These Perfect Theologies

Christianity as an embodied faith.

(This is bit of a longer article, so feel fee to take it in segments, I do hope the length gets to a point that is worth the effort.)

‘It was then that I found I had memorized something I had never taken time to understand.’ I have decided to call this little article, ‘These Perfect Theologies,’ however, it might be better named, ‘These Disembodied Theologies,’ you decide which you like more.

When you hear the word theology bandied around in public (and all that word entails with technicalities, and long descriptors) it can all too easily take on the character of a cool detached set of abstractions, impersonal, immaterial. Like trivia to win a debate or seem clever in a conversation—which we would never do (of course) and of course never on Internet forums; yet it is easy to employ these things at an arms length—they sit in our hand like a category, like facts about bridges or tyrannosaurs. But why the arms length?

This makes a person wonder, have we become so engaged with the idea of being, that we have ceased to find interesting the phenomenon of becoming? Theology is a becoming sort of word. If we fancy ourselves ‘intellectual Christians,’ we may aspire to be a kind of theologian, but it is much more important that we are always becoming theologians. And the becoming part is really the key thing, it directs us towards humility, and becomes an activity fit for not only those whose personalities bend in bookish ways, but for all. Christianity is the curious faith, and curiosity doesn’t have education as a prerequisite. Now, back to the emphasis on becoming—I mean that we might always be discovering something—yet not satisfied with trivia. Becoming takes more than an awareness of information, it is the wrestling with it, body and soul.

Now, I know that to talk about something as deep and wide as ‘theology’—as though it was one simple thing—is a fraught activity, but I’m going to try and say something, and it is my hope that this something isn’t too naïve given the subject matter.

So to sum up so far: is man made for the head or the head for man?

CHAPTER 1 : A Split Between

What if we began with a premise to get this going? Let’s start here: there is a God, and there is a world that he calls his for he made it, and upon it live a people, ‘humanity’ they are called, and they spend their days there. This world has goodness, beauty, truth: this we know and feel in certain ways. But it also has that which dulls the senses and corrodes the world, it would be this thing we hear called by the name, ‘sin,’ that is the undoing of all things: this we know and feel in certain ways. This tension of beauty and corrosion places us in an unsettled state, and we should feel unsettled, for that is the first step in awakening to the whole thing.

Now, we go further with our premise: the God of this world is not far away from it, and can be felt, but the feeling of God is not too strange of a concept in the landscape of gods across cultures past and present, but here is a wonder, he can be known, and the knowing changes the possibilities of the unsettled state. Now this knowing is what we’ll consider now, and we’ll consider how it has been split for some time, split from the feeling, and the feeling from the knowing, not only on this earth, but within us.

The split existed in the old myths, between feeling and knowing (for the mythic gods were largely felt and largely a mystery), and as it seems to me, it exists again here in the generations after the Enlightenment (we wish to know and the feelings have no part in it, so they say). It is though we may either know, or feel God, but the two are very often held apart, the philosopher and the mystic sit at different tables, the worship leader and theologian, likewise.

Perhaps we feel safety in one or the other of the sides of the split. Or perhaps it is even more pronounced that that: we love to experience God and worry that study will over complicate it, or, inversely, we fear that emotional aspect of ourselves and find more safety in thinking. The split has left split-folk in its wake.

The humans of our opening premise often seek that which one or the other of the sides of the split can offer, yet the God of feeling and knowing seeks to heal the split, and it is the split within us we’ll seek to understand next, and we’ll consider it as the split between the head and belly. (Now I am indebted to Lewis for much of this metaphor, as those who already know can see).

This head and belly split we might also call the split between the cerebral and the visceral. Between, ‘knowing things about God,’ and, that different sort of deep-in-your-gut ‘knowing.’ The imperative and the intuitive, perhaps. I once heard a friend say that they disliked theology because as they saw it, is was a sort of spiritual exam held at the pearly gates, this bringing up in them fears of inadequacy first felt at school.

They didn’t need such contrivences made by Christians for the purpose of establishing some kind of in-group of super-Christians, and that this friend of mine wanted something altogether more authentic. What they meant to be ‘more authentic’ would perhaps be more ‘lived’ or ‘felt.’ This lived and felt aspiration is an admirable thought, and yet we should take firm notice of the split within it, and the disembodied aspect of the ‘test at the gates’ notion—and the idea of intellectual angels. It would seem authentic and intellectual would be terms pitted against each other.

We are not to be intellectual angels but instructed, living, feeling, creatures.

CHAPTER 2 : And / Also

I want to consider theology more directly now, I don’t think to do so is a mistake. Theology, if I understand those minds better informed than my own, is concerned with words. Not flippant words, or (hopefully) convoluted words. They are words about God. The word theology itself, we are told by the theologians, means those, ‘words about God and everything else in relation to God.’

And so what is the place of theology then, these words about God? Relying on our premise, we can see these words are in fact words concerned with a a real something, and have been honed, trimmed, and shaped to the evidence and the road that humankind has had with the God who self-reveals. These are the hard fought for words.

Theology is the study of the Story: the story of God and humans. And in the Christian sense of theology, these words are not simply words about something, but words with something. A something who is indeed a Someone, an object who is a subject. God has made himself known. I go further, these words are by, with, and through this Someone, not simply airdropped, or given to us by the scandal of a Promethean flame. This theology we hold differs from those other religions where god or the gods handed down something through the veil and then humans found it lying there, as though a gift tossed over a great gulf. In the Christian story, theology is rooted to the biblical text we hold, and so therefore wrapped up in the very life of humanity with God, in the notes of the story itself, and so theology is like thumbing through the appendix of it, the paper trail, contracts, and witness statements of the covenantal proceedings.

These words being set within the regular categories of biblical theology, historical theology, systematic (also called dogmatic) theology, and practical theology. They are not an activity in logic, story, poem, or parable alone, of course they are all of that, but more also, theology is an activity that calls for the whole person: heart, soul, mind, and strength. Because of course it isn’t simply an idea of God we are talking about, but the real thing, and if it is the real thing, then we are talking about a thing that would be bigger than the collective history, knowledge, intellect, and courage of the whole of humanity since the very beginning.

These words that we call theology are anchored umbilically to this word of God we call by the name ‘Bible,’ a collection of books, that forms a compendium or library in itself. Yet we can still make the mistake of thinking this whole library activity is exclusively ours, that we stand in it alone. That knowing and learning occurs in an isolated way, in the realm of the intellect, in a separate sort of reality from everyday, as though our soulish minds in learned-sanctification start rising out of our bodies to a place of the divine, as though this is a sealed off internal-work that sequesters us saint from saint, one from another.

Now, there is a definite personal way that God works on all of us, knows us, but it is funny how it is completed in a public sort of way: revealed in how we talk to our spouse, interact with the poor, or inhabit the church. We are to be known to be his. In our intellectual growth, we mustn’t forget that from the dust he made us, and so in that respect we are animal, the communal kind, but not animal alone (if you got offended at that), we are—to recall an old theologian’s phrase—an Image Bearing Animal. We are neither angel nor beastial, we are human. Our heads have to be attached to a real body, with real hands and feet unto which Jesus might have the lordly say.

A theology of dust would remind us that God made matter and so He has a plan for it. Our heads are on real bodies.

CHAPTER 3 : Safe Little Cells

Fides quaerens intellecum (‘faith seeking understanding’). A story, a true story, is the kind you live in. Now in a normal story you do this with your imagination, for the story already happened, and we visit it. But we should not confuse theology as the study of that kind of story, for this kind of story we find ourselves in, is happening. At every moment it is happening. We may be tempted to think we are holding the only pen in our age of self-actualization. But this story asks us to take part in it, for it is a grand story that spans many ages and places, and we are a small, yet, valued part of it. Faith brought us here, to the edge of something grand, but now we have been given a sort of map as to go somewhere new. If this story is right, then we are learning something very real when we learn it, and it behooves us to try and learn it best we can, lest we embody some other story.

We have already spoken of the head, and how it is on a real body. That we are not meant to be disembodied, intellectual angels, but creatures here on the earth as we were created to be. However, there is the opposite side of the split that might be a trap. One might follow the belly. We have been instructed by this current age of ours to follow the emotions, bliss being the road to flourishing. It is easy enough through temperament or dissolutionment to go this way.

It may result from the observation that abstracted contentment can become a sort of created prison-cell-of-thinking into which one retreats for safety’s sake. Yet in the case of the belly looking for bliss, bliss reveals itself to be elusive, a spectre: you might see it from afar, but it disappears when you try to chase it down. Chasing happiness for happiness sake would feel like freedom, but in the end, would be another prison.

And so in the final analysis of the belly person and the heady one, we end up with one walking around a field in circles, and the other sitting in their corner of it, both unaware of their predicament. Yet it appears, to our horror, that the Christ that sets captives free would wish to do the same to our two fellows here, to make a hero out of the first, and an embodied creature out of the second.

“Ancient faith gives power of resistance against the tyranny of our own immediate experience.” —Ellen Davis, Getting Involved with God

We wish to see the world as it really is. This, in moments of sober clarity, is the hope of all humanity. And so what follows here is a big claim, but for the Christian it is the belief that the scriptures we have act as a sort of lens upon the world, and it was given to us that we might see clearer. Yet it is a curious sort of lens. And as we search through it, it is though we are looking through a ‘glass darkly,’ we see on the other side of it a mystery, many glories, and, remarkably, one like a Son of Man. But simultaneously, we still see our own reflection on this side of the glass. This is sort of the wonder of it all. This dual image would be intentional. We see ourselves, but not ourselves alone, we see the Other World, but not it alone. It simultaneously sets our gaze on the beatific vision, on the heavenly, while holding a mirror up to that earth which we are meant to live upon, and that which we, ourselves, are meant to be within it all. It is this overlapping part of the reflection that we find challenging to our more material philosophies, and adds a balance to that which was missing.

For the Gnostic or the Platonist viewer, it would offer the embodied overlap of heaven and earth, and for the spiritualist it would offer the Sacred that would exceed purely personal experience. Theology, if this is not a faulty addition to this metaphor, would be like a cloth woven with the words and insights of a multitude of saints, held in our hand that we might keep wiping the glass as to remove, by the help of the Spirit, the kicked up dust that had settled there, so as to see a bit clearer. Now, we may keep cleaning the glass, and enjoy to do so, wiping and polishing, but here is the key thing, we still have to look into it and through it, and see what is there to see, and then, follow what we see.

Christ is interested in freeing us even from those prisons that were invisible to us.

CHAPTER 4 : The Unified Self

The Bible is amongst other things, a collection of experiences between humanity and God, this collection taking the shape desired by this God who wants to be known. And we might observe that the humans themselves were not often comfortable in these pages, but at the desperate and ragged edge of whatever understanding that had been theirs, they had reached the end of their little, invisible cell and felt the fresh air upon their faces. They knew something as well as felt something in the writing and conveying of these scriptures.

Likewise our theologies have to take on this borderland kind of understanding. What we study here will take us to the edge of our knowing, and marry it to the edge of that guttural sense we hold right in our bellies. We are in good company, however, for we see this going on also in the prophets, the psalmists, and the disciples—we indeed tread on holy ground when we seek to understand and perhaps say something true about God, and so it will take all of us, not just an idea we have, or unguided motion, it will take head and belly.

There is a thought that theology is not a creative act, but instead, an act of science. And in a vital way that is true, we are understanding things as a scientist would in their field about this true reality we call God. In that way, we are forbidden from improvising facts, we are too busy understanding them. This makes sense like music makes sense, to change the rules of music just ends up in much nonsense and dissonance. However, after this first delimitation, there is a second outgrowth in which theology is creative, it is creative in us.

We learn and it doesn’t leave us the same, for in us a mingling is happening. What we have understood cerebrally, if we allow it, mingles with that visceral joy, pain, heartache, longing, and inarticulate self. What first started as learning about something we loved, simply became love itself. Not self-interested love, nor sheer passion, but that sort of love that takes the whole person in. This is the potential of allowing our knowledge to go down the steps, and allow it to interact with the very deep in the center of us. It is within that place that ‘deep calls to deep.’

Theology describes, in a sense, what already is. This is the theology that exists in the narrow sense, that of true knowledge expressed in doctrine and creed. However, in the wider sense it is more mysterious. This is what theology does in the mingling. It is here that theology is enlivened by the Spirit, and becomes creative, expressing not only what is, but what is coming to be as it finds fresh expression in and through the whole person. Though, we notice still that the wide sense follows the narrow sense in truth and character, for though the tune is unique within us, it still is part of what the orchestra is doing.

Theology helps instruct the steps, enliven the imagination, and work on us as all good study does. But, here is where theology becomes imperfect as it were, because though it is the study of the very Truth of the world, absolute, and perfect, it still has to be embodied by us. We have to walk around in it, and we will do so with much wobbling and stumbling. And so what I am saying is that theology, the thing we have to study with, is still worked out with us. When people say that they object to Christianity, it is because they are thinking more of the Christian than the Christ.

And so this is the real thing I want to point out. Christianity doesn’t make perfect saints right out of the box, in fact, right out of the box these saved people look very much as they did going into the box. Often they are some of the biggest messes—yet that mess—and their recognition of it, is the very reason they fell at the base of the cross to begin with. And so the humility that led us there, must keep us there, even as we learn.

It would not be a problem if our theology was actually perfect (as if epistemically that were possible) what is more dangerous in every way is that we would think it is perfect. As soon as we would have reached that place, it would be the case that we would find it sufficient in itself and un-needing of any change, even from the One the whole thing is about.

The head and belly are not categories for different personality types, they are realms to be united in each person, right there in the chest.

CHAPTER 5 : Final Words

Perhaps theology is a kind of gift, or better said, a way to understand a gift. A good gift is one that you wonder at, but really, also one that you want to learn all about: of what it does, its features, and how to engage it. A person might receive a mystery package in the mail that has something dear to them inside—yet, if the desire is not widely known by others, this could be an accident as easily as it could be intentional, but, the gift itself is magnified when it is given to you by a loved one that you know took special care and forethought to give it, and as you see the intention in their face, there is no distance present, you understand something more.

This is the thing with words about God, they haven’t stopped since the day they were uttered, they are, and they will be. They are as we first encountered them, and they will be as we join in with them and their great creative act within us. But to do that, they have to sit in our chest. If something is held in the head, then it does a certain cerebral good. But it isn’t until it moves into the chest that it can mingle with what we have in our bellies. What we feel deepest, hold closest, and keep nearest. You see the gut is where we are rawest, and where the unutterable things of the world within us dwell. The head is the rational center. But if we treat the head like a tower guard and the belly like a prisoner, we will be only half a person. Likewise, if we let the belly run wild then we become only an emotive beast, we need to be whole humans.

What is in the head gives utterance, correction, and shape to the wordless belly, and what is in the belly embodies what has been learned. And this is the potency of theology, it is the teacher of both, and if allowed to sink into the chest, goes from being a word that reports to a word that mingles. This is the idea of living out what we know. This is also the movement that takes our theologies from being those perfect ones, to those that exist not as closed abstract theories, but open worlds where a truth about the world is mingled with our painful, hopeful, celebratory, or lamented engagements with it. It becomes holy to us, and not just holy perfect apart from us.

I am not here advocating for an overwrought romanticism. But for us in the family of God, who have been long subject to a hard and detached rationalism, we may now find it the right time to be in the business of layering, of mingling. Of marrying our piqued minds set on the science of God’s word, to the wetted and infused understanding made by the mystery and inefficacy of our longings and yearnings. That we might, in some way, find ourselves like Orual wrestling with both the words of the Fox and the priest of Ungit.

What I am attempting to explain is less of a clear category set and more of an overlapping-way. A way of being that brings the two halves of us together to make a whole human. It is in this mingling part of us where we find what we know meets that which we feel, and, where fact becomes truth. It is sort of like this. We might love the Eucharist, and experience it with wonder and joy—we may be interested to learn about it, and seek out what our ancestors in the faith wrote and said about it, that we might share in the same orthodoxy and doctrine as to help us see clearly what we are doing. But in the end, we still need to partake of the bread, and the wine, and live in the whole remembrance.