Tuesday August 2, In the year of our Lord 2011
Briercrest Continuing and Distance Education Office, Caronport Saskatchewan
Posting something that I've been working on for a while, 2:31 PM
Weather = Sunny and Warm (unstable)
Over the last few months I have been working on a careful (and slow) reading of Stanley Grenz’s 20th Century Theology: God & the World in a Transitional Age. I know that such books do not really lead to a full understanding of first source material that they evaluate, but I had made a promise to read this book for Senior Theology Seminar with David Guretzki so I had to read it someday. I am glad that I did though. Looking at all sorts of different streams within Christian theology made me stop and think about my own tradition and my personal understanding of theology in general contrasted with how others have understood theology around me. This post will be a manifestation of those thoughts.
First of all I think it is worth noting that I see within theology several different facets that tie together and affect the entire discipline. First of all there is an understanding of God, who He [or as the less Biblically based might have it, She or It] is, God’s purpose, God’s will, basically an entire understanding of (or theology of) God. Secondly there is the understanding of humanity, it’s purpose, eternal status, and how we as human beings should relate to each other and God. Thirdly there is an understanding of how the imminent of today should interact with the traditions of the past, the way things are now (culturally), and how to proceed into the future.
I suppose this would be a three dimensional dialogue of God and man through time. These are just thoughts though, and I am in no way setting out some sort of theological method or a consistent personal view on the topic. Hmm…
So what do I make of all this then? As I look at my own outlook on these topics I realize that my reasoning and views are quite simple and very much faith based. I look at the mighty streams of theology (Hume, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Barth, Tillich, Bonheoffer, Rahner, Kung, Liberation, Narrative, etc.) and think to myself that I am indeed a very simple person. These outstanding theological giants had such a keen understanding and a glowing conviction of theology. All of these have been established on axioms of truth and as I read through each section I realized that in many senses all of them were correct and all of them must also be wrong. They are all correct in that all of them have a specific focus in which they hit upon a nail which is foundational to an understanding of theology, whether it be Hume’s critique of pure reason which moved theology out of the grasp of science and history, Karl Barth’s wholly transcendent God, or Feminist Theology’s drive to make a just and fair society in light of the Christian Gospel. They are all wrong in that in no way and at no time has anyone nor will anyone ever be able to fully understand God, humanity, and how the relationship has progressed through time. I find this encouraging because I know that such a standard is impossible, which means that I am not going to hold myself to it. This does not mean that I will not try my utmost hardest to understand correctly these things, nor is it an excuse to shirk the serious responsibilities in undertaking theology.
Traditionally I have been brought up as a conservative Evangelical, maybe even Neo-orthodox, a tradition that acknowledges the omnipotence of God, sinfulness of man, existence of miracles, divine inspiration of Scripture, and the emphasis on personal faith in the literal historical Jesus Christ as Lord and savior. Growing up I went to Sunday School, Church, Youth Group, and my parents played an active role in my spiritual formation. I believed what I saw as truth all around me, that God is good, that God cares, that God loves me, and that God answers prayer. Mine has been a life touched by the faith of others and empowered by a personal faith in Christ, albeit a simple one. I have always believed that when I stop to pray to God, either out loud or quietly in my mind or heart, that God hears every prayer and answers every prayer. (not necessarily with a yes or no answer) When things happened that were hurtful or that I didn’t understand and especially if they were outside of my control I would trust God and put active faith in Him. Sometimes I wondered if my social-economic status of being a middle class white person in Canada was maybe more to do with God’s apparent answers to prayer, but after asking God about this I had the very strong impression that I was indeed in a very favorable position on this Earth, but that was not mine to choose and that God provides, for me as well as for those who have nothing. It was not for me to know how or if it was just and good, only that God does indeed take care of the sparrows and lilies, and that human kind which is made in His image, is worth so much more than birds or grass to Him. I thought then that maybe this impression was also a result of my social-economic status and a basic reaction of faith, maybe not from God at all. After coming to this point repeatedly in my life I have always had to dismiss it as an unhelpful notion. If God does indeed speak to me then He is God and God will know best how to communicate so that I understand Him. If I mistake my own feelings / intuitions as God’s voice to me then it won’t be long before I am corrected by God or the community of faith. I am of a natural disposition to listen and consider and always pray for wisdom and understanding which is the equivalent of inviting God to come and tell you where you went wrong. But what if all of this understanding, even the reasoning I just state, all a façade for the bleak truth that God does not exist. Well, once again there is nothing I can do about that. Feuerbach’s critique about how we create god in our own image based on the understanding we have is indeed correct, but it does not in any way nullify the possibility of the transcendent God Yahweh. Pascal’s Wager is enough convince me with cold logic if nothing else which is the wiser of the two choices. And then we come to faith, where God makes himself known to you and you just know. It is different from emotion and intuition, although these can be confirmation of faith. It is as Barth says, that God allows himself to be known to you by giving himself to you as subject as well as creator of faith and that unless God gives this faith to you, you cannot have it or even understand it.
After going through the book I look at the axioms and rulings of theologies and shake my head. It is necessary to always attempt to nail down what reality is and how it should work. Unfortunately (or maybe very fortunately) we will never fully succeed. God’s truth is both eternal and subjective. It is eternal in the sense that God’s ways are indeed higher than our ways and that some truths (like the incarnation of Christ Jesus) will always be eternally true. It is also subjective in that God as person decides truth, truth as subjective to the person that is God, but also subjective in how God works with human kind in general as well as each individual person specifically. I believe that this is why there are so many different strands within the Christian faith, the essence of truth, even revealed truth, is both eternal-objective and temporal-subjective. God has become man and has entered into time-space, community, even a very specific time-space community but the manifestation of that reality interacts with the time-space community which it enters into. When the Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles just as it did the Jews the Gentiles did not for that reason become Jews like their Lord Jesus, they remained Gentiles and God’s Holy Spirit worked mightily through them! Indeed, the Apostle Paul who witnessed the Resurrected Christ became all things to all men so that some might be saved, he did not follow the strict method of religion as the Judaizers but lived by faith in that God would Speak into the context of the audience and communicate eternal truth in subjective ways.
Historically the church has created doctrines in an effort to understand God and put limits on what is considered authentic Christianity. I believe this has been a natural and helpful process and the only real responsible thing to do in light of the incredible task of theology. The struggle though is to be faithful to this task without putting limits on God, yet we must do that very thing lest the concept of God be confused with ‘inanimate force,’ ‘unintelligible,’ or ‘the essence of being.’ So we create doctrines (or parables) that seek to explain with authority who God is, who we are, and what our purpose is. These are set out with the very noblest and highest intentions but I fear that they will always fall short. And here I begin to doubt myself. I am not quite willing to side completely with Barth on this issue because I think that there are some basic things that are just always wrong and cannot rationalize (even in faith) how some doctrines could not hold true. It would seem that even the doctrine of God’s freedom from doctrines runs afoul its own reef. And now I have confused myself, there has to be a better way of saying what I mean without contradictions.
But yes, we create an understanding of theology, basic tenants for the Community of Faith but God transcends them. This must be so, because the focus of all of Scripture and Revelation has never been to academicize the God-human relationship but to bring life characterized by faith. Our focus should not be on doctrine, but on an active participation with Jesus through the Holy Spirit in the world today. Doctrine without faith is dead religion. However, one should not just ignore doctrine out of hand either! Indeed, we should seek to follow and understand doctrine as a norm for our personal understandings of all aspects of theology. We should seek after knowledge and wisdom of God as though it were more valuable than great treasure! Understanding sound doctrine is just as important as the basic necessities of looking both ways before crossing a street and making sure to wipe after relieving one’s self. It would be foolish to try and start over as though the meditations of two thousand years of Christian thinkers (to say nothing of the movements of the Holy Spirit for two thousand years) are rubbish to be discarded. We cannot separate ourselves from these doctrines or the cultural influences inherent within them, but neither should we fear that the future of true Christianity depends on our puny understanding of eternal truths. Unless such an undertaking is done in faith and its results are empowered by the Holy Spirit then this is the birthplace for much heresy.
We as Christians must live in our times and places on this earth. We cannot live with a 1st Century understanding of theology because the dialogue of the 1st Century has moved on to include other important concepts while also dropping concepts that were important in the 1st Century. But once again, the rules of how to live Christian lives with believers or nonbelievers are not what we are supposed to be focused on. We are supposed to live in faith and act according to that faith in our time and place. The dialogue of our own societies is always shifting, a constant engagement between affirming what is good and trying to change what is not alongside believers and nonbelievers who are doing the exact same thing who all have a different opinion about what is good and what is not. Culture is subjective, so the workings of the Holy Spirit will be different in different circles. In some places God will work miracles and revivals, in some other places God will work quietly through the community of faith. Sometimes this is because God is working with the social environment because that is how they understand how things work, and sometimes God chooses to work against those understandings. In Pentecostal and Apostolic circles the laying on of hands has become a spiritual symbol of God’s work, and indeed God has chosen to work miracles through the laying on of hands, but in Catholic circles it is the symbol of the cross, and in Baptist circles it is prayer and use of Scripture. The essence is active faith, the form varies according to the understanding of the people exercising that faith. Right when we think we’ve nailed down how we think Christian living ought to be done for all people at all times we’ve missed the mark.
I’ve let this post sit for too long and now my thoughts are scattered again.
More later.
Greg Out
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