Why Theology Matters

October 23, 2008

I am sure that some of what follows is stolen word for word from someone else.  I just don’t know what.  Sorry.

I wrote the following (and the next two posts) in the space of a week to deliver to a group of Christian Union students on retreat.  As such, it is a bit hasty and is sometimes a mix of notes and prose.  Bear with me.  I think it was useful to them, and I hope it is useful to you as well.

Introduction: What is Theology?

To be certain, I have always been a bit of a misfit when it comes to theology.  Growing up in the Seattle area, as a member of a non-Christian minority faith, I felt that I needed to understand something of what I said I believed in…and maybe something as well of what my friends believed in.  As I lived in white-bread Snohomish, most of those friends were either Evangelicals or Catholics – and it was in relationship with them that I started doing my first independent and basic-level theology.  The first step was to try and get a grounding in my own faith tradition’s religious texts (of which, depending on who you ask, there are many!).  Moving from there, I explored my Catholic friend’s belief systems through catechism class and my Evangelical friend’s belief systems through concerts, Young Life, and youth groups.

We would meet regularly at Alfie’s Pizza to discuss what God was, what Christianity was, and why they thought I wasn’t a Christian.  Looking back, I am surprised at how little they knew about their own faiths.  The Catholics seemed to have a grouping of esoteric facts and figures about Popes and Saints, but save one or two, no real grounding in an *experiential* or lived-out faith.  My Evangelical friends, on the other hand, had a lot of excitement, wrist-bands, t-shirts, music-of-varying-levels-of-coolness, and a whole “Jesus is my boyfriend and we are totally going to prom” relationship lingo.  There were also several of them who were “fearless” about sharing their faith – I respected this about them.  But almost uniformly, there was a lack of knowledge – of the Bible, of broader theology, of basic self-awareness and conformity to God’s Word.

Some would say that we were not theologians, but even as 16 year olds at a pizza joint we were doing the work of theology.  We were asking the questions and answering as best as we knew how.  And that is where we start, with the question “What is Theology?”

The word Theology comes from two Greek words, theos and logos.  These respectively mean God and word, thought, or reason.  Therefore theology is the Study of God.  Theologians have defined theology more particularly as:

Thomas Aquinas - “(theology) is a unified science in which all things are treated under the aspect of God either because they are God Himself or because they refer to God.”

Charles Hodge - “The science of the facts of divine revelation so far as those facts govern the nature of God and our relation to Him.”

Paul Tillich - “The methodological explanation of the contents of the Christian faith.”

Emil Brunner - “The study of the development of dogma.”

John Frame, a current theologian, defines theology as “the application of the Word of God by persons to all areas of life.”  All of the previous definitions are true, and I believe John Frame may not be the best definition for everyone in this room – but it works for me, because the theological discipline is both an Academic and Existential challenge.  Theology should always be useful, either in directing our lives, our worldview, or our worship.

Theology is essentially the application of Scripture to life.

Who should “do” Theology?

As I alluded to previously, we all do theology.  Theology is the domain of questions such as “how should I pray?”, “should I watch this movie?”, “what kind of church should I go to?” or even “should I go to church at all?”.  Indeed, the great existential questions of “what is man”, “is there a god” are cross-disciplinary essentially theological questions.

There may be many, or even the majority, of the folks here who believe that theology is the domain of anorack-wearing nerds who spend their days on theology blogs and forums…and maybe Pastors too.  Although we usually fall into the “nerd” category as well – sorry!  Theology is not relegated to the intellectual elite, the mentally ill and socially handicapped.  Theology is not, as we have discussed, some airy-fairy discipline which spends its days discussing the number of angels on the head of a pin.  It is eminently practical.  Theology does not require a degree, or a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.  It requires a brain, and I hope you all have one of those.

If you have ever studied the Bible, prayed, thought over a sermon, put your faith in Jesus, or asked any kind of philosophical or pragmatic question – you have done theology.  The question is not whether each believer should or can do theology.  The question is whether they do good theology.

Let’s take a quick look at a few passages which speak of our need to do good theology:

Proverbs 2:1-6

Hosea 4:6, 14 (effects of bad theology)

John 8:31-32

Romans 10:2-3 (effects of bad theology)

1 Timothy 4:16

The question asked by theologian Wayne Grudem is “What is our grid for thinking about God?” and by extension life and reality.  We either have a well-formed theology (forged through an organized and prayerful study of Scripture) or we have a disorganized and random theology (pieced together by experience and tid-bits of what we like).

St. Anselm of Canterbury said that our “faith seeks understanding”.  Faith seeks maturity and deepening by means of coming to an understanding of itself.  The passages above, and even human experience demonstrate that our God wants us to know him through the study and application of his word.  It is not enough just to “be saved”.  Our command is to “grow in the knowledge” of God.

Part 1: Theology & It’s Uses

The Analogy of Relationship

Imagine that you find yourself falling in love with a beautiful boy or girl.  This is the person you have always dreamed of realized in the flesh.  You are thinking that you might even want to spend the rest of your life with them.  One night, you are discussing your love with a group of other people and whilst gushing about how wonderful this person is and how they make you feel – you explain to your friends that one of the best things about your love is that they are a cat.  You know that human-animal relationships are usually frowned upon, but you are so overcome with passion that you know it must be right.  Your friends look at you confused.  “Who is a cat?  Kelly is a cat?  What are you smoking?  Kelly is definitely a human being!  Are you into some kind of weird furry thing?  ‘cuz I really don’t want to hear about your freaky love life…”  You spend the rest of the night arguing that Kelly is a cat, with your friend arguing that Kelly is most definitely hominoid.

Unfortunately, you are wrong.  And you have a warped view of Kelly.  Kelly hears of your distorted view of them, they dump you, and you hang yourself.  Kelly wonders why you thought they were a cat.  It’s all very sad.

Christianity is primarily a religion of facts not of feelings.  Unlike other faiths who place little/no value in historical accuracy, authors such as Luke go to great lengths to provide an historical account of reality.  The apostle Paul claims that the central truth of Christianity is the bodily resurrection of Christ, an historical event, which if false makes us all fools.  Oh, and by the way, if you have trouble with the idea of a resurrection – read Bishop N.T. Wright’s book on Resurrection or his volume entitled “Surprised by Hope” (which surprisingly isn’t about Barack Obama).

J. Gresham Machen, a Presbyterian theologian in the 1920s wrote of encroaching views on Christian Orthodoxy, “Theology, or the knowledge of God, it is said, is the death of religion; we should not seek to know God, but should merely feel his presence.”

Some of you may find yourself agreeing with the sentiment of the people Machen is quoting.  After all, theological reflection and discipline is not incredibly hip in the church today.  As one commentator states, this is because “we live in a media culture; we are lazy intellectually; we fear to think anything in depth –we stay superficial.”  We live in a Facebook age.  Were it is enough that God is listed as one of our Friends…occasionally we will leave a comment for him, but we don’t visit his blog multiple times a day to digest what is writing.  We don’t actually visit him face-to-face.  Metaphors in metaphors.  I hope that you get what I am saying.

In short, we live in a church that broadly states that “Theology is unimportant” (a theological statement) or, if we are hip, that it is a “power-construct of modernity that must be deconstructed into partial narratives which are incorporated into the communal life of the church by way of story” (again, a theological statement).  Both of these statements, of course, are theological in nature and are a complete load of crap.

Scripture gives us a statement, packed with theology, that says what the basic requirement of salvation is – that one “confesses Jesus Christ is Lord”.

Does this mean that we just have to say the words and feel really good about it?  No, of course not.  There is much theology that can be unpacked from this – but looking at the rest of the NT witness this seems to encapsulate a belief that Jesus is God, and this God is the God of the Jews, that Jesus is also a man, that Jesus Christ is King over the world, that Jesus has expressed his Lordship over the world by defeating sin, and that at the cross, that Jesus’ Lordship is confirmed by his resurrection, and so forth.

If theology were irrelevant, and it was about feelings and touchy-feely pictures of lambs and unicorns – than what claim can you actually make?  It would make no difference whatsoever who Christ is or even how we are saved.  As novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, friend of Tolkien and Lewis, argued in her book Creed or Chaos, “It is the dogma that is the drama!”

Indeed, often-times my discussions with unbelievers go like this:

Me: Hello, I’m Jonathan.

Mary: Hi, I’m Mary.

Me: Hi Mary, what do you do?

Mary: Oh, I work in IT – Databases and all that.

Me: Great – I used to work in IT.

Mary: What do you do now?

Me: I’m a Presbyterian Minister.

Mary: Oh.  That’s good for you.  My feeling is that God is really a flying spaghetti monster…but whatever works for you.

I relay this to you not to belittled the imaginary Mary, but rather because I hear the same kind of crap come out of the mouths of Christians – “My God would never…” or “I believe…” which is so often followed by utterly unbiblical notions that are more informed by the popular cultural climate than by the Word of God.

The fact is that often in discussions even with Christians, I hear something much more analogous to the discussion about Kelly being or not being a cat mentioned earlier.  This is because our theological roots are not sunk into the word of God and the teaching of the church – but rather into Political Philosophy, Playstation 3, and possibly very questionable “Christian” music and media.

For instance, I could ask several of you at random to come up and recite your favorite lyrics.  We could quote movies until tomorrow…But how many of you could come up here and recite for me 2 Corinthians 5:21, a basic summary of the Christian Gospel.  Not many.  Then how many could come up and recite for me the Apostles Creed?  Possibly fewer.  And that is what the church has agreed for 1900 years is the basic summation of our Christian faith!  It is what Lewis and Chesterton refer to as that which was “understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very short time ago…”  I wouldn’t be surprised in an every-eye-closed-every-head-bowed altar call for those who don’t even know what the Apostles Creed is if we would get several hands going into the air.

The problem with “My God would never…” or “I believe God is like…” is that in making such statements we frequently commit idolatry.  We build a God who is not a God, we build a Jesus who is not a Jesus, we make Sin not Sin, and reduce the Savior to merely a motivational speaker.  In many cases, in many churches, people are worshipping themselves on Sunday – as they have made a God out of their preferences and prejudices.  That God cannot save them.  If that is your God, he cannot save you.

As one writer wrote: “It must be understood that Christianity is not primarily about having certain emotional experiences and feelings, but what one believes and their relationship with Christ.  If one is basing their joy off of false beliefs about God and spiritual matters, then the joy they are experiencing is not true joy.  Joy is based on reality, not misinformed or ignorant beliefs.”

We can believe what we want about God and ourselves.  I can believe that I am a nipple-ring, but it doesn’t make me metal, it doesn’t make me round (the burgers did that), it doesn’t make me a nipple-ring.

Theology is essential because it corrects our view of God.  Many writers speak of a “hermeneutical spiral”, where in the reading and study of God’s word – our views and our behaviors are drawn closer to that of the text, from a starting point which may have been very far away to begin with.  Man-centered religion is a “creeping force” that is never idle.  I often tell folks that if you don’t have a God who pisses you off and makes you do stuff you don’t want to do (on a regular basis) – you probably don’t know much about God.  If Jesus is just your boyfriend, you aren’t experiencing the depth of relationship that is available.

Real relationship, and our relationship with God is based on communication.  God has communicated himself to us through His Word.  We do not learn about God and His kingdom, our purpose, the nature of sin, the way to be saved by prayer – we learn them from the Bible.  We relate these facts from the Bible together through the broader practice of theology.

A Final Word

Tomorrow we will be discussing some of the “how of theology”, some of the attacks upon our study of God’s Word and application in theology, and also particularly looking at a theology of culture and its application to our life and world.  If you think I am full of it, or if you have questions you want answered in the forthcoming lectures – I want you to write them down and slip them under my door tonight.  I will try to find ways to address these in the coming lectures.  There is, of course, time for questions directly after the lecture – but you may not want to ask them right now.

So, with all of that I want to make a couple final points and reiterate others.

1.)     Theology is never an end to itself.  There is some theology which thinks that it is, but it is pretty worthless.  I’ve got some.  I can lend it to you.  I give it to my pregnant wife when she is having trouble sleeping.  Theology should always be useful, either in directing our lives, our worldview, or our worship.

2.)     This is particularly applicable to probably 2 or 3 of you.  There are always 2 or 3.  Usually you are Calvinists.  And you are complete asses.  You beat people down with your 10 verses you’ve got memorized.  You dominate and glory in being right.  You don’t love your brothers and sisters in Christ and you don’t humbly serve them.  You think that you should be a teacher when you should be a student.  Get this – you can have all five-points, the canons of dordt, and all of the books of the Bible memorized.  If you have not love, it’s all worth a hill of beans.  You need to repent.

3.)     There are probably several more of you who accuse anyone who challenges what you believe with being “divisive” or whatever.  We are going to discuss this in more depth tomorrow, but sometimes we do need to do battle with each other with Word of God.  The aim of this, however, should be that we both are brought to worship and greater subjection under the Lordship of Christ.  Christianity, and the study and application of it, has always brought division and hurt feelings.  Jesus didn’t come to unite – but to divide.  Again, we’ll discuss this more tomorrow.

4.)     We are always doing what the old theologians referred to as “pilgrim theology”.  Our personalities, our sin, our limitedness makes it impossible to have God’s own theology of himself.  Furthermore, we are all wrong.  No one has got it right perfectly.  This should not lead us to despair, but rather to reliance upon God and humility with our brothers & sisters in Christ.

5.)     We all have a grid through which we view the world, ourselves and God.  What is your grid?  Maybe it is time for you to get epistemologically self-aware.  Why do you think what you think, how you think it?

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