A sermon on unnecessary theology - and much else besides - by Theodore Gill

Meditation on Psalm 14 and Jeremiah 4:22-28
Ecumenical Chapel, Geneva, Monday 13 September 2010
Rev. Theodore A. Gill, Jr.


“Theology is unnecessary, says physicist Stephen Hawking”. Or so reported the bottom-of-the-screen crawl on CNN International.

Saturday was a tough day on Theology, so far as CNN was concerned. My wife and I were visiting Zermatt for the weekend, discovering for ourselves whether the Matterhorn actually resembles a piece of Toblerone. In the event, we found it to be even more beautiful than we imagined.

But we are descended from northern Europeans, so we had to retreat from the bright mountain sunlight at regular intervals. Several of those times, we clicked on CNN.

In the morning, Central European Time, there was Professor Hawking’s interview with Larry King in which he dismissed the discipline of Theology as irrelevant to a contemporary understanding of cosmology. How did the universe(s) come into being? – no need for any theologian’s opinion!

Then there was the “theology” of the Reverend Terry Jones, the fundamentalist pastor in Jacksonville, Florida who was threatening to burn Korans that September 11th. And CNN covered many of the ceremonies in memory of “9/11” in 2001, when followers of another theology wrought their violence on New York, Washington and, as it turned out, a field in Pennsylvania. (One has to concede that there are brands of theology that are beyond “unnecessary”, theologies that we’d all be better off without.)

Throughout the day on Saturday there were CNN stories on the pope’s visit to the UK during this coming week, stories filled with harshly critical interviews. And finally, in the evening when it seemed safe to tune into CNN again, we encountered was a whole episode of “The World’s Untold Stories” focusing on Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople; the title of that report was “The Last Patriarch?”

A tough day for Theology. Much better P.R. for Science, which apparently has now solved the riddle of Creation without an assist from a Creator.

But I can’t help wondering whether the headline “Theology is unnecessary, says Hawking” will go down in the annals of journalism with “The end of history, says Fukuyama”. You remember “the end of history”, just after the Berlin Wall came down? But then, there was September 11, 2001…

And I also wondered: Whatever became of humility? And whatever became of Thomas Kuhn?

Twenty or thirty years ago, the academy found it hard to talk at all without speaking in terms of “paradigm shifts”. Thomas Kuhn, the author of that concept and of the book in which it appeared, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, was reluctant to apply his idea to the social sciences. Kuhn was a physicist and a historian of science, and he was attempting to describe the development of scientific theories and worldviews – exactly the sort of thing that Hawking is now advancing.

David Bosch, the late South African missiologist, described Kuhn’s central thesis in his (Bosch’s) book “Transforming Mission” (p.184):

“In a nutshell, Kuhn’s suggestion is that science does not really grow cumulatively (as if more and more knowledge and research bring us ever closer to final solutions of problems), but rather by way of ‘revolutions’. A few individuals begin to perceive reality in ways qualitatively different from their predecessors and contemporaries, who are practicing ‘normal science’. The small group of pioneers sense that the existing scientific model is riddled with anomalies and is unable to solve emerging problems. They then begin to search for a new model or theoretical structure, or (Kuhn’s favorite term) a new ‘paradigm’, one that is, as it were, waiting in the wings, ready to replace the old… This seldom happens without a struggle, however, since scientific communities are by nature conservative and do not like their peace to be disturbed; the old paradigm’s protagonists continue for a long time to fight a rearguard action.”

And this has happened again and again. Each time, the “rearguard” has held a conviction that their worldview is the final truth, whether it be Copernican, Newtonian, Einsteinian… …or “M-theory”? The history of science has not succeeded in reaching its “end”, any more than history itself ended with the dissolution of the Soviet empire.

Whatever became of humility? It’s the sort of question the biblical prophets raised. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, he recognized the potential for disaster in the arrogant foolishness of his people and their leaders. He described a vision of horrific ugliness – an ugliness that was “waiting in the wings” unless his people changed their ways.

This vision in Jeremiah 4 was one of the inspirations that led Paul Tillich to write “The Shaking of the Foundations”. Along with passages from Isaiah, the Jeremiah text inspired Tillich at the beginning of the nuclear age. Here a theologian looked askance at the harvest of modern science and engineering, and particularly at the work of physicists – theoretical and practical.

Reason – so fundamental, so necessary in many ways to the human project – had led, among other things, to the Reign of Terror. Paul Tillich asked: Where may Science lead, in the absence of humility?

Tillich was a pioneer in the use of aesthetics as a dimension of Theology. I sense that what appalled him most in Jeremiah’s vision was the sheer ugliness of it all. Humanity is given the gift of the Matterhorn, of alpine meadows and long sunshiny weekends – but at best stays indoors watching CNN, and at worst trends toward shaking the foundations of earth and its beauty.

One of the questions that arises repeatedly in discussion of Stephen Hawking’s position is this: Why is there something, rather than nothing? Turning from television and looking out the window at the Matterhorn, I wondered: Why is there beauty instead of ugliness?

And the words of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th-century transcendentalist, came back to me. It is called “The Rhodora” and describes a wildflower growing far from human habitation. The subtitle of the poem is “On being asked, whence is the flower?”

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.


In former days, Jesus came out of the wilderness, and he said: “Behold, the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent, and believe the good news.”

Is “Theology” necessary? I don’t know. I really don’t. I suppose it depends on your goal.

But I do know that repentance is necessary. Humility is necessary. Careful – “care-full” – thought is necessary.

And… Beauty is to be desired, and affirmed, wherever we find it.

Copyright (c) Theodore A. Gill, Jr./WCC