For our April 13, 2024 Second Saturday Conversation I continued exploring dogmatics and poetics. In this session I contrasted theology and Theopoetics. To suggest one contrast: Theology declares. Theopoetics invites. Both theology and Theopoetics are responses to the mystery of life and our existence. Arguably we need both; we have both. But I suggested that Christianity in the 21st century needs a strong dose of Theopoetics.
I also played with three gospel stories and contrasted a theopoetic vs a propositional approach to interpreting the stories. My suggestions aren’t definitive. But I hope illustrative of another way of thinking about the stories than proof texts for belief.
I began the session by quoting physicist Neils Bohr in a conversation with Robert Oppenheimer. It’s not can you read the music, it’s can you hear the music. Can you hear the music, Robert? (Bohr was referring to mathematics and physics.) I ask the same of Christianity. Do we hear the music? Or has our insistence on propositional thinking tuned our ear to calculations and solving problems rather than to its musicality.
Can we hear the music? I suggest Theopoetics can assist us to do just that. In life. And in theology.
Use these sessions as prompts for your own ongoing conversations. My intention on Second Saturday is always to provoke more thought and more questions.