Poetry, anyone?
Karen Armstrong is a famous ex-nun who has written, among other things, a puffing biography of the prophet Muhammad. She frequently appears on TV confidently gassing about various religious matters. But I was really taken a back by this, which I ran across in a podcast:
Ms. Armstrong: Well, you see, I think theology is poetry. That’s what my Jewish friend, Chaim Maccabee, told me all those years ago when he quoted Hillel’s golden rule to me and said, “You know, it doesn’t matter what you believe. Theology is poetry.”
Now a poet spends a great deal of time listening to his unconscious, and slowly calling up a poem word by word, phrase by phrase, until something beautiful is brought forth, we hope, into the world that changes people’s perceptions. And we respond to a poem emotionally. And I think we should take as great a care when we write our theology as we would if we were writing such a poem, instead of just trotting out an orthodox formula, or an orthodox definition of God, or a catechism answer, so that when people listen to a theological idea, they feel as touched as when they read a great poem by, say, Milton or Dante.
We should take as great care with our religious rituals as if we were putting on a great performance at a theater because ritual — and theater, indeed, was originally a religious ritual designed to lead us to transcendence instead of just mechanically going through the motions of our various rites and ceremonies, trying to make them into something absolutely beautiful and inspiring, because I do see religion as a kind of art form.
There’s a wonderful moment when one of my favorite Greek Orthodox theologians, a man called Gregory of Nyssa, who was a fourth-century wonderful mystic, and he and his brother and friend were the people who formulated the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of Trinity. And he said, first of all, this doctrine could only be understood in a ritual context and in the context of prayer and contemplation. It’s not something like an equation that you can just follow rationally. But he said when he thinks — “When I think of the three, I think of the one. When I think of the one, I think of the three. And then my eyes fill with tears and I lose all sense of where I am.”
And that’s what a theological formulation of the Trinity should do to us. And so often our theological formulations don’t do that to us. They remain opaque and a bit soulless. But I think we should be a bit more creative and inventive with our theology. (source)
Yes, folks, the purpose of theology is to make you feel a certain way. Truth? Rationality? Who needs ’em? Not poetry.
Just remember this, next time you’re tempted to consult one of her many books: “Oh freddled gruntbuggly / Thy micturations are to me /As plurdled gabbleblotchits / On a lurgid bee.”
Scott,
I’ve long puzzled over that story myself. It’s impossible to say how, if at all, down he was on the body of his work after that. Calling it “straw” certainly isn’t complementing it! What was straw used for – feeding the animals, and catching their poop on the stable floor. However you cut it, it’s an ephemeral and temporary thing, with a rather low value and rather common uses. We should post that story some time – if I remember, it’s only like a paragraph or so from one of his contemporaries.
What might one make of the story about Thomas Aquinas ending his writing career by saying all that he wrote was as straw? I imagine it has something to do with the deep (mystical) realization that what you talk about involves you– as though all you are and have talked about is itself part of the drama of God’s saving actions in the world.
The philosophical theology I write is not poetry but I do aim at truth.
The most charitable spin I can put on the Vogon idea is that theology should not end with the mind but should inspire one to engage with God as a whole person.
I confess that some philosophy or theology I hear or read that tries to do that, though, makes me want to gnaw off a limb to keep my internal organs from throttling my brain.
A lot of Vogon sympathizers eh? 🙂
I guess there are many kinds of poetry, but I don’t see that expressing true claims would be a primary aim of them. Of course, Psalms are song lyrics are poetry, and some genres of spiritual writing are poetry, or maybe something closely related to it. But I think theology is a theoretical discipline – concerned with delivering comprehensive knowledge and understanding. Of course I think that when it is done, then doing it is actually going to involve worship, and a whole range of emotions.
What I was complaining about is a concern to deliver some enjoyable feelings with a lack of concern for truth, or for any other epistemic desiderata. There’s something deeply perverse about that, which is incompatible with human flourishing. There’s also a political aim in all work, but that’s another conversation.
I thought M’s comment was interesting – I agree that there are fitting and unfitting emotions – whether we’re talking about a specific, momentary state, or an overall emotional background condition. I sort of draw a blank at that medieval stuff about Truth and Goodness, but perhaps I’m in broad sympathy with it, as I believe in objective value which supervenes on non-value properties.
I’m with JT (shock!) and Joseph. Appeals to one’s emotive state of being is not per se enough–to cite a favorite spiritualist, Thomas Merton, “love with no concern for the truth is not love” (_No Man Is An Island_). One’s emotive state is quite important–and even (gasp!) rational (pace Martha Nussbaum _The Intelligence of the Emotions_).
I’m with Joseph on this.
(Also, if you forced me to look into theology as poetry, I’d look to two traditions: the Victorines (Hugh, Richard, etc.), and the Syriac theologians — up through, perhaps, the 8th century.)
I seems to me that the question boils down to this: are there some ways of feeling which fit better with the world than others? In different language, is there a real final cause to the world, as well as an efficient and an exemplar cause? In this case, one can ascribe an affective dimension to theology which can be “true,” by analogy. I would think that many of the more mystically minded, such as Bonaventure, Augustine, and the Cappadocians, would have some agreement with the above, and yet would not see this beauty as something arbitrary. The True and the Good are, at root, one.
If one is going to take this route, than the task is to show the beauty of Christian theology as offering a goodness, a hope, and a peace which transcends that which other religions have to offer. If it can do so, then there is no relation between the propositions “Theology is poetry” and “All religions are the same.”
Long time. Sorry I’ve been away.
I met a guy who told me philosophy was literature.
It’s hard to say what the boundaries of poetry are. There’s some overlap between philosophy and poetry. I heard Wittgenstein thought of the Tractatus as both.
A big problem comes with endorsing the thought that if religion is poetry, it doesn’t matter what you believe. Even if religion is poetry, I don’t see that follows. Most poetry says something and some poetry says something true.
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