an emerging theology

I am grateful for these thoughtful recommendations, and with qualifications here or there I can agree with many of them for how to pursue theology. However, I am struck by a certain irony for the list as a whole. Every tenet begins with the word theology, which, you know, means a “study of God.” Yet I do believe that I could be a philosophical materialist and affirm every tenet you have proposed (as long as you permit me to define “Christ” in number 2 functionally or in any way less than fully divine). In other words, the problem is not what’s on your list, it’s what’s not on your list. Why not speak about the “revelation of God” or the “divinely-conferred authority of Scripture,” unless you are in fact working with hidden “modernist” presuppositions, much as the postliberals, Hauerwas et al are. As it stands, you’re not talking about “theo-logy,” you’re talking about “community-ology.”