How theology can be made simpler

Abstract

When we theologians interpret the great teachings of traditional Christianity — the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the two natures of Christ, for example — it often appears that our task is a very difficult one. What I mean is that when we think about the three-in-oneness of God we tend to presuppose that this three-in-oneness is a mathematical absurdity, and when we think about the two natures of Christ we almost instinctively presuppose that we are thinking about a self-contradictory nonsense. This is because whereas it is normal to say that 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, we seem to be saying something that contradicts this when we say that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are God. Absurdly, we insist that ‘these three are one’. And whereas we know that squares cannot be circles, we seem to be saying something like this when we say that Jesus Christ is simultaneously God and man. Such doctrines confront us as difficult riddles that need to be solved, problems that need to be cracked. We presuppose that Christian doctrine is, in one sense or another, intellectually outrageous; we think that it is essentially paradoxical, and we think that it provides a challenge to human reason. And because theology spends its time dealing with confusing and bewildering paradoxes it seems appropriate that theology itself is understood to be something that is very difficult to do.