I cannot get enough of it.  Theology.  I am willingly drowning in it.  I lose sleep over it.  I am sacrificing a great deal of money to learn more of it.  The “tolle lege” that rang in Augustine’s ear echoes in mine.  And the more I take up and read, the more intrigued, mystified, entranced I become.

This is not, as best as I can tell, pious boasting.  I am not intrigued with fanciful, populist platitudes easily emblazoned on mugs displayed among Christian bookshop trinkets (or easily chanted to signify piety amidst the pews).  The theology that has caught my eye and held it, that has seized me and to which I am now captive, is far from user-friendly.  The pleasure is more like the thrill from standing dangerously close to a precipice than the delight from a warm cup of tea on a cold day.  The  fascination is inspired not so much by some touching, sentimental scene but by the sight of of some swirling maelstrom tearing at the sea.

My captor is a theology of tender beauty but not without grim brutality.  Gospel Theology.  Theology that comprises the nailing of a naked Jew to a timber beam.  Theology that refuses to silence a raucous death-howl that—for St. Mark, at least—sounded like a demon in flight (Mk 15:37).  This theology also sings about holes exploded in sky and in stone, one a gash in the cosmic veil and the other a tomb now vacant.  Theologia Gloriae… et Crucis.

I am more textual than aural, but I listened to two audio clips this weekend: an excerpt from a lecture by Karl Barth on “Evangelical [read Gospel] Theology” and an interview of Lauren Winner about her new book Still.  The former a 20th c. theologian known for his incomparable sophistication in writing about the Cross and Empty Tomb, the latter a young 21st c. theologian writing about clutching onto something divine and holy in the midst of divorce and spiritual disillusionment.  Dogmatics and the daily grind of faith are inseparable.  Theology that cannot deal with the dull blankness of depression or the very real horrors of the night is a theology alien to Christian Scripture.  I write about this in my book:

[If the Gospel we preach] “cannot speak to Auschwitz, if it cannot speak to marauded villages in the eastern Congo, if it cannot speak in the ears of abducted children, if it cannot make sense to mothers digging for children in earthquake rubble, then it ought not send forth from polished pulpits in carpeted suburban sanctuaries” [1].

I am not trying to link Barth and Winner (and myself) together, necessarily.  I am just thinking about those sound clips along with my theological reading, thinking, praying, writing… and struggling.  Gospel Theology is theology that clings to the gasping breath of Christ Crucified (Mk 15:39) as well as to the recreating breath of Christ Resurrected (Jn 20:22).

This is the theology in which I am drowning.  Its mystery and strength intimidate and haunt me.  But only a theology so mysterious and strong encompasses ex-Eden reality and pre-Parousia hope.  The “Theos” of Gospel Theology is the only God who suffices for maelstroms at sea as well as those warm cups of tea.  Gospel Theology is about the “Theos” who hurled himself toward Death’s throat and then climbed out of the hole he exploded in Death’s bloated gut.

Tolle Lege.  Take up and read….

[1] Faith Without Illusions (Downs Grove, IL: IVP, 2011), 39.

[from my new series of posts entitled, "Calvin & Coffee"...]

Hazardous occupations: firefighting, police work, soldiering, espionage, high-rise construction, mining…

…Theology?

When we think of dangerous job profiles, “theologian” usually does not come to mind.  The stereotypical theologian wears tweed, smokes an occasional pipe, avoids manual labor, and haunts locally-owned coffee shops when not holed up in some office off the university quad.

But in reading John Calvin, I am reminded that Christian theology has been an exceptionally dangerous profession throughout the history of the church.  Many of the great works we read so casually in locally-owned coffee shops or debate so flippantly in seminary classrooms or teach so dispassionately from the lectern were written by trembling hands, the threat of death and exile ever looming over the open page.

Calvin completed and published the Institutes as an exile.  France was terribly unsafe for a young man writing a book that premised the theological enterprise on the Word of God as revealed in Scripture.  His theology is penned in the hope of eternal life in the face of possible death.  As he wrote to King Francis,

For the sake of this hope some of us are shackled with irons, some beaten with rods, some led about as laughingstocks, some proscribed, some most savagely tortured, some forced to flee.  All of us are oppressed by poverty, cursed with dire execrations, wounded by slanders and treated in most shameful ways [1].

Calvin’s writing is the result of sustained theological thinking under the ominous vigilance of the ruling ecclesiastical and political authorities.  His work was in some ways squeezed out of him, perhaps, by such frightful pressures.

In addition to those external conflicts, Calvin did much of his writing while seriously ill.  Though first published in 1536, multiple editions of the Institutes appeared over the next two decades, the final version not leaving the printer’s office until 1559.  While completing his final revision, Calvin suffered dreadfully from a form of malaria.  He somehow muscled through the sickness in the hopes of bequeathing a worthy work to his readers:

Last winter when I thought the quartan fever was summoning me to my death, the more the disease pressed upon me the less I spared myself, until I could leave a book behind me that might, in some measure, repay the generous invitation of godly men [2].

Danger has attended Christian theology from its inception.  Calvin was not the first to write under the threat of death or to labor in the midst of personal sickness and pain.  Much of the theology of the New Testament was produced in such anxious and dreadful circumstances.  The Apostle Paul would surely have struggled to imagine his vocation as a theologian in a serene and gentle context!

So much of the entire Bible, in fact, was penned under great conflict.  The theology of Scripture is exile theology, the theology of those who cannot forget their near-death escape from Pharaoh (the Torah), the theology of those who anticipate not escaping from Assyria or Babylon (the Prophets), the theology of those who feel the breath of their enemies on their necks and hear the howling of dogs in the distant hills (the Psalms).  The theology of the Gospels is the theology of those who face the threat of synagogue expulsion, who have the claim “Caesar is Lord” ringing raucously in their ears when they know Another is Lord.

Theology is a hazardous vocation.

So how does this heritage of danger affect how we do theology today while the leaves gently fall on green university lawns or while we preach to respectable citizens in the pews amidst their yawns?

Even if the contemporary context in which we work provides safe haven for theological labor, we must refuse to forget the high price paid by the theologians and pastors who have written in darker times.  And we must remember that the times are still quite dark for so many even today.  Though I myself study theology in the shadow of a 1000-year old Norman cathedral in a charming English town, some men and women are doing theology in dirty, humid megacities, breathing in the dust and fumes from busy streets below and sweating on books written only in English which they struggle to understand.  What do these theologians have to teach us, many of whom work in settings much more similar to those of our theological forbears in both biblical and ecclesiastical history?

Theology is always a bit suspect (who among us can truly know the Triune God and write sufficiently about His beauty and power?).  And bad theology can certainly come out of bad circumstances.  But it is also quite possible that Christian theologians writing in favorable circumstances will misperceive or even distort the theological writings of the Scriptures, so many of which were penned in pain.

[1]  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; tr. Ford Lewis Battles; Library of Christian Classics vols XX and XXI; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 14.

[2] Ibid., 3.