What Could a Theologian Have to Say About Good Writing?

If you want to ask someone about good writing or the latest innovation in writing instruction, you would naturally call a professor of English or composition. Or, as a result of the trend of writing across the curriculum, you might speak with a sociologist or historian. The odds are you would not look up your local theologian. Of course, many institutions of higher education don’t employ theologians, but I suspect there is more to it than that.

Some people may assume that the idea of God, of ultimate reality, is too impenetrable or amorphous to speak intelligibly about, much less yield insights on the craft of writing. There is some truth and wisdom in this. No less than the fifth-century theologian and bishop Augustine of Hippo, himself a prolific writer, once observed, “Since it is God we are speaking of, you do not understand. If you could understand it, it would not be God.”

Nevertheless, academic theologians like me find ourselves standing in front of students—most of whom are in our class to fulfill a core curriculum requirement—and charged with the responsibility to promote reasoned discourse about the problem of God, religious experience and theological ethics. We face much the same challenge our colleagues in other disciplines do: persuading others of the value of good writing in life and helping them cultivate some of the tools to enhance clarity of expression and style.

I typically assign essay papers that prompt critical reflection on a theological text in the light of the student’s own life experience, values and worldview. The assignment’s guidelines require an understanding of the work in question and an evaluation of the concerns and claims within the text. The guidelines clarify that personal faith and/or religious affiliation are not presupposed or required to carry out the assignment. Students find this approach to theological and religious questions novel and liberating, but what they really need help with is improving their use of the English language and their knowledge of what analytical and persuasive writing requires for success.

Students being taught grammar sometimes take this in a moralistic way, as if they were being made to feel guilty for being poor writers. Therefore, the first thing I jokingly say is that while students struggle with writing for many reasons, the good news is that most of those reasons are not their fault. For one thing, many students come from homes where English is not the primary language—which, of course, is natural and not a matter of fault at all. What’s more, primary, intermediate and secondary schools are frequently underfunded. Writing might not have been prioritized in them, and, after all, at those ages (and even now) many different good things compete for our attention.

I could hardly say everything that could be said about good writing, so what does my experience tell me they could not do without? If I could somehow fit it on a PowerPoint slide, we might have something the students would listen to and remember.

Writing is not talking: This is the most important thing they need to know. Talking is the verbalization of your largely unfiltered stream of consciousness. It serves its purpose, but writing, and certainly writing a college paper, is another matter entirely. You must step back from your prose and scrutinize it from a third-party perspective. Am I coming across the way I want to? Am I communicating what I think I’m communicating? It’s like a different language from everyday speech.

Writing is not a transcript of your thoughts, I tell my students. Rather, it’s more like the careful, creative, trial-and-error process of craftsmanship or artistic expression. To accomplished writers, that is self-evident; to some first-year students, it’s a revelation. All this sounds harder than talking, and it is. But it also means that nobody has to be—or could be—a perfect writer, a liberating message.

“Because”—this is a powerful word and should be used often. It tells me that my student is not simply making an assertion or venting, but she’s also offering a reason for what she states. It signals there is an attempt to explain and justify what is asserted. She is taking the reader and her own work seriously. There are other words that accomplish the same thing, but it helps to make my point with the most basic term. Instructors are used to seeing red flags that announce the paper is headed in the wrong direction; “because” declares the opposite. Not every reason is persuasive or even plausible, but the habit of attempting it must be established.

“For example.” This is another piece of the English language I confess to enjoy seeing, and I tell my students that. Giving an example of what one thinks is important slows the paper down and makes concrete what can easily remain abstract or theoretical. In a given case, the example might be a particular personal experience or Pope Francis commenting on climate change, but the point being driven home becomes more vivid by way of an example. Things never get worse with a good example.

After quoting, “This means that …” students sometimes think that if they quote a source or text, their work is done, but it is far from done. I tell them not to assume the meaning of the text is self-evident or that I will understand it because I am the professor. Rather, they need to interpret the text just quoted and also explain how the quotation is relevant to the argument they themselves have been making in their paper. How might the quoted material support or challenge their position? When the students write, “This means that,” they are not simply mimicking me; they are telegraphing they get what engaging the thought of another writer is all about and making that happen.

“1→2.” As I explain to my students, this is my own code for shortening your sentences and paragraphs. Most students err on the side of excessively long, unwieldy sentences, whether or not they are technically run-on sentences. Excited about having a number of things to say, they try to jam a host of ideas into one sentence. The impulse to connect ideas is good, but the execution is bad.

As a corrective, I encourage them to “go from one to two”—to take two sentences to say what they would have said in one. The same advice holds for paragraphs. Learning to start a new paragraph helps the writer organize one’s thoughts in a manageable and coherent way. Not every long sentence or paragraph is ill-advised, but students first need to practice shortening them.

Don’t write “indeed.” I first learned this tip from my middle school–aged daughter, and I tell my students how this came about. One day she asked me to read a paper she had written. I thought it was good work, but asked her why she had used the word “indeed.” She replied that she had done some serious research in her paper and wanted the teacher to take her, and her work, seriously.

I gave her a different view. I told her it was likely to leave the opposite impression—however inaccurate—that she wrote “indeed” to impress him and cover up superficial aspects of the paper. The message to my students is not so much about the word “indeed,” which after all has its rightful place in English usage. The larger point is that they should write in their own voice and let their material speak for itself without affectation or trying to sound good.

I don’t know whether my writing tips will become second nature to my students over time, but I can report seeing “because” and “for example” more frequently of late. Developing my short list of tips has reminded me that good writing in the theology classroom looks a lot like good writing in an English or history class. In theology parlance, God is known as “mystery,” but that’s not a license for theologians and their students to write in obscure or mystifying ways. If it were, who would listen?