THE LIMITS OF THEOLOGY

We’ve been traveling. You may have noticed the radio silence from me. Or not. I had almost forgotten it was Sunday. Easy to do when you are traveling, nine time zones from home. We were wandering the streets of Trieste, Italy, the lovely town on the shores of the Adriatic. We spotted a large church, just off the canal in the heart of the city. We love churches. We love looking around in them. We love joining the worship when we can. As we approached this church, Sant’Antonio Nuovo Taumaturgo, Saint Anthony, the wonderworker, we saw that a service was going on. The huge nave was packed with worshipers. A few were obviously tourists, like us, but most seemed to be Triestians. We listened and prayed, passed the peace with those around us, and decided when it came time for the eucharist that we should not test our welcome.

We climbed the steep hill of San Giusto. On the way we passed the ruins of a Roman amphitheater and the remains of a wall built by Octavian, later Caesar Augustus. Up a tree-lined street, we reached the Basilica di San Giusto, named for St. Justus, martyred in Trieste on November 2, ca. 303. Again, the church was in worship. We stepped in, prayed along with the congregation, and were treated to a thundering postlude played on the huge Mascioni organ. 

We stayed at San Giusto for a third service, this one modest and contemporary, led by a warm young priest and a soloist who accompanied himself on a guitar. The service began with a christening ceremony in the back of the church, near where we were seated. Around us were other children. 

Sunday was Good Shepherd Sunday. The readings included Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” and John 10: “I am the good shepherd.” We followed along as the familiar passages were read in Italian. The cantor led us through Psalm 23, he taking the verses and we singing as a chorus the opening lines of the psalm: Il Signore è il mio pastore: non manco di nulla. The “non manco di nulla,” “I lack for nothing,” seemed especially resonant in the times in which we live.

It was church. In another language, in another place, with perhaps theological emphases with which I would not agree, but still church. When one sits in a church among the people of the congregation, there is a transcendent sense of the oneness of the church of Jesus Christ. Perhaps this is something of what the Nicene creed means by “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” The catholicity of the church is in the worship. And in the people. And in the sense that in these congregations, the Spirit moves.

When you sit in a church you begin to notice small things that mark that particular congregation. As I sat in San Giusto, I noticed pillars. Thirteen of them lining the nave. Thirteen! An odd number! Six on one side, seven on the other, unless you count a stubby pillar near the alter, in which case there are fourteen, eight on one side and still six on the other. 

The pillars are not alike: some fat, some skinny; some light, some darker; some from one sort of stone, some from another; some with woven leaf capitals, and some plain. San Giusto was built in the 14th century by putting two side-by-side basilicas together. The variation may reflect the differences in the original churches. And the church must have been repaired many times since it was completed, each repair done in its own way. Variation has crept in through the years. Rather like churches themselves. Rather like the people.

As I was thinking about those two things—the sameness of churches and their individuality, I started thinking about the role of theology in the church. People like me, trained in theology (at least, so we fancy), tend to think of theology as primary: as the church thinks, so it acts. But this is clearly not true. Churches are often better than their theology, and perhaps sometimes worse. In churches, in the actual living congregation, the fellowship and the ritual are primary. The theologies of individual people may not reflect the official theology of the church, but they learn to love each other, to do together works of mercy, to stand in hope at the gravesides of friends and family, and absorb the biblical story as best they can.

This does not mean that theology is unimportant. How the gospel is presented has long term effects, even at the congregational level. But it does mean that the theology that matters most is at the level of the story told not by theologians but by the congregants themselves.

Which brings me back to the project I have in mind to rethink popular theology, to get the fundamental evangelical (in the original sense) theology of the church right. The church is falling apart in part because it has over a long period of time drifted from the course set for it in the gospels into a theology of heaven and hell. I’ll have more to say about this in subsequent posts, but first this caution: when I or others criticize the theology of the church we are not thereby criticizing the congregational life of the church. It was good, if only for a moment and only at the shallowest of levels, to step into church life in Trieste. We were blessed by our small participation, and looking around, we saw in others the face of Jesus.

Clay