of theology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and a minister of the United Church of Canada. Prior to joining the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies in 1975^[2] he was MacDougald Professor of Systematic Theology at St Andrew's College in the University of Saskatchewan (1965–1975), Principal of St Paul's College in the University of Waterloo (1962–1965), and minister of St Andrew's Church in Blind River, Ontario (1960–1962).

Early life and education

Hall was born on March 23, 1928, in Ingersoll, Ontario. He attended high school and business college in Woodstock, Ontario, and worked for four years in that city's daily newspaper. In 1948–1949 he studied composition and piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He was graduated (Bachelor of Arts) from the University of Western Ontario (London) in 1953. His graduate degrees are all from Union Theological Seminary in New York City: Master of Divinity (1956), Master of Sacred Theology (1957), Doctor of Theology (1963).

Professional life

The author of 25 published works, including a three-volume systematic theology, and numerous articles, Hall lectured widely in the United States and Canada during the period 1974–2010. He was Gastprofessor at the University of Siegen, Germany, in 1980; Visiting Scholar at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, in 1989; Professor of Theology at the Melanchthon Institute of Houston, Texas, in 1999; member of the Campbell Seminar on the Future of the Church at Columbia Seminary of Decatur, Georgia, in 2000; Distinguished Visiting Professor at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio, in 2001; Theologian-in-Residence, Church of the Crossroads in Honolulu, Hawaii (2003 f.); and Theologian-in-Residence, International Protestant Church in Vienna (2003).

Hall was an active participant in many international consultations including the World Convocation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Seoul, South Korea, 1990, and the UN AIDS theological symposium in Namibia (2003). He served on theological committees of the WCC and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the United Church of Canada, the National Council of Churches USA, et al.

Thought

Influenced by his teachers Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, John Coleman Bennett, and others, as well as fellow-Canadians including George Grant and Emil Fackenheim, Hall desired to understand and further the biblical and mainstream Reformation Protestant traditions of critical and constructive theology. He argues that over the past two centuries the Christian religion has been experiencing a momentous and (for most) disconcerting transition ("metamorphosis"): after fifteen centuries of legal and cultural "Establishment" in the West, Christianity is being challenged by the evolution of planetary history to assume a more modest, dialogical and humanly responsible position in the new global society.

Accordingly, he believes, the church must abandon the theological triumphalism that has typified its long fraternization with empire, and search its biblical and doctrinal traditions for ways of engaging, rather than seeking to monopolize the spiritual and intellectual life of humankind:

In his books and lectures Hall argues that the stance (modus vivendi) appropriate to Christianity in the post-Christendom context is best illuminated by the ("never much loved" [Moltmann]) theological tradition that Martin Luther named theologia crucis (‘theology of the cross’). That tradition, which Luther distinguished from the dominant religious and ecclesiastical conventions of Christendom (all variations of the theologia gloriae ,‘theology of glory’), accentuates God's compassionate solidarity with the world; thus it opens the Christian movement to both secular and other faith-communities that seek planetary "peace, justice and the integrity of creation" [the theme of the World Council of Churches, Vancouver 1983-1990].

Hall affirms that theology, in contrast to both "doctrine" and piety ("spirituality"), involves both historical knowledge and conscious, informed immersion in one's cultural context [contextuality]. Authentic theology only occurs where the claims of faith meet and wrestle with the great (characteristically repressed) questions and instabilities of the Zeitgeist [spirit of the times]. "Establishment" Christianity was content to transmit dogma and morality from place to place, generation to generation; post-Christendom theology entails original and diligent thinking [Denkarbeit!] including the entertainment of doubt and disbelief, on the part of the disciple-community. Today faith in all its forms and expressions is called to rescue human thinking as such from its captivation by "technical reason" (Tillich) or rechnendes Denken (Heidegger), as it manifests itself today (e.g.) in the West's educational emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) often to the virtual exclusion of the arts and humanities (Sciences humaines et sociales).

Personal life

Hall married the late Rhoda Catherine Palfrey, a fellow Canadian and graduate student at Columbia University, in 1960 at Riverside Church, New York City. They have four adult children (Kate, Christopher, Sara and Lucy), three of whom are professional musicians, and eight grandchildren.

Selected publications

• Lighten Our Darkness: Towards an Indigenous Theology of the Cross (1976)
• Has the Church a Future? (1980)
• The Steward: A Biblical Symbol Come of Age (1982)
• Christian Mission: The Stewardship of Life in the Kingdom of Death (1985)
• God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross (1986)
• A Trilogy: Christian Theology in a North American Context
  • Thinking the Faith (1991)
  • Professing the Faith (1993)
  • Confessing the Faith (1996)
• "Why Christian?" - For those on the Edge of Faith (1998)
• Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the legacy of 'Neo-Orthodoxy' (1998)
• The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity (2002)
• When You Pray: Thinking Your Way into God’s World (2003)
• Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship (2004)
• The Messenger: Friendship, Faith, and Finding One’s Way (2011)
• Waiting for Gospel: An Appeal to the Dispirited Remnants of Protestant "Establishment" (2012)
• What Christianity Is Not: An Exercise in "Negative" Theology (2013)

Honours

• Member of the Order of Canada (C.M.) - 2003
• Distinguished Alumnus of Union Theological Seminary – 1995
• The Joseph Sittler Medal for Leadership in Theology, Trinity Seminary (Columbus) – 2002
• Three Book of the Year awards, Academy of Parish Clergy -1994, 1997, 2004
• Ten Honorary Doctorates:
  • Queen's University, Kingston – D.D. 1988
  • The University of Waterloo – LL.D. 1992
  • The Presbyterian Theological College of Montreal – D.D. 1995
  • Victoria University in the University of Toronto – D.D. 2003
  • Montreal Diocesan College – S.T.D. 2007
  • United Theological College, Montreal – D.D. 2007
  • Huron University College, University of Western Ontario – D.D. 2009
  • St Andrew's Theological College, University of Saskatchewan – D.D. 2011
  • Wartburg Theological College, Dubuque, Iowa – D.D. 2013
  • Vancouver School of Theology -D.D. 2013

Notes

1. ^ "Douglas John Hall | School of Religious Studies - McGill University". www.mcgill.ca. Retrieved 2017-11-19.
2. ^ Lott 2013, p. 1. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFLott2013 (help)

References

• Lott, David B. (2013). "Introduction" (PDF). In Lott, David B. (ed.). Douglas John Hall: Collected Readings. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-9986-4. Retrieved 14 June 2017.

Further reading

• Lott, David B. (2013). "The Writings of Douglas John Hall". The Cresset. 76 (4): 54–58. ISSN 0011-1198. Retrieved 14 June 2017.

External links

•  Quotations related to Douglas John Hall at Wikiquote