Those Poor Professors of Theology. What Can They Be Thinking?

            I’ve been thinking about professors of Systematic Theology sitting in their seminary offices lately. What do they think they’re doing?

            I’m not trying to be funny. I’m not trying to suggest that whatever they’re doing, it’s silly. I just wonder.

            There are a few obvious candidate answers. Theology professors will teach the History of Theology—as they see it, of course, with lots of judgments thrown in. Just choosing what history you’re going to talk about requires such judgments. I’m not blaming them. I did it too.

            Theology profs will also want to teach from out of his or her own tradition—likely the seminary’s tradition, too. It might be Barthianism or Fundamentalism or Mormonism. The tradition will come with lots of presuppositions, a certain worldview, and perhaps even an ethnic or class culture. Every tradition is a rich resource for the judgments mentioned above. Again, no theology prof can avoid this, though hopefully they always pass on their tradition with a lot of soul searching.

            Theology profs will probably say that they also want to teach their students to think . . . somehow. I’m not sure which word fits best after “think.” Probably something like “rationally.”

           

John Suk teaching Hermeneutics at
Asian Theological Seminary, c. 2005

Teaching students to think rationally isn’t as critical as it first might seem. Most probably can do so pretty well already, even if they haven’t applied the skill to theology. But rationality gets more complicated if the point of teaching is to pass on a tradition. That’s because unless we’re talking about something that’s truly weird (Jesus was a Hindu mystic) most competing doctrines in different traditions are at least internally coherent. Both Unitarianism and Trinitarianism are rational, for example. “Rational” doesn’t mean, after all, “proven.” To think rationally means that, given certain presuppositions, there is a way to make sense of these doctrines; they are internally coherent.

            In fact, it strikes me that one’s presuppositions, worldview, parents’ expectations, and favorite place to go to church will have a greater impact on both the theology professor and his or her students than the goal of rationality. All these doctrines are rational, after all. Most theology professors then, are probably much more interested in convincing their students (either through careful argument or any of a dozen or so other rhetorical strategies) that the presuppositions the professor holds are absolutely right.

            Except that, if this is the case, are we really doing theology? Or, are we teaching the true presuppositions as somebody or some tradition sees them?

            I remember early on, in seminary, hearing some lectures by one professor on how theology was a “science.” That is, theology was subject to strict methodological rules. It’s object was the examination of scripture (and a tiny bit of creation) in order to theorize about true faith.

            Years later, I read some philosophy of science books. In them I encountered discussions about science’s “craft values.” That is, to be a good scientist, you will theorize in a manner that meets the approval of other scientists. A good scientific theory, for example, needs to be rational (of course), meaning internally and externally consistent. But also simple. Heuristic. It should have unifying power. And it must be falsifiable. Which no theologian truly believes about his or her take on things. If it is a science, rather than a parade of presuppositions, theology is a strange one, for sure.

            I mean, even if the odd theologian claims it, most theology doesn’t go for Occum’s razor. Inerrancy? Very complicated, once you read scriptures, or even just compare the gospels. Trinity? Persons (?) divided, but substances not? Original sin? Honestly, when there isn’t an original Adam and Eve to lean on anymore, this is a doctrine only Rube Goldberg could love.

            No, I don’t think theology is a science. And for most theologians thinking about their next lecture, I’d guess that many are really thinking indoctrination, even if they don’t admit it to themselves. They are thinking about how to pass on a tradition for the sake of maintaining it. To do otherwise, at least in most denominational seminaries, is to face a trial or maybe just be fired.

            In view of this sort of analysis, in the past I’ve suggested that we ought to make theology a playground. Theology ought to be experienced as a holy pastime rather than serious indoctrination. I know that this won’t do much for denominational distinctives, or upholding your sect’s idea of the true facts.

            But upon reflection, I also realize that calling theology a playground isn’t enough. So I’d like to offer some “rules,” for this playground—craft values for having fun with theology rather than doing mere indoctrination.

            So, first, good theology should probably be aesthetically compelling. It should be beautiful. And I don’t mean merely the beauty of something that is internally coherent. I mean it should be good poetry, or art. Theology ought to paint a picture that is worth a thousand “facts.” This quality, in fact, is what makes the work of painters like Van Gogh, or writers such as Marilyn Robinson such good theology.

            Good theology should be creative. If humans—whether in myth or history—were created by God as image bearers, surely human reflections on God should be, in turn,  creative, too. Theology should find new answers to the old questions of the problem of evil, or the nature of Jesus’ presence at the eucharist, or when to get baptized; new answers that break down old barriers and offer new insight or encouragement or joy. Another way of putting this is that every few years or so, good theology should lead to some major paradigm change when it comes to creedal or confessional conundrums.

            Good theology must be meditative. It ought to allow the thinker or the reader or the doer of the theology to step back from the rat race of the parsonage or faculty or student life and engage in seeking God seeking us, instead.

            Good theology should make identifying presuppositions a game, like Finding Waldo. Look, we know they are there in the writing and the teaching. Let’s name them! All! Ironically, it usually takes not only a hard look but also a childlike naivety to identify many presuppositions. Doing so, however, means that they won’t likely get a chance to be as  coercive as an emperor without clothes.

            Good theology should not be primarily thought of as trying to say systematically what the Bible says enigmatically. When it comes to the Trinity, we needed poetry but got a formula based on now-discredited Greek philosophical theories that has about as much connection to the original texts as Derridian deconstruction does.

            Good theology should focus more on ethics rooted in the summary of the law than in hotly debated disagreements about the Bible’s enigmas. If Old Testament Pharisees were too enamoured of the tithe, then the modern Christian academy is too enamoured of propositions.

            A good theologian has a full heart that needs to find expression in the words he or she speaks, rather than in ancient creeds or confessions that must be parsed correctly to be understood today.

            Look, it can’t be easy to be a professor of Systematic Theology. And thinking of theology as a playground rather than an arena is only a partial solution to the theologian’s problems. But theology is fun. Even if that’s just the beginning of the rest of the story.

The Hebrew Creation Myth on "Who Is God?"

Many years ago I did a year of post-graduate study on an interdisciplinary team that studied the theme Creation and Cosmogony. The team included a geologist, a philosopher, an astrophysisist, an Old Testament scholar, and myself.

My role on the team, in part, was to translate Psalm 104, a creation Psalm, from Hebrew to English, and then compare that Psalm to ancient Sumarian, Akkadian, and Canaanite creation stories. Sumer and Akkad were ancient Middle Eastern empires whose myths were well known to the Hebrews. In fact, ancient Hebrew religious leaders actually rewrote those ancient myths to suit their own purposes. That is, the Genesis story of creation, and the Psalms of creation, are really ironic, almost sarcastic commentaries on the popular myths that the people living in and around the Hebrews believed.

So, in this post, I want to introduce you to an Akkadian scribe whose name was Ku-Aya. He is a real person who lived more than 2000 years before Jesus’ birth. Archeologists know that Ku-Aya was a real person because they have found his signature on a set of clay tablets that he copied for the Akkadian library. These clay tablets tell the Akkadian version of the creation story. This story is entitled the Ennuma Elish.

The world, as pictured in the Ennuma Elish is, in some ways, similar to the world as the ancient Hebrews understood it. Both Ku-Aya, the Akkadian scribe, and the Psalmist who wrote Psalm 104 shared the same primitive, mythic understanding of how the world worked. Ku-Aya thought that the gods lived up there, in heaven. And Ku-Aya thought that down there was an ocean of water on which the ground floated. Between the heaven above and the waters below was the world.

The Psalmist thought very much the same, and you can see that from the structure of this Psalm. In fact, Psalm 104 is actually a sort of map, where the words and structure of the Psalm, as well as its rhyme and alliteration (that can’t be translated), make the map’s design instead of the graphic lines and splashy colors that we’re used to on Google Maps.

At the top of the Psalm, that is, the top of the map, in verses 2-4, where heaven belongs, is a description of heaven. Heaven is where Yahweh—the Hebrew name for God—rides on the wings of the wind and where the winds are his messengers. Just before the Psalm's conclusion, in verses 24-26, at the bottom of the Psalm, the Psalmist describes bottom of the world, the sea upon which the world floats. In the sea are creatures beyond number, whales that frolic and play.

Like Ku-Aya, the Psalmist put the earth between the sea below and the heaven above. In verses 5-9 the Psalmist describes how Yahweh set the earth on its foundations, and near the end of the poem, just before the description of the sea, in verses 19-23, the poet describes how Yahweh orders the earth's seasons, night and day.

Finally, at the heart of his Psalm, in verses 13-15, the Psalmist describes the heart of his world, Judah. Judah is surrounded, in turn, by the Negev desert (10-12) and Lebanon (16-18). Even here, Ku-Aya would have agreed with the Psalmist—at least in principle, because if he had drawn a map, Ku-Aya would have put his empire, Akkad, at its center too.

Ku-Aya and the Psalmist shared the same mythical and prescientific understanding of the world. But the two stories they told about how that earth came to be represent very different religious understandings of the world. So let’s compare, in broad strokes, some of that myth that Ku-Aya told to the Biblical myth.

Ku-Aya's myth tells of a time before the creation of the world when the gods had to work for a living. Ku-Aya's gods planted crops and dug irrigation canals, but they detested this demeaning work. According to Genesis, however, Yahweh, the Hebrew God, enjoyed his six days of creative work, and only then, when he was finished on the seventh day, did Yahweh rest.

Ku-Aya's unhappy worker-gods went to their boss god, Enlil, and begged Enlil to find someone else to do their dirty work. So, to help the tired worker-gods out, Enlil created men and women to be slaves in the gardens of the gods. Humans were to work in the garden in order to grow food for the gods. According to the Genesis myth, however, Yahweh did it the other way around. Yahweh created Adam and Eve not as slaves, but as stewards, caretakers of the Garden of Eden, so that they could feed not the gods, but themselves. Yahweh made Adam and Eve co-rulers in the garden, rather than slaves.

Early on, Enlil was crushed to realize that the humans he created were so fertile that the earth was soom overrun by them. In fact, there were so many humans making such a racket that Enlil and the other Akkadian gods couldn't even get a decent night's sleep. According to the Ennuma Elish, Enlil cries out: "Twelve hundred years has not yet passed, and the people have over multiplied. Their land is bellowing like a bull, and I am disturbed by their noise and uproar. I cannot sleep with all those humans and their horns."

Of course, in the Bible, Yahweh told Adam and Eve not to worry about fertility; in fact, Yahweh told them to be fruitful and multiply and enjoy it.

Enlil's solution for his insomnia was to kill off as many humans as he could. Ku-Aya tells us that Enlil sent drought and famine; Enlil sent a wind to parch the ground and dry up the springs. Hopefully these plagues would solve the overpopulation problem. The Psalmist, on the other hand, notes that Yahweh provides springs to pour water into the ravines of the Negev desert. The Psalmist smiles to think of how the ceders in Lebanon are well watered by mountain streams. But most especially, the Psalmist rejoices because Yahweh waters the mountains of Judah from his upper chambers, the clouds in the heavens.

In the end, Enlil decides to destroy the noisy humans with a flood in which only one human family, the family of Atrahasis, escape, by way of an Ark. In scripture, the flood is described not as a noise reduction measure, but as an attempt by Yahweh to flush the world clean of wickedness.

What do we make of these two pictures? Well, on the science front, the Psalmist and Ku-Aya had similar understandings of how the world worked. The world is like a meatball sandwich, with slice of sea below and a slice of heaven above.

On the religious front, however, the stories of Ku-Aya and the Psalmist show that they had radically different understandings of what the gods—or the one God—was like. As I said earlier, Psalm 104, as well as Genesis 1 and 2, were certainly written as ironic, sarcastic rebuttals of Ku-Aya's popular myth. Biblical accounts of creation seem to have been written as a point by point refutation of the popular religious themes of Ku-Aya's story, themes that the religion of the surrounding Canaanites were full of.

Consider. Where Ku-Aya's gods created human slaves, the Biblical creation myth says humans were created to rule. Where Ku-Aya's world was a prison farm, the Hebrew world was a garden of delight. Where Ku-Aya and his friends were much too fertile for their gods' liking, the Hebrew myth commands humans to be fertile and multiply.

Where Ku-Aya thought that the gods detested humans, Psalm 104 portrays a world where Yahweh blesses humans. Yahweh, for example, waters the mountains from his upper chambers; Yahweh brings forth food from the earth, too, for humans: wine for our hearts and oil to make our faces shine—one of my favorite Bible texts.

So, what do we make of the Bible's creation myth, and the God at its centre?

Well, I think that what the Hebrews wanted to say about God was radically different than what the peoples that surrounded them believed. In short, the Hebrews believed that God was for them. God loved and valued them. God wanted to bless them and see them thrive. God might be powerful and distant, shrouded in mystery and hard to get to know—but still, this God is fundamentally for humans, not against them. God is on our side, blesses us with great opportunity as citizens of this planet, and desires that we, like Him or Her, do the same for and unto our neighbors.

And so we should.