Artistry and Theology

I write this blog as a novice in almost every sense of the word, as one who is traveling through an M.Div. Nearing the end of my first year of three, it strikes me as quite peculiar that we in the arcane field of theology are not taught artistry. Any artistry we might have been taught is apparently supplanted by priority for truth. But I daresay, is not truth creative? And should we not consequently be taught to articulate truth creatively? Should not the spheres of the theologian and poet collide?

And that brings me to a particular person, who posed a particular question and who received a particular response.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

…

“And who is my neighbor?”

In response, Jesus proceeded to tell a parable. Why is it that Jesus told a parable in response? I don’t know. But I’d wager a guess that perhaps Jesus opted to tell a parable because he did not want to spend the next hundred years writing an arid discourse in response (he allowed for the next two thousand years’ worth of theologians with multiple PhD’s to do that). Of course, I am being facetious, but not entirely.

Theologians ill trained?

And so what have we with these ill trained theologians? Uninteresting dullards preaching from the pulpits to uninterested congregations in the pews. It’s a charade.

Are we to boil down truth to its “essence”? Are we to boil down truth until nothing is left? We are boiling down truth so that it evaporates into thin air in search of someone more interesting. And yet theologians boil down the truth so that it may be rearticulated “in more precise form.” Precise? Perhaps, empty and insipid. I do not contend that theologians have ill gotten goods but ungotten goods!

It thus seems to me that if an M.Div., and just about any theological education for that matter, is to carry any weight, then it must involve more of life. It must involve artistry. It must involve the poetic. Is not creation itself poetic? And if that is the case, then true theology is inherently poetic.

Here are our thoughts, voyagers’ thoughts.

Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by

Them be said,

The sky o’erarches, we feel the undulating deck beneath

Our feet,

We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,

The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of

The briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,

The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,

The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,

And this is ocean’s poem.

Will the rocks shout out? They already are.