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Saturdays at Seven Conversation Series

“The Most Precious Gift” ft. the University of Bristol’s Gavin D’Costa I Saturdays at Seven – Season Three, Episode Forty-Nine

By August 22, 2026No Comments

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In the forty-ninth episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Gavin D’Costa, Professor of Catholic Theology Emeritus at the University of Bristol and Invited Professor of Interreligious Dialogue at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. D’Costa opens by discussing the legacy of Vatican II and the relationships Catholics share with members of the other two Abrahamic religious traditions in Judaism and Islam. He then expands upon those insights by discussing the relationships Catholics share with members of wider circles of religious traditions including Hinduism and Buddhism. D’Costa’s childhood was defined by years in India, Kenya, and England, cultivating within him a keen interest in and sensitivity to how his own religious commitments intersect with the commitments of others. While an undergraduate student, the secular nature of the research university initially compelled D’Costa to question the validity of his faith. Drawing inspiration and insight from Thomas Aquinas, Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, however, D’Costa found his voice as a Catholic theologian which also led to a renewed calling to his commitment to foster and frame dialogue with members of other religious traditions. D’Costa discusses lessons he learned while exercising his vocation at the University of Bristol for 31-years as well as his appreciation for the ways an appointment at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas allowed him to continue exercising his vocation in direct service to the Church. D’Costa then closes by talking about the importance of intellectual friendship and the role the practice of listening plays when cultivating relationships with individuals with whom one agrees and disagrees.

Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.

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Our guest is Gavin D’Costa, Professor of Catholic Theology Emeritus at the University of Bristol and Invited Professor of Interfaith Dialogue at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thank you for joining us.

Gavin D’Costa: My pleasure.

Todd Ream: Perhaps one of the most important contributions offered by Vatican II is found in the words of Unitatis redintegratio. Its introduction we find, “Christ has been rousing divided Christians to remorse over their divisions and to a longing for unity. Everywhere large numbers have felt the impulse of this grace, and among our separated brethren also there increases from day to day the movement fostered by the grace of the Holy Spirit. For this restoration of unity is among all Christians. This movement toward unity is called ecumenical.”

Would you begin by putting to words some context for us about how that constitution was issued by the council and how it resonated with Catholics, predictable or unpredictable perhaps?

Gavin D’Costa: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we’ve got to kind of look to the ’30s and ’40s as a time when a lot of grassroot ecumenical conversations were going on. This was primarily in, in terms of the Catholic Church, France, Germany Holland, and in the United States. So they were kind of small groups. They were pretty advanced in one respect. They didn’t represent the majority of Catholics.

And of course, after World War II, with this kind of moment of crisis for Christian identity, not only had there been the massacre and murder of millions of Jews in the heart of Christian Europe, which was a kind of wake-up call about, you know, Christian identity, but also the butchering of Christians by Christians. And in one respect, there was a kind of momentum for Christians to face seriously the question about their identity. And we have to look over our shoulders and see that the World Council of Churches began in the ’40s. That was a key moment for bringing ecumenism high on the map.

Of course, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church both did not feel that they could join it because they felt, rightly or wrongly, that it was kind of signifying the equality of all Christian groups coming together, whereas the Catholic Church pretty well held a doctrine which it was the true Church founded by Christ desired for all men and women. So that was a kind of block on Catholic participation.

But the momentum of the World Council of Churches, the momentum of these small grassroot movements eventually hit the consciousness of Pope John XXIII. And in a, in a strange way, the Catholic Church has the great benefit of being a very pyramidal power structure. So if the Pope wants something, usually, usually I say, get it done. 

So when John XXIII convoked the council, ’62, people were just shocked. They thought, you know, “What is this all about?” Sort of “What has the Catholic Church got to discuss?” Usually councils were held because of major heresies that had to be quashed and anathemas that had to be proclaimed. And here was John saying, “Let us have a council.”

And one of his main concerns was ecumenism, to bring Christians together in unity. And I think in a, in a way, it was a kind of profound sense of the scandal of Christian unity actually meant it lacked credibility to a growing secularism that was sweeping over Europe, the US, et cetera. And like now in 2000 and in the 2020s where we are, we can see the repercussions of all that. And we can also see, I think, the sense in which Christian disunity often does make non-Christians say, “Well, look at them. They’re supposed to be following Jesus Christ, but they’re squabbling with each other all the time.” So that context is important.

So it was a kind of a bit of a shock, I think, for your average Catholic, because if you think about it, at that point in Church discipline, no Catholic was allowed to attend any service from another Christian denomination. That was forbidden. And in a way, you know, when you think about it now, the shift where there are kind of prayer meetings, ecumenical services, which are kind of taken for granted, in the ’30s and ’40s, that was absolutely disallowed.

So it wasn’t predicted, I would say, by the majority of Catholics, but it was fortunately a kind of momentum that had built up in terms of the hierarchy because of grassroot movements that were going on in different countries.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Another contribution, perhaps an equally important contribution offered by Vatican II, is found in the words of Nostra aetate. And from its introduction, we find the words: “The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons that, through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve, and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among those men.”

Would you begin by putting those words also into context as Catholics and widening circle of Christians, thanks to ecumenical efforts that were also taking place at the time, how, how they would’ve impacted them?

Gavin D’Costa: Yeah. So in the same way that kind of Christian ecumenism had been bubbling up at grassroots and affecting the consciousness of some who were eventually transmitting it to the wider group. Same thing was going on in terms of interfaith. And, you know, we got to, again, think back to the ’60s. We had, like, one of the most successful pop groups in the world, the Beatles having one of their members being involved with Hinduism later on and having his own personal guru. We have the huge migration of Indian and Asian culture into the West, and with it Hinduism and Buddhism and Eastern religions.

So it’s, it’s a kind of very important point that when Christianity was undergoing its own internal crisis in the ’40s onwards, suddenly there were alternatives on the market, if I could put it like that rather crudely. Uh, there were alternatives on the market, and especially you’ve got to remember that a lot of the alternatives came from colonial-dominated countries.

So very famously, if I take the example of Satvali Radhakrishnan Radhakrishnan was, you know, part of British-dominated India and used to write very polemically that Christianity’s imperial arrogance was translated into its political actions. And he used that argument to also argue for the superiority of Hinduism that was being put down by lots of British missionaries. So think of this ferment of the collapse of the empire, huge migration everywhere around the globe.

And the Catholic Church is a universal Church, so it doesn’t just exist in one place. And in a way, the pressure for it to look at other religions was significant. But if the truth be told, and here we must be truthful, it wasn’t really on the agenda at all for the council, right. It started off entirely connected with one issue, which was the Jewish Holocaust in the center of Europe.

And John XXIII was very concerned through interestingly, his friendship with a famous Jewish scholar, Jules Isaac. And Isaac argued that actually Christian antisemitism, which hardly anyone could deny now that Christian Europe had done the butchering, Christian antisemitism could be, if you like, deconstructed, not through any change of doctrine, but that the deicide charge against the Jews, that they were guilty then and now for Jesus’s death, be removed.

And John XXIII, you know, this is like in diaries, et cetera, not official information, was persuaded by that argument and asked the Cardinal Bea, who was in charge of ecumenism at the time, to start drafting a document on the Jews. And of course, if we think of this in the ’60s, in the background, what have we got going in Israel? We’ve got the nation state Israel coming into existence, then it’s being attacked by its many, many Arab neighbors. And of course, as soon as there was news that the Catholic Church was going to speak about Jews, all hell broke loose because Middle Eastern countries, Christians in Middle Eastern countries said, “Hey, we are going to get it in the neck if you start supporting the Jews in any way at all.”

And it was the genius of the next pope to preside over the council, Pope Paul VI, who realized that doing a document on the Jews just wasn’t going to work with the Middle East in flames. So he said, “Whenever the Jews get mentioned, we must mention Islam.” And the African bishop said, “Hey, what about the religions we live with?” And the Asian bishops also said, “What about Hinduism and Buddhism?”

So we get this document on the world religions that was never intended and started life exclusively as a document on the Jews, but for various pressures changed. So if you think the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways, this is a fantastic example. So it was a shock for many Catholics, again, that the Church was speaking on this.

And just one last comment. Uh, when the council was called by John, he said it was a council to address the modern world in its complexity and reality. It’s not about changing doctrine. It’s not about renouncing the truth, but applying the truth of the Catholic faith to these situations. So we have this theme of both ecumenism and the importance of other religions that really take off after the ’60s in the Roman Catholic Church.

Todd Ream: Thank you. In what ways then does Nostra aetate impact the efforts in which you currently invest at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, or popularly known, the Angelicum?

Gavin D’Costa: Yeah. So in Rome, where I’m teaching, this Nostra aetate is absolutely vital for those of us who are concerned with this area. So there are various universities and the Angelicum at the moment has started a center for interreligious theology.

And in this center, we are keen that our students, who are mainly actually coming from countries with Islam happening, I mean, a lot of my African students have never met a Jew in their life or seen a Jew, and most of the Jews they know are from the Bible. So that’s the really interesting point. Islam is the big thing. And for the Indian and Asian students, Hinduism and Buddhism.

So at the Pontifical University of the Angelicum in Rome, we’re trying to develop a center which will train priests and pastors to understand the Catholic view of these religions in general, so that in their own particular context, which is going to be different in Nigeria, it’s different from London, which is different from, you know, Islamabad, et cetera in their own contexts, can engage fruitfully, critically, and positively with those from other faiths, as opposed to an earlier attitude which may have been, I’m caricaturing slightly, but the only thing we’ve got to do is tell the people the truth of Jesus Christ, full stop.

There was no sense of an engagement with the other, with a sort of respect and understanding that the other may have been touched by God already. Um, that’s a caricatured view. If we look at the history of missions, it’s much more complex. But at least it changed a mindset from keep out, we are the truth and nothing but the truth, to saying, “Hey, we are all on a journey, and we still believe we’re the truth, but we want to share and learn and witness all at the same time.” And that relates both to Christians and other faiths.

But we have to remember the word ecumenism in terms of the Catholic world is only applied to other Christians and intriguingly and surprisingly, the Jewish people, so that the dicastery that is in charge of relations with the Jews sits in the dicastery for ecumenism. And then there’s another dicastery in the Holy See, which is other religions, which means everything else but Christians and Jews. So that’s a kind of important sense that ecumenism is not necessarily the same dynamic for these different groups.

Todd Ream: Thank you. That’s very helpful. I want to back up now and ask you about your own story. Your parents are originally from India. You were born in Kenya and educated in England, earning undergraduate degrees in English and theology from the University of Birmingham and a PhD in theology from the University of Cambridge.

At what point in time did you know that the study of theology would prove central to how you were called to exercise your vocation?

Gavin D’Costa: Right. Okay, so this, this is a kind of moment of personal story. Um, I was born and raised Roman Catholic by my folks who were cradle Catholics as well. They had moved to Kenya as part of the empire, and my sister and I were brought up in a Catholic school. When we came to the UK, I was 11, and at the age of about 13 or 14, like I think a lot of young people do undergo, there was a kind of questioning, and I felt somehow that I did not know Jesus Christ personally. I, I knew all the words. I went to church, but I had something missing inside of me.

And I had cousin, wonderful guy, who’s still around, who was visiting us at the time, and I was talking to him about this, and he just said “Let’s pray. Let’s stop and pray that Christ comes into your life.” Now, this is, like, very maybe un-Catholic type of stuff. We may, may assume this more in Protestant or Pentecostal or whatever circles.

But that was the moment at the age of 14, I was overwhelmed, met Jesus Christ, knew Him to be my Savior, and at that point onwards, I knew I wanted serve Him. And because I was kind of reasonably smart and very interested in studying, my main interest then became theology. So I started reading Aquinas and Aristotle at 16 and was thinking, “Wow, this is just mind-blowing.” And my thought was either I wanted to become a priest or I wanted to teach theology, or the best deal would be both. And so I pursued initially testing a discernment process for being a Jesuit.

And I, I hadn’t kind of made up my mind, then I decided I would go and study theology. But I knew I wanted to do theology. I did theology in English because I loved English literature, and I thought I would explore the vocation going through that route. And sad to say, and I, I say this with a kind of not ingratitude, but in the UK, going to study theology in a secular university is kind of almost destined to crash the faith because it’s really operating on historical-literary presuppositions.

And the idea of, of faith commitment is kind of, you know, kept private. You can be committed, but it’s not part of the studying process, and it has to be kind of hardcore historical-linguistic that, the UK is very famous for its Bible study compared to, say, Scotland, which was much more systematically oriented. So within two years to three years, I’d lost my faith and had a sense that I didn’t realize then, but I could see it retrospectively later on. This was because I studied theology, which is a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? But there you go.

But I knew still that there was something within me that kept me going. Part of it was the process whereby you had to apply to do a PhD a year before you finished your first degree. So I was slightly like a machine going forward, having lost my inner sense of commitment.

But, and this will be the end of the story. In my first year at Cambridge, I went out to India to research. I was doing my PhD on John Hick and Hick and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. So I was going out there to read Radhakrishnan’s stuff, and I spent a lot of time in Christian ashrams, and to be honest, because they were cheap, and also because I was kind of keen on looking at how Christianity and Catholicism was impacted by Indian culture.

So I had all these intellectual interests, and there I had this remarkable moment at Bede Griffith’s ashram suddenly thinking, “Wow, the liturgy is so beautiful. It’s so meaningful. It’s so prayerful. This is what I love.” And it led me back into a strong and serious relationship with Christ. It was almost like, you know, T.S. Eliot says, “You suddenly see the same thing for the first time.”

So the key point was going to India, staying at Bede Griffith’s ashram, going to Mass, which was sitting on the floor, incense, saying prayers in Sanskrit, which was all a bit, you know, could be seen as a bit wacky. But it allowed me to see the treasures of the liturgy in a new way, that here was a time that it allowed stopping before God, involving all the senses and giving praise and glory. So that was the turning point, and I knew back to theology , this was what I wanted to do.

And by that time, I think I was also aware that it wasn’t to the priesthood I was called because I’d started a relationship in Birmingham with my now wife. Um, but I wanted to do theology, and there was nothing else I thought I wanted to do. So I was a kind of one of, one of these useless people that my poor Indian parents were slightly disappointed with. All I wanted to do was read theology and teach theology and not become a banker or a lawyer or a doctor or something like that.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Were there any mentors along the way who helped shape that commitment to teaching, or authors who have also, recent or past, who have shaped your ways that you view theology and the practice of doing theology?

Gavin D’Costa: Yeah. No, I mean, it’s, it’s interesting. I think both because of having this kind theological, the love of theology, but certainly the priest who I used to see when I was thinking about the Jesuits, we kept in contact throughout. I also became involved with Opus Dei for a period, and they were very, a guy called Jim was very, very influential and helpful. Someone who kind of took seriously the spiritual path and said, “Yeah, yeah, you want to be an intellectual, that’s cool, but it’s also important to keep your faith integrated with this intellectual journey.”

My supervisor at Cambridge, who was in fact a practicing Catholic, but he was married to a Hindu, and that’s his own plug-in to the whole kind of interfaith thing. So very much various people along the journey who I’m very grateful to.

I think my, my intellectual mentors Aquinas, you know, it’s wonderful for me that I’m finally teaching in Rome, at a university dedicated to Thomas Aquinas, because Aquinas always struck me as the most wonderful synthesis between faith and reason, and faith and culture. And talk about a kind of like a total giant who just embraced and was interested in culture, in history, in art. Nothing was closed off to him, and that’s the kind of spirit that attracted me to Catholicism.

And he was also very keen. You know, he draws on, Aristotle, of course, but he also draws on the famous Islamic philosophers who were being translated into Latin at the time, Averröes, et cetera. And Aquinas just has this constant dialogue with the intellectual worldviews around him. So I think for me, he was a very, very big model of be open, be truthful to your own tradition, embrace all that is good and true, and integrate it into your tradition.

You know, he used to say, the sacking of the Egyptians was part of the Christian tradition. It’s a kind of metaphor that may make us feel uncomfortable in the post-colonial world, but there’s something quite profound about it.

I think in terms of modern theology, the two people I am most grateful to, it would be Karl Rahner, who, when I was in India recovering my faith, I remember reading The Foundations of Faith. And for me, that was like a kind of intellectual moment of gestalt, of connecting me with what I was going through in my experience.

 And then the second person who then weaned me off Rahner but I’m still grateful to Rahner, was Karl Barth. So I spent a couple of years being immersed in Barth, and I think I sort of valued him because there was a kind of attempt to focus on the Gospel. And as a Catholic, you know, I’m focused on the Gospel but through the medium of tradition and the magisterium. Barth was just like taking us. I mean, he had his own tradition of mediation. But I, I loved both his biblical focus and his unpredictability, that sense that when you encounter the Word of God, your world begins to go haywire.

So Barth was kind of chastening spirit me. And then von Balthasar took over as, in a sense, a kind of amalgam of the instinct of Barth and the universality that was present in Rahner and Aquinas. So those have been big figures in my whole upbringing.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. You served on the theology and religious studies faculty at the University of Bristol for 31 years.

Would you describe the discernment process that led you to serve that long at one institution? And then what advice would you offer to young scholars who have recently accepted their first appointment?

Gavin D’Costa: Well, in the UK when I finished at Cambridge, I taught in London for a little bit, but it, it wasn’t on a full contract, so I was always looking for a permanent position. Bristol is a very prestigious university but in the UK, pretty well all of the universities are secular foundation. I mean, they were religious originally, like Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, but now they are part of the government funding they’re under the control of.

So when I got the job at Bristol, I was delighted because, one, it was a permanent job, two, it was doing theology. And in a funny way, because it was a secular university and it was a time when Marxism, feminism, all these disciplines were engaging with the teaching of classics, the teaching of English, et cetera. And at Bristol, I suddenly had this moment of insight that I didn’t have to keep secret I was a Catholic. In fact, the culture of postmodernism said, you know, “Come out. Be who you are and say that’s where you’re coming from.”

So I kind of suddenly moved out of the bondage of the secular with a pretense to neutrality into a situation of being in Bristol where because it was a secular university that was committed to intellectual freedom, it allowed people to do the subject in a, as long as they were responsible, intellectually rigorous in whatever they wanted.

So I used to tell my students my story of being led out of faith through doing theology, and my desire to recognize that this discipline was actually dependent on faith, and to ask students to think about their own situation. Not in a way saying, “You ought to be Christian if you’re doing it,” but to say, “Where are you coming from when you do this subject? What are your own beliefs and assumptions?” Because that’s important in how you make judgments and evaluations.

So why did I stay there 31 years? Because I had fabulous colleagues, and more because, our kids were, like, they were born in Bristol, and their education was there. And there had to be something really important to interrupt both my wife’s career and my kids’ education to say, “Let’s leave Bristol and go and do something else.”

So there were moments of being offered very attractive positions in the US and in other parts of the UK. But fortunately because I had a permanent job and a very happy family life, which I wanted to keep as prime, I thought, “I’m not going to move, I’m happy here, and I don’t have to, like, pursue a, a career just of moving up and up the ladder.”

So the advice, which is your question, what advice would I give young scholars? Um, one is that there’s so much pressure to get a job. And academic jobs are really difficult, so I take that seriously. And when you’ve invested so much to do a doctorate and do all this training, that’s what you want to do. So go for it and be very professional and thoughtful in the way you approach the task. You know, learn what you’ve got to do to get that job.

Then when you’ve got it, make sure you integrate your faith and keep it integrated so that you can be a teacher of a true discipline called theology, rather than a teacher of history or a teacher of, you know literary studies which happen to be the Bible. And I think in a way, if you have faith, it is the most precious gift, and to be able to offer it as part of a intellectual approach to the world is the way in which you can serve students well.

Um, in the States, you have a much more mixed economy of religious institutions, and that’s, you know, all taken for granted. In the UK, it was a battle, but it was a kind of joyful battle. And I want to just say one thing given the ecumenical context of this, this interview, that the students I found a lot in common with and used to kind of get very friendly with were evangelical Protestants. They kind of came to university because they loved theology and found it almost immediately quite inimical to their faith. So for a lecturer to stand up who happened to be Catholic and used to say, “I’m Catholic,” but put faith at the center of the studying, gave them an opening to come clean, which I appreciated.

And I think we both had a sense of solidarity that I remember one of my evangelical students saying “I think…” When I was saying to him how I’d love to teach in a Catholic university, he said, a really nice guy he said, “But you carry out a missionary task here.” And I’d never thought about it in that way. “Yeah, you’re right, Dan.” And he said, “Well, you know, if you weren’t here saying that faith is driving you for what you’re doing and you’re intellectually respectable, a lot of students would miss out.”

And it’s not in any way that, you know my colleagues were lovely, lovely people, but it was a kind of taken for granted that we would not mention our personal religious faith in the university. Crazy, but that’s how it was and is in some places.

Todd Ream: Would you tell us now then about the discernment process after you retired from the University of Bristol that has now led you to Rome and to serve within a Catholic university context there at the Angelicum?

Gavin D’Costa: I can only say this is God’s graciousness and gift really, because when I was coming up to retirement at Bristol, I got offered a six-month chair in Rome, and it was in my last year as an academic. I decided to kind of take retirement a bit early because basically I didn’t want to be dragged into endless admin. I wanted to do research. And I thought, “Well, okay, why not?” because otherwise you’re going to be miserable and ascend a particular ladder that I had no desire to ascend, which was, you know, it’s important, I’m not knocking it, but it wasn’t me.

So when I went to Rome it was like a dream come true. I was in a Catholic environment. All the students had Christian commitment, Catholic commitment, pretty well all. And it was taken for granted that the faith was true. You didn’t have to be all the time doing apologetics. You could actually be doing dogmatics proper, which, you know, in Bristol, one could never do.

And the discernment was thinking, “This is just a fabulous environment. I wish I could teach here.” And fortunately, the rector of the institution saying to me in the middle of the visiting lectureship “We’d love you to teach here.” And I said, “Oh, I would love to.

But why I left Bristol is I just don’t like admin at all. It’s dragging me down. So is there any chance of, you know, teaching, research, doing all the kind of stuff that one should, but not to do any admin? And he said, “Sure.” And there you have the story.

But the discernment was two things. One, it felt like I’d been a, you know, been fed, payrolled through doing theology, but never directly serving the Church in the teaching of it. I was teaching deacons and priests and kind of Sunday events and things like that. But it felt a real chance to serve the Church right at the heart of its center in Rome.

It also felt like a real privilege to be able to teach people pretty well from countries which were often not well off financially, who could not normally get a kind of rigorous education. But in Rome, especially at the Angelicum, there was a very big drive to raise money to help people from poorer countries to come and study there, because no one can afford to live in Italy if you’re coming from, you know, Sub-Saharan Africa or whatever.

So it felt like a wonderful enterprise, and the opportunity to teach there was just like a dream come true. And I thought, seemed to be good for my wife and for my kids, we’re all very positive about it.

So the process of discernment was thinking, how can I serve God through the talents and skills I’ve been given? And the answer was by retiring and getting on with your writing, and then suddenly being woken up to, actually I love teaching, and this was an opportunity to teach as well as continue the research. So it was a rather delightful situation of serving God and being very happy myself in doing so.

I don’t have a, a kind of struggle story that, you know, I went into the jungle and swamps and it was horrible, but I knew I was serving God. I was just having a grand time and loving it and knew I was serving God.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. I want to ask you now about a couple of your previous book projects, if I may.

Gavin D’Costa: Sure.

Todd Ream: You’re the author of 10 books and the editor of another 12 books, and when you look back over the arc of your published work, what themes do you notice? What questions sort of jump out to you that would be perhaps, say, at the heart of your vocation and how you’ve sought to express that as a theologian?

Gavin D’Costa: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting you ask that question because sometimes I think, gosh, well to write this much is a bit driven or did I really have so much to say about all these things?

The one thing in common in reflecting on your question, was about actually engagement of the other. What I loved so much about Aquinas was that in all of the books, there’s one thing in common. It was other religions particularly Judaism and then particularly Islam. But in one of the books, Theology in the Public Square, was my attempt to think through other isn’t just a theoretical construct. It is here in the UK, how do I actually see my vocation as a theologian in a predominantly secular society, and think that one through.

In my book, Sexing the Trinity, I was very keen to think about the doctrine of the Trinity, which was the heart of the faith in the light of psychoanalysis, which I myself had been involved with, and kind of wanting to integrate these very different parts of life and make sense of it.

And I mentioned my sister, she became a Buddhist at the age of about 35 or so, and that was a kind of serious call for me to engage with Buddhism because this wasn’t just an intellectual question, but an existential one that my buddy in faith, she, you know, I had a, questioned whether I needed, would go into the priesthood, and she did. Likewise, if she had a religious vocation.

So when she became a Buddhist, it was a big shock to all of the family my mom, my dad, and myself. I say shock, you know, it wasn’t like, we still loved her and we just carried on as you do with all these things in life, but I think it just meant that the otherness of different traditions underlies one theme. It runs through all of those books.

But also to recognize in the other the positive reality of Christ’s work. I mean, I don’t say this with a bleary eye. You know, we face ISIS, we face all sorts of threats to world order and peace. And in our lives, we face our own obstruction of goodness through sinfulness. So this is a difficult journey, but I think the journey of engaging with the world is my kind of central concern to apply theology like Vatican II to the situation of our time.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Before we close our conversation then, I want to ask you a couple more questions about your vocation as a theologian then.

Over the course of your career, what practices nurtured it? What opportunities advanced it? And then what forces, you’ve talked about already secularism as it was present in England, but what forces, if any, threatened it too?

Gavin D’Costa: I guess practices, I would say cuts across all of the different Christian denominations. But prayer and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that nourishes everything else that comes along. So, you know, one can be at the heart of Rome, be involved with stuff connected with the Holy See, but if you don’t have actual real living faith, as Paul says, you’re like an empty gong.

And it’s very important for me, the practice of prayer and also the liturgy. I go up and down sometimes because, you know, like I’m, I belong to a parish, and the priest may change, and then I’m thinking, this is not very nourishing. I didn’t like the sermon, but I carry on, as I should. You know, like we’re all part of a family.

So I would say prayer, liturgy, and confession because confession’s kind of, I think one of the few opportunities of an examination of conscience and coming clean, but doing it in front of someone else, totally different from when I do it on my own in the room. It’s like sudden vulnerability which allows us to keep close to our humanity. Okay, so those are the kind of practices.

And the last practice, which I think come out of that life of prayer and grace and fellowship, are what are traditionally called acts of mercy or we could call going out into the world to bring justice and peace. And I’m putting that in that order because just for me, that’s how it works.

I know I have friends who want to emphasize the justice and peace as the primary praxis of Christianity, whereas I’d want to put prayer at the center and say justice and peace follow from it. So I think actually that involvement of trying to be a Christian in the world is a practice that should be, you know, very, very much present. And for me, it’s great.

Like I said, Rome, I’m in the middle of a Catholic community. All the teachers, all the students are Catholics. I sometimes think, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if these students actually met a non-Catholic each week?” No, I’m serious, you know.

We have a program now where I co-teach with a Jewish rabbi. And to have that different voice come into the community and learn from it, you don’t have to kind of agree, obviously, with everything. Uh, now I’m losing track of your question. So those are the practices, but there was something else in the question that I haven’t to.

Todd Ream: What forces, if any, have threatened it, or do you need to be prepared to address as a theologian and one who’s called to share in that vocation?

Gavin D’Costa: I think the forces that threaten it are the social power of certain discourses, which are basically non-Christian. So there’s a huge sense that if you are going to be open to the world, you start reading other people, listening to other people, and it’s not losing the distinctive salt of Christianity.

So, you know, I think like I know when I was immersing myself in Freud and Jung and psychoanalysis, there was a moment of recognition that I could easily begin to mold my Christianity through the lenses that, just as liberation theology had been profoundly affected by Marx, just as et cetera, et cetera.

And it wasn’t a matter of kind of saying, what has Athens and Rome got to do with each other? It’s more having a fruitful conversation, not allowing the domination of what I would call ideologies to actually become primary for what is primary, which is the relationship with God.

So that would’ve been a constant sense of having to struggle with idolatry, both, you know, in my theological life, but also in my living practice. And that’s one of the biggest distractions.

And the second one I would say, and this is, you know, working in Europe and maybe this would be true of the US, are the levels of affluence. Um, sometimes going to Rome has made me realize, some of these guys teaching they’re mainly guys, nuns don’t always do my courses they come from countries which are so, so poor, where my having an iPad is like, wow, that would be five, six months’ salary.

The assumptions I make about what is important in life are so embedded in material wealth. I need to be aware of that. And I think the more our politicians offer us increased standard of living, while they cut welfare or cut money to developing nations, et cetera, is to be able not to be engulfed in that, but to have a critical distance through fidelity to Christ.

I mean, I’m a terrible sinner. I’m easily pulled away by so many things. Uh, but I think it’s the vigilance of recognizing there are those things and fidelity to Christ is a, a costly and timely process, and the development of habits, which was part of your earlier bit of the question, keeps us anchored in that way.

Todd Ream: As the outgrowth of those practices and habits then, what intellectual or moral virtues do you believe theologians need to cultivate in order to flourish in their work? And for what theological virtues do you believe theologians need to pray to receive?

Gavin D’Costa: That’s difficult, but I’m just going to pick one in each category. I’d say friendship, because friendship really allows us to get to hear other people so that when our speaking happens, it may be effective, rather than coming with a prepackaged thing which you communicate to everyone and anyone, but the particular person doesn’t get touched, and vice versa. So I think, you know, one of the, the virtue of friendship is kind of like fostering being a human being, and being a human being is primary to being a good theologian.

And in terms of the virtues, for me, humility. Each person would have to answer this themselves, because I spend a lot of my time kind of locked up in a room with books, writing books, tends to imagine foolishly that, you know, what you’re doing is connected with truth and it’s important. And that is what I believe I’m doing. But I have to also recognize that I can get it wrong. I can actually misinterpret things terribly.

And if I have a confidence that, well, I’m in this position, I’m a professor here, and I’ve written this number of books, it can be part of this idolatry of not being open to truth and judged by truth. So for me, humility. For other people, it would be different things.

Um, for me, friendship, partly because of my locked in the room with books, you know, has made me a monk at times in a way that I wouldn’t have ever chosen. So I kind of have got to recognize that value.

But we each have to ask ourselves in our vocation as theologians, how can we do it better? How can we serve God better? And I think then it’ll, the questions you’re asking come up in different ways.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. For our last question of the day, I want to tap back into the theme that’s probably run through our entire conversation here, and but ask it more formally in this sense.

In what ways do you believe theologians can be of greater service by exercising their calling to the Church? But then, and also, in what ways can the Church be of greater service to theologians as those theologians exercise their calling?

Gavin D’Costa: Well, the Church is a kind of, you know, an amorphous term, different groups, different communities. So I think I’ll just speak for my own community here.

In a way, I think the theologian primarily needs to develop an ecclesial vocation that they seek to serve the Church in their work, not necessarily to write the best books or important paradigm changing things, et cetera, which, you know, as an intellectual, that’s what we’re encouraged to do. But how can we serve the Church?

And the Church, I think doesn’t always value the importance of the intellectual part of our faith. And, you know, so again, I just want to speak about my own church to cause no offense to others and cause only offense to other Catholics, which would be that, you know, sometimes we just don’t realize that the faith will not be planted and passed on if it doesn’t have an intellectual vitality and depth. You cannot just grow churches through numbers and people coming in.

It also has to be through their maturation, through their with the world, so that it’s the will, the heart, and the intellect working together. So I think, you know, especially at times when there are not enough people coming into the churches in the West, we’re worried about that, but we should also be worried about proper formation and giving resources, so that there can be proper formators, so to speak.

So to the Catholic Church, there was a time when the intellectual cultivation and development of theological training was greatly prized. And sadly, I think because of pragmatic pressures like money to train people enough, that’s falling down a little bit. So the Church needs to value its theologians and deploy them and use them and not become clerical, i.e. only the priest’s voice is heard.

So that’s the kind of ongoing struggle of love-hate saying, “Yoohoo, listen to us,” and the others saying, we do, but there are other things in life that we’ve got to attend to.” Um, but you know, I guess Methodists or Baptists or whatever will have different sorts of perception on that matter.

Todd Ream: Thank you very much. Our guest has been Gavin D’Costa, Professor of Catholic Theology Emeritus at the University of Bristol and the invited Professor of Interfaith Dialogue at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom with us.

Gavin D’Costa: My pleasure. Great to talk with you, Todd.

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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.

Todd C. Ream

Indiana Wesleyan University
Todd C. Ream serves as University Professor and Executive Director of Faculty Scholarship at Indiana Wesleyan. He also serves as a senior fellow with the Lumen Research Institute and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review.

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