Theology – Page 2 – LOVE | ACCEPT

Who’s Up (today) for An Honest Reading? John 6:37-40

Theological discussion in various venues often pits one position of belief against its opposites. Supporters of one position or another like to issue proposition statements of the form ‘If they would give _____ an honest reading’, ‘once I gave ______ an honest reading’,’ you can’t read _________ honestly and still believe’ or various other permutations that are meant to couch the idea that your position is unsupportable in the light of clear interpretation. In other words, the veiled inference is that theological presuppositions have colored your interpretation of the text and if you would put them aside and engage an honest reading of the text, you would certainly see the validity of the opposing position. Let’s see if that’s a valid argument…

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (Jn 6:37–40)

It’s All Greek to Me

Yesterday we looked at the various contextual levels in which the reader encounters a bible passage. To avoid mishandling a text or inappropriately proof-texting out of context we need to recognize the material that surrounds the passage to varying degrees of immediacy. We close by turning our attention to the language used by the original author and how well our modern translations accord to the original meaning of the words used. This will come as a shock to some but the Bible was not delivered in Elizabethan English. God elected to transmit His truth through authors in Hebrew and Greek for the most part and if we are going to delve beyond our English (or whatever translated language we read) we need to dive into the original texts. Caution is advised here; words in Greek and Hebrew often have ranges of meaning just like their English counterparts and it is easy to manipulate the interpretation of a passage

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Who’s Up (again) for An Honest Reading? John 6:37-40

A Text Without a Context May Be a Pretext

We closed our discussion yesterday with a brief discussion of the necessity for recognizing context in interpreting biblical texts. In all cases, we want to avoid the interpretive error of proof texting which, unfortunately, has become a substitute for sound exegesis. In our pursuit of an honest reading, let’s have a look at the context in which this passage occurs, starting from the immediate and moving outward.

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Who’s Up for An Honest Reading? John 6:37-40

Given the earlier promise of Jesus recorded by the Evangelist John in 3:16-17, the power of the good news that brought many to believe in Samaria recorded in 4:39, and his repetition of the earlier promise for any who believe spoken in 5:24, an honest reading of this passage leads the reader to two conclusions.

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The Calvinist Canard of Honest Reading

Like an AM radio signal, the amplitude of the eternal rhetorical war of theology is ratcheted up and wound down by adherents of a particular camp. A recent campaign of bomb throwing posts ignited an insignificant skirmish that left no dead but encouraged the chest thumping of one group to rise to deafening levels. The posts were of the typical ‘Arminians are Pelagians (Sovereignty deniers, Grace deniers, Works lovers, Depravity diminishers, et. al. ) who probably put catsup on their hot dogs’ offerings that regularly appear on this particular blog and, unsurprisingly, generated sound pressure in the echo chamber of Townsend-Blackmore-Young proportions. Continue reading “The Calvinist Canard of Honest Reading”

Working Out Your Theology

So, budding theologians, you have your resources and the steps of reflection and now it’s time to bring these to bear on the substance of life. Every craftsman has a method that they follow in order to bring the object of their work to life, and theology is no exception. This methodology is necessarily personal and the way that I reflect may not align precisely with yours. What is more important is that we share, or at least understand, the bases on which our method unfolds so that if we should arrive at differing conclusions we can avoid naming the other as heretics.

Christians want to understand God and how we relate to Him. We want to know what can be known about Him, who He is and what Jesus means to us. We also want to understand where we came from, who we are, why we are the way we are, the nature of our relationship with God, what faith in Jesus Christ entails, and where we’re headed. This heady list comprises the singular purpose of the theological reflection that we undertake on a personal basis. We want to know what it means to be a Christian and how it applies to our lives.

Reflection starts at one of two points and the choice is significant. If we begin by examining Christianity in the context of life and then seek to determine the meaning of God’s word we begin from an anthropological starting point. The other path we might follow is the begin with divine revelation, the word of God in the Scriptures, and then move to discover the implications that it has for human life. Noting and revealing this starting point is important to your method as it not only shapes its direction, but it gives important clues to us as to how to best receive the results that you come to. For example, if you express an anthropological beginning you must be cautious not to allow your conclusions to be colored more by culture or other social factors to the extent that they override the core of the gospel message. Likewise, the revelatory method can become removed from the realities of life, separating God from His people and His world.

Start Me Up

None of us comes to this process as empty vessels. Inevitably, we begin applying our theological method from where we are, here and now. As Christians, we also have some understanding of the Faith from our involvement in church, listening to sermons, praying, and reading the Scriptures. We begin in a combination of the anthropological and revelatory positions to forge our theological understandings. We share happiness and struggles and seek to understand them. We want to know what it means to be saved and how the righteousness of Jesus is imputed to us. Mostly, we want to process our lives as best we can through our faith.

The way in which human beings think is a large part of this process as well. There are two basic forms of thinking that we practice, sequential and parallel-synthetic. Sequential thinking is just what is says, linear information processing. We take facts that present themselves and work through them logically; A leads to B and B leads to C and so on. Parallel synthetic processing is big picture thinking. Human beings are capable of seeing the relationships between numerous things at the same time. I am able to look out of my office window and see the birds battling at the feeder, the dog watching them, and the increasing clouds in the air. Our minds will naturally switch between these two modes as appropriate to the task at hand, using the other mode as a complement to complete the picture in our thinking. Both modes are necessary to thorough theological reflection.

Creative Theological Reflection

Many will cringe at the heading above but in fact, theological reflective requires the application of imaginative thinking. Applying God’s revelation in His word to the complexities of life requires that the theologian examine the facts that are available and, in the context of a living and changing world, apply them to the infinitely unique situations which present themselves every moment of every day. This reality disturbs many Christians. They demand that every issue be wedged into a neat five-point framework. Taking the whole of revelation into consideration, especially when it contradicts the neat categories of logical thinking, is a challenge that some are unwilling to make. Creative thinking in theological reflection requires that both cognitive approaches be present to some degree. You and I favor one or the other and should be aware of which is our dominant mode. Once identified, the theologian will engage in activities meant to strengthen or encourage the other mode in our thought process.

Creative theological thinking also demands verification. We are not free to ‘see’ new truths or applications without submitting them to the verification of history and the rest of the Church. Others are capable and engaged in theological reflection and can help us to verify, clarify or challenge our conclusions. Ego and pride have no place in this process. We are all one community and should be allowed or allow others to participate in the task.

So, Let’s Go

The objects of our reflection have a tendency to present themselves to us in the course of life. Once a situation presents itself that we want to have an outline of the steps we will take. A rough process would look something like this:

identify the Christian truths that apply to the situation we are reflecting on
determine the strengths and weaknesses of each of these truths as they apply to the current reflection
propose an adequate solution in light of the message that God has revealed
explain in theological terms why this solution is preferable to others

The first two steps will comprise our process of analysis and the second pair represent the process of construction. This is theological reflection. Now it’s your turn.

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The Tools of Theological Reflection

When Christians voice their position on a theological subject, the expectation of a disciple is that this position has been considered in the context of their faith. Taking a stand on a particular subject is saying to the world, “this is my best understanding of what Christian faith means.” This understanding is the cumulative experience and meditation of the Church as we have witnessed God at work in our lives, in the Church, and in the World. A theological framework derived from our embedded theology is necessarily limited by what others tell or teach us. A deeper understanding of what faith means is the product of a craftsman utilizing the tools of Christian reflection.

The depth of this theological viewpoint is important because it is the framework on which we organize input and process events. A shallow embedded framework provides us with a limited number of ‘hooks’ on which we can process information or events. We are reliant on others to grasp the world around us. A reflective theological process, on the other hand, builds a stronger and more in-depth framework through which truth and events are interpreted, correlated, and assessed in light of the Christian faith.

Resources for Theological Reflection

In my last post we established the the methods of the theological craft (Interpret, Correlate, Assess) but without a proper orientation to the resources of the craft, the methods are of little worth as they will rely on secular constructs. The list of resources is fourfold and include Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience. Many readers will identify this as the Wesleyan quadrilateral** (or Methodist quadrilateral) but that should not be read as endorsing or leaning toward a specific theology. These four tools provide a way of assessing ideas within the framework of Scriptures, of the work of the Church throughout history, and of your experience with how God has and does work in the world. Some may argue otherwise but the crafting of theological takes place in the crucible of life.

Christians have often been referred to as ‘people of the book’ since the Bible forms the chief resource for reflection. Each of the other tools is subordinate to the words of the Scriptures. Through the pages of the Bible we draw propositions about divine truth, descriptions of the nature of God, we see the faith experiences of those who have come before us, and we hear repeated invitations to a new life offered through the grace of the Father. The craftsman recognizes that while the Scriptures offer a treasure house of knowledge that applies to all areas of life, it does not speak specifically to every question. It requires responsible interpretation that is cognizant of its scope and the broad strokes and categorization that may encompass specific areas of concern. (For example, the specific question of abortion is never addressed. The Scriptures do reveal God’s perspective on the sanctity of the life of His creations and from this we can interpret His feelings toward the practice.)

Rational human beings utilize their ability to reason constantly and theological reflection is no different. Reason is crucial in the ability to assess and correlate theological thought. To take the individual words ( or verses ) of scripture literally from the page into application often leads to misinterpretation. We must understand and recognize the ever widening circles of context that exist in the Scriptures and work from the tenet that all of the Bible works together. It does not deny itself. If we craft a new theological idea that stands apart from the rest of the Scriptures, reason tells us that we must tread carefully. Our ability to reason also contributes to our evaluation of alternative portrayals of the Christian faith. Contrasting limited and unlimited atonement as an example, requires the theologian to sift through and evaluate the entire body of the Scriptures before concluding which of these two lines of thought most adequately fits the nature of the Faith.

If, in the midst of crafting your theological understandings, you arrive at a conclusion that has never been heard within the Church during the centuries of her existence, be very cautious. Tradition plays an important role in the craft. Many thousands upon thousands of Christian thinkers and practitioners have preceded us and certain doctrines and beliefs have survived the transference from generation to generation. We must always take these into account, remembering that similar evaluations of their validity have been conducted prior to our coming on the scene. Tradition serves as an anchor as well, preventing us from being blown about by every new doctrinal breeze.

Finally, our experiences play a role in theological reflection. The degree to which you consider your experiences valuable is going to vary. Some Christians will elevate experience to a level equal to or above that of the other resources but a more temperate approach is called for. Relying on experience as a prime determinant can push us towards reading this experience into the scriptures rather than trying to understand an experience in light of the Scriptures. Our own experiences, while not definitive, aid us in evaluating the theological truth claims that are based on other’s truth claims. If a televangelist claims riches for all of those who contribute to his ministry but it is later discovered that many who contributed to the appeal remained impoverished, we can rightly judge the evangelist’s theology to be lacking.

Working at the Craft

The Christian crafting a theological viewpoint brings many resources to the task. Scripture remains the primary resource around which the others orbit and it is from the Bible that our process should start. Even when it is an experience that we are seeking to understand we should return to our knowledge of the Bible to begin forming a theological explanation. This requires that we are consistent students of the Scriptures, regularly reading and storing the truths within us so that we have as complete an understanding of God’s word as possible. As we become masters of these tools, we will become more adept at using them to assess, interpret and correlate truths in our theological crafting.

** The Wesleyan Quadrilateral

This structure has been criticized many times throughout its brief history. Though Wesley expressed these as the tools of theology, it was only in 1964 that the term came into being when written by biographer Albert Outler. He has expressed regret at doing so since it has been incorrectly interpreted (both intentionally and unintentionally) and gives and invalid impression of Wesley’s method. The Quadrilateral is often expressed graphically as an axis with the four tools placed in each of the quadrants.

One draws from this diagram the impression that the importance of Scripture is equal to or subservient to the others but this is incorrect. Wesley always places the Scriptures at the center of theology with the others contributing to a lesser degree. This diagram could be improved by either varying the sizes of the boxes (which would spoil the quadrants I suppose) or portraying it in some other form.

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Theological Craftsmanship

When we last were together, we had worked through the distinction between our embedded and deliberative theological understandings. Though there’s nothing wrong with the embedded theological understandings that we carry around, a problem arises when life crises challenge these beliefs. We have second thoughts and sometimes, doubt about what we know. A new crisis of faith is added to our current troubles, burdening the believer rather than giving them the answers they seek.

Crafting Theology

Before crisis arrives, all Christians should be involved in developing a foundation for their theological understandings. This does not mean that we start from scratch and create a new, personal set of theological tenets that the world has never seen. Theology is our calling to process all that we can gather about God and to craft a strong base of knowledge supporting our embedded beliefs. At the crucial moment when we are seeking to understand how God could allow a child to be taken from their parents a solid and unshakeable foundation is necessary. Those pillars are only built from a deliberate effort.

Theology is said to be crafted as it utilizes raw materials to fashion an end product. In the case of theology, the end product is a new or more substantial theological understanding and our raw materials are the scriptures and the thinking that has preceded our own efforts. These materials are subjected to a three step process of interpreting, correlating, and assessing an idea that stretches and works our theological muscles and, in the end, through this effort supplies us with a new, better, and stronger way of understanding our God and our relation to Him.

Interpretation

We interpret the meanings of things all day every day. Words, images, sounds are all interpreted by each of us and we all bring a unique perspective to the process. As our interpretations become relatively stable, they begin to form our views. Collected together, the views form a viewpoint that allows us to interpret things on a larger scale. For the Christian, interpretation is performed from the perspective of faith. God and our belief in and understanding of who He is influences our perspective on everything. For example, abortion viewed through a perspective that includes God as Creator is much different than a purely clinical view. Recognizing our perspective and its depth, or lack of depth, is the first step in crafting a theological viewpoint.

Correlation

Correlation is the act of discovering the relation between two things if it exists. If it does not, the word can take an active sense as well as we bring two things into relation. A Christian in the process of theological reflection will often be called into the give and take of correlation as he seeks to bring the perspective of God’s people into correlation with other perspectives. These might come from outside of the faith community or they might be an opposing point of view from within the larger Church that differs from your own.

This process is not without conflict. Ask yourself first if you are able to see things as others do. Are you able to fully understand their perspective? Responsible theology requires that you do so. This is a source of much strife within the Church as proponents of one theological view refuse to make the effort to understand how the views of another believer have come to be or why they are supported.

Assessment

When one of your Christian views or viewpoints becomes relatively stable in your mind as representative of truth, there is one final step that occurs in order to set it. An assessment of the position you have crafted pushes it through a series of filters so that you can judge it to be good or bad. The four most common questions asked are:

Is it valid?
Is it understandable?
Does it have moral integrity?
Is it appropriate from a Christian standpoint?

Each of these is not equally applicable. A Christian may not be in the position to state whether or not an idea is valid but the plethora of documented positions can certainly aid us in evaluating whether or not we are in the ballpark. Moral integrity, on the other hand, is easier to assign. If your proposed view dooms all babies to death, contrary to centuries of Christian belief, the morality of a god who makes this proclamation would certainly be in question. A view impeded by this filter would likely be a candidate for reformation or to be discarded.

Being a Craftsman

Reflecting on your faith and what you believe requires the same love and attention to detail that a craftsman applies to a piece of furniture that she creates. It requires the ability to examine a view from all perspectives and to have a framework to evaluate different aspects of the position. Experience and maturity round out process, resulting in a pronounced ability for the Christian to understand life and humanity in a way that honors and upholds God and their faith.

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God IS Great – The Hitchens Challenge

The trouble one encounters in reading God is Not Great is the Voice. After watching and listening to Christopher Hitchens speak, the words peal off of the page in his contemptuous English sneer. Your mind processes the words, sentences, and paragraphs but, all the while, your MIND hears the voice surreptitiously attempting to corner you for interrogation. Certainly, you agree with me about all of this god silliness, don’t you? You’re not one of those believers are you? – leering pompously over his glasses for assent from the sycophantic atheists in the distance who lap these prickly rants up. Hitchens is far more erudite than Sam Harris and even a bit less irritable but their two recent works are similar in theme and tenor. Both plow the same ground, germinating from the casual assumption that there is no God of any stripe and that the religious people of the world range from simply ignorant to downright evil and dangerous.

I agree with Mr. Hitchens as he observes that much evil is promulgated in the name of religion. Religious practice is a human endeavor and unlike the hopes of the progressivist dream, humans cannot be perfected. To indict broad swaths of people through the actions of a few adherents should cause us to examine Hitchens’ general arguments more closely. To argue that evil practitioners of a faith are representative of the whole requires that we move our examination to a lower strata and ask, are the theological foundations of the religion inherently wicked? Once established, the follow up question is whether or not a person roots their evil in this theology. Does the pederast priest locate his acts in the Bible? If not, intellectual honesty in making ones argument requires a separation of the man from the belief. Hitchens consistently fails to kick over this stone since it threatens to trim the broad brush with which he paints.

This broad swath extends to Mr. Hitchens’ presentation of God in general. He would have the reader accept his expansive definition of ‘god’ as being the same deity represented by all of the faith groups he excoriates. The enlightened reader will see through this facade immediately. Without a careful evaluation of the apologetic for faith traditions one might be tempted to step into this trap but the thoughtful reader will not. Simple logic (which Hitchens demands we practice on nearly every page) leads one to conclude that all views of God cannot be true. If one is correct, the others then must be false according to the apologetics of each.

The final pages of God is Not Great provide a reading group guide composed of 19 questions meant to gauge your assent to Hitchens’ arguments. I propose that we examine these one by one and see how they hold up. It might be that we discover that God is great while people, in their fallen state, are not. The two should not be confused.

You, Theologian : Where We Begin

As we accept our call to be theologians, the next logical question is to ask what that means. Many in the Christian community will default to the image of the sequestered scholar, surrounded by mountains of books and poring over the scattered papers piled before him. Theology, in this narrow view, is a field with high barriers to entry, only to be approached by a select few while the rest of us wait to receive their wisdom. Nonsense. This stereotype is not only damaging to the faith, it is flat out wrong. Go look in a mirror Christian. There is a theologian. Regardless of background, social group, education, or denomination even, you and I are called to be theologians and our theology is formed in two ways. One is by our experience of being a Christian. This is known as our embedded theology.

Our first order theology comes from the Christian environment that surrounds us. This environment, usually our church and this immediate community, usually drives what we believe about our faith. Since every church believes itself to be living by Christian principles, the initial framework of how we think about faith is organized on a similar framework to that which guides our church. The practices, stated doctrine, and general atmosphere give us some idea of what it means to be a Christian. We trust that those who developed the doctrines and traditions knew what they were doing and this confidence tells us we can accept these things without too much worry.

This is as far as many believers will ever go. If our church teaches it, regardless of the initial reasons, it’s good enough for us. Embedded theology works well for a while but some cracks in the firmness of the foundation begin to show when it is challenged. The first challenge often arrives in the form of a comparison between our church and our neighbor’s church. We may worship within a tradition that has a dry tradition toward alcohol and so we live as teetotalers. One fine summer day our neighbor Ed invites us over for a barbecue. Ed and his family are Christians who go to a different church but we still look forward to some fine fellowship. Knocking on the door brings Ed quickly to answer it, swinging the door wide with the hand that isn’t gripping his beer. Beer! Your embedded theology sends a message to your brain: smile, but watch this guy carefully since you know that no Christians use alcohol.

The barbecue is fine and later, as you nurse your third cola, you get a chance to talk to Ed alone. “Say Ed,” you say. “I noticed you drink beer.”

“Yep, I have a couple now and then. Why?”

You don’t want to lecture (but secretly you do) so you put a big smile on your face and say “Well, my pastor speaks against alcohol at least once every couple of months. I was just wondering how often yours does.”

“I’ve only heard him talk about it once.” Ed replies and takes the last sip of his beverage. “He taught us that the Bible talks about drunkenness but doesn’t say we must not drink alcohol. Didn’t Jesus drink wine?”

So it seems that some Christians do drink alcohol. How can the Bible teach both things? We trust our embedded ideas but often find them quickly challenged.

Second order challenges are much more difficult for this type of theological thinking. Imagine the family of the child who wandered away at the beach and got too close to the surf. She was swept out of reach of her searching parents and they lost her. How will the shallow theology of our community answer this tragedy. Why did God take the child? Were the parents secret sinners who were being punished? Was the child herself punished? Embedded theology is usually to fragile to deal with something like effectively. To come to grips with a loss like this requires a depth in the answers. It requires an intentional approach to theological questions. It requires that we practice deliberative theology.

Deliberative theology begins work right where we are by setting forth to reflect upon our embedded convictions. We question the beliefs that we have taken for granted and seek to place them among the spectrum of Christian belief on a subject. The deliberative approach looks into the various positions and seeks to understand that which is most satisfactory. Sometimes this is easier said than done since seeking answers outside of our narrow understanding can lead to challenges that we would rather not face. Beloved traditions and beliefs can be toppled in an instant and many will retreat to the shallow end of the pool when this threat becomes too real.

Sadly, we discover our need for a more intentional approach to theological thinking when the deeper tragedies of life occur. Our embedded beliefs prove unsatisfactory to answer the questions we have and we embark on a quest to understand. When we are prepared to set aside simply believing what we are told to believe and to make the effort to understand why we believe what we believe, we finally grow and mature as Christians. We see God as more than just Daddy. We seek out a deeper knowledge of His revealed nature and character. The result is a more satisfying faith and a more complete worship. We are living out our calling.

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You, Theologian

I’ll move right to the conclusion. You and I, if we are followers of Christ, are called to be theologians. We, as Christians, have a tendency to assign this title only to a small sampling of our community, perhaps to pastors or scholars but this is wrong. To be a theologian has little to do with academic achievement or vocational calling. Rather, it has everything to do with processing all of our thoughts and actions through the filter of what we understand it to mean to be a Christian. To put this another way, our decision to speed a little on the way to work should be processed not only through the filter of civil law but through the notion of what it means to be a Christian who is disrespecting civil law and representing Christ as you do so. The witness you and I present to the world in the course of our daily lives reflects our understanding of the faith. We are not given the luxury to compartmentalize and separate life from life in Christ.

Theology is not some arcane art, to be grasped by a select few who have made the epic journey across the wild and unforgiving seas, fighting dragons as we go. Theology is the knowledge and understanding that you and I have of God. Theology is dual-faceted and it encompasses our doctrine and the resulting practice that comes from applying that doctrine. Doctrine can be generally defined as our beliefs about the nature of God and His actions, who we are as His created beings, and what He has done to restore our damaged relationship with Him. To the extent that we find our understanding in line with those of historic Christianity is the degree of our orthodoxy. The behaviors that result from this understanding are the external display to those around us of what our doctrine is. Orthopraxy defines our allegiance to our doctrine through the act of daily living. Say and do are not separated in theological reflection.

The tools of theological reflection are within the grasp of all Christians. We find our content in the sixty-six books of the Bible, the revealed word of God to and for His people. We bring to this content an assent to our personal biases and suppositions and are honest in admitting how they might tint our reflection. Finally, we bring our faith to bear on the whole of the endeavor. We believe in God who has revealed Himself to us in numerous and varied ways yet remains elusive. We have yet to be privileged to see Him face to face and so we trust. Here, we come full circle. Some have described theology as faith that is seeking understanding and this is is an excellent baseline definition. To understand what you believe and why you believe it and then apply this structure to your life, this is the task that you are called to Theologian. Godspeed.

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