When someone wants to talk about theology and becoming a theologian, some people want to duck or run out of the room! Of course, if you are going to be a Christian (or a Jew, Muslim, etc.) you will have some theology, whether you think about it or not. A theologian is someone who thinks about what he or she believes. Theologians strive to make what they believe have some coherence, consistency, etc. For me personally, theology made a great deal of believing possible.
I will elaborate with some personal examples. I came of age during the Vietnam era of the 1960s. It was a tumultuous time. I had dutifully gone to church as a young Quaker. For the most part in those early years of mine, “going to church” was considered part of what it meant to be an American. It would not be unusual to hear someone query, “did you go to church today?” Most of the farmers in the area in which I lived did not work on Sunday, except to milk the cows and other essential duties. Only the rarest of moments would my family have considered going to the fields with the tractor and planting corn or running the combine to harvest it. It we had done that, the neighbors would have been aghast.
Times change. Now I can go to any store of choice, buy alcohol if I want and do all sorts of things that would have been impossible in my childhood days. Without entertaining the question whether it is better or worse, we can be sure it is different. And there are plenty of reasons why it is different. I don’t need to detail them here and now. Let me simply say one of the key differences is the difference in culture and culture’s relationship to Christian theology.
When I was younger, I now realize folks used theology to uphold what I now consider cultural expectations and norms. For example, we can refer to the Sabbath. In my youthful Indiana days, no one would have bothered to question whether the Sabbath was anything but Sunday. As far as I knew, no one thought any differently than Sunday equals Sabbath. Since I did not know any Jews, it never occurred to me to think about what they might consider the Sabbath.
I realize now how much of my life was shaped by the culture in which I grew up. And I also realize how much that culture was informed by a kind of “American interpretation of Christianity.” I don’t have negative feelings about that. I just know now I was not informed at all about how to do theology. That only happened as I became curious about my own faith. I realized I had inherited a faith, but it was not really mine. I put it on like I put on a shirt. But it was like a piece of clothing; I also took it off as easily. It was not internal. It did not touch my heart.
When I began to have questions about my own heart---about life, death and meaning---I realized I wanted my own theology. I needed a theology to articulate what was going on in my heart and to shape the confusion in my head. For the first time, I knew I wanted to be a theologian. Everyone who takes seriously his or her own faith becomes a theologian. Some of us don’t do it well. I wanted to be a good theologian.
To be a good theologian is not necessarily a matter of getting a Ph.D. in theology. Rather, it means to take seriously our own experience of God and God’s work in us and then to think about that experience and work in a coherent, consistent way. I have been trying to become a good theologian since those days in the 60s. It was with this in mind, I read a recent short piece from Pope Francis.
The Pope is being criticized by some fellow Catholics about his early papal encyclical, Amoris Laetitia, in which the Pope addresses issues of family life. Of course, the Pope insists it represents good Catholic theology. I am less concerned about the specifics and more drawn to his way of talking about how one does good theology. The first thing he notes is philosophy and theology happen not "in a laboratory, but in life, in dialogue with reality." The Pope continues with the sentence I want to underscore. "I like to repeat that to be a good theologian, beyond studying you have to be dedicated, awake and seize hold of reality; and you need to reflect on all of this on your knees."
I love this papal directive. A good theologian has to be dedicated, awake and seize hold of reality. Theology has to do with reality, not simply ideas and, for sure, doctrine. A theologian has to be dedicated to the task. The task is to experience life and think about it deeply. A theologian has to be awake. In many ways this sounds Buddhist, as much as Christian. The Pope knows as well as I do, we can sleepwalk through life. To be spiritual is to be awake---awake to ourselves and our world. To be awake is to avoid living the illusions and delusions which create false selves.
In this sense we need to seize hold of reality. To seize reality is to make sure life is not grounded in illusion. An example of an illusion for me was the prohibition of combining soybeans on Sunday because Jesus would not us work on the Sabbath. I want to honor the Sabbath, but it is a deeper issue than climbing on to a combine on Sunday morning. How do we get to this good theology (for me, at least)?
We do it by reflecting on all this on my knees. That is the most profound or absurd thing the Pope offers. I choose to see its profundity. Reflection is key to becoming a good theologian. And its best done one our knees---which says to me, humbly. When theology and theologians become arrogant---standing and telling---watch out! Give me a humble person on his or her knees.
I will elaborate with some personal examples. I came of age during the Vietnam era of the 1960s. It was a tumultuous time. I had dutifully gone to church as a young Quaker. For the most part in those early years of mine, “going to church” was considered part of what it meant to be an American. It would not be unusual to hear someone query, “did you go to church today?” Most of the farmers in the area in which I lived did not work on Sunday, except to milk the cows and other essential duties. Only the rarest of moments would my family have considered going to the fields with the tractor and planting corn or running the combine to harvest it. It we had done that, the neighbors would have been aghast.
Times change. Now I can go to any store of choice, buy alcohol if I want and do all sorts of things that would have been impossible in my childhood days. Without entertaining the question whether it is better or worse, we can be sure it is different. And there are plenty of reasons why it is different. I don’t need to detail them here and now. Let me simply say one of the key differences is the difference in culture and culture’s relationship to Christian theology.
When I was younger, I now realize folks used theology to uphold what I now consider cultural expectations and norms. For example, we can refer to the Sabbath. In my youthful Indiana days, no one would have bothered to question whether the Sabbath was anything but Sunday. As far as I knew, no one thought any differently than Sunday equals Sabbath. Since I did not know any Jews, it never occurred to me to think about what they might consider the Sabbath.
I realize now how much of my life was shaped by the culture in which I grew up. And I also realize how much that culture was informed by a kind of “American interpretation of Christianity.” I don’t have negative feelings about that. I just know now I was not informed at all about how to do theology. That only happened as I became curious about my own faith. I realized I had inherited a faith, but it was not really mine. I put it on like I put on a shirt. But it was like a piece of clothing; I also took it off as easily. It was not internal. It did not touch my heart.
When I began to have questions about my own heart---about life, death and meaning---I realized I wanted my own theology. I needed a theology to articulate what was going on in my heart and to shape the confusion in my head. For the first time, I knew I wanted to be a theologian. Everyone who takes seriously his or her own faith becomes a theologian. Some of us don’t do it well. I wanted to be a good theologian.
To be a good theologian is not necessarily a matter of getting a Ph.D. in theology. Rather, it means to take seriously our own experience of God and God’s work in us and then to think about that experience and work in a coherent, consistent way. I have been trying to become a good theologian since those days in the 60s. It was with this in mind, I read a recent short piece from Pope Francis.
The Pope is being criticized by some fellow Catholics about his early papal encyclical, Amoris Laetitia, in which the Pope addresses issues of family life. Of course, the Pope insists it represents good Catholic theology. I am less concerned about the specifics and more drawn to his way of talking about how one does good theology. The first thing he notes is philosophy and theology happen not "in a laboratory, but in life, in dialogue with reality." The Pope continues with the sentence I want to underscore. "I like to repeat that to be a good theologian, beyond studying you have to be dedicated, awake and seize hold of reality; and you need to reflect on all of this on your knees."
I love this papal directive. A good theologian has to be dedicated, awake and seize hold of reality. Theology has to do with reality, not simply ideas and, for sure, doctrine. A theologian has to be dedicated to the task. The task is to experience life and think about it deeply. A theologian has to be awake. In many ways this sounds Buddhist, as much as Christian. The Pope knows as well as I do, we can sleepwalk through life. To be spiritual is to be awake---awake to ourselves and our world. To be awake is to avoid living the illusions and delusions which create false selves.
In this sense we need to seize hold of reality. To seize reality is to make sure life is not grounded in illusion. An example of an illusion for me was the prohibition of combining soybeans on Sunday because Jesus would not us work on the Sabbath. I want to honor the Sabbath, but it is a deeper issue than climbing on to a combine on Sunday morning. How do we get to this good theology (for me, at least)?
We do it by reflecting on all this on my knees. That is the most profound or absurd thing the Pope offers. I choose to see its profundity. Reflection is key to becoming a good theologian. And its best done one our knees---which says to me, humbly. When theology and theologians become arrogant---standing and telling---watch out! Give me a humble person on his or her knees.
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