| Sumario: | Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, "There is no final theology," by which he meant that every theology is partial, possibly expressing a valuable truth but never encompassing the totality of the truth. For Tutu, the way we go about navigating conflicts, in theology and beyond, involves a recognition that we have neither the first word nor the last word. We are always already participating in an ongoing dialogical interaction. By comparing Tutu's ideas with the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, this essay argues that the metaphor of "not having the last word" provides a framework for responsibly engaging in disagreements about ethics, politics, and theology.
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