Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

Off and on for years I have considered writing something autobiographical. Many of the people who live in my retirement community, Pilgrim Place, do so, as do some of my academic peers. But I have repeatedly postponed such an enterprise for a variety of reasons and might easily have kept postponing until my ability to carry it out was long gone. Current opportunities and needs always seemed more important. Indeed, I was not sure of what use any autobiography I might write would be.

I think there may be value in a truly self-revelatory autobiography, and if I alone were involved, I would be open to that kind of self-exposure. But one cannot share intimate details about oneself without involving others who may prefer privacy. On the other hand, since my memory is far from reliable, a factually accurate account of past events would require a kind of research for which I lack the patience, and I see no reason to suppose that the results would have significant interest for others.

What changed my mind was reading Thomas J. J. Altizer’s Living the Death of God. He calls it, quite accurately, “A Theological Memoir.” It is a reflection on his still ongoing theological journey.

In three ways, reading it heightened my interest in writing some kind of theological memoir myself. First, it made me think about my very different theological journey. Reading Altizer has always made me self-reflective, and reading this book pushed me to a brief renewal of what was once an intense and extensive interaction between us. I’ll write about that later. Second, I decided that, for my own sake, I might make more sense of the variety of directions my thought has taken in a kind of apologia. Overall, what have I been trying to do? Obviously, my hopes and dreams far exceeded any accomplishments. But here and there some of my initiatives have borne fruit. To what extent, then, have I “succeeded”? Third, Altizer’s book showed me that I might write something that would not simply be self-indulgent, although it remains that, but would also have its own theological weight and usefulness. It can be a proposal of a kind of theological program that few are pursuing. Perhaps it can even stimulate some readers to reflect about their own vocations, as I have been stimulated by Altizer to become more reflective about mine. I am not as original a thinker as Altizer; so my story is more typical of my generation of theologians than his. But no two stories are the same.

By calling my writing “reminiscences” I hope to free myself from heavy responsibility with respect to the detailed historical accuracy of what I say. I will write about how I see the development of my thinking from my present vantage point. No doubt I am now trying to fit things into an overall pattern that exists primarily in my current imagination. But I hope that there is also some real connection to the past. I do not intend to write fiction.