There was a time when being a theologian meant admitting weakness and uncertainty, then nailing down as many answers and definitions as possible anyway. You might use philosophy to ‘prove’ something about creation or Scripture, then build on what you said to make some assertion about God or humanity, go from there to outline everything you thought you knew about salvation, and then talk about church or politics or what happens when you die or, most likely, all of the above.
A lot of us learned to think about God this way: doctrines as building blocks or puzzle pieces that all fit together and ultimately explain life, the universe, and everything. We called it ‘systematic theology.’
There’s not exactly a problem with reasoning like this, in itself, but if you encounter evidence that contradicts some element of your theory of life, the universe, and everything, the whole thing has a nasty habit of crumbling. Archaeological data, or your own life experience, or the observations of science, or just the inconsistencies and paradoxes inherent in life and the universe (and the Bible) eventually poke holes in every system.
Then those clever people who had everything nailed down suddenly appear as conspiracy theorists with pins in the wall, trapped by internal logics and unable to face the outside world.
There are circles where it’s fashionable to point out such vulnerabilities in theological systems as if they were themselves victories for nihilism (or, sillier yet, for other systems explaining the world). Of course, most of us who’ve enjoyed lobbing these grenades at other people’s systems are, ourselves, standing in the pile of rubbish that was once our own system. I suppose it’s natural enough to make an enemy of systematic theology, or Christians, or Almighty God himself after a letdown like that.
But there are others of us who’ve shuffled about in the shambles of our systems long enough to make a certain peace with chaos; yet, after a while, we find ourselves compelled to try and say something about God. We may even start to string together two or three of these thoughts—with fear and trembling, and we hope, with humility—not so much to explain the world, as to maybe describe something we saw.
We discover we’ve begun again to build; but this time we’re aware we will never construct a system, a machine, or a tower to the sky. No, what we’re building is simply an artwork—a pile of metaphors, a bundle of better questions, a sculpture or a good meal, maybe a story or maybe a garden, that shares and shows more than it tells. It doesn’t have to ‘fit’ or ‘function’ as much as it has to bear witness, to bear repeating, to bear dialogue, and to gracefully let go of what doesn’t bear scrutiny. We know we may come to stand, again and again, in piles of dust—but like fools, like artists, like lovers, we dare to speak again and again of what we know, what we’ve seen and heard, what we love, of the truth, of God.
We know we’re doing something like systematic theology. But in the academy, these days, we call it constructive theology. For my own little bit that I’m cobbling together, I’ve landed on (un)systematic theology.
Constructive theologians tend to get a little weird with our building materials. Yes, we take starting points from the Bible, but also from new stories, from poetry, from the world around us. While scientific theories or stories from our own lives do fall into the centuries-old framework of ways we learn about God—the classic sources of reason, experience, scripture, and tradition—constructivists usually sprinkle in such ‘indirect’ revelations (God-sightings) more liberally than your average Bible-preaching pastor.
It’s not because we don’t like the Bible. Most of us love the Bible! It’s more that we’re not interested in fighting the world ‘outside’ scripture and tradition or forcing it to assimilate with our foregone conclusions. Or maybe our foregone conclusions are these: there’s room in the story of God for every truth and every good thing. And the remix can show you things you never noticed about the original. And God is still speaking.
Now, before this starts to sound like everything is true and no one disagrees, let me assure you that constructivists love to disagree. We do understand that affirming one statement or argument often means negating another; and we make conscious choices about how to interpret and prioritize our sources of truth. But we also understand that our goal isn’t just ‘to never be wrong,’ and many of us are as willing to end our arguments with a question, parable, lament, silence, or song as we are with a statement of fact.
For my own part, I’ve been standing in a pile of dust for a long long time, and I’ve been stirring and stuttering toward construction for a while now, too. In 2018 I want to string some things together, play some riffs and make some starts. I want to go straight back to my Sunday school roots sometimes and other times, get a little weird. In fact, I’ve set up a little project for myself. It’s almost like the Julie/Julia project only with less butter and more convoluted terms for abstract concepts. Here’s the plan, God willing:
– read the Bible and pray every day of 2018
– research and practice one spiritual discipline every month of 2018
– read one work of constructive theology every month
– read one book each month from another academic discipline
Along the way, I’ll share with you what I’m learning, and try sometimes to say where I’ve seen God. (Half of these field notes will be here on the blog, but the other half will only go out to my email list! Sign up at the bottom of this post.)
Whatever this stunt or journey or exercise turns out to be, I hope you’ll come along. I hope you’ll gather up your doubts and your dust and see, with me, whether there might not be a place for them to fit, after all.
What questions are you questioning this year? What should I read, do, or study over the course of this project?