What is Theology????

In the next few weeks I am hoping to finish up my dissertation proposal so I can start writing the real thing (a bit daunting). So, on the blog, I'll post my initial thoughts to each chapter of the dissertation to get the creative juices flowing. Today, though, I thought I'd give a brief outline of my topic - the first stage in writing my proposal.

So, my dissertation seeks to answer the question "What is theology?" It seems like by now, writing a dissertation to finish a Ph.D. in Theology, I should know what theology is. However, I have noticed in my studies that oftentimes the idea of theology is taken for granted, without ever really being thought through. Or, we often discuss theology with different types of theology or different methods for doing theology. This is not what I want to do. Instead, I want to ask the question "What is theology?" and offer an exposition of the phenomenon of theology.

In answering this question, my thesis will be that theology is an improvisation. I say this because central to the task of theology and improvisation is what I call attunement and this attunement allows us point of contact between both disciplines. Thus, improvisation (and I think mostly of music here) allows an entry point into thinking about what theology is.

This requires three steps from me, then, in my dissertation. First, it is to offer an explication of attunement, which I will do through the work Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. In doing this, I will rely on Heidegger to use attunement, through his notion of Destruktion, to open a way of asking the question "what is theology?" I will then focus on Derrida's use of deconstruction (his translation of Destruktion) to place attunement to the center of thinking. After this, I will show attunement at work in the thinking that takes place in improvisational music. The second part of the dissertation will be to explicate theology as improvisation by distinguishing it from the idea that theology is a conversation, often associated with the work of David Tracy. In doing this, I'll be able to dialogue with Tracy's work and show how improvisation offers a better understanding of the nature of theology. The last section, then, will be a reading of Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana as an example of what I would term improvisational theology. I will articulate how it is that Augustine sees theology as improvisation (centering around this notion of attunement) and then how this allows his to do theology.

This is a brief starting point for where I am going. Comments, suggestions, whatever are always helpful.