Like a Weaned Child with Its Mother

Psalm 131 and the Work of Theology

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.
²But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
³ O Israel, hope in the Lord
    from this time on and forevermore.

We’re tempted to read Psalm 131 (and 1 Cor. 1:18-2:5 and 8:1-3) as a caution against or even a prohibition of theology, at least in its speculative and constructive modes. But we might hear it otherwise—as directions for our thinking rather than as prohibitions against it. Here’s one such hearing.

“O Lord…”

Theology not only begins in prayer, but it must be prayerful through and through. At its truest, theology just is prayer. What are the Psalms if not that? What are any of the words of Jesus?

Thus, what happened to Aquinas on the Feast of St Nicholas is meant to happen in one way or another to all of us. Denys Turner is right: the incompleteness of Thomas’ life’s work is itself a theological statement—perhaps the most important one he made.

“O Israel”

Theology explodes the confusions of individualism. Israel hopes; I, alone, do not. What is most personal is least private. Psalm 131 is a Psalm of David, but it belongs to Israel, and so to the world.

“hope in the Lord”

Theology proves its worth in the hope it affords. And that hope is entirely dependent on the likeness it gives to God. That likeness must be particular enough to be confrontative, surprising enough to be moving, and mystically charged without being mystifying or vague. That is to say, hope is always hope not in a generic God but in Israel’s Lord.

“I do not occupy myself”

Theology is not a self-initiated, self-determined, self-serving enterprise. It is an act of love for God and neighbor, and for that reason involves self-denial, self-offering, self-discovery—all initiated and sustained by the Holy Spirit. In the end, the joy of theology is this: I do not occupy myself; God, the Too-Wonderful, occupies me.

“my soul is like the weaned child that is with me”

Theologians do their best work when they have grown down into childlikeness. That, obviously, takes time. Only in our later years (the so-called second half of life) can we mature into the purity of wonder and absorbed play that comes as we are freed from childish neediness and naïveté.

“I have calmed and quieted my soul…”

Theology is only as good as the theologian’s self-awareness and self-control. Thus, good theology begins in the painful confrontation of my limits and limitations, which are exposed in the attempt to do right by my neighbors—especially those strangers who share my name and my home. Hamann is right: “nothing but descent into the hell of self-knowledge paves the way to deification,” and “self-awareness begins with the neighbor.”

“my heart… my eyes”

Theological vision depends on clarity of heart. Inasmuch as my heart is quieted and settled, not “lifted up” (or, in Paul’s phrase, “puffed up”) but freed of illusions and pretensions, its vision is clear. In other words, if my heart is truly childlike, truly cherished as a child should be, if it has been nursed into watchful silence as Jesus was nursed by his mother, then it will not lie to me about what it knows of God and God’s thoughts towards me.

“like a weaned child with its mother”

Theology is holy and hallowing in its thinking of the infinite only insofar as it does its work in the light and along the lines of the finitude of one particular child and his peerless mother.