We are all theologians. A theologian is anyone who asks theological
questions. And we all do that. The questions everybody asks are at their root
"God questions" and that's what the word "theologian" implies. It comes from two
Greek words for God and reason and embraces all our thinking about God and the
meaning of life. It includes the questions that start early in life and may
haunt us until we die. Questions like:
These are profoundly practical questions. The answers are not simple. For
every proposal we make our minds can think of something else that needs to be
added, some alternative point of view. Perhaps the truth is larger than we at
first supposed, more than one-sided.
Paradox
The perspective this course offers in answering these questions is that they
are paradoxical. Life is perceived as paradoxical at heart. In the realm of
theology we think of God as both one and yet triune, of Jesus as both human and
divine, of the Bible as both divinely inspired and written by human beings. In
the physical realm, for example, scientists are mystified about the nature of
light. Is it waves or particles in motion? Reason says it can't be both. And yet
some experiments demonstrate that it is one and some the other, depending on how
the experiment is conducted. Even more, in the spiritual realm we can expect to
find paradoxes. After all, we are finite beings dealing with the Eternal,
space-time creatures relating to that which is beyond space and time.
Some things that seem true may not fit with other things that seem equally
true. We can only conclude that we have discovered partial truths that are
difficult to harmonize. After one statement we may have to say, "On the other
hand..." And we may simply have to live with some questions that can only be
resolved by the choices we make day by day.
Some people see these things in either/or terms, or polarities that somehow
complement each other. Others recognize them as paradoxes. Can we agree that
life is filled with seeming opposites that both seem true? That we can't do
without either of them? Like being tough-minded and tenderhearted as Martin
Luther King, Jr. exhorted us all to be. Or like making clear judgments without
being judgmental.
I discovered the paradoxical when I was in high school. A friend loaned me a
copy of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, his spiritual journal in which
the chapter, "Paradoxes of Christianity," forever shaped my thinking.
Chesterton grew up in the Church of England. He did not question his faith
until college days when he read all the skeptical writings of his time and
decided that the Christian faith made no sense. Then he discovered that its
critics were contradicting each other. One writer accused Christianity of
producing milquetoasts (imitating the so-called "meek and mild Jesus"). And
indeed the first Christians were pacifists, refusing to participate in war. The
next critic accused Christianity of fostering some of the bloodiest battles in
history. And there was plenty of proof for it.
But Chesterton, who by this time had discovered that all of life is
paradoxical, sensed that Christianity's critics were like the blind men
describing an elephant, each responding to just one aspect of its totality. He
read the New Testament afresh and discovered a paradox on almost every page. He
returned to the Christian faith and became, in his time, one of the foremost
defenders of the faith.
God is More Than...
Writer after writer affirms this perspective on life, including the English
poet Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Our little systems have their day;
they have their day and cease to be.
They are but broken lights of Thee,
and Thou, 0 Lord, art more than they.
And Vernon Grounds, a Conservative Baptist seminary president:
Life is immensely bigger than logic and only Christianity is big enough to take in all of life with its paradoxes and contradictions. For Christianity has at its heart, as Kierkegaard delighted to emphasize, the sheer paradox of a God-man.
As well as United Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy:
Life is paradoxical. That is, it demands that we hold together in a kind of tension what seem to be contradictions. The Christianity which is truly realistic is not afraid of paradox, and sets forth its truth in paradoxes. Theology is not an intellectual exercise of the cloister, but a statement of experience from Christians facing life's issues. Christianity dares to go beyond logic because life does. It demands a decision, an action. For this is where the issues of life are decided, and not in an arm chair working intellectual exercises.
In this course, then, we will examine important and practical questions that
affect our everyday thinking and acting. We will see what the Bible says on each
subject. We will hear what others have to say. We will be asked to reflect on
what we really believe for ourselves. And we will learn how to approach the
ambiguities that we discover in our belief systems.
A sampling of familiar paradoxes from the New Testament is inserted here to
help us feel at home in the process of theological inquiry.
A Sampling of New Testament Paradoxes
Mark 4:34 says, "He spoke to them in parables." Jesus also
spoke in paradoxes. Instead of simply giving easy answers, he often reflected
the questions of both his followers and his critics back to them and made them
think carefully through ambiguous situations. Here are just a few of the
paradoxes the New Testament records:
Editor's note:
The course referred to in this article is one that Wally taught first at his home church, Kittamaqundi Community in Columbia MD. Called "Exploring Our Faith," it is available from F@W Resources.
Wally Howard edited Faith At Work magazine from 1963 to 1980. He died in November of 2003, but his words still touch our hearts. His wife Alice lives in Columbia MD.