Tracking God

An Ecumenical Fundamental Theology

Noble

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781498271776
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book offers an introduction to some of the fundamental themes of theology. From the very beginning, however, it insists on the contribution to be found in the different Christian traditions. The reader is enabled to view these traditions as part of a common heritage. Drawing on the wealth of these understandings of what it is to be Christian can be an inspiration for those from very different church structures, and even for people who seek to understand their own spiritual journey and search for God, without identifying themselves or their journey with any particular church.A number of important theological questions are covered in the book. It starts with a look at theological method before examining the idea of divine revelation. This is followed by investigating the nature of authority and authorities in different churches and where these coincide and come into conflict. The historical and cultural contexts of theology and its roots in religious experience are also examined. Each theme has a biblical and patristic part, as well as a genuinely reciprocal discussion involving contemporary Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theologians.

1

Theology and the Problem of Method

Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going.How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’

John 14:5–6a

We must begin with the mistake and transform it into what is true. That is, we must uncover the source of the error; otherwise hearing what is true won’t help us. It cannot penetrate when something is taking its place. To convince someone of what is true, it is not enough to state it; we must find the road from error to truth. I must plunge again and again in the water of doubt.

Wittgenstein1

Those who want to pursue theology seriously are subjected to the process of which Wittgenstein talks in the introductory quotation. They have to confront the question as to whether the security that has held their faith so far is a real security, or whether it has been a crutch that must be left behind on the way to the One who is the truth and life. This process is necessary, but it is not easy. It is accompanied by doubts with which the emerging theologian must learn to deal. Immediate experiencing of faith has to be subjected to testing. The time when it felt as if God spoke through everything one encountered can appear in this process as a lost childhood paradise, now exchanged for a period of insecurity. At the same time this loss of security opens up a new stage on the journey to a deeper understanding of who God is, how God interacts with us, what truth about Godself, about the world, and about ourselves God discloses to us, what God has in mind for us, and what God asks of us. On this journey we will encounter again and again what we left behind, like clothes a child has grown out of, but from a new angle, in new forms integrating new experience and new knowledge.

We will discover en route that theology is not a language, but a plurality of languages. The people who speak them strive more or less for mutual understanding, and look for traditional connections and topicality in regard to the problems with which they are confronted by their times and society. What is the role theology plays and can play? What is its view of itself? What are its tasks, agendas, methods? What role does it play for the Christian faith and for the human quest after truth?2 We are going to focus on these questions in this opening chapter on theological methods. First, I will outline a definition of theology. Then, having elaborated it further, I concentrate on the issue of the scientific approach to theology, before finally dealing with the variety of methods that theology employs.

What is Theology?

Theology is generally understood as a science that focuses on God and religion. This simplified definition of theology is widespread, despite two substantial problems. First, in what sense is God the object of that which theology scientifically investigates? We cannot inquire into God the same way we would into a stone or bacteria, plants or animals, the human soul, or human society and its culture. In this sense God resists being treated as an object. Whenever theologians try to speak about God in terms of evidence for an object, they sooner or later find themselves acting out of their depth. What methods would they use to pin down their Creator and the Lord of the Universe, to master their Master?

However, if we attempt to escape the problem of whether it is possible to speak directly about God and say that theology is teaching about religious ideas and practices in which notions of God emerge, we face another problem. It is true that religion can be at least partially grasped historically or typologically. However, the science concerned with religion is not called theology, but religious studies. In reducing theology to the study of religion the specificity of theology is abandoned.

In this chapter I will introduce alternatives to either insisting that God alone, fathomless, other than anything we know, is the subject of theology, or to saying that God-discourse is always relative to its religious mediation, which alone is the subject of theology. I will introduce theology as an investigation of God’s traces. The focus on the traces of God will make it possible to hold on to the mystery of God through a direct as well as a mediated relationship. God’s self-revelation will be examined from the point of view of a relationship that has transformed human lives, has been witnessed and handed down in holy texts and communities of faith, and has left its marks on human history and culture, whilst also transcending all these and remaining the other that we cannot pin down and edit.

Origins of the Concept

The word “theology” comes from Greek, theologia, made up of the words theos (god) and logia (sayings). Sayings about God (gods, divinity) did not start with the beginning of Christianity, nor were they taken over exclusively from the Jewish background. Although the Jews believed in one Lord God, the Greeks also had their discourse about gods. Before the Greeks there were the Egyptians, the Sumerians, and other ancient peoples. Their discourses varied: some of them were pantheistic, others polytheistic, and still others monotheistic. The concept of theology is first found in written form in Plato’s Republic, where it signifies patterns and norms of speech about the gods, so that the true quality of divine goodness would not be lost.3 For Plato, theology works with a plurality of styles and a variety of insights. Within and through them it sought to prevent the dissemination of any belief that the gods desire war, or do harm to anyone, or participate in vices. Aristotle was the first to define theology as a divine science.4 It shares with other sciences the pursuit of wisdom, or, in Aristotle’s terms, the investigation of principles and causes. However, theology deals with universal principles and prime causes, with facts separated from matter and immovable. Even if not the most practical, it is the noblest science because it desires knowledge for its own sake.5

Biblical Greek lacks the concept of theology as such,6 but it can be found in the Church Fathers who adopted it from the Greek philosophical tradition and adjusted its meaning to the discourse about God, handed down in the Scriptures, and in what was called the regula fidei (the rule of faith), or creed (Gr. symbolon, Lat. credo). So, according to Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen, it represented the basic articles of the Christian faith, preserved and handed down by the church.

This understanding of theology then spread across the whole of church teaching and practice, which together with the Scriptures possesses the authority of the authentic tradition of the Christian faith and way of life. Talking about God is bound up with talking about people, about the world in which they live and struggle for faith, hope, and love. Theology includes its own history, as well as the cultural plurality and diversity of the environment out of which it arose. The Church Fathers further elaborate the requirements of a Christian theologian. Here we can find the need for “inner katharsis, contemplation, veneration of the divine mystery.”7 Clement of Alexandria writes: “For only to those who often approach them [the Scriptures], and have given them a trial by faith and in their whole life, will they supply the real philosophy and the true theology.”8 In the fourth century, during the ongoing struggle with Arianism, the words theologia and theologos became related to the correct understanding of the Trinity, incarnation, and redemption. However, the emphasis on the purification of life as a condition for understanding God’s revelation remains: “[A]nyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds. Thus united to them in the fellowship of life, he will both understand the things revealed to them by God and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the judgment, will receive that which is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven.”9

Theology as a Triple Critical Reflection

Theology originates in experience. In continuity with the patristic tradition, we can say that it is an experience of encounter with God, and an experience of the believing community that, with all available help, strives to hold together orthodoxy (the correct way of belief) and orthopraxis (the correct way of life). Theology reflects on that experience, and on the tradition that the experience both initiates and continually challenges. Furthermore, this reflection is critical. It means that theology not only collects data about the experiences but also examines the patterns or norms implicit in the experiences and measures them against its own accumulated principles. In the Christian tradition a special place has been given to the triad of faith, hope, and love. This triad has given a symbolic vocabulary to express people’s experiences of the anchorage of their being, of trusting that God who is with us today will be with us tomorrow, of receiving that inspire...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Theology and the Problem of Method
• Chapter 2: Revealing God
• Chapter 3: The Problem of Authority
• Chapter 4: History and Culture
• Chapter 5: Religious Experience
• Conclusion
• Bibliography