Christian Theology: The Basics

Murray Rae

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317548393
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Christian Theology: The Basics is a concise introduction to the nature, tasks and central concerns of theology – the study of God within the Christian tradition. Providing a broad overview of the story that Christianity tells us about our human situation before God, this book will also seek to provide encouragement and a solid foundation for the reader's further explorations within the subject. With debates surrounding the relation between faith and reason in theology, the book opens with a consideration of the basis of theology and goes on to explore key topics including:

• The identity of Jesus and debates in Christology
• The role of the Bible in shaping theological inquiry
• The centrality of the Trinity for all forms of Christian thinking
• The promise of salvation and how it is achieved.

With suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter along with a glossary Christian Theology: The Basics, is the ideal starting point for those new to study of theology.

1

Speaking of God

The task of theology is to speak of God. That is what the word ‘theology’ means. Combining the two Greek terms Theos (God) and logos (word), theology is simply speech about God. But how is the theologian to go about this task? On what basis is it possible for human beings to say anything at all about the subject matter of theology? That is a matter of debate among theologians, but the approach taken in this book is that theology is possible only on the basis that God has spoken to humankind. God has given himself to be known, through the history of Israel, and supremely in the person of Jesus Christ. Put another way, theologians take their clues about what may be said about God from what God has revealed of himself.

There was a time, so the story goes, when a man named Abram heard a voice from the Lord saying, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed’ (Genesis 12:1–3). Thus begins a story Israel tells of its dealings with God. It is a story told by prophets and kings, shepherd boys and maidservants. It winds its way through a long history of struggle and calamity, triumph and defeat, despair and promise, until at last it comes to the man Jesus, of whom it is said, God has spoken to us now by a Son (Hebrews 1:2).

Christian theology is the thinking and speaking done in the light of this story, most especially by those who participate in it. Although the term ‘theology’ as used in this book will refer particularly to Christian theology, it will become clear that Christian theology has its roots in and remains deeply entwined with and dependent upon Israel’s theology. Jesus was an Israelite. He was born of David’s line. The God who speaks through him, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it, is the God of Abraham and Isaac, Rebecca and Naomi, Moses and Jeremiah and Ruth. To say this is to make a far-reaching theological claim not only about the nature and being of God, but also about the way theology must proceed. The God of Christian faith reveals himself to a particular people and through a particular history. We are not dealing in theology with abstract concepts, with a philosophical system, or with a spirituality developed from within the self. We are dealing with a God who involves himself in history as its Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Theology is a matter of attentiveness to what this God does. It involves attentiveness to what theologians call the divine economy.

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The ‘divine economy’ is a term used to describe all that God does in relation to the world. This activity of God is distinguished from the internal relations of Father, Son and Spirit.

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Theology as Witness

Christian theology thus begins with the recognition that God acts, that God reveals himself, that God has spoken through the prophets and, in these last days, through a Son. The letter to the Hebrews goes on to say that this Son is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and that he sustains all things by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3). We will return to these claims in chapter three when we speak in more detail about the person of Christ, but for now, it is important simply to note the form that Christian theological claims take. They are, first of all, a witness to what God has done. We see this in the testimony offered by the author of the letter to the Hebrews: ‘in these last days God has spoken through a Son’.

Drawing upon the biblical witness, the creeds of the church testify that ‘Jesus Christ, [God’s] only Son, our Lord, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried … ’ and so on. These claims offer further description of what God has done. As with all historical testimony, however, these claims, along with many others in the Bible, are infused with interpretative judgements. They attempt to explain not only what has happened, but also what these things mean. So, for example, Jesus, the Son of Mary and of Joseph, is confessed to be the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah who fulfils the promises once delivered to Israel and inaugurates the coming kingdom of God. His crucifixion and his resurrection from the dead are said to be for the forgiveness of sins. We see here, added to the witness, a confession about what these events of history mean and to what end they are directed. Theological speech, Christianly understood, ought always to have this character of witness and of confession.

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The church has occasionally formulated short statements of Christian faith that are known as ‘creeds’, from the Latin word credo, ‘I believe’. The most important of these are the Apostles’ Creed, probably written during the second century AD, and the fourth-century Nicene Creed.

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Several implications follow from this claim. Because theological speech has the character of witness, it always points beyond itself to a reality that it cannot replace. Theological speech points in the direction of the divine reality. Just as the angels, the bearers of good news, said to the women on Easter morning, ‘come and see the place where Jesus lay’ (Matthew 28:6), theological speech invites its hearers to ‘come and see’ for themselves where God is at work in the world. Theological speech cannot stand in for the reality itself. It can only gesture towards the reality of God’s self-disclosure which, in the end, must be allowed to speak for itself.

Theological Language

A second implication is that there is always a provisionality and an inadequacy about theological speech. Our language certainly cannot exhaust or encapsulate the reality of God. God may reveal himself through the language of Christian witness, but he is not tethered by it. Some readers will have detected already the inadequacy of theological speech. I have been using a personal, masculine pronoun to refer to God. This practice is appropriate insofar as it indicates that God is personal, but wholly inappropriate in its suggestion that God is male. Unfortunately, the English language does not have any personal pronouns available that are not gendered. We could use ‘it’, but that would render God an object at our disposal rather than the personal God who encounters us as subjects. I have chosen to persist, therefore, with inadequate male pronouns in order to bear witness to the personal character of God. My choice of male rather than female personal pronouns is shaped also by convention. Some, understandably, find that jarring; I acknowledge the difficulty that it causes but, in my judgement, the abandonment of personal pronouns gives away too much, while the adoption of female pronouns reads more gender, not less, into the being of God. Others in the tradition of Christian theology make a different judgement and adopt different practices. The debate highlights the inadequacy of our language about God.

Despite this inadequacy, however, the language of theological witness has succeeded again and again in engendering and nurturing faith. To what might this success be attributed? We have first to consider what faith is. Faith is a form of life lived in response to God’s action. We will be more specific in subsequent chapters about what God’s action consists in and about the form of life it calls for. For the moment, though, let us note that faith is a response to divine initiative. It is consequent upon God’s action. Insofar, then, that theological speech has succeeded again and again in engendering and nurturing faith, it must be seen as participating somehow in this divine initiative. Theological speech, we might say, is called forth and enlivened by God. This is said especially of the theological witness of Scripture. The theological claim made here is that Scripture is inspired. This does not mean that Scripture is not a human witness. We know much about the circumstances of its production and transmission, and we can see the ways it has been shaped by human interests and by human understanding, but people of faith testify that through the words of Scripture they are encountered by God; they hear the voice of God, and they are drawn to share in Scripture’s account of how and where God is at work in the world.

To inspire means to give breath, to enliven. The same root of this word in Hebrew (ruach), in Greek (pneuma) and in English is also used of the Spirit. According to biblical understanding, therefore, the words of Scripture are given life by the Spirit. Through the Spirit, God calls forth the witness of Scripture, makes eloquent the stumbling testimony of human authors and, through their testimony, gives himself to be known. It is for this reason that Scripture is regarded as the primary source of Christian theology. There are other sources too – experience, reason and the tradition of the church are those usually acknowledged – but in the approach to Christian theology taken in this book, these have a relative authority. They are subordinate to the authority of Scripture. We will shortly consider some other approaches that accord primary authority to reason, to the church and its tradition, or to experience. But first, let us consider the authority of Scripture.

The Witness of Scripture

The great Protestant Reformer John Calvin (1509–64) claimed that ‘no one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture’ (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, ch. VI.2). This is a conviction championed especially by the Protestant Reformers, but all branches of the Christian church recog-nise that theology is both enabled by and, in a certain, positive sense, constrained by Scripture. Theology is enabled by Scripture because it is in Scripture that the story is told of God’s engagement with the world, culminating in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christian theology, as has been suggested above, is the thinking done in light of that story. Theology is constrained by Scripture in the sense that the story Scripture tells provides the essential content of Christian theology. This constraint means that Christian theologians are not free, as theologians, to tell some other story that is incompatible with the story Scripture tells, but it also means that Christian theology has a definite and positive content and that theologians are not left to their own devices when they attempt to speak of God.

The ‘story’ Scripture tells is not a singular historical account of God’s engagement with the world. The various writings that are gathered together in Scripture include historical narratives, but also laws, prayers, songs, poetry, parables, proverbs and so on. Alongside and woven into the narratives about what God has said and done, we find the responses of God’s people in prayer and praise, in theological interpretation of what it all means, and in ethical reflection about what form of life is called forth and enabled by God’s action. The biblical authors were themselves theologians, observing, responding to and trying to make sense of what God is doing in the world. It is important to note that the biblical writers are not all of one mind. They share a commitment, it appears, to speak of God and God’s purposes as they have been revealed through Israel, but they do not always agree on what God requires of them. Was it necessary, for example, for Israel to maintain racial purity in order to fulfill God’s calling upon them to be his people? Ezra and Nehemiah thought it was and so advised against intermarriage with other races, but the author of Ruth clearly had another view and so tells the story of how King David, Israel’s greatest king, was the great-grandson of Ruth, a Moabite woman who had married the Israelite Boaz. Or again, at various stages of the biblical story there is a difference of opinion about whether a temple is needed in order to worship and honour God. David proposed that a temple should be built but was advised against it (2 Samuel 7:1–7). Later in the story, Solomon receives God’s blessing for his plans to build a temple. Later still, after the temple is destroyed and Israel finds itself in exile, the question is raised whether Israel can worship God in a foreign land, without the possibility of fulfilling the annual cycle of festivals and sacrifices in the temple. Jesus, who at several points in his life appears to honour the temple (e.g. Luke 2:41–49; John 2:13–17), then seems to be indifferent to its possible destruction (John 2:18–22). The need for a temple and its role within Israel’s relationship with God is a matter of ongoing debate and disagreement that extends into the New Testament.

Given the rich diversity of the biblical witness, the multiple genres employed by its authors and the searching theological enquiries that reveal contrasting points of view, the authority of Scripture must be carefully conceived. Its authority is not honoured by extracting ‘proof-texts’ to support a particular theological position. The authority of Scripture rests, rather, in the use God makes of it to communicate with his people. Reading Scripture is a discipline requiring discernment, faithfulness, wisdom, obedience. It is the discipline through which the people of God learn to be attentive to God’s voice. They are schooled in this discipline by the Lord himself, as is apparent especially in the conversation Jesus has with his disciples on the road to Emmaus following his resurrection (see Luke 24:27). Jesus’ interpretation of the Scriptures in this incident reveals an important principle for all Christian reading of Scripture. It is to be read under the guidance of God and in attentiveness to his voice. For this reason, reading Scripture as a source for theology, as a source, that is, for Christian reflection upon who God is and what God does, ought to take place in the context of prayer.

An ancient saying of the church, possibly originating with Prosper of Aquitaine, a Christian writer of the early fifth century, reads lex orandi, lex credendi. The Latin phrase, translated ‘the law of praying is the law of believing’, suggests that understanding or belief comes through prayer. As it is with theology in general, so also with the reading of Scripture: understanding depends upon God’s help. That help is sought through prayer. It is also sought through participation in the community that gathers around Scripture to partake in fellowship with the one whom Scripture calls Lord and to attend to his Word. The reading of Scripture for theological understanding is ultimately a task of the community of faith, of that community that knows itself to be addressed and equipped and commissioned by God for the tasks of worship, of witness and of faithful service. That community is called the church. It is possible to read the texts gathered together in the Bible apart from the community of faith and to treat the Bible as something other than a mode of God’s communication with his people. But in this case the reader is no longer engaged in the task of Christian theology. The authority of Scripture for theology rests in the fact that God in person speaks through it. The theologian’s task, accordingly, is to be attentive to the viva vox Dei, the living voice of God.

Tradition

The theologian does not work alone in giving attention to the voice of God. There is a community, extended across time and space, that is devoted to the same task. This community, as we have just observed, is the church. Under the headship of Christ and the guidance of the Spirit, this community has learned things about the nature and purpose of God that have an enduring value. The theologian does well, therefore, to attend not only to Scripture but also to the insight given to the church down through the ages and across the vast expanse of the church’s present life. A recent example is the contribution made to theology by Christians within the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements who have drawn attention to features of the biblical witness, particularly concerning the role of the Holy Spirit, that other branches of the church have tended to overlook. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries there has been a major shift in the location of the Christian population away from the West and towards Africa, Asia and Latin America. As the gospel is increasingly taken up and refracted through the lenses of non-Western cultures, new insights emerge into the content of Scripture. The work of theologians, and indeed of the whole church, is enriched by this expansion of insight into the biblical text.

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The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 with a dispute about key elements of Christian teaching. The theological dispute eventually led to many Christians in Western Europe leaving the Roman Catholic Church and establishing new churches that were no longer tied to Rome.

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Alongside the enrichment and insight provided through attentiveness to the wide diversity of perspectives found in the Christian church, theology is guided and enriched through attention to the long history of Christian reflection upon the biblical witness. The accumulated findings of this history of theological reflection as affirmed and taught by the church are together called the ‘tradition’. This tradition is regarded as a secondary source of authority for theological enquiry. Precisely how much authority should be accorded to tradition is, however, a matter of disagreement between various branches of the Christian church. The Roman Catholic Church places a high value on the authority of tradition and the teaching of the church and ranks the church’s interpretation of Scripture as equivalent in authority to Scripture itself. Protestant churches, on the other hand, regard the authority of tradition as subordinate to that of Scripture. Martin Luther (1483–1546), for instance, who was the prime instigator of the Protestant Reformation, argued that he would stand by his understanding of justification even though it differed from the account given by the church and that he would renounce it only if it could be shown to be in conflict with Scripture. At the Council of Trent that met from 1545–63 in response to Luther and to the Protestant Reformation more broadly, the Roman Catholic Church offered the following statement of its position:

Following, then, the examples of the orthodox Fathers, [the holy, ecumenical and general Council of Trent]...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Speaking of God
• 2. Creation and Covenant
• 3. Jesus and the Spirit
• 4. The Triune God
• 5. Salvation
• 6. Christian Hope
• 7. A New Community
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index