«Εἰ θεολόγος εἶ, προσεύξῃ ἀληθῶς,
καὶ εἰ άληθῶς προσεύξῃ, θεολόγος εἶ.»
— Εὐάγριος ὁ Ποντικός
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“If you are a theologian, you will pray truly.
And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.”
Evagrios of Pontus (345–399)
On Prayer 61 (the translation in The Philokalia, vol. 1)
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I’m forever grateful to Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350-428) for introducing me to this text of Evagrios. Too often “Theology” (Θεολογία / Theologia) means, in practice, “academic language about God which is hard to understand.” But Theodore and Evagrios were among the first to teach me that a theologian is one who speaks (or writes) well about God BECAUSE he or she is in the habit of speaking well WITH God. Our theology, our God-talk, should proceed from our talks with God. Our theorizing should rather be contemplation (θεωρία / theoria; Latin: contemplatio) of whom God has reveled Godself to be in our own stories and (crucially) in the stories handed down to us in the Scriptures.
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(On that last point, just so no one misses it: if not grounded in the texts of Scripture, our contemplation is not Christian contemplation, our prayer is not Christian prayer, and our theology is not Christian theology.)
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“Theology” (or at least, good theology) is never academic speculation clothed in what Ruth calls “Emperor’s New Clothes” language. Theology is speaking well about God which arises out of our having well-spent time speaking with God.
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It is worth noting that the Church has only granted the title “Theologian” to three individuals. In the first two centuries of the Church, only one person ranked the title “The Theologian” — John the Evangelist (the Apostle who wrote the Gospel and the Letters). It wasn’t until the Nicene period that anyone else ranked the title: Gregory Nazianzen (Γρηγόριος ὁ Ναζιανζηνός; c. 329-390), the writer of hymns and theological poetry. Next was Symeon the New Theologian (Συμεὼν ὁ Νέος Θεολόγος; 949–1022). Each of these men spoke well about God because they had spoken well with God, and their discourses fleshed out their conversions to Christ within their particular cultural contexts.
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Theologizing is the attempt — by individuals or communities — to make sense of the conversion (turning to Christ) of social life, family life, and intellectual life, within a given cultural and linguistic context. Andrew F. Walls notes that “Theology does not arise from the study or the library even if it can be prosecuted there. It arises from Christian life and activity, from the need to make Christian choices, to think in a Christian way.”*
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As christians, we are not proselytes but converts; the harsh words of Jesus about proselytization (Matthew 23.15) are not for nothing. The Jerusalem Council made it clear that Gentiles don’t have to become Jewish to follow Jesus (nor do Jews have to become Goyim who eat pork to follow Jesus; Africans don’t have to become American, etc.). Christian conversion is the “turning to Christ what is already there.”**
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Conversion has at least three categories in which we must turn to Christ what is there: family life, social life, and intellectual life. In this process, of course some new things will be picked up as necessary and some old things will be dropped as incompatible with the Gospel — but many things will be retained. Those things which are retained are reoriented and redirected toward Jesus.
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Theologizing is the natural result of processing conversion of these areas — family life, social life, and intellectual life — and arises out of time spent with God. Fancy academic jargon is not theology, even if it is often (mistakenly) called that. “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.”
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I will add a corollary for my preacher friends: “and if you become a theologian, you will preach truly.”
