The Jargon That Jars

To christen an idea, jazz musicians invent slang, admen and politicans go for novelty-promising labels ("New Fab," "New Frontier"), art critics pile on prefixes and suffixes ("post-abstractionism"). But it is theology, slicing its concepts fine, that seems to need new lingo most and best knows how to create it. Plain words, knighted with a capital letter, take on reverent meanings; Greek and German syllables, in numbers from two to six, are joined and sent out to intimidate the outsider.

Instead of the emergence of Christianity, younger theologians nowadays speak knowingly of The Event. Sin, in the person-centered approach of existential theology, becomes estrangement. And no theologian today worth his doctorate would dare talk of preaching or teaching: the fashionable forms are kerygma and didache.

Never in English. God is, of course, still in the theological vocabulary--except perhaps to some followers of Paul Tillich who prefer the phrase "Ground of Being." Tillich has provided a whole glossary of terms for modern theological table talk, including "religious atheism"; many more come from such equally fertile German word-coiners as Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Whenever possible, theological jargon words are used in their German form. Heilsgeschichte, for example, is more learned than salvation history, and it is definitely one up to say Angst instead of anxiety or Wissenschaft instead of discipline. Says Dr. Robert McAfee Brown of Stanford: "You never refer to Barth's Church Dogmatics but rather to his Kirchliche Dogmatik, to show that you don't bother with trots."

It takes fast footwork to keep up with the latest in theological fashions. Jargon changes, as theologians change, says the Rev. Karl Parker, executive director of the Association of Churches of Greater Houston. "It used to be 'atmosphere.' Then it became 'climate.' Now it's 'posture.' " Because Karl Barth's influence is generally on the wane in the U.S., the word "encounter"--meaning man's confrontation with God--is now slightly old hat. Bultmann's "demythologizing"--meaning to strip the Gospel message of its nonfactual elements--is still very much In, as are the provocative terms coined in a Nazi prison by Bonhoeffer during World War II--"holy worldliness," "religionless Christianity," "cheap grace." But sometimes words lose favor when they are used too often; koinonia, from the Greek word for fellowship or communion, has been subject to almost as much misinterpretation as neurosis, and stirs troubled frowns nowadays when it is dropped into the conversation over divinity school coffee cups.

Agape & Eros. Some churchmen feel that the search for a specific vocabulary may have gone a little too far. "Some of these terms have become so broad and vague as to be almost unusable," says Los Angeles' Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy. "I don't think anyone can use any of them in a precise way unless he first spends two pages to explain what he means."

Yet most theologians feel that many jargon words clarify thought, and are as essential to theology as formulas are to chemistry. Love may be a perfectly proper English word, but it lacks the precision of agape, philia or eras, which a theologian would prefer to express his exact shade of meaning. A muscular German borrowing, such as redaktionsgeschichte, may be a mouthful to pronounce--but it is still handier than saying in English "the historical study of how the written Gospels were edited from the oral teaching of the early church." Dr. Nels Ferre of Andover Newton Theological School, whose technical writing includes such wafflers as "reflexive superperspective,"* firmly believes that jargon has its use in providing precise definitions. But when it comes to preaching God's Word, he adds, "it's not essential. Obviously not. Poor Jesus, if it were."

* Which he defines as "seeing the ordinary world in the light of its best instances universalized and then used as the standard for evaluating and directing the present world."

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