For Rowan Williams, the choice between faithfulness to received traditions of creedal, scriptural, and theological discourse, on the one hand, and genuine theological creativity, on the other, is false. This is because Williams sees the texts of scripture, creed, and tradition not as historical artifacts whose meaning is equated with the original authorial intention behind the texts but rather as scripts for a certain kind of performance, similar to the script of a play. Just as a theater company can remain faithful to the words and stage directions of the script of a play while enjoying a great deal of freedom to stage the play in a way that is illuminating and challenging to audiences of its day, so the theologian can remain faithful to the words of the texts of Christian sources while interpreting them in ways that are fruitful and demanding for today’s Church and world.
(Jeffery McCurry, 'TOWARDS A POETICS OF THEOLOGICAL CREATIVITY: ROWAN WILLIAMS READS AUGUSTINE’S DE DOCTRINA AFTER DERRIDA', Modern Theology, 23/3: 415-433 [2007])
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