THEOPOETICS DEMARCATED
The English word "poem" has a fascinating background. It is first seen around 1548, entering the game as a replacement for "poesy," which dates back as far as 1300 and comes from the Latin poesis via the Late Latin poesia and the Old French poesie. The Latin comes from the Greek noun poema and verb poiein; "a created thing" and "to make," respectively. I work with the word theopoetics from that place: the theory and practice of making God known.
At the risk of stretching of the word's definition so thin that it loses coherence, I see no reason why the term theopoetics cannot take in poetic speech as well as the created aspects of any academic language, dance, song, or art, etc. that lead toward hierophany.
--L.B.C. Keefe-Perry
At the risk of stretching of the word's definition so thin that it loses coherence, I see no reason why the term theopoetics cannot take in poetic speech as well as the created aspects of any academic language, dance, song, or art, etc. that lead toward hierophany.
--L.B.C. Keefe-Perry
Good theology is a kind of transgression, a kind of excess, a kind of gift. It is not a smooth systematics, a dogmatics, or a metaphysics; as a theopoetics it is a kind of writing. It is a kind of writing that invites more writing. Its narratives lead to other narratives, its metaphors encourages new metaphors, its confessions more confssions...
-Scott Holland
from Theology Is a Kind of Writing
-Scott Holland
from Theology Is a Kind of Writing
...theopoetics, opens up a space for unanticipated dreaming in which the past, present, and future are re-shaped as we reorganize and even re-create our own stories and our relationships with others, the world, and the Divine. ... [It] is a style of writing or a theological stance, an artful way of working with language and worldview. The theo-poet uses the occasion of the poem to creatively suggest, ambiguously hint, generously intimate in ways that create space for the reader or the public to face the unknown, engage Mystery, to dream and be transformed.
-- Matt Guynn
from Theopoetics
-- Matt Guynn
from Theopoetics
What . . . theopoiesis does is to effect disclosure [of Being] through the crucial nexus of event, thereby making the crux of knowing, both morally and aesthetically, radically decisive in time…
[Like Rilke] . . . we must learn, with trust, to be one with, a breathing with the inhale and exhale of Being, in order that "the god" may breathe through us, and we, through the translation of its breath into song, may be . . . the eyes of becoming and a tongue for Being's utterance.
--Stanley Hopper and David Miller
from Interpretation: The poetry of meaning
[Like Rilke] . . . we must learn, with trust, to be one with, a breathing with the inhale and exhale of Being, in order that "the god" may breathe through us, and we, through the translation of its breath into song, may be . . . the eyes of becoming and a tongue for Being's utterance.
--Stanley Hopper and David Miller
from Interpretation: The poetry of meaning
Stanley Hopper's solution for our sense of mythic vertigo is a new appreciation for the role of imagination. He recommends that we replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self. This is a theology for a period highly influenced by technology and by psychoanalysis.
--Thomas Moore
from Original Self
--Thomas Moore
from Original Self
There are four theopoetic oscillations or themes:
1. Theopoetics is not theology-as-usual nor is it "not theology." It rhythmically destabilizes the certainties of traditional theological inquiry
2. God-talk is mindful of its own edge, e.g., the unspeakable vs. the word, or between silence and language itself. Process theopoetics is the steady work of auto-deconstruction: the critique of abstractions in order to keep discourse vibrant and relevant.
3. This discourse occurs in a space between theopoetics and theopolitics. Poiesis is the making of something that previously did not exist, a creative practice. It is an action, a poem.
4. Theopoetics is not just involved with theology-as-method, but also with the Logos of scripture. There is a multiplicity of oscillations waiting to be unleashed. Theopoetics is in one sense polyphilia: the love of and for multiplicity
adapted from:
--Catherine Keller
Process Conversations: 3/3/06
1. Theopoetics is not theology-as-usual nor is it "not theology." It rhythmically destabilizes the certainties of traditional theological inquiry
2. God-talk is mindful of its own edge, e.g., the unspeakable vs. the word, or between silence and language itself. Process theopoetics is the steady work of auto-deconstruction: the critique of abstractions in order to keep discourse vibrant and relevant.
3. This discourse occurs in a space between theopoetics and theopolitics. Poiesis is the making of something that previously did not exist, a creative practice. It is an action, a poem.
4. Theopoetics is not just involved with theology-as-method, but also with the Logos of scripture. There is a multiplicity of oscillations waiting to be unleashed. Theopoetics is in one sense polyphilia: the love of and for multiplicity
adapted from:
--Catherine Keller
Process Conversations: 3/3/06
Theopoetics -not reducing theology to imagery and fiction, but, in the ancient way, noticing that there are many levels at which theological statements can be read. And these various levels don't cancel each other out.
--Thomas Moore
from The Voice of the Eagle
--Thomas Moore
from The Voice of the Eagle
Theology tends to develop talk about God logically, where the logos is constrained within the model of Aristotelian propositional thinking; whereas theopoetics stresses the poem dimension, the creativity of God, his is-ness, if you wish to theologize it, so that I must move within his own creative nature and must construe him creatively, so that I would become co-creator with God, if you must speak theologically. If I am going to talk about God, I must recognize this mythopoeic, metaphorical nature of the language I use.
--Stanley Hopper
from an interview with Dan Noel at Drew University
--Stanley Hopper
from an interview with Dan Noel at Drew University
To functionally define it, theopoetics is a (re)emerging field of interdisciplinary study, combining elements of poetic analysis, process theology, narrative theology, and postmodern philosophy.
Theopoetics suggests that instead of trying to develop a "scientific" theory of God such as would a traditional systematic theology, theologians should instead try to find God through poetry and narrative; or to interpret reality itself as symbolic of some greater or deeper truth.
Thus, the theopoet operates on a continuum: as a theologian working in a poetically interpretive way, and as a poet defining or demarcating the idea of God, maintaining beauty and the knowledge of language's tenuous nature.
--L.B.C. Keefe-Perry
Theopoetics suggests that instead of trying to develop a "scientific" theory of God such as would a traditional systematic theology, theologians should instead try to find God through poetry and narrative; or to interpret reality itself as symbolic of some greater or deeper truth.
Thus, the theopoet operates on a continuum: as a theologian working in a poetically interpretive way, and as a poet defining or demarcating the idea of God, maintaining beauty and the knowledge of language's tenuous nature.
--L.B.C. Keefe-Perry
