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My departmental seminar this week asked us each to describe in one page how we approach theology (personally and professionally) from our different fields, so I thought I’d share mine here, hopefully to provoke discussion. (Incidentally, if you’ve never tried to write something in exactly one page before, it’s a great exercise in saying what you mean and omitting what is beside the point.) Theology can aim to describe at least three different things: what is true of God, what a certain person or groups believes of God, or what is helpful to believe of God. I feel called to theology primarily to learn to say what is true (as far as possible) concerning God. Claiming to know truth can lead to blind dogmatism, of course, but one’s attitude (rather than one’s aim) is the deciding factor in that risk. If we worship a real God, at least some theologians must dedicate their work to finding who that God really is. The latter two approaches, secondary in my mind, are useful but more limited. Studying a particular theology can help us understand better our own theology, understand people of other faiths, or just explore interesting ways to think about God; but it also can lead us to ignore who God is in favor of pet topics or abstract ideals. Determining which beliefs about God most benefit (or harm) people’s lives can call our attention to points at which we should take special care; but it also can give us license to create the God we want in a vain effort to make religion safe. I pursue theology first through the study of the Scriptures because Scripture provides the strongest available corrective against simply saying whatever we please. But because my study requires analysis of the individual theologies within Scripture, determining what Scripture says requires a sort of dialogue even within the text itself. Grounded in Scripture’s web of ideas, theology also must then take into account the reality of our lives. The Bible itself provides countless examples of God’s people trying to make sense of their faith: Job’s discourses on God’s justice; the prophets’ declaration of what God really wants; Jesus’ insistence that some parts of the Torah hang on others; Paul’s application of the theology of the cross to evangelism and baptism and imprisonment and church and sickness. A biblical theologian presumes to follow in this line. |
September 15th, 2006 at 9:58 am
What I find interesting is that while one looks at their theology as trying to find out what is true of God, others look at this theology to see what the person believes of God, and vice versa.
September 16th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Yeah, and we all have different ideas about what “true” means, too.
So to take various views of Scripture as an example: one person is convinced that Scripture describes for us the very being of God; another person believes that Scripture is limited, but that it tells us all the true things about God that humans can understand; a third person believes that God is totally beyond human comprehension but that he gave Scripture to the church to set up the terms on which we are to worship and serve him; a fourth person believes that Scripture is the human record of how the people of God have experienced and understood their relationship with him over the centuries.
Funny thing is, each of these four would probably call Scripture “true,” and yet the first person would likely accuse the fourth person of not believing in the truth of Scripture.
Then when we look at theology in general (i.e., not Scipture in particular), people have different views on the firmness of the truth we find. For one person, known theological truth is absolute, for another it’s totally provisional.
And the “provisional” person might think the knowledge we have of God is real but just needs constant refining, or they might think we can’t ever really know anything about God, but that it’s worth trying to figure it out anyway.
This helps explain why one of my fellow incoming students yesterday told the other ten of us that he’s only interested (academically) in studying the history of theology, because trying to find real grounds for claiming truth is such a nightmare.
I’m not quite as jaded, largely because I circumvent the whole question by not bothering to ground my beliefs in any kind of pure reason. My take is: come study the Bible with me, and there’s a decent chance you’ll start believing that this is who God really is.
September 17th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Scooters,<br/><br/>Interesting post, and I basically agree with you. BTW, check out the two most recent posts on my blog for some very similar points.<br/><br/>Later,<br/>Jason
September 18th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
I find the comment that your student made intresting. I need to think about it before further commenting.