Teaching the 'subject' of theology: The theologian as postmodern educator, with continual reference to Michel Foucault

The contemporary setting for teaching theology in the West is adequately described as “postmodern,” an era wherein increasing general consciousness of cultural and historical difference problematizes the possibility of any common understanding of subjectivity and knowledge. This is not only true ad extra, but also ad intra for Christian theology. Today, subjectivity and knowledge are contested concepts.;The works of Karl Rahner and Thomas Groome show that and how subjectivity is always being formed in the knowing that takes place in every theological-pedagogical event. Both take somewhat different approaches in limning this formation in terms of a unity of being and knowing. Their existential frameworks are open to postmodern development: in the direction of greater historical sensitivity in construing the freeing character of knowing, and in construing more critically the discursive embeddedness of subjectivity itself.;The works of Michel Foucault provide critical historical-philosophical tools for understanding the way that power and knowledge articulate subjectivity. Placing Foucault's work in conversation with that of Rahner and Groome leads to three theses: First, practices of theological education are exercises of power-knowledge. Thus, theological knowledge comes from diverse domains and is learned in diverse ways. Second, subjectification is what is primarily at stake in power-knowledge exercises in the theology classroom. Subjectification is continually contested in the classroom, in part through the uses of domains of theological knowledge. Third, given this, Catholic theology in the classroom should strive to practice a freeing theological subjectification, sponsoring critical fluency in plural domains of knowledge. The achievements of Rahner anti Groome are thus elaborated in more specific attention to the discursive embeddedness of subjectification.;A theological subjectification tied to an enlargement of what counts as theological knowing may critically resource the influential work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences. In so doing, the present work proposes musical knowledge as an exemplary form of a non-verbal, subjugated domain of theological knowledge deserving renewed attention. The theologian as postmodern educator will then take on a new solidarity with students that is informed by a spirituality of power, enriched by an enlargement of domains and modes of theological knowing, and evaluated through a more critical view of assessment practices.