Of course rigour should not be discarded. It isn’t about rigour, it is about expectation and training. How many graduate degrees in theology have within them a core training in Christian Disciplines? How many theologians are experts also in Christian spirituality. The classics of theology, those many wonderful and grand writers we read from centuries ago were almost always both pastors and thinkers, their thought informing their ministry, their ministry informing their thought, their private spirituality informing their ministry and their thought.

Now we separate these worlds, and insist theology fit into the mold of Philosophy’s lesser cousin.

To blend mysticism and theology is challenging and hard. But it does not mean abandoning the rigour. The idea that distancing is required is a result of centuries of assuming this, insisting there is no room for spirituality in logical thought. But of course there is, and as my Lossky quote suggests it can often result in some of the most rigorous and complex theology.

Do we have, for instance, any theologians today who could match the Cappadocian Fathers?

To be coherent and new and wide reaching Emerging Theology should almost certainly be challenging and difficult. And to be something truly transformative it cannot depend on the same methods or approaches that modernity has taught. Discovering again the different methods will be certainly challenging and require new emphases in training.

If all things stay the same but for different buzz words what will actually emerge from any of this?