Theology as Poetry

Theology as Poetry 

by Miriam Dale

“Theology is poetry”, he tells me, and as a poet I quite like that.

Theology is poetry, I think. It is the shading in a world of lines, the winch that straining, pulls words from the page and into the 3-dimensional. Despite being the study of an objective Truth, it is the thing that makes a complex faith applicable to a complex life.

Theology is sacred– it is, after all, the study of the Divine. But there is an earthiness to it, a brown-dust-and-blood reality, which is reminiscent of the soles of Christ’s feet as he trod the countryside, walking life into the nation of Israel and through them into the World. This is what takes it from a science into the realm of the relational.

Theology is relationship. Not in the sense that a relationship with God requires completely clarified theology, or that theology guarantees a relationship with God (it most certainly does not!), but in the sense that every study of Christian theology must occur within relationship with the living God.

Theology is un-mappable, enigmatic, ambiguous. It is the Divine Mystery whom we seek to understand when we study theology, and He is not just mystery because we haven’t quite discovered Him yet. He is mystery because we are not gods, and so cannot even dream of fully comprehending Him, ever.

But, Theology is still essential. Despite the certainty of never reaching the end, there is something in theology that calls to us to always keep coming. Blessed with brains and souls and the ability to wrestle with YHWH like our forefather Jacob, theology teaches us and inspires us to stretch and bend our brains up and out and around any scrap of God that we can find. If faith were an amorphous blob, theology is the thing that straightens and stretches it out like a waking cat, tucking our faith into the corners we hadn’t seen before, lining it up slowly along the edges of the framework of our incredible, indescribable, intriguingly inviting God.

Theology is Word in Life. It is what captures our minds; calms and confuses our souls; and always, every day, tugs at our hearts with the call of our Lover whispering in the quiet moments- “Come! There is more still to discover.” So we follow. And the more we discover, the greater YHWH is revealed to be.