"Theology" "OK, but keep it light"

I'll try.

The thing that prompted this bit of reflection was a column in a publication. It's a publication that is read almost exclusively by members of one denomination. The focal point of the article was the Apostles' Creed, and the point of the article was that the faith to which they adhere was the same as that expressed in the Apostles' Creed if you just tweak the Creed a little. The writer, I take it, was a newspaperman, not a theologian, so while he can be excused for not knowing this, I think he should have researched a little more thoroughly. He would have become aware of something:

He thinks he only tweaked a little here and there. But theologians and theological reflection live in the tweaks - in the seemingly minor details - and those tweaks undermined the very argument he was trying to make.

So, some thoughts on the theological task.

On philosophy and theology: there is an interrelation. Tertullian asked, "What do Athens and Jerusalem have to do with each other?" The answer is that theology has borrowed many philosophical terms, and has explored many fields that philosophy has. Ontology - what is the nature of existence? Descartes said that the principle he arrived at, about which he could not be deceived, was, "I think, therefore I am." Is he right, or is there an insurmountable difficulty in centering the nature of existence on the self? Epistemology - what does it mean to know? How do we come to know? For philosophy, a question may be, are we born as blank slates, as Hume and the Empiricists propose? If so, everything that we know comes only from our sense perception. Or are we with Kant, in maintaining that, while sense certainly has much to do with what we know, there is some knowledge - Kant would refer to it as a priori - that is truth independent of our sense perception?

While some terminology is shared between philosophy and theology, the latter field inquires into an area of ontology that philosophy (and science) cannot reach:

Why is there anything at all?

For the theologian, the question that Descartes tried to answer would have been moot. Existence is taken for granted, but how do you reconcile what science tells us with the creation stories?

How do we know? Can we receive saving knowledge only by revelation, or is there some knowledge at which we can arrive through reason and observation of what God has given in creation? Is there an analogy we can draw from existence - an analogia entis? The analogia entis was given by a prominent Protestant theologian as the reason he could not be Roman Catholic. For me, it's a large part of the reason that I am Roman Catholic.

Back to the tweaks, and a couple of illustrations of theology and its necessary "tweakiness" (if that's not a word it should be). There is a reason that, while Roman Catholics say the Nicene Creed, our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters do not. The reason? (Talk about a tweak): one word. Filioque. The third portion of the Nicene Creed starts: "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son". "And the Son" in Latin is Filioque. Eastern Orthodoxy asks, does this not imply a subordination of one person in the Trinity to another?

Other tweaks were over, not one word, but one letter. "We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ. . .One in being with the Father." There was lengthy debate over one letter. "Homoiousios" translates as "bearing a strong resemblance to" but it does not posit an identity between Father and Son. The denomination to which this newspaper writer belongs maintains a homoiousios position. The word that won out in ancient times was homoousios.Notice one missing "i". Homoousios does present an identity between Father and Son ' "One in being with the Father." In the Greek that missing "i" is the letter "iota." So a missing iota made more than an iota of difference.

Tweaks, tweaks, tweaks. They make a difference. In the questions posed above I am not really a Cartesian - if I stub my toe on a rock I think I am not deceived about the existence of that rock. Epistemologically I tend to Kant, rather than Hume. My ontology is a bit of a hybrid - I believe in an intelligent design and Designer, and if that Designer wanted to use a Big Bang and billions of years, so be it. What are billions of years to an infinite Being?

I'm sorry - was I supposed to put the "Heavy Sledding Ahead" warning in place?  ;)

Thanks for hanging out for a few! Love your company, and I'd love your reactions.