A Personal Theology of Incompleteness

I don't think she meant it to be funny, but a Massachusetts writer had me laughing out loud with her review of two Catholic books this week.

Her polite bewilderment at Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ronald Tacelli's Handbook of Catholic Apologetics was funny enough. Obviously a stranger to Catholic radio, Catholic blogs, and a sizeable number of Catholic publications these days, freelance writer Rachelle Linner didn't know what to make of a book written to prove that Catholic theology is true and that both secularism and other Christian theologies are not.

I know, it's a surprising concept the first time you encounter it. "Readers may need time to become familiar with their style of discourse," Linner says -- not the writing itself, which is "actually easy to follow and frequently leavened with humor" -- but the "divisiveness of their evangelical Catholicism." She decides to "take them at their word" that want to convert others in a spirit of love and compassion, but she can't get over their way of thinking -- which condemns subjectivism, leads them to call some theologians heretics, and seems to her more Protestant than Catholic. "The book's language of discourse," she says, "... is an anachronistic rendering of an earlier, triumphalistic ecclesiology."

All right, we know where she's coming from. But here's the part that had me laughing out loud: Linner's favorable review of Neil A. Parent's A Concise Guide to Adult Faith Formation. This book, she says, is "more useful" than the other. Parent has "spent his entire professional life in adult catechsis" and has a "sophisticated understanding of how adults learn." His book is "evidence that Parent is the wise teacher who has taken his own advice." 

So far, so good. But what does wise Mr. Parent teach with his sophisticated understanding of how adults learn? Here's her approving quote from the book:

When it comes to being a learner in the faith, it helps to cultivate a personal theology of incompleteness. We don't have all the answers; we are not pinnacles of wisdom. We are an unfolding mystery, even to ourselves.

Now, as "an adult learner in the faith," would you rather take a class from someone who offers answers to your questions, or from someone who "cultivates a personal theology of incompleteness"? This goes far beyond whether one holds (for lack of better terms) "liberal" or "traditional" theological positions, both of which have a place in the Catholic Church. This is just plain silliness dressed up as profundity.

Please let me know which you would prefer. I'd tell you my recommendation, but right now I'm trying to cultivate a personal theology of incompleteness and I'm a mystery even to myself. So I'm not really in a position to teach anyone anything.