Playful Theology

Today I took my final exam for History of Christianity I, in which I was instructed to compare Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God with one of Thomas Aquinas' proofs for God's existence.  If you have no clue what I just wrote, especially after the word "compare," then wait until you read Anselm's argument.  I would recapitulate it for you, but that's not my main reason for writing this entry, so I'll let you discover it on your own.  (To quote my professor, "Please don't feel bad" if you have to re-read Anselm's argument several times.  It didn't click for me until about half an hour after I turned in my exam, and I still feel fuzzy when I think on it.)

Anywho, my main reason for writing is to explore the fact that in their argument/proofs, neither Anselm nor Aquinas were really trying to prove the existence of God, as if they couldn't believe in God until they perfected their formulas.  That is, if they had not completed their their proofs, they still would have believed in God by faith.  As church historian Justo González writes, "What [Anselm] sought in doing this was not to prove something that he did not believe without such proof, but rather to understand more deeply what he already believed."  And for Aquinas, González says, "rational inquiry helps us to understand better that which we accept by faith."

Before, I thought that theologians like Anselm and Aquinas were trying to teach an unbelieving world that God actually exists.  Believe, because it's rational!  Now that we've proven God through logic, you have no excuse!  Certainly, theologians tried this later, including some today.  But Anselm and Aquinas were doing something different than trying to save souls in their writing.  They were exploring the unseen territories of what they already believed, like someone who has bought a house and begins wandering through the rooms to really get to know the place.  Like musicians of thought, they were playing.

"Playing and praying are like the musicians' art that combines discipline with delight," writes Eugene Peterson.  "Music quickens something deep within us. . . . Karl Barth once declared that the music of Mozart led him to 'the threshold of a world which in sunlight and storm, by day and by night, is a good and ordered world.'"  Playing and praying, Peterson writes, enhance life, renew us, make us fully human.