I've been a theologian for over 50 years. Of course that's on a fairly generous definition of what a theologian is, and what theology is. Still, it's true enough that for all of that time I've thought about God, spoken to and with God, praised God and been mad at God, trusted God and been troubled by God. All of which makes me a theologian even if I never opened a book.
But I have opened books. Hundreds of them. I've learned theology and taught theology; I've read it, written it, preached it, prayed it, sung it and most times have loved it. Because theology is just what the word says; God-talk. Words about God and words spoken to God - and words and the Word spoken by God. My faith has deep roots in my own experience, but that experience is in turn embodied in a community, and that community is sourced and resourced from within its own story, traditions and convictions, going back to where that story started, in the biblical narrative of God's love affair with the Creation.
One of the theologians who has faithfully thought and taught theology out of his own immersion in the community of faith across history and cultures, is Jurgen Moltmann. In an essay he explains the inner dynamic, and the energy centre of theology as both spiritual discipline and way of life:
"Theology comes into being wherever men and women come to the knowledge of God, and in the praxis of their lives, their happiness and their suffering, perceive God's presence with all their senses."
Suffering and happiness, two poles of human experience and between them we actively live out, in practice, what it is we say we believe, have come to know and have given our lives to. In the end theology is faith put into practice, experience of God and thoughts about God transforming behaviour and character, forming convictions which fuel motivation, energy and vision.
As a minister for 45 years I've done what ministers do. The obvious things like preaching, pastoral care, community building, praying, spiritual direction, study, all have been dependent on the study and application of theology "in the praxis of our lives". However, informing each of the tasks of ministry is the character and unique identity of the person called by this community now, and by those communities in the past. Integral to that call is the invitation from a particular community to take the risks of sharing in the lives and experience of others in the companionship of Christian obedience. To follow faithfully after Christ in community is to enter a covenant of learning and teaching, a commitment of loving and living together in and through the shared suffering and happiness in which God is to be found.
Because Moltmann is right. It is in the suffering and happiness, the grief and the joy, the despairing and the hoping, the frustrations and the fulfilment, the tears and the laughter, the hurt and the forgiveness, it is in all of the life we live that we will "perceive God's presence with all our senses." "O taste and see that God is good", meaning we open our souls to the nourishment only God can give. Our prayers become fragrance rising out of our hurt and our healing to God who is right in there with us, so near you can smell the holiness. The voice of God, as whisper or shout and even sometimes heard as silence, and this despite our insistence for noise and certainty. And then there's that bread and wine which we touch and taste and see, the faithful aide memoir of the faithful, lest we forget what kind of God it is whose presence "besieges us". That phrase was used by Helen Waddell, in a beautiful prayer in which she felt the fear and the awe and the thrill of the God "whose eternity doth ever besiege us." Hemmed in by God.
So theology isn't merely the faith in theory; nor is theology an intellectual sudoku puzzle to keep Christian minds usefully occupied; nor is theological study an academic specialism aimed at domesticating mystery, and reducing living experience of God to words, propositions and a manageable coherence. Long ago Augustine heard those accusations and this was one of his responses:
"What is needed is a loving confession of ignorance rather than a rash profession of knowledge. To reach out a little toward God with the mind is a great blessedness; yet to understand is wholly impossible." (Augustine, Sermon 117)
The theologian embarks on a lifetime's learning and praying and studying and worshipping, knowing that the God whose presence we perceive and seek, is always beyond our controlling grasp. This is the God whose love we know though it is beyond knowledge, and whose glory shines with a radiance that makes seeing a form of blindness, that this God is beyond our grasp, thankfully.
The theologian begins with a loving confession, and ends with that same loving confession of the God whose love passes knowledge. A living and loving confession of God whose ways are beyond our understanding, and who has come to us in Christ. In that sense, to accept the invitation of Christ, to "take my yoke upon you and learn of me" is to find ourselves on the way to being a theologian. And beyond that, to learn from Scripture, to read what others have learned, to enter into conversation with the great cloud of witnesses, to build and be built into a community of faith in Jesus as Lord, to think God's thoughts after Him. To do all this, is to take that invitation seriously, and own the name of theologian.
Well said, Jim.
Posted by: Jason Goroncy | January 31, 2020 at 10:56 PM