![\"newvogon.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/newvogon.jpg\")
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Poetry<\/a>, anyone?<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n Karen Armstrong<\/a><\/strong> 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:<\/p>\n Ms. Armstrong: Well, you see, I think theology is poetry<\/strong>. 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<\/strong>. Theology is poetry.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n We should take as great care with our religious rituals as if we were putting on a great performance at a theater because ritual \u2014 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 “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.” <\/strong><\/p>\n And that’s what a theological formulation of the Trinity should do to us.<\/strong> 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<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, folks, the purpose of theology is to make you feel<\/em> a certain way.<\/strong> Truth? Rationality? Who needs ’em? Not poetry.<\/p>\n Just remember this<\/strong>, 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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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… Read More »How not to do theology, Or: the theological Vogon (Dale)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-complaints"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}