in defence of theology

In Defense of Theology
by Mark Shea


"Wow!," said my friend, looking up from his science magazine, "Did
you know DNA is folded into each cell nucleus in your body in a very
precise and compact way? It says here it's like 30 miles of spider
web thread carefully folded into a cherry pit!"

I think this sort of thing is amazing too. But what strikes me funny
is that the same friends of mine who just love to read this sort of
thing in science magazines think nothing of dismissing theology as
just so much "angels on pinheads trivia". Religion, they say, should
be simple, not complex. They say this because moderns imagine
religious truth as an airy speculation, unconnected to "real life",
which somebody got a bunch of people to buy into. That's why we
think Christianity could be made simple if "The Church" wanted to
make it so, but we never imagine DNA could be made simple if "The
Scientists" wanted to make it so. We know that Science is
constrained to describe what is actually there, not what scientists
would like to be there. But we have somehow forgotten that Theology
is under the same obligation.

Christianity is not something somebody made up. It began, not with
philosophical speculation about angels and pins, but with a real
life event that hit a bunch of people between the eyes and left them
wondering, "What was that?" The event was the life, teaching, death,
resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. And Jesus came, not that we
might have More Abundant Theory, but to bring the Kingdom of God
with a power so frighteningly real that on more than one occasion he
was politely requested to leave the premises. The apostles
themselves did not know what to make of it at first. But Jesus
forced them to face, not some abstraction, but Himself.

"Who do you say that I am?" he asked them. Different theories were
kicked about. Jeremiah? John the Baptist back from the dead? None of
these fit the data till Peter spoke up and offered not theory, but
reality. "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God," he said.

He was right. And he and the billion or so Christians after him have
been engaged in one monumental exploration of the enormity folded
into those ten words just as molecular biology is an exploration of
the enormity deftly folded into a cell nucleus. All the meaning of
life, the Eucharist, the doctrine of the Trinity, the dignity and
destiny of the human person and the salvation of the world are
folded up and compressed into Peter's words.

Which is why Christian theology has to be "complicated." Theology is
the study of supernatural life just as biology is the study of
natural life. We make no more sense demanding that Theology, the
Queen of the Sciences, be simple than we do demanding that the cells
be filled with a featureless jelly and not all those chromosomes,
ribosomes and mitochondria. Nor do we do ourselves a favor by
depriving ourselves of the sheer wonder and human dignity that is
ours in the task of theology. You think the cell is cool? You should
meet the One who invented it! You amazed by the size of the
Universe? That's just peanuts compared to God! You think the
adventurers who explored the Earth were interesting? Try the
adventure of exploring Heaven! It is, says Proverbs, the "glory of
kings" to search such matters out.

But most amazing of all is that this same God has folded his divine
life into something smaller than a cherry pit, something smaller
even than a mustard seed.

He has placed it in the heart of sinful people like you and me with
a promise to make it grow until it fills heaven and earth.

hsi