Studying God's works

For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page, which includes Stroble's current Living by the Word column as well as past magazine and blog content. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.

When I was in junior high, I checked out the Great Books edition of Thomas Aquinas's writings at our local library. I don't remember how I knew about Thomas, since my family and I weren't Roman Catholic. We were churchgoers, though, and I loved science, plus I had a nascent interest in philosophy, so I suppose I made some connection. Looking through Thomas's Summa, I was fascinated by the scholastic method of theological inquiry. I'd never seen such a diligent inquiry into religious assertions.

Four years later, the complete English translation of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics appeared on the "new acquisitions" shelf of my college library. Again, I was fascinated. Those famous small-print sections of Barth's hefty volumes looked so fascinating! His method was different from Thomas's Summa, but I loved Barth's own style of diligent inquiry into God's truth.