Theology is the study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study man and his ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise. (Frederick Buechner)
I'm not a theologian
by vocation. I've probably studied - formally or otherwise - about as
much theology as a first-year seminarian. I've always been
interested in theology, but I don't do it for a living. I'm not a
pastor, or a teacher, or involved in any other "professional" ministry,
so I don't spend my days reading and researching theology. Maybe that's
what saves me from hating it; I actually work as a professional
software developer, and I definitely hate computers.
That said, Michael Spencer has raised some important objections to theology - or perhaps we should say, to theology done badly, or for the wrong reasons. My intent here isn't to offer a point-for-point refutation of his article, but merely to point out that there are a lot of reasons why I love theology.
I love theology when it is devotional. Theology has the capacity to bring me mentally into the place where I can experience God's presence and worship Him with all my mind. For that to take place, though, I can't approach theology as if its source materials are a single book. As Henri Nouwen says in Bread for the Journey, "As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through its words." That sort of thing bothers some people tremendously, because they are unwilling to let go of the idea that the Scripture is a kind of "magic book™" with special powers to endow the reader with insight. The fact is, though, the Bible is just like any other book in an important way: it can only present propositions, statements about God. If I want to know God, I need to both know things about Him and to experience being with Him.
As an example, consider that anyone with access to the Internet and enough time can probably learn a great deal about Michael Spencer (I'd suggest reading Internet Monk, and Michael's personal weblog, and then browse through his posts on Boar's Head Tavern if you're interested,) but knowing that Michael works for a Christian boarding school, or that he has a wife and two kids, or that he does supply preaching in a PC-USA church, or that he's struggled with theology, fundamentalism, epistemology, and weight issues isn't enough to let you say you know Michael. To be able to say that, you'd have to spend time interacting with him - talking to him, chatting via IM, maybe actually visiting him. It's only then that you could say that Michael was your friend, or that you really knew him.
Or, for another example, consider that there are a number of books out in the market that will teach you Java Programming, or tell you how to build Lego robots. But no matter how many of these books you read, you can't really call yourself a Java programmer or a robotics enthusiast until you put the book down and write some code, or put some bricks together. That's what I mean when I talk about devotional theology: applying what I know about God to my relationship with God. I love that; really, it's a very rewarding part of my journey toward Him. Geoffrey Bromiley sums up this nicely when he writes that Karl Barth "contends that dogmatics itself must always be undertaken as an act of penitence, obedience, and prayer - all three of which are necessary constituents of faith."
On another level, I love theology when it is mind-expanding. Today, in our modern world, we have all become specialists. I'm not just a "computer programmer," I'm a "Client-Server Java Applications Developer." My "primary care physician" no longer can handle my various failing body parts, and so he sends me off to visit a cardiologist, a urologist, and a psychiatrist to deal with the specific parts that are failing. Theology, though, is a truly interdisciplinary field. To participate in it, you must know something of each of
This is hardly an exhaustive list. Theology was rightly called "the queen of sciences" in the past, because it represents the best hope that we finite humans have of formulating a true Unified Field theory. (I say this knowing full well that physics strives toward something similar; I submit that if you read the writings of those physicists concerned with that effort, you will soon find them lapsing into theological language, albeit often hidden in mathematical codes.)
I love theology when it is practical. Not merely practical, of course, because that would be pragmatism, which Michael Spencer and I agree is bad. But when Paul writes to Timothy that scripture is "profitable for teaching and reproof," he has a point - even if by "scripture," he was referring not to our Christian canon but rather a somewhat dubious Greek translation of Hebrew religious texts. Theology is at its best when it leaps off the page into our hearts and calls us to action for the advance of God's Kingdom. That means that when I understand what it means to be loved by God, or perhaps I should say that when I grasp how far beyond my understanding God's love for me is, I am motivated to do something radical and beautiful: I am motivated to love others, in my halting and limited way, as Christ loves me. Theology can do that, if I'm willing to let it.
I love theology when it calls me out of the safe places and out into the wilderness. Michael Bauman describes this beautifully in his book Pilgrim Theology, and interestingly enough, it also makes its way into the teaching of Brennan Manning (see the discussion here.) I'll let a poster from the forum on Manning's web site sum it up:
In the book the Settlers are the town people. The Church is the courthouse where people are judged and taxes are done and records are kept, God is seen as the mayor that reigns over the people. Jesus is the sheriff sent to keep the people in line and doing what they are supposed to do. He makes sure the people follow the rules. The Holy Spirit is the saloon girl.. the book states that she "tickles the people under their chins and makes everything ok again". The Christian is the settler who fears the unknown. His main concern is keeping the mayor happy and to stay out of the sheriff's way. The clergyman is the banker. All the values of the town are kept safe in his vault. He sees he and the sheriff as having a lot in common because they both protect the bank. Faith is trusting the safety of the town and following the rules. Sin is breaking the town's laws. Salvation is living close to home and hanging around the courthouse.
Here's the one that I like.. the Pioneer theology. The church is seen as the covered wag on... never staying in the same place and changing all the time. It is always where the action is. God is seen as the trail boss. He lives, eats, sleeps, and fights with his people. He's always there. He will get down in the mud with the pioneers to get the wagon going again. Jesus is the scout. He goes out ahead of the people to see what is ahead. He suffers every hardship and is attacked by the Indians. The Holy Spirit is the buffalo hunter, he furnishes fresh meat for the pioneers and rides along side of the wagon. They never know what he is going to do and he "scares the hell out of the settlers". The Christian is the pioneer. He is a daring man hungry for a new life. He feels sorry for the settlers and tries to tell them of the joy and excitement of life on the trail. The clergyman is the cook. He doesn't furnish the meat, he just dishes up what the buffalo hunter provides. Faith is the spirit of adventure. the readiness to move out.. To risk everything. Sin is wanting to turn back... and salvation is being more afraid of sterile town life than of death on the trail.
Theology can have the power to pull me out of town and onto the wagon trail. It can invite me to take risks, to trust myself to the Trail Boss and hit the road. On the other hand, theology can sometimes keep me in town. In Bauman's version of the analogy, theology itself is either the stockade that encompasses the town, or else it is the trail we are blazing through the wilderness. If theology becomes a fortress that I must defend, then however successful I am in that defense, I'm essentially stuck - I'm not going anywhere. But if theology is the journey I'm taking, then I may find myself in desperate straits at times, but at least I have the hope of one day arriving at my Destination - and I have the advantage of having tried to get somewhere. In the words of musician Bruce Cockburn, "The best roads of all are the ones that aren't certain."
I love theology when it's personal. For me, one of the most interesting aspects of reading theologians is seeing how their ideas play out in their lives, and how their thought is shaped by the times they live in. History, both in a general sense and in the sense of the specific events in our lives, leaves its mark on everyone, and the theologian has no special immunity to this. Frederick Buechner puts it well:
At its heart most theology, like most fiction, is essentially autobiography. Aquinas, Calvin, Barth, Tillich, working out their systems in their own ways and in their own language, are all telling us the stories of their lives, and if you press them far enough, even at their most cerebral and forbidding, you find an experience of flesh and blood, a human face smiling or frowning or weeping or covering its eyes before something that happened once.
Buechner goes on to contrast the poet and the theologian, but his conclusion seems to me to apply equally to both:
... I cannot talk about God or sin or grace, for example, without at the same time talking about those parts of my own experience where they became compelling and real.
To read Luther without understanding the forces that pulled the Holy Roman Empire apart, to read Calvin without understanding the culture of medieval Switzerland, to study Augustine's The City of God without first understanding Confessions, to read Romans or Church Dogmatics (which, if you have, in itself is a great accomplishment) without reading Barth's correspondence with Bonhoffer or knowing that for much of his life he preached weekly in the prison in Basil, to study the doctrines without knowing the person behind the pen is a symptom of a kind of poverty of the mind that I find troubling. It seems too close to the grave error of studying the text of Scripture without ever knowing the Word of God, perhaps.
Finally, I love theology when it's relational. Not only does theology usher me into the presence of God for worship, not only does it allow my mind to stretch in adoration of His infinite love and goodness, not only does it provide the trail that I'm taking toward God, not only does it move me to be Christ to others around me, but ultimately, theology can be where God offers Himself to me in communion. To explain how this happens would be like trying to try to describe Bach's B Minor Mass in words, and just as futile, but this is an important (and in my view often sadly missing) aspect of theology. When I think about God, when I (to use Barth's understanding) participate in the church's conversation about God, I hope to - and on occasion, I think I do - encounter Him in His infinite vastness, and in His Incarnation.
For many years, I've been hearing the objections of people like R. C. Sproul, to the effect that "relational theology" will lead to "sensuous Christians" who will abandon scripture when it clashes with personal experience. Sproul asks, "What happens when there is a conflict between what God says and what I feel?" My answer is, how do you know that what you're feeling isn't what God is telling you? Or, for that matter, how do I know that what you think God is saying in a particular passage is the right understanding? And why are you so ready to abandon your feelings and the conflict that they bring up, when that conflict might really be a fundamental insight, a glimpse of the Mystery that's too big for your intellect to handle?
My own experience tells me that in fact Sproul's objection is a red herring; when I truly seek after God (and don't quote at me that no one does, because I have His Spirit to help me there,) my feelings confirm rather than deny the essential message of the Bible: that in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God both reconciles me to Himself and demonstrates His love for me most fully, and that His grace is sufficient to cover all my sins, even those that come from my failure to understand Paul's injunctions about head coverings or other trivial matters.
The important thing is, I don't arrive at that response by denying the value of theology; rather, I find it by employing theology as a tool to understand my experience. That understanding is important, because one of the things I'm called to do - besides eating "cake," as Michael Spencer often says, is to offer a slice to those I meet, and sometimes they have questions about the ingredients, or about the Cook. I've met Him, and trust me, you'll like the Cake. Everything that's happened to me on the journey of my life confirms that God cares about relationships. He wanted a relationship with me enough to send his son to die for me. So, please, bring me a relational theology. I'm sure I won't hate it.