Before I went public on this idea, I had the first hundred or so tweets written in draft. I wanted to be sure I could do it before telling people I would…
I wrote the first fifty-odd draft tweets in a splurge, and then went back to them a couple of weeks later. I made minor adjustments to content, inevitably, but the thing that struck me the most was the mood of the posts. Reducing everything to one sentence had made the account of theology sound terse, austere even; there was no sense of joy or worship, which (for me) are realities that are inseparable from worthwhile theology.
Some adjustments and additions have at least lessened this problem, but it did make me think that the form I am adopting will inevitably affect the mood of the theology I propose. I don’t think this is a serious weakness: it will be true for every attempt to propose a theology, and by being very explicit about form I am at least bringing the issue to the foreground, where it has to be remembered.