A Liturgy for Beginning the Study of God

What is the calling of a theologian? Most fundamentally, our calling is to help our students to pray. While this may seem like a strange, perhaps even counter-intuitive, claim (isn’t that the job of pastors and Bible study leaders?), it remains commensurate with the object of our study: the Triune God.

Our job is not only to teach doctrine, or to situate the creedal claims of the church within their historical contexts, or to root them in a credible reading of Holy Scripture, or to equip our students with a coherent vision of Christian faith, among other things. Our job is to invite our students to encounter the living God, and this is done most crucially through the act of prayer.

It is for this reason that theology, properly taught, must always begin and end with prayer.

The fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus goes so far to say that “a theologian is someone who knows how to pray.” A non-praying theologian, on this thinking, is not an actual theologian; he is something else, perhaps a disinterested philosopher or a dispassionate historian. But he is not yet a theologian.

The Swiss theologian Karl Barth argues similarly that a defining feature of theological study is “that it can be performed only in the act of prayer." This is what keeps theology legitimate, persuasive, attractive. To know God, in this vein, is not simply to know about God; it is to stand in the presence of God in the company of seraphim who shield their eyes before the mystery of God.

It is to be addressed by this God and to be undone by this God, so that one can be made and remade by this God. It is to know and to love this God. This is the work of prayer.

On this account, I am grateful to The Rabbit Room for the opportunity to contribute to the new Every Moment Holy volume of liturgies.

In this “Liturgy for Beginning the Study of God,” I sought to give voice to that which I pray for myself and my students. It is a prayer that I pray every time that I teach at Fuller Seminary.

My sincerest hope, then, is that this liturgy might become a useful aid to all who teach people about God, “coram Deo,” whether they be pastors, Sunday School instructors, ministry leaders, home school teachers, or professors at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Grateful also to Ned Bustard for his amazing illustration.

You can see info about all of the liturgies included in EMH vol. 3 and purchase yourself a copy here.