Theologian. This title calls forth images of a bearded scholar slumped over the desk of a cluttered seminary office or an aged pastor droning on about intellectual issues as his congregation catches up on its sleep. However, Karl Barth begins his voluminous “Church Dogmatics” by acknowledging that theology means nothing more than to “talk about God.”
With this definition, it seems that there are a lot of theologians today. Some may be well-informed, grounded, and thought-provoking. Others, well, not so much. Everyone from Stephen Hawking to Stephen Colbert is talking about God. However, for all this talk, no one is getting it right.
Barth’s opening pages acknowledge the impossibility of theology. He writes that the work of theology “would be meaningless without justifying grace, which here too can alone make good what man as such invariably does badly” (004) and that “Theology does not in fact possess special keys to special doors” (005). In other words, everything we say about God is inadequate and falls short.
On one hand, as a professional church person, this could be discouraging to realize that every sermon, song, conversation, and prayer is invariably done badly. Yet, I find this incredibly liberating. From the onset, I know that when I talk about God I am merely attempting to shed a single light on an unfathomable mystery. I don’t have to worry about explaining all that God is, because I can’t. Rather, it is God’s grace that will make up for my short-comings, accept our misstatements, and fully reveal who God is.
Let us talk away my fellow theologians, finding freedom in the fact that our talk of God will always be inadequate.
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