What Drives Theologians?

The Motivations for Research and Writing

Before getting to today’s material, I have a couple of requests:

1. I am hoping to do a post on “What I wish they had taught me about teaching in grad school,” so if you know a Catholic theologian (including yourself) who just finished up their first or second year of full-time teaching theology at the undergraduate level who would be good for this feature, please email me at matthew_shadle@outlook.com.

2. Similarly, conference season is upon us for Catholic theologians, so I thought it would be fun to do a light-hearted post on how people prepare for conference presentations, whether they are good habits, bad habits, or personal quirks and idiosyncrasies. Write your paper at the last minute on the plane? Practice your talk in front of a mirror? Let me know! Also let me know if you want your submission to be kept anonymous if I use it. Email me at: matthew_shadle@outlook.com.

While working on last week’s post summarizing what has been included in Window Light over the past three months, I realized that recently there had not been any posts on the craft of theology, so I’m returning to that theme in today’s newsletter. I hope you enjoy!

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For academic theologians, as for most scholars, there is nothing quite like seeing that essay you worked on for months finally come out in print (or in PDF…), or seeing your presentation in the conference program. I imagine even the most seasoned scholar gets a little dopamine hit from this sense of accomplishment.

But how do we pick the research topics that leads to months, if not years, of work, in pursuit of that payoff? Of course, we write about the things that interest us and that we have some expertise in, but the reality is more complex than that. Based on my own experience, I have come to realize there are two basic motivations that impact the topics of our research: external demand and inner curiosity.

One of the best feelings in academia is when someone asks you to write something or to give a presentation on a specific topic in your area of expertise. For example, a few weeks ago I wrote about how my friend Anna Floerke Scheid and I were asked to write an essay on “The Virtues of Democratic Disobedience: Catholic Ethics and Political Resistance,” as a contribution to Uncivil Disobedience: Theological Perspectives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), a volume edited by David Giddes. The first time something like this happens, you feel like you have “arrived,” that someone has recognized you for your work and wants to see more, which is a great feeling!

These sorts of personal requests for a presentation or essay (or sometimes even a book!) on a specific topic are relatively rare. More commonly, a conference will issue a call for papers on a specific topic or a journal will solicit manuscripts for a special issue. For example, a couple of weeks ago I referenced a special issue of the Journal of Moral Theology focused on the theme of artificial intelligence. If we find the topic interesting and relevant for our research interests, we try to develop a proposal that draws on our expertise and that will catch the conveners’ or editors’ eye. In these cases the motivation is again primarily external, even if we come up with a proposal topic we find personally interesting, because in many cases the project is not what we would be working on absent the call for papers.

Scholarship that arises from external demand has certain advantages. In addition to the sense of pride that comes from being invited to contribute your work in some way that I already mentioned, there is the sense of security in knowing that the time you spend researching and writing will pay off and your work will see the light of day. Even when you submit a proposal for a highly selective conference, you at least have the comfort of having some sense of what the conveners are looking for and that there is already an audience for your work if your proposal is accepted.

But there are also disadvantages. For one, with external demands come external deadlines. Presentations have to be ready by the time of the conference, and editors need manuscripts so they can be revised and submitted to publishers. For some of us, deadlines can actually help motivate us to get work done, but even so, they force us to balance our competing responsibilities, which is stressful. Second, working on a project someone else asked you to do potentially takes time away from what you would prefer to be researching and writing about. Early scholars are pressured to publish articles and give conference presentations for the sake of tenure, and even post-tenure we want to be part of the conversation in the field, but acquiescing to these pressures may mean putting off that passion project another semester.

(Photo: Wan San Yip, from Unsplash)

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Although some research topics arise from external demand, others come from a more intrinsic sense of curiosity or interest. These could include long-term passion projects delving deeply into a research field, but also briefer forays into a specific topic of interest. I would bet that the balance between work undertaken to meet external demands and arising from an intrinsic drive differs from scholar to scholar, and probably varies over the course of a career, as well.

One of the advantages of research driven more by intrinsic interests is the psychological satisfaction that can come from pursuing that curiosity, which can be quite intense. From my own experience, that intensity is strongest when pursuing a specific question of interest, but a question that arouses even further questions once it is answered satisfactorily. I am sure readers better versed in Bernard Lonergan’s work than me could explain this phenomenon in more detail!

I can, however, provide a personal example to illustrate my point. Ever since I became aware of them, I had been intrigued by two lines in the Council of Trent’s Decree Concerning Justification (1547) that suggest that a person can resist God’s grace once it has been offered to them:

• In Chapter V, which describes how a person must assent to and cooperate with prevenient grace (the grace disposing a person toward baptism), it states: “man himself neither does absolutely nothing while receiving that inspiration, since he can also reject it, nor yet is he able by his own free will and without the grace of God to move himself to justice in His sight.”

• In Chapter XIII, dealing with the grace of perseverance needed for salvation, it states, “For God, unless men themselves fail in His grace, as he has begun a good work, so will he perfect it, working to will and to accomplish (Phil. 2:13).”

These passages intrigued me because the notion that a person can resist grace once offered contradicts both Augustinian and Thomistic teaching on the issue, and it was surprising that the council was willing to teach something contrary to these two Doctors who are so authoritative in the Western Christian tradition. More importantly for me, the council’s teaching seems to throw a wrench in the Augustinian (and Thomistic) doctrine of predestination, in which the irresistibility of grace is the mechanism through which God infallibly guides the elect toward their foreordained destiny. Both as a Christian and a theologian, I have been deeply influenced by Augustine, but I have always been troubled by his teaching on predestination, and so this question had a personal, spiritual dimension for me.

So two summers ago, I became obsessed with the question of who was responsible for getting those lines into Trent’s decree, and what the theology behind them was. That question has led to a research project that remains ongoing. I deliberately say “obsessed” since there is a bit of craziness to it, in terms of the time I’ve devoted to the project and the drive to find answers. For those who know me or my work, it is also a bit crazy because it is far outside of the topics I have typically written about in the past.

Ironically, the answer to my initial question is relatively simple. According to the records of the council, Bonaventura Pio da Costacciaro, the Minister General of the Conventual Franciscans, proposed both lines as amendments to the text of the decree during the council’s proceedings. This answer led to further research. As a Franciscan, Costacciaro was trained in the theology of John Duns Scotus. Having only the barest knowledge of Duns Scotus myself (for reasons I obliquely suggested here), I delved into studying his theology, particularly on the questions of grace and predestination, and discovered that, indeed, the human capacity to resist grace is an important Scotist thesis. Mystery solved! Yet I found the Scotist teaching on predestination so intriguing that I have continued to investigate it, and even write on it.

Also, discovering the answer to my initial question was not as simple as I made it sound. Before consulting the records of the council, I had learned from a secondary source that a Dominican theologian named Ambrosio Catarino Politi was one of the major drafters (or perhaps the major drafter) of the Decree Concerning Justification, and further research into Politi revealed that he had written quite a bit on the questions of grace and predestination both prior to and after the Council of Trent, so at first I assumed that he was responsible for the lines in question. It was only through further research that I discovered that I had gone down the wrong path. But even so, this “wrong” path was worthwhile because Politi is an interesting and brilliant thinker in his own right who is nevertheless practically unknown, and researching him and his background enriched my understanding of the topic and raised further questions to pursue later.

(Photo: Clay Banks, from Unsplash)

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I tell this story because it illustrates some of the advantages of research driven by an intrinsic sense of curiosity. The first is that there is a strong sense of personal reward in the process of research and writing, not just in the final product. I have found that when I am working on a project that someone else has asked for, I have a tendency to put it off or to feel annoyed that I need to work on it to meet a deadline. When I am working on a project driven by my own curiosity, however, I have very little trouble with motivation. Sometimes I get annoyed by other responsibilities that take me away from the research!

Some of the best advice I received as a doctoral student was to pick a dissertation topic that could maintain my interest for a long time, potentially years, because the work itself will sometimes become tedious and dealing with the feedback of committee members can become frustrating. I think choosing a dissertation topic is one opportunity where most of us in academia do pursue a topic driven by our intrinsic curiosity, although in some cases there may be external pressures on the selection of topics, for example wanting to continue the research project of a dissertation director.

The example of a dissertation illustrates a second benefit of research driven by intrinsic curiosity: research fuels further research. Although some scholars understandably set aside the topic of their dissertation once it is complete and move on to other things, others pursue questions that arose in the process of completing the dissertation or that follow naturally from their topic. Similarly, as I noted in my story, even after I had discovered who was responsible for the lines in the Council of Trent’s decree that originally interested me, I wanted to learn more about the theological background behind the text. Even what appeared to be a wrong turn, a mistaken assumption about the author of the lines, led to more interesting discoveries and questions.

Although research driven by passion can be exhilarating, there are some downsides (besides your significant other getting angry when you don’t come to bed because you need to read just one more article…). From my own experience, one drawback is that it may be more challenging to formulate why your research should be of interest to other scholars. As with my example, this type of research may be driven by deeply personal motives, and so more work needs to be put into figuring out how to present it in a way that others will find interesting or relevant.

A related problem, and one that is even more fundamental, is that it may be difficult to translate your research into writing or a presentation. As my example illustrates, this type of research may lead you in all kinds of unexpected directions, and so it can be difficult to know when to stop and put your thoughts into words. It can also be difficult to take the scattered ideas from your research (that all make sense to you!) and focus them on a narrower topic in a way that will make sense to someone who hasn’t been immersed in the research.

(Photo: Clay Banks, from Unsplash)

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I hope that these reflections on the research process have been thought-provoking for you. They arose from me out of a process of self-examination as I was re-thinking my vocation as a theologian in the midst of career changes. What I noticed (and this is not just true regarding research and writing, but in many areas of life) is that I am highly motivated by a need for external validation, but I have an underdeveloped ability to develop internal validation—a sense of what I want to do, what I think is important or worthwhile, etc. And yet, as we probably all recognize, it is internal validation that in the end most consistently motivates us and fulfills us.

In terms of my scholarly work, what I noticed is that I readily commit (sometimes over-commit) to work requested by others, because of the external validation it brings—I know from the get go that my expertise is valued and that my work is wanted. But having committed to the work, I find myself stressed out by the commitment and tempted to procrastinate. I become angry and guilty that I am not able to work on some other project I really want to be working on. The disturbing irony, however, is that once that commissioned essay or conference presentation is done, I may procrastinate picking up that other project that supposedly was so urgent, or may even have difficulty defining what exactly it is I want to do! Even if the research process, once started, can be intoxicating and self-motivating, it can be hard to initiate without a strong sense of the intrinsic worth of the project.

I know that some people have less difficulty with the dilemma of balancing external demands and inner motivation. Maybe they are more skilled at developing an intrinsic curiosity in the topics they are asked to write about or present on. Or maybe they are better at finding synchronicities between their passion projects and calls for papers. Those are two skills that I need to work on.

One thing that has helped me, however, is to really meditate on how the value, and even excitement, I find in the research process makes it inherently worthwhile, without any external validation. At the end of the day, whether anyone else finds it interesting does not determine whether the research is worth pursuing (like I said, I know the pressures of tenure, etc., make this complicated). In many cases, however, the passion we bring to a project, the meaning we find in it, and our ability will lead others to be interested in it. Bonum diffusivum sui est. But that requires the skill to communicate your passion. Developing a stronger sense of internal validation in turn is helping me develop a clearer plan for my future research, giving me confidence to explore new areas and to put those ideas into words and get them out into the world.

I know others may respond to these issues very differently, or may struggle with different aspects of the research and writing process. Even so, I hope my reflections here can be food for thought and start a conversation about how we do research and what motivates us.

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Of Interest…

• Late last week in the newsletter, I wrote in response to the killing of Jordan Neely on a subway in New York City and commented on our diminished sense of human dignity, especially among society’s most vulnerable. Since then there has been a mass shooting at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, and a driver, seemingly intentionally, drove an SUV into a group of migrants waiting at a bus stop outside a Catholic migrant center in Brownsville, Texas. Christ have mercy on us all.

• Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville issued a statement in response to the latter incident, evoking themes similar to those I raised in the newsletter, calling on Christians, and the entire community, to resist “the corrosive tendency to devalue the lives of immigrants, the poor, and the vulnerable.”

• On the issue of immigration, writing on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso has challenged the so-called Secure the Border Act of 2023, sponsored mainly by Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate. The bill would resume construction on a border wall, significantly restrict asylum applications, and increase the number of Border Patrol agents. In the letter, Bishop Seitz refers to the bill as “extreme” and incompatible with Catholic social teaching. He also points out that the restrictions on asylum claims would “fundamentally weaken our nation’s decades-long commitment to humanitarian protection.”

• In the main post above, I talked about the benefits and drawbacks of engaging in a writing project at the request of someone else. Several years ago I was asked by Catherine Clifford and Massimo Faggioli to contribute a chapter to the Oxford Handbook of Vatican II, and just a couple of months ago, the volume made its public debut. The book is wide-ranging and magisterial. My own chapter was on “Catholicism and International Affairs Since Vatican II. At the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters has offered a two-part review of the volume (here and here) that is worth checking out. Gotta enjoy that external validation…

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Coming Soon…

• The Journal of Moral Theology’s special issue on intersectionality and moral theology is finally out. My goal is to offer some thoughts on the issue and the topic of intersectionality in an upcoming post, but I already have a blog post available at the Catholic Moral Theology blog responding to one of the articles in the issue, “The Case for Intersectional Theology from an Asian American Perspective” by Hoon Choi. CMT will also feature posts by other authors in response to articles from the journal throughout the week.