Thoughts on “Doing” Theology

When wanting to grow as a Christian, we have several areas from which to choose. We can choose to be better dedicated to prayer. We can choose to be better dedicated to worship. We can choose to be better dedicated to service. Or, we can, as I think most persons wishing to “be” better Christians do, attempt to be more knowledgeable in our theology. However, this enterprise can be difficult. Where do we begin? More often than not, people become bogged down in Scripture as soon as they begin. I think our want to be more knowledgeable is a noble endeavor. We could, because of this danger of paralysis, wish to avoid deeper understanding and revert to growing in the other areas mentioned just above, but, then again, all those areas above are better practiced with deeper understanding of theology, of what God expects of us when we pray, worship, and serve.

When doing theology, orthodox Christians have, since the beginning of the church, relied on Scripture as a primary source, but why? If we are going to do good theology, the Bible gives us a firm, unchanging place to turn, but why don't Christians use any other means of doing theology, or do they? 

We have to start somewhere, and when it comes to theology, many wish to start with the Bible, and, while this might be appropriate, do we ever ask what gives the Bible the right to establish what we believe about reality? In other words, where did we start before we came to the conclusion that the Bible is the place to start? How did we decide that the Bible has something to teach? We do not simply read a piece of paper that says, “This document is true,” and automatically believe it, do we?

Moreover, while many naysayers attempt to caricature the Scripture by suggesting that it somehow makes such claims, they would be mistaken. While many a person has come to Christ because of something that they read in Scripture, was that the whole of the experience? Were the words in the Text so moving that   the would-be believer decided to stake his or her whole life on what it says? If so, what do we make of the text that says a natural man cannot understand the Spiritual on his or her own (I Corinthians 2:14). Such faith in the Bible seems to be antithetical to the claims of the Bible. Paul tells us in I Corinthians that something else must be involved in our coming to truly accept Scripture as such.

While there are certainly areas in which the Scripture hints to its own validity, it is most often not concerned with such discourse. It simply does not spend an exorbitant amount of time defending its self.  It instead most often assumes its own authority as the Word of God, and leaves it up to the reader to sort out if he or she will accept it. Put another way, the Bible grew up amongst a people who already assumed that sacred Scripture could and would be produced, so it did not spend much of its time defending the reality of such a thing as “sacred Scripture.” Do not misunderstand. I am not suggesting that the Bible is undefended, that there is no way to ask the question, "How is the Bible an authority." Unlike many people today who simply rely on certain statements of Scripture, the Bible did not find its ultimate authority in its self, but assumed another, bestowed authority.

Again, this is not to say it does not have authority, but the authority is simply more than the Bible assuring you that it is true. The Bible has a stronger hand than that.

There are various ways in which we might try and test the Scriptures in order to see if they are true. We can perhaps test the validity of its truth claims, if we know what sort of truths the Scriptures are trying to present, which seems to be a growing issue in the world of Bible reading. Asking the wrong questions of the right text is not very helpful, and there are, much to our chagrin, many areas of human curiosity that the Scriptures do not wish to explore. We will perhaps be discussing the sorts of questions that should and should not be asked throughout our discussion on the blog. At least I hope to return to this at some future time.

We might also wish to test the validity of Scripture by seeing how well it matches with our own logic, but, no matter how educated we find ourselves to be, one preliminary class in logic proves that we, on our own, without much training, are not always very good at being logical, and, if we for a moment, simply assume there to be a higher being that is revealing Himself to us through these words in this ancient text, we must realize that there will be a learning curve.

We might also wish to see how Scripture has been used to impact the world, but, again, since humans are involved, Scripture is often mixed with other agendas to produce less than helpful events of history, and we tend to fixate on those events rather than the quite miraculous and world altering events that occur all the time from rightly practiced belief.

Again, unless we are simply studying Scripture as a purely intellectual pursuit, without the want of allowing such a study to be transformative, we must establish its authority, what gives it right to tell us to live the way it says we should. Of course, there are “theologians” out there that do not believe the Bible says anything really true about reality, truth, or a being called “God.” They are theologians in the sense that they are interested, for whatever reason, to know what a particular ancient group (or groups) of people, namely the ancient Hebrews and the Early Church Cult, thought about reality, and how they used a construct known as God to describe their ideal. But, this is not the sort of theology that means much.

While intellectual examination of Scripture might be stimulating, such reading is not the intended purpose of the Scriptures. Whatever is true about reality, the authors of Scripture obviously believed that they were speaking about a real being known as “God” and a real history revealed by the same God. Moreover, they believed they were writing with authority to tell people about how life is and how it should be. Again, the scholar might not have a problem with this. They might simply wish to say that their pursuit is meaningful even if they are not reading Scripture as the author(s) intended, because its intent is based in less than intellectual reason, according to these "theologians." Humans can be wrong, and yet, they can be very interesting indeed.

The assumptions of these thinkers brings me to my main point of this article. Unless we give the Scripture the benefit of the doubt and test it claims in the ways in which it urges us to test them, we have no right to conclude, as the liberal theologian does, that they are really not authoritative at all. In other words, one of the most important and practical ways of doing theology is by doing what has been called Experimental of Experiential Theology. I will explain this term shortly. First I must finish my thoughts on liberal theology, which has it own methodology it will suggest we should use to test Scripture.

The series of thoughts we will explore over the course of time assumes Scripture to be authoritative and transformative. The real tragedy of the liberal theologian is that he or she will not allow one's self to test the claims of Scripture as the Scripture has asked the claims to be tested. Instead, they rely on their own rationalism to inform them that there is no real reason to test the Scriptures as intended, namely by faith, and they ironically miss out on its blessings for the same reasons they accuse the authors for being wrong, human error.

These scholars have at least one thing correct: Humans can be wrong. So, as we search for reasons by which we come to affirm Scripture, our main proof cannot be based on human credibility. As we search for reasons why we believe the Scriptures to be credible, we might run into several reasons based in human authority. We might respect the authority of great thinkers, of parents, of grandparents, aunts or uncles, and so on. But, again, as the liberal theologian has pointed out (and demonstrated) humans can be wrong. Again, if Biblical authority exists, but it does not simply exist in the Bible's own words or in the humans that preach these words, where do we find its authority?

Before I discontinue this talk of “human authority,” please do not misunderstand. I do believe that humans can be quite credible, and we can rely on honest, well researched, and well-intentioned people, but, as an ultimate authority, as a primary authority, we cannot be satisfied with placing all our eggs in the human authority basket. I actually feel discouraged for those who have a worldview that only have humans as the highest authority, but I digress.

While we have discussed several ways in which we can test theology, this author will argue that perhaps the most beneficial means by which we may test the theology of Scripture is to live out of its theology. We must take a leap of faith to be fully engaged in Scripture, but so many people want the Scripture to prove itself before they have faith. What sort of faith is that? Scripture is full of divine bidding, full of invitation to join God. It is in this submission that God is best understood. This seems to be the surest way to understand for one’s self whether or not Scripture is true. This is not as simple as following the Ten Commandments or the golden rule. The bidding of Scripture is to submit to God, which, I think, reveals the real authority of Scripture, which is the question we have been asking.

So, back to our opening question: What gives the Bible the right to tell us about Truth? On what authority does it make its claims? As a people of the book, we might feel justified in saying, “Well, the Bible teaches…” And for us, such a claim has meaning. But, this cannot rightly be our answer when discussing the Bible’s own truth. We cannot reason that the Bible is true because the Bible says so, and if we all think hard enough, we should see that, while the Bible might have been the tool to open our eyes to Truth, it was not the reason we accepted the truth as such. It was a means of a greater authority.

The Bible is authoritative because of its being given authority by its divine author. In other words, when we read the Bible, there is something outside the Bible witnessing to our being that the Bible has authority. That witness, according to Orthodox Christianity, is the author Himself. Not only do we who call ourselves Christians feel as if God is speaking to us when we consider the validity of the Bible, the Bible itself points to God as the ultimate authority. In many ways, this is the whole intent of Scripture (not to be too monolithic about the issue). If the Bible asks us to look outside of the pages itself and to that which the pages point, namely God, then we should at least, if we are going to take the study of theology seriously, give the Scripture the benefit of the doubt and lean into His authority.

The reader might find him or her self frustrated about now. You might be saying, "You say that the Bible's authority is of God, but we only know of God through the Bible." This is not entirely true, but let's assume it is. The whole reason that you have stayed this long with me, if you are frustrated, is because you know the Bible is at least worth considering. Otherwise, you would have stopped reading by now. Why do you feel this way? Perhaps you were raised in the church and it is latent, ingrained prejudice. Perhaps. Perhaps, you were moved once, and want to see if that was simply emotion or something real. Perhaps. Whatever the reason, you are asking along with me, "Could the Bible be true?" The Bible then would respond: "Test and see." In other words, God urges us to live in Scripture in order to find Him. If you are not willing to do it His way, you will never know. In other words, when we read the Bible and ask, "Who is speaking here?" The Bible answers, "God is speaking." God says, "This is my word." We respond, "How can I be sure?" and God, through scripture, answers: "Walk with me." Have you never had such a conversation before. I think they happen all the time. We do not take strangers word on face value. We sit and listen. We apply, and we see. 

In conclusion, while we have options as to where we might start in affirming theology's place in our lives, it seems that the surest place to start is actually outside of our biggest theological source, the Bible. This is not to threaten the Bible in any way, but is to lend the utmost credence to its place in God’s great plan. It is our rulebook, not because it is a collection of human thoughts about God, but because God, the ultimate authority, has given us Scripture as our guide. But, here is the rub. While God is the authority of the Bible, He makes His appeal through the Bible. This seems to stick us back into square one with circular reasoning, that is unless we affirm that perhaps God is active in our lives. As strange and as nonacademic as it might sound, most of us find ourselves believing the Bible, not simply because grandma and grandpa, mom and dad, preacher Bob, or sister Suzie said they liked it and recommend it. Instead, we feel urging. On its own, the urging might not be enough, but once we are urged, we then begin to test the Scriptures in our own lives. This is very unappealing to many who wish for “proof before taking a leap of faith.” But the God of Scripture asks for us to walk with Him.

God is not in the business of acquiescing to our wants. While we might wish to accept the Bible’s authority if and only if it measures up to a litany of human testing, God does not allow for such. Instead, God’s invitation to live out of truth requires that we, to obtain the full experience of theology, must live in it through submission to Him. In other words, in order to truly understand the power of Truth, we must live under His authority. Through this, we not only study biblical theology, but we live out of biblical theology.  The unwilling scholar will read truth his or her whole life, and they might even test the claims in scientific or historical ways, and while much fruit might be produced (and God might speak His grace through this process), if they are unbending to allow God to touch the heart, the Truth of Scripture, the Personal and Loving Trinity, will never be experienced in a lasting way.

In short, the best way to “do” theology, is to actually “do” the bidding of theology. Experiential Theology is one of many lens by which we do theology. These lens are not mutually exclusive, but have different weights, and we must decide how we are going to approach the Scriptures with all our various means of study. We will talk of these lenses more in the next few posts. For now, I am simply arguing that the surest way to do theology so that it actually impacts your life, is to submit to theology and do what they Bible bids us do, follow God.