The Limits of Theology

I will bet you never thought I would say that! Sometimes modern western theologians are accused of being overly influenced by Greek philosophy in our theology. While certainly the church was influenced by those modes of expression, our doctrine comes from the Bible and early Christian tradition itself. The ancient Christians saw God as a great mystery. God cannot be contained or fully understood by any created being, even humans. God can be known through Divine revelation, but the entirety of God is totally incomprehensible. Theology arises from the lived experience of the Church in its journey, and derives from the Church's worship of God and life of prayer. We in the western Church assert that but put much more trust in our mind's ability to understand God. Under the influence of the precision of Roman law and the influence of Medieval Scholasticism, we have put much more stock in the ability of the intellect to understand God. We Protestants have particularly been influenced in that way. We believe that precision of theology must be achieved before worshipping together can take place. While I think most Protestant theologians would agree that certainly our worship and prayer inform our theology, our emphasis on the mind and especially on agreement to very precise doctrinal statements, has led us to the many fractures we see in the Western Church today. It is time for us to allow God to put the awe, wonder, and mystery back into our theology.

Now, so far that history lesson has been about as dry as, well, most theological statements! All Christians would agree that it is the living relationship to the triune God that makes our beliefs come alive in us. If we limit the infinite God to our understanding we have reduced God. Then we reduce salvation to some formula, whether a creedal formula or a fundamentalist principle. Not long ago a fundamentalist preacher told me that it was not enough to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, the most ancient confession of the Church, but one must also believe in the Bible literally from cover to cover to be saved. The books of the Bible are written individually and have no concept of themselves as constituting one book. The Bible treats the confession of Jesus as Lord as the saving confession. We must not add things to this when preaching salvation in Christ.

As a Protestant Christian, I affirm that the Bible is the Word of God. Catholics and Orthodox would too. But salvation is for the whole person. When we reduce it to just a mental exercise, we kill it. As a Presbyterian, and a Confessional Christian, I believe the creeds are important in guiding us, and forming us in what the Church believes and confesses. There is a place for our intellect. If Bible and creed are not influencing us, then our faith is reduced to personal or denominational opinion. Those who minimize the Bible in theology assert whatever seems good to them as truth. Those who confuse the Bible with God, or Creed with final ultimate and complete revelation, also reduce the unknowable mystery of God to words. Our intellect is part of our salvation. So are our emotions, our spirituality, and our life in the Community of Faith. We are saved as whole people in the full theology of the Church, not just as souls, or minds, or as bodies, but as whole beings.

So, the Bible is God's Word and points beyond itself to the living God. The creeds tell us what the Church has, and will continue, to believe and confess in her pilgrim journey on earth. What other Christians have believed and experienced through the ages is important. The faith is not an exercise in individual belief and opinion. As the Church worships we are lead to a collective experience with God and informed through Word and Sacrament. Through corporate and private prayer, we come into a personal and saving relationship with God, and confess the saving confession that Jesus is our Lord. Salvation is holistic, it cannot be reduced. The purpose of theology, and all that the Church does, is to bring us into a living relationship with the living Christ, to draw us into that mystery which will take us a lifetime to begin to understand, and to send us forth to serve a lost and hurting world with the Good News. We will never know God fully, but we do know from the Bible, our historic Confessions, and our own collective and lived experience, what God wants us to do. God has given us a relationship to himself, and has shown us how to serve God in this world, and enjoy God forever. This is the purpose for which we are created. Personally I am glad there is mystery in our relationship to God, it means we must grow on, it reminds us that we are created beings and human, only God is infinite. It reminds us of the grandeur of God and the reach of our faith. There are limits to theology because we cannot fully know God, but we can know our relationship to God and go forth to serve in love. Let's get to it.

In the Mystery of the Triune God,
Jim