Christ the Stranger: The theology of Rowan Williams

Abstract

Boccaccio once theorised (in his Life of Dante) that theology could be accurately described as 'poetry' about God. However, one does not always get the impression when reading theologians that such a connection is so obvious. And yet there are Christian writers who have sought to bring together the concerns of skilled writing and communication. One only has to remember Augustine's consummate level of Latin dexterity, or Calvin's infl uence on French prose writing, or Tyndale's translation of Bible to know that the relation between form and content, between the concrete and the evocative is by no means alien to the tradition of spiritual and theological writing.It is for this reason that Benjamin Myers' descriptive and interpretative essay on Rowan Williams is particularly admirable. Besides being a wellresearched and readable work, it is fi lled with a good amount of apercus and insightful bon mots regarding key aspects of Williams' theology, such that in addition to being an accessible work, it is also an eminently quotable one as well. Some examples will suffi ce: regarding Williams' theological method he states in the Preface (p xi) that theology in Williams' view is 'not a private table for one but a rowdy banquet for those who gather, famished and thirsty, around Christ'. Th e overtones of theological dialogue and Eucharistic communion are clearly evident here, expressing in nuce Williams' fundamental hermeneutical orientation, consistent throughout his oeuvre. Th is is reiterated again, towards the end of the book (pp119-120), when he writes (again concerning Williams' theological methodology) that his 'theology is not so much an orderly arrangement of themes as an assemblage of discrete textual performances, a written ensemble, a