2. Theology: Equipping for the journey
I’ve come to believe that Christian faith is not as simple as reading the holy scriptures, clearly understanding their plain and obvious meaning, and believing them or doing what they say.
The Bible is full of truth, but it is also full of mystery—so full of meaning that it sometimes overflows the limits of our understanding.
The Bible is not just a technical manual or a rulebook for conduct, nor is it always a straightforward book of historical or scientific fact.
The Bible is a collection of writings and oral traditions committed to writing, written by many different people, passed down by many people, in many different genres, for many different reasons, in many different times and situations and contexts for different reasons to achieve different effects.
As much as I would like it to be so, my relationship with the Bible is not as simple as “For the Bible tells me so.”
An ongoing conversation with the texts
My life of faith is about having an ongoing conversation with the texts, with the traditions and history of how those texts have been understood, and interpreting those texts through the faithful use of reason and the careful use of what I have experienced to be true.
My study of the Bible is an attempt to set aside my presuppositions to see what’s REALLY on the page, even if it is not what I want to see. I look back at how the early Church Fathers (and, in some cases, Mothers) interpreted the scriptures and practically applied them to their lives.
In modern parlance, “theology” has come to mean “the study of God” or even “the science of God” (which could be considered an oxymoron, if one considers science and religion to be non-overlapping domains, as scientist and historian Stephen Jay Gould says), but if one digs down into the etymology of the term, “theology” works out to be something like “words about God,” or “talking about God,” (“theo”—God, and “logos”—word) which is exactly what I plan to do here.
This is the space to have those conversations about God, and with God, using the sacred, time-tested tools of theology in hopes of coming to a greater understanding of God than I could with a “plain” reading of the Bible—which often left me frustrated or merely guessing.
This is the space where I throw ideas out into the world. Some of them come back to me polished and shined by being discussed and handled by other thinkers, while some of them are shown to be too hollow or fragile to hold up to being kicked around.
My journey of understanding is not just about comprehension of what I’ve read, but about interpretation, consideration, meditation, and inspiration.
We CAN know something
It may sound like I’m saying that we can’t know “the truth” about God as God is understood in the Christian faith.
It’s true that I do believe much of what there is to be known about God is mystery, so far beyond the limits of our understanding that we can’t know it, at least not within our earthly limitations. However, just because we can’t know everything, doesn’t mean we can’t know SOMETHING. Maybe even know a lot, if we’re willing to do the work.
I am reminded of listening to the original recording of the musical Godspell, and the writer Steven Schwartz’ succinct summary of Thomas Aquinas’ view of how we can know this “unknowable” God:
God is apprehended by imagination, intuition, reason, touch, opinion, sense, and name (and so on)
But on quite the other hand, we find we can't begin to understand Him, so to some it seems a shame to go on
But He is all things in all
And He is nothing in any
He is often found in one thing small
Conversely, he is often missed in many
This musical version of one of the earliest “rockstars” of theology is telling us that we can’t necessarily understand God if we try to do so head-on, such as with scientific proofs of that God exists, but that in many small ways we might indeed find out what God is like in our daily lives, if we pay attention.
As an addendum to that, in a more recent update of the musical, Schwarz added another voice to the opening “Tower of Babble” number, namely that of the shunned scientist, Galileo, who says:
God endows us with sense and intellect
God endows us with reason we neglect
And despite the abolition by the current inquisition of any intuition that they don't choose
When it comes to God, I find I can't believe that he designed a human being with a mind he's not supposed to use
I’m with Galileo on this one. I think God invites us to seek God with our intellect, even to swing for the fences. Even if we fall short, we still will have gotten somewhere.
Moving forward, outward, upward!
Once I have examined my own past in some detail, prayerfully testing each detail like individual beads in a rosary, and examined the Church’s past traditions as well, I want to use this space to do NEW theology.
At least, new for ME.
One of the discoveries that amazed me when I first started formally studying graduate-level theology was that, when I looked back through the history of Christian thought, there had been dozens, if not more, of writers and thinkers and preachers who have stayed up late, wrestling with the same ideas I was, turning over the same stones and tilling the same earth hoping to dig up some gem of truth, proposing the same high-flying imaginings of how fantastic God can be.
When I opened that first book of the history of theology, it was like I was looking into my own journals—only someone smarter than me had gone in and written in answers to many of the questions. Which was the most eye-opening part of the experience—not only had people been asking the same questions as me for the last few thousand years, but SOME OF THOSE QUESTIONS HAD ANSWERS!
There have been few moments in my life more satisfying than that one.
That said, although much of the territory of theology has been covered—and the conversations happening in academic theology departments and conferences around the world are now decades beyond me and into regions of exploration well past the basic questions I’m still asking—I still have not done all of this work myself.
There are no shortcuts to revelation.
I remember back in high school, reading Herman Hesse’s biography of the Buddha, Siddhartha, and latching onto an idea that has continued to influence the way I have thought about learning and teaching religion ever since:
Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish… Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
It is because of this concept that I do not consider myself a missionary. I only know what I know via faith, not evidence, so I cannot prove it as fact. If there is wisdom in my beliefs to be found, I cannot impart that wisdom to someone else by simply telling them. I suppose the best I can do is live and work my faith in real time, and if someone sees it and is curious, I will happily tell them more about the thinking behind it.
At the same time, though, it also means that someone can’t just come along and tell me how it is, and expect that I will have a transformative moment.
Faith is a gift
As the writer of Ephesians 2:8-9 (NRSV) tells us, saving faith is a gift, not something someone grasps through their own effort:
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
And as the writer of the Gospel of John tells us in chapter 6, verse 44 (NRSV):
No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise that person up on the last day.
So just as faith is a gift from God, and I can’t give it to someone else just by the telling, so I also can’t totally gain, internalize, and fully embrace the wisdom of faith just by hearing someone else’s conclusions.
I wish I could, but it has been shown to me over and over again, as a faithful servant but a disciplined skeptic, that for it to really stick, I have to figure it out my own darned self.
But while that is where the effort is, that is also where the fun is.
May this space be a creative blackboard, a playground, a think tank and wellspring, a launch pad and a new world, where ideas flourish, are refined and sharpened, and I can grow in faith and understanding.
And maybe someone else will look at the work I’m doing here and say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about that too…”
I don’t want to tell you how or what to believe, but I do hope that sharing my journey might be helpful or illuminating for someone else out there who is looking for confirmation or inspiration or just the comfort of knowing someone else is asking these questions too.
