By its very name, theology is the rational attempt by human beings to communicate the infinite mystery of God in words—no mean feat! If we follow Anselm’s line of reasoning in the Proslogion (the title itself is a reference to discourse) that God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought,” then God ultimately transcends our ability to understand. Rather than a proper noun expressing something known, our word “God” is actually a heuristic device, a sign connoting the infinite mystery which surrounds the finite human mind like a raft floating in the middle of the ocean, or the solitary beam of a flashlight shining in the inky blackness of night. As the vast corpus of literature produced by Christian theology over the past 2,000 years attests, no amount of human words can ever be adequate to communicate the infinite mystery of the divine. Since this is only a blog post rather than an expansive tome, a different approach is needed. Let us seek to be as concise as we can, if possible, to distill the essence of theology into a single word.
The first truth of human existence is that it is a gift. Our life is something which we have received; our being is given to us. None of us gets to choose to be born. While in the immediate sense we receive our life from our parents, the ultimate origin of the spark which gives life to the wet dust of bodies is a mystery to us. Even after birth, that which is given to us forms the warp and woof with which we weave our lives: from our bodies to the food we use to sustain them, from the myriad technologies we use to the understanding behind them, from the culture which shapes us to the communities in which we live, from the language we learn to communicate ourselves to our very names. Even in the face of injustice, affliction, suffering, and despair, we are nevertheless blessed just to be alive. We have been loved into being.
Belief in God is a way of affirming this given-ness of our being. Ultimately, we cannot account for the existence of the universe, or even of our own lives. That there is something rather than nothing is an awesome miracle. That we ourselves exist is no less miraculous. In the midst of the inconceivable vastness of space and time, we are here, alive, part of an ecosystem of interrelated living things, including a community of our fellow human beings. In us, the dust of stars has been brought together into a living consciousness capable of self-reflection, free choice, understanding, communication, and, most remarkably, loving. To believe in God is to recognize that our existence is an otherwise incredible gift.
Thus, we return to our original question. How can we use words to communicate the God who has given us such an overwhelming gift? The proper response to a gift is recognition and gratitude. This can most succinctly be expressed with the words my parents taught me, “thank you.” However, this is two words. More eloquent still is the Spanish, “gracias.” This word carries with it the connotation of grace. In common usage, grace refers to the practice of consciously giving thanks before a meal. For theologians, grace refers to God’s gift to human beings. Although God is infinite and transcends our understanding, it is possible for us to discern that we have been given an inestimable gift and ought to respond with gratitude, by giving thanks. It is from this simple beginning that the task of theology proceeds, trying to make sense of this gift.