The Theologians

"The Theologians" (original title: "Los teólogos") is a short story by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It was featured in the collection Labyrinths. It was originally published in Los Anales de Buenos Aires in April 1947.

In typical Borges style, the author weaves a web of historical and semi-historical references of Christian heretical sects into a palimpsest on which orthodoxy and heresy overwrite one another. Borges does not commit a travesty of muddling the history of Christian Gnosticism (as that history is more or less a mish-mash and hodgepodge of speculation by first, second and third hand accounts anyway), instead sparse, tightly crafted sentences set a stage on which an author competes with a rival author of orthodoxy, by writing different versions of truth. Both fictitious characters are denouncing heresies. Upon this landscape of self-doubt and right and wrong Borges brilliantly brings to life the very real struggle one faces in life, specifically in one's own pursuit for spiritual truth.

A strict reading of the story deals with morality and heresy, but a broader reading deals with the internal pathos man struggles with when questioning truth and one’s own life's importance. The obolus, along with the mirror, is a symbol of one of the new schisms in the story, perfect symbols to appear in a compilation already possessing the title of such a potent esoteric symbol as a labyrinth. After all, the mirror is not simply a device that creates a double, but an object that one uses to examine oneself. The obolus, the coin used to pay the Ferryman Charon of Greek myth to reach the Land of the Dead, is demonstrative within the story of one heretical sect's belief in the transmigration of the soul through several bodies. However, the obolus is additionally a symbol of a journey (such as the main character's introspection, and thus the reader's own journey of introspection). The author uses a quote of Luke 12:59, that points to reconciling with one's apparent enemy, translated as "no one will be released from prison until he has paid the last obolus." These symbols of self-examination and of death (be it a quest into eternity, or simply a voyage without end) are used in this short story that ultimately concerns the main character's pursuit for personal recognition competing beside another man. Both men are in the business of denouncing heresy, or, in other words, are authors of Truth.

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