THE END OF THEOLOGY

“Who is this who darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?” (38:2)

The Lord’s first words to Job contain a message that all theologians and priests, all pastors and Christian counselors, all teachers of spirituality and all writers of devotional books should have inscribed on a plaque and hanging in their studies, or perhaps even tattooed upon their foreheads for all the world to see. These words are a stark reminder that all human thinking and speaking and writing on the topic of religion, however lofty or even inspired it may be, ultimately falls short of the reality of the living God. One of the twentieth century’s greatest theologians, Karl Barth, compared theology to “the turning over of a sick man in his bed for sake of change.” An even greater theologian, Thomas Aquinas, had an experience toward the end of his life that caused him to cease writing altogether, and to look back over his life’s work and lament, “It’s all straw.” Surely the best thing that could happen to any theological system or treatise, from Augustine’s City of God to the book you are reading right now, is that it be dismantled. This is not to disparage the value (or better, call it the inevitability) of theology. But in the long run theology is no more than a crutch, and once the leg is healed, we throw the crutch away.

Many find it strange that the Lord should speak so sternly and censoriously to Job, to this man whom all along we have maintained is “blameless and upright” and whom God Himself has called the very best man in all the earth (see 1:8). Yet if God speaks this way to such a one as Job, what might He say to you or to me? Perhaps it is not so much Job and his theology that the Lord here singles out to pass judgment upon, as theology itself, the whole bumbling project of human God-talk in all its presumptuous inadequacy. God being God, how else is He to respond to all these words, words, words of ours? What other position could the Lord possibly take in regard to the thoughts of mankind, and still remain the great and awesome Holy One, matchless in majesty?

This is the very conclusion Paul reaches when he caps one of his arguments in Romans with the question, “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (9:20). Even Scripture stops short before the deepest mysteries of God, which is why Paul at the end of Romans 11 allows the entire elaborate scaffolding of his argument simply to collapse into delirious doxology as he sings, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” If Paul could state boldly, “Christ is the end of the law” (10:4), how much more might he have argued that “Christ is the end of theology.” Although Paul himself employed theology in all his writing, the essence of his gospel is not theology but rather a living relationship with Jesus. The gospel is not words and ideas, but “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

The most remarkable feature of the Lord’s speeches to Job is how free they are of theology. At least, this is like no other theology we have ever heard. For the first time in the book a character opens his mouth without any need to explain or rationalize. How refreshing this is, and how mysterious! For God is not a theologian; He is the living God. When He speaks, He does not need to justify Himself. God needs no justification; it is man who needs the justification. Therefore instead of rationalizing, God simply points. He points to the mighty works of His own creation that have been there all along for anyone with eyes to see.

G. K. Chesterton writes that the way God describes all His fabulous creatures and parades them before Job, He makes each one seem “like a monster walking in the sun. The whole is a sort of psalm or rhapsody of the sense of wonder. The maker of all things is astonished at the things He has Himself made.” Chesterton goes on to conclude that “the riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man,” and that “man is most comforted by paradoxes.”

If we find it exasperating that God never gives Job any reasons for his long ordeal of suffering, then we have entirely missed the point of these final chapters. While it is true that the Lord’s answer to Job is neither logical nor theological, this is not the same as saying that He gives no answer. The Lord does give an answer. His answer is Himself. Naturally there is no way to sum up such an answer without sounding prosaic, pedantic, theological. There is no way to sum it up at all. It is not a formula—it is a supernatural encounter, a theophany. The Lord’s answer is Himself.


Mason, M. (2002). The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything. Crossway.