This was an attempt started whn you
first posted this. I wanted to think on it some more.
Your annotations take a lot
of stuff away. I'm not sure that's to the benefit of theology. I
removed the unannotated article.
More below.
David
"Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of
what's good for people than people do is a swine."--P. J. O’Rourke
On 9/25/2011 1:46 PM, [email protected] wrote:
First, the essay as originally published. Then my comments
in BF in an annotated version
which follows.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Annotated Version
Why You Should Take Theology Seriously
In J. I. Packer’s 1973 classic Knowing God, he points out
that “ignorance of God --ignorance both of his ways and of
the practice of communion with him-- lies at the root of
much of the church’s weakness today.” And just how
sure can anyone be that he or she "knows God" ? While it
can be maintained that the Bible is a prime source of
revelation, it cannot be maintained that it is only
Pure Revelation since, clearly, the text was written by
fallible human beings. The various mistakes in the text in
various places --for instance historical inaccuracies in
Daniel or the inconsistent lists of disciples in the
Gospels-- also tell us that flaws of the writers are
often in play. And then there are conceptual issues.
Clearly, for example, there are at least two very
different strands in the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament,
between the worldview of books like Ecclesiastes and
Esther and Jonah, for example, and Deuteronomy and
Jeremiah. Moreover, beliefs notwithstanding, we are given
conceptions of God in the Bible. The reality
of God, or your choice in characterizing the nature of the
divine however you think of him or her or the Unknowable
Ultimate, is another matter, and maybe the best the Bible
can give us, even if it really is the best available,
necessarily won't be the final word. That is, it is
simplistic to the point of arrogance to claim that "you"
--anyone-- knows God in an "all-questions-answered"
sense. That is not possible for any of us. Hence the
problem is one of the inescapable need to
muddle through , somehow, despite large areas of
ignorance in our understanding. Far from being a side
issue, the agnostic critique of religious faith is
absolutely fundamental. The ignorance to which
Packer refers is first and foremost theological. To some,
the term theology evokes images of scholasticism and ivory
tower elitism with little practical use. However, the
science What "science" ? Where are the testable
hypotheses ? Where is the empirical evidence as the word
"empirical" is understood by scientists ? As close to a
science as we can find is in the writings of Thomas
Aquinas, but even that is more of a philosophy based on
deductive logic that anything else. This kind of loose use
of an important word with serious meaning really
compromises language, and does so in a dishonest way.
Theology is a form of philosophy if you want a
more-or-less valid comparison. of theology is simply the
organized and systematic study of God. Every Christian is
called to know God and if we deny that responsibility then
we deny what it means to be Christian. Therefore every
Christian is to be a theologian in the strictest sense of
the word. Utterly pretentious.
DRB: You are tempting me to fire up the soft-copy version of The
Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, When Skeptics Ask, and
When Critics Ask. With these annotations, do you ascribe to
Christianity at all? If so, why? I don't really like asking those
questions. I struggle to maintain status at amateur theologian.
Professional Theologians from various seminaries vary in quality, so
I'm not going to guess what Packer (or this author) means. Yes, it
does sound pretentious.
I think many in the American church know God in the same
way they know the president --they know some facts about
him, where he lives, what he does, and so on --but they
do not have a relational knowledge of the actual person
who is president. This could be described as a cultural
theology. A biblical theology is more akin to the
relationship between a child and a good parent. The child
in this sense has a much more intimate knowledge that,
through time and maturation, transmits the character and
expectations of the parent. Experience only confirms this
knowledge, producing trust, which in turn fosters
obedience. This may well be one way to look at
the issue, but what says this is the only way to do so ?
Nothing. After all, the Bible itself sometimes says
that it is best to regard God as a friend. And that is
not the same as a parent-child relationship. Sometimes
it says that what we should be doing, which is
emphasized by Paul, is thinking deeply and as
objectively-- as truthfully-- as possible about higher
things and hard questions, which, of course, is also a
message in the book of Job. Then there is Song of Songs
in which the love between a man and woman is how we
should think about "theology." To base one's
understanding of theology on a parent-child metaphor to
the presumed exclusion of other ways of thinking is,
quite simply, absurd. Others may take
seriously the study of the president and his office, its
history, legal powers, and so forth, but this is only
theoretical since this knowledge exists apart from any
relationship with the person who is president. For many,
this is their approach to theology; it is only theoretical
knowledge that often serves to “puff up” and make people
intellectually proud. In the end, they may be more
enamored with the office of the president than they are
the person of the presidency.
DRB: Well, if one puts any stock into the Lord's Prayer, it starts
out with "Our Father." So why not a parent? I don't know why you are
allergic to the term.
A proper biblical theology that every follower of Christ
should pursue is one that seeks to know the character,
nature, and will of God as revealed in Scripture so that
they may live in a way that pleases him. Are we
to believe that this is a simple matter ? That this is
an open-and-shut case ?It would be nice if it was, but
how can anyone who is realistic take that kind
of outlook ? The world is a complicated place and life
is hardly a walk in the park. There are trials and
tribulations everywhere even if, now and then, islands
of peace and tranquility may exist somehow. Besides,
try as anyone might, the testimony of "the" Bible is
sometimes difficult to discern. This is because, or
partly because, the book is a library of texts by
different writers. How do you reconcile the view of God
in Ezra or Nehemiah with the views in Proverbs or the
Gospel of John or the Apocalypse ? A simple assertion
that they all say the same thing is an evasion when you
get down to it. There are consistencies to be found, but
they may require a good deal of serious questioning to
discover and, even then, some major problem may remain
that defy solution --at least if you are honest about
where you may have gotten to in your spiritual journey.
There is a practicality to theology that
produces relevant wisdom for living in the real world.
Some refer to this as the Christian worldview, which is
really only another way of referring to a coherent
biblical theology ; it functions less
as a set of academic facts than as an analytical framework
for living properly. How can one successfully live in the
world without knowing about the one who made and continues
to govern that world?
DRB: Packer, while Church of England all the way, is also a
Calvinist. Don't know about Craven. (Never heard of him before this
article.) If one follows Calvin, for instance, certain texts are
often bent beyond recognition as the Calvinist tries mightily (in
some instances) to justify limited atonement or irresistible grace.
This seems to be the majority view with lots of Baptists and
Presbyterian evangelicals holding to it. I think that they are
building their theology backwards, but they tend not to listen to
me. The battle is always about Biblical interpretation. While the
Calvinists build a "sound" biblical system, if some of their
fundamental assumptions are wrong, then the whole thing collapses.
They can't have that, so they make up for their lack of clear
statements from the Bible of their tenets with condescension and
derision.
In John 17 : 3, Jesus provides the best
definition of theology --he equates knowledge of God with
eternal life. Here, eternal life is not merely a reference
to our experience after death, but a life lived now that
is qualitatively different from our former lives and the
lives of those around us. In other words, the greater our
knowledge of God, the more abundant is our experience of
life in Christ. This is an unobjectionable and
even inspirational statement. Yet this is not to say
that it is definitive. After all, John 17 : 3 is
followed by 17 : 4, and there are many other related
texts in the Bible. Verse 4, for instance, tells us that
the work we do, presumably our chosen profession, is
important in our understanding of spiritual things. Or,
in an alternative reading, God gives each of us a
mission on Earth and we derive deep meaning from all the
tasks that a mission requires, not as hurdles to jump
over but as opportunities to learn and grow. Maybe think
of this as each of us having our own "labors of
Hercules" to accomplish, including --at least by way of
metaphor-- cleaning piles of horse manure in the Augian
stables. Another perspective is found in Wisdom of
Solomon where it is the story of the Shekinah that is
crucial, she who was with the Lord from the beginning,
his companion and the source of wisdom for all mankind.
In other words, personally I sometimes get rather
annoyed by a tendency among a class of Evangelicals who
insist that everything must be reduced to the most
simplistic understanding anyone can think of, and that
--and nothing else-- is the essence of Christian
faith.
DRB: If you are going to decry simplicity, then I suppose that you
are in favor of complexity. No? I think that people have been adding
their own restrictions to the requirements for being or becoming a
Christian in order to make it difficult to get their "badge of
approval."
In recent weeks I have tried to offer critical analysis
and a thoughtful response to Christendom’s collapse and
the lingering influence of the Constantinian system. Many
were challenged and responded with recognition that these
are relevant and serious questions that must be considered
if we seek to recover a biblical understanding of the
gospel and the mission of the church. Others however
responded in ways that reveal a lack of reliance upon
proper theology A "proper theology" as defined
Craven is not serious theology at all. It is a species
of apologetics, a sub-field of rhetoric. And this
is extolled as good "theology" ? What a
mischaracterization. and instead rely on
emotional impulse or culturally induced ways of thinking,
which they attempt to validate by use of selected proof
texts.The proof text approach is nowhere more
evident than in Craven's writing.
DRB: Well, that's what a Calvinist DOES.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
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