In the context of Christian theology, what is Tradition? And what is it for? Is it a unified, monolithic body of doctrines, from which we deviate at our peril? Is it a quarry of texts, open to be mined by any and all for juicy quotations? Instead of these images, Matt Jenson offers us the image of apprenticeship. In his book Theology in the Democracy of the Dead, Jenson reminds us that we inherit not only ideas from the Tradition, but also models of practice in the arts of reading and thinking, models that are both original and humbly faithful to the witness of Scripture and the Spirit’s guiding work in the Church.
In this episode of Christian Humanist Profiles, David Grubbs interviews Dr. Matt Jenson, Professor of Theology in the Torrey Honors College at Biola University and author of Theology in the Democracy of the Dead: A Dialogue with the Living Tradition (Baker Academic, 2020).