We are writing in a time when the “theologies of …” are becoming as countless as snowflakes in my February driveway. Tragically, believers today will have a ready theology on fadish topics like sexual identity or carbon capture technologies before even beginning to study what it means for man, who is a sinful creature made from dirt, to be the image of Him who is infinite, almighty and holy? Or how do we think, as Christians, of the Father today creating a computer, a twilight or a symphony?
The Cappadocian Fathers granted theology (i.e. theologia) one task only; to correct errors about the Trinitarian mystery of God. And, given that any orthodox understanding of God characterizes Him as having, first and foremost, an incomprehensible divine nature, reverent brevity was, by these writers at least, the advisable strategy.
For reflecting on the divine economy they used the term oikonomia. This is the incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension and continuing activity of the secound person of the Trinity.
It is hard to know what St. Basil would make of a “theology” of the four-day work week or the third-wave behavioural therapies. It is safe to say both that he would have applied a different term and that the terms “the general revelation of…” or “a Christian understanding of…” just do not have the same ring as “theology.”
Taking up theologia and oikonomia, we will go with a middle ground between theology as silence and as a runaway train. This blog will start, therefore, by limiting its posts and essays on theology to merely the mystery of the Triune God incarnate. It will get us rolling anyway.