Usefulness comes not from pursuing it, but from patiently gathering enough of a reservoir of material so that one has the quirky bit of knowledge about practices of iconography, or Catholic mysticism, or Reformed Christology, or ninteenth-century missions theory, or whatever, that turns out to be the key to unlocking the problem which someone offers. The academic theologian becomes useful to the church and the world by reading widely, and remembering broadly, across the tradition, by being and becoming a catalogue of what has been done before (and by being plausibly imaginative in how the tradition might be used to address contemporary problems.)
On discovering (again) the utility of theology | Steve Holmes @ Shored Fragments

Source: steverholmes.org.uk

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