The other thing about theology

So, this is a follow-up to my earlier short essay, "What's important about theology".  I was tempted to call this one "the problem with theology," but I avoided that because "problem" has such a negative connotation (although it shouldn't.)  But in this short essay, I will try to sketch out what makes theology so devilishly difficult.

I started off that earlier essay by saying that theology dealt with two "puzzles."  I used that word purposefully.  But of course a theologian doesn't usually use the word "puzzles."  Indeed, a proud theologian might take offense at the use of this word - it might offend their dignity.  (Similarly, according to Mark, the "people" often took "offense" at what Jesus said.  "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.")

Theologians usually don't like thinking of the questions they are pondering as puzzles.  The word "puzzle" sounds too trivial, as though solving it were simply a matter of cleverness.  It sounds like too much fun.  It sounds as though these questions were a kind of game.  In other words, it makes it sound as if these were questions for philosophy, rather than theology.

Theologians can be a "puffed up," "stiff-necked" people.  They often like to think of theological questions as being of importance.  Indeed, they think of their thoughts as being the most important, the highest and the deepest, as profoundly sacred, as no laughing matter, and that these questions should be approached with fear and trembling, so that we do not, out of laxity, offend. For these theologians, what is even more important than the clever reasoning of theology is the mood we are in when we ask these questions.  They want us to feel deep, abiding reverence.  You are to stand naked before the fire of God, in perfect vulnerability, if not shame.

(Heidegger always stressed mood - Stimmung - and denigrated "curiosity" and mere "chatter".  That is why, despite his futile protests, Heidegger will always be a theologian and never a philosopher.  Heidegger was possibly the most puffed up man who ever lived.)

The greatest saints are often put to death because they offend the pride of the people - especially the pride of the teachers of theology.

When I speak of the pride of theology, it must be understood that for millennia, this was not a personal pride.  Individualism is a fairly recent phenomenon, a modern indulgence, and we are very lucky to be able to enjoy this extravagance.  For most of the time humans have been on Earth, pride was a collective experience, and tribal.  (Indeed, quite often, the more shame you are made to feel on a personal level, the more pride you will feel on a tribal level.)

Left wing people - anarchists and communists, for instance - tend to see political conflicts as fundamentally motivated by struggles over material interests.  Right wing people, like Carl Schmitt, Eric Voegelin, and Norman Cohn, see political ideology as fundamentally rooted in theology: Weltanschauung and Gottanschauung.  In a way, they are both right.  I am trying to articulate this - no easy task - and probably failing.  But the analogy that appears, sketchily, in my head, is that it is ultimately material interests that provide motive power - drive, you might say - to the "motors" of our political conflicts - but it is theology that locks them in place, causing them to grind their gears forever.  It is material interests that create political problems, but it is theology that makes them intractable.  People will fight over land and water and food and medicine.  But they will kill, and die, for theology.  Issues may arise out of material forces, but political problems become unsolvable once they become theological.