I suspect we could almost make an analogy like this: A Christian who studies only formal theology but never poetic mysticism would be like an aspiring writer who studies only grammar but never literature
A lovely reflection. You mention mathematics, and I interpolate the notion of a language of numbers, quantities and symbols. I was never any good at mathematics, though I would find it useful to manage money, calculate angles and distances - the essence of navigation and designing things. Since childhood, words would have their conventional dictionary meanings, but they would also convey feelings and impressions. ("Aspies" are particularly sensitive to this). Working in two modern languages, English and French, gives me another dimension. The third language you didn't mention, but might do so in the future, is music. Mere notes in the modal scale and transpositions of key, melody, harmony, counterpoint and rhythm don't make music. I greatly enjoy the music of Sir Hubert Parry, but it remains very academic when compared to Elgar, Stanford and Vaughan Williams. It is the difference between prose and poetry. Oscar Wilde also made this point of prose and poetry in his "De Profundis", something that made a big impression on me.
@@Warwickensis I thought you would, being yourself a musician. Would you care to link to your videos in The Beatitudes? This is exactly the kind of thing we need to conceive a future for Christianity.
Also, as a side note, would you say that if any sort of human language, even a very formal one like mathematics, were capable of capturing truth, then we would fall to the ground in Holy Terror every time we proved a theorem? I've heard that Pythagoras slaughtered a goat when he discovered a particularly elegant result. So I don't deny that God (ie, truth) can be present "in" (with, under, consubstantial, really present, substantially there but veiled by accidents of human symbols, pick-your-favorite-Eucharistic-lingo, etc) our representations. Moreover, it's probably even anti-Christian to make such a denial. Still, though, I believe that's why poetic mysticism is in some sense necessary to "flesh" out the divine substance in formal theology--ie, because it's so easy to get caught up in the formalism, which may be, in and of itself, as dead as a wafer of unleavened bread
Of course mathematics is capable of capturing truth - it's absolutely true though limited to its own realm until there is an explicit correspondence with the physical world. Mathematics is a form of poetry as it expresses absolute truth and beauty which it derives from God Who is Truth and Beauty. For example e^(πi)+1=0 is both poetry and an absolute truth. There are words that we can use to say Who God is - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - because these are the words He gave us. St Thomas Aquinas is very clear that one might only be able to grasp truth through analogy which is grounded by God's authentic self-revelation. Understanding God is like forming an atlas of charts for an infinite dimensional manifold in which we can be sure that we are right because we already have God's word, but we often find ourselves running up against the singularities at the edge of a chart and need to use the transition functions to move to the next chart.
I would define a "formal theology" as one that speaks in a "legalistic" or "technical" manner. Sorry for the further multiplication of undefined terms, so I'll give you an example. I recall an old Catechism that explained Baptism as a sacrament that instantly and automatically justified and regenerated, removing all eternal and temporal punishment for any sins committed up to that point, and posited as a corollary that if one died immediately after baptism, one would go straight to Heaven, without need for any additional purgation. This struck me as blatantly superstitious. For example, I'm sure we could all think of people who were just as much scoundrels after they came out of the water. An analogy would be if I were bedridden with pneumonia, and someone gave me a shot of penicillin sufficient to cure me and said "Well, that's that, you're cured...now out of bed and back to work!" immediately afterwards. Now, I will say, I don't necessarily even disagree with the corollary, as such. For one, owing to Divine Providence, it's not as if the immediate death would catch God by surprise, and I suppose He could complete the work of sanctification in the man's death, or perhaps had very nearly completed it right before he was baptized. Nonetheless, without further clarification, that bit of "formal theology" seemed to miss something very important that most of us intuitively sense, and leaves the door open for one to think of sacraments as transactional means for justifying oneself
I would personally think of that as forensic theology in that it is the inability of these types of catechism to regard the fallenness of humanity as anything other than purely legal. You can see exactly the same phenomena in some Protestant soteriologies, particularly Calvinism. Forensic theology, while not entirely wrong, fails to take into account the fact that each individual human being must not only be loveable but is in fact loved unconditionally otherwise there is no need for salvation. If we are totally depraved then why does God not cast us all into the abyss and just start again. Perhaps we need to reclaim the subject of Divinity which is a theology lived, not just studied.
I suspect we could almost make an analogy like this: A Christian who studies only formal theology but never poetic mysticism would be like an aspiring writer who studies only grammar but never literature
What is "*formal* Theology"? All true theology is done with prayer which makes Summa Theologiae poetic in its formalism.
A lovely reflection. You mention mathematics, and I interpolate the notion of a language of numbers, quantities and symbols. I was never any good at mathematics, though I would find it useful to manage money, calculate angles and distances - the essence of navigation and designing things. Since childhood, words would have their conventional dictionary meanings, but they would also convey feelings and impressions. ("Aspies" are particularly sensitive to this). Working in two modern languages, English and French, gives me another dimension. The third language you didn't mention, but might do so in the future, is music. Mere notes in the modal scale and transpositions of key, melody, harmony, counterpoint and rhythm don't make music. I greatly enjoy the music of Sir Hubert Parry, but it remains very academic when compared to Elgar, Stanford and Vaughan Williams. It is the difference between prose and poetry. Oscar Wilde also made this point of prose and poetry in his "De Profundis", something that made a big impression on me.
Music? Don't jump the gun, Father! I will touch on this next week but I have something more extensive planned.
@@Warwickensis I thought you would, being yourself a musician. Would you care to link to your videos in The Beatitudes? This is exactly the kind of thing we need to conceive a future for Christianity.
Also, as a side note, would you say that if any sort of human language, even a very formal one like mathematics, were capable of capturing truth, then we would fall to the ground in Holy Terror every time we proved a theorem? I've heard that Pythagoras slaughtered a goat when he discovered a particularly elegant result. So I don't deny that God (ie, truth) can be present "in" (with, under, consubstantial, really present, substantially there but veiled by accidents of human symbols, pick-your-favorite-Eucharistic-lingo, etc) our representations. Moreover, it's probably even anti-Christian to make such a denial. Still, though, I believe that's why poetic mysticism is in some sense necessary to "flesh" out the divine substance in formal theology--ie, because it's so easy to get caught up in the formalism, which may be, in and of itself, as dead as a wafer of unleavened bread
Of course mathematics is capable of capturing truth - it's absolutely true though limited to its own realm until there is an explicit correspondence with the physical world. Mathematics is a form of poetry as it expresses absolute truth and beauty which it derives from God Who is Truth and Beauty.
For example
e^(πi)+1=0
is both poetry and an absolute truth.
There are words that we can use to say Who God is - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - because these are the words He gave us. St Thomas Aquinas is very clear that one might only be able to grasp truth through analogy which is grounded by God's authentic self-revelation. Understanding God is like forming an atlas of charts for an infinite dimensional manifold in which we can be sure that we are right because we already have God's word, but we often find ourselves running up against the singularities at the edge of a chart and need to use the transition functions to move to the next chart.
I would define a "formal theology" as one that speaks in a "legalistic" or "technical" manner. Sorry for the further multiplication of undefined terms, so I'll give you an example. I recall an old Catechism that explained Baptism as a sacrament that instantly and automatically justified and regenerated, removing all eternal and temporal punishment for any sins committed up to that point, and posited as a corollary that if one died immediately after baptism, one would go straight to Heaven, without need for any additional purgation. This struck me as blatantly superstitious. For example, I'm sure we could all think of people who were just as much scoundrels after they came out of the water. An analogy would be if I were bedridden with pneumonia, and someone gave me a shot of penicillin sufficient to cure me and said "Well, that's that, you're cured...now out of bed and back to work!" immediately afterwards. Now, I will say, I don't necessarily even disagree with the corollary, as such. For one, owing to Divine Providence, it's not as if the immediate death would catch God by surprise, and I suppose He could complete the work of sanctification in the man's death, or perhaps had very nearly completed it right before he was baptized. Nonetheless, without further clarification, that bit of "formal theology" seemed to miss something very important that most of us intuitively sense, and leaves the door open for one to think of sacraments as transactional means for justifying oneself
I would personally think of that as forensic theology in that it is the inability of these types of catechism to regard the fallenness of humanity as anything other than purely legal. You can see exactly the same phenomena in some Protestant soteriologies, particularly Calvinism. Forensic theology, while not entirely wrong, fails to take into account the fact that each individual human being must not only be loveable but is in fact loved unconditionally otherwise there is no need for salvation. If we are totally depraved then why does God not cast us all into the abyss and just start again.
Perhaps we need to reclaim the subject of Divinity which is a theology lived, not just studied.