I’m sitting here in the Ft. Lauderdale airport waiting for our plane to board. My wife and I are returning from our honeymoon, and we decided to buy some books for the long wait (which is coming to an end in the next hour and a half). Walking through the small bookstore, I found a copy of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden which I have been wanting to read for awhile. I’m a fan of Steinbeck, and have been wanting to read this for awhile, but my curiosity was piqued even more when I read an article on the book in the Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (google books). As I was reading I came across this part of the book where Adam’s father, Cyrus, is talking to him about his eventual run in the army, and is waxing philosophical on war and religion:

“Adam wet his dry lips and tried to ask and failed and tried again. ‘Why do they have to do it?’ he said. ‘Why is it?’
Cyrus was deeply moved and he spoke as he had never spoken before. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve studied and maybe learned how things are, but I’m not even close to why they are.’”

As I thought about Adam’s discussion with his dad, I began to think how their musing on war was a lot like my theology. I would say that I’m at least well-read, if not even a little informed. I tend, for the most part, to understand all sides on various theological topics, even those I reject. In the end, however, I find that I’ve studied enough to “maybe learn how things are” but sometimes “I’m not even close to why they are.”
For example, I can offer several reasons for the existence of and purpose for evil, but like Chris Wright in his book “The God I Don’t Understand,” I ponder the existence of the serpent in the garden in the first place. I simply don’t know… and I can’t know, because the Bible doesn’t give us the necessary information here. Here it only gives us fact: the serpent was there.
Now, let me temper that quote with another favorite quote of mine:
“I hold it to be a failure in duty if after we have become steadfast in our faith we do not strive to understand what we believe.”
-Anselm
I don’t know why, a lot of times. Sometimes I can’t know why, sometimes I just haven’t found out how I can find the why. But, I am always searching. Always, in Anselm’s translated terms, striving to understand. That seems to me to be the best description of the theologian (all of us)—striving to understand. Sometimes we arrive at the answers, sometimes not, but always striving.