Rereading Barth's The Word of God & the Word of Man tonight, I had a thought: Our theology may be influenced by books, but the deepest theological influences are almost always non-literary. These are the things that really construct us and constitute us as persons -- only subsequently do we also make a few minor alterations through the influence of the reading of books.
So I started thinking: Would I be able to list those top theological influences that have shaped me? I doubt that I'd be able to categorize these kinds of influences (which is really the point, since the deepest influences function tacitly). Wittgenstein famously observed that our language can't even describe the aroma of coffee -- much less can we articulate the experiences and discourses that construct us and give us being!
Still, I thought I'd give it a try. I've numbered them here, but those numbers are not meant to indicate the level of importance. My top theological influences:
So I started thinking: Would I be able to list those top theological influences that have shaped me? I doubt that I'd be able to categorize these kinds of influences (which is really the point, since the deepest influences function tacitly). Wittgenstein famously observed that our language can't even describe the aroma of coffee -- much less can we articulate the experiences and discourses that construct us and give us being!
Still, I thought I'd give it a try. I've numbered them here, but those numbers are not meant to indicate the level of importance. My top theological influences:
- The Eucharist
- Certain hymns
- Psalm 23 (I was made to memorize this when I was ever so young, and ever since it's been the text that I've inhabited time and again)
- Walking in the mountains (I spent my childhood living in mountains, so for me the "meaning of life" is inexorably wound up with the smells and touches and sounds of mountains)
- The experience of family community with my great-grandparents, as I grew up (I learnt from them stories of who we are and were -- still to this day I can audibly hear my great-grandfather say, "That's not who we are" when I'd get out of line)
- A certain family/religious discourse in which the presence and reality of Jesus Christ were always unproblematic, always simply a "given" (I realized much later -- in seminary, actually -- that such discourse is in fact the presupposition of all theological reflection)
- Leaving the church tradition in which I was raised
- Unexpected experiences of generosity and forgiveness
- Conversations with an elderly baptist missionary
- Encounters with people whose theology had made them angry and self-enclosed
- Holding children for baptism
- The rich, diverse and surprising experiences of daily life
- Conversations with my wife Kendra
- Reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, which gave me "new eyes" (come on, you've got to let me include one literary experience!)