I've been thinking for some time about a new series on those theologians I love. I'm not so much interested in a roll call of "great" theologians (as fun as that might be) nor do I care to come up with a list of influential thinkers. Instead, I'm going to write on why I love particular theologians. So it's meant to be personal and subjective. Doubtless other lists would contain other folks.
In other words, the series is as much about love as it is about theologians. Why is it that the experience of love is so closely tied to theological study? Why is it that we are really deeply influenced only by those thinkers to whom we open ourselves in love? Why is it that the absence of love so often constitutes an obstacle to genuine understanding -- so that the thinker whom we have not yet learned to love seems remote and unintelligible?
Those are questions I want to address, however indirectly, in this series.
This may seem a strange project to begin at the start of Lent. But I think it's precisely the sort of discipline called for.
This Lent I've "given up" judgmentalism and the need to always be right. I've "taken up" love and kindness. So it's time I account for all those who have helped me grow in loving grace.