True Theology?

One of the stories collected by a popular story-teller in India goes something like this: Once a parachutist found himself caught up in a storm, and he was swept off several kilometers away from his original destination.

He landed on the top of a tree, and was only happy his life was saved.

He saw someone passing by, and called out to him and asked, "Sir, can you tell me, where I am?" Came the answer, "You are on the top of a tree."

The parachutist said." Are you a theologian?"

At this the other man was simply wonder-struck.

He asked the parachutist. "Yes I am, but how do you know that?".

The parachutist replied. "Oh that is easy. Because what you said is correct, but useless!"
Theology can state many correct things, and yet become quite useless and even ridiculous when it fails to identify its topos, its location.

A general theology would be a theology on the top of a tree, in the clouds.

That is why every theology has to be really located, has to be contextual.

This is what the experiences in our Third World societies continue to impress upon us.

All true theology can only be partial.

Paradoxically, we can say that, precisely because the Ultimate Reality is total, all our theology can only be partial. This is not something new. In fact it has always been so.

But the difference is that certain theologies claimed to be total theologies are unaware of the fact that they were only universalizing what has been a particular, historically and culturally limited experience.

Here I would like to recall an experience narrated to me by a friend from Nepal who is an expert also in Buddhism.

He took a group of theology students to a Buddhist monastery.

After the chief monk spoke, the young students were vying with each other in putting critical questions to the monk.

One of them argued this way: If Buddhism teaches that desire is the root cause of all suffering and that we should free ourselves from desires, then, there will still remain at least one desire the desire not to have desires. Perfect logic, of course! But the response of the experienced monk was simple: "This means, my friend," said the monk, you are not yet ready for Enlightenment."

We need to first walk a bit on the path to experience and understand it.

This is how every authentic theology needs to begin.

But where does this path lie?

Life is today the path on which we encounter God, and it is in walking on the path of life in a determined context that true contextual theology takes flesh and bone.