Theology’s Ends

Derrick Day, in the blog Love Minus Religion (“Divine Anthropology—The End of Theology,” March 3, 2020) asks this:

“Think about it, theology is, ostensibly, the study of God. But how can we study something we cannot begin to quantify, much less comprehend. Because we cannot understand the object of our study, it is nearly impossible to produce any empirical conclusions about God.”

Day proceeds to suggest: “My proposal would be to adopt Divine Anthropology. Just like theology is, ostensibly, the study of God, anthropology is the study of humanity. And, since Jesus is the prototype of our coexisting humanity and divinity, He is the springboard for this field of study.”

Despite Day’s laudable appeal to logic, he describes no necessary connection between an unfathomable God and Day’s (or my) seizing on Jesus in preference to any other teacher or savior.  There would seem (if we are to entertain Day’s—and my—emphasis on an unquantifiable God) to be only one reason to accept Jesus as an authoritative voice on the qualities of God: because Jesus gestures toward an indescribable God.

This, then (as I will try to develop later) is the proper end of theology: the beginning of our understanding of ourselves as conceptualizing beings, in the context of our realization that formulating concepts about God is the pursuit of fools, liars, and hypocrites such as we.