Theology for the Community of God

Eternal

Preface

During the last two decades, the church in North America has witnessed a renewed interest in theology. This interest has spawned a litter of new systematic theologies, as thinkers have sought to provide the intellectual resources for the Christian community as it faces the third millennium of its history. Theology for the Community of God arises out of this theological ferment.

Like many similar works, the following pages delineate the central themes of Christian doctrine in a systematic manner. Hence, after an introductory chapter, the discussion moves through the major divisions of systematic theology as it has been traditionally conceived: God (theology proper), humankind (anthropology), Christ (Christology), the Holy Spirit (pneumatology), the church (ecclesiology), and the last things (eschatology).

While sharing the common format, the book differs in certain crucial respects from other systematic theologies. One obvious difference is perspective. Every theology reflects to a certain degree the faith community which nourishes its author. Theology for the Community of God gives evidence to my location within the Baptist denomination and my participation in the broader evangelical trajectory. Consequently, the statement of systematic theology that follows is avowedly evangelical and unabashedly Baptist.

Above all, however, the book differs from recent theologies in the integrative motif—community—around which the discussion revolves. Like other statements of theology, the following chapters offer an outline of our Christian faith commitment. But my goal is to consider our faith within the context of God’s central program for creation, namely, the establishment of community. I believe this understanding of the divine purpose offers a fruitful point of departure for theological discussion, because it lies at the heart both of the biblical vision and of the longings of humankind as we move into the emerging postmodern era.

As a result of its perspective and integrative motif, Theology for the Community of God comprises a preliminary sketch of the theology called for in my earlier, more programmatic book, Revisioning Evangelical Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1993).

The agenda set forth in both books is the product of my own theological odyssey. My spiritual roots lie in the pious heritage of the Baptist parsonage in which I was raised. After experiencing a dramatic call to the gospel ministry, my educational track introduced me to the rationalist approach to theology espoused by my teachers, Gordon Lewis at Denver Seminary and Wolfhart Pannenberg in Munich. Consequently, when I began teaching in the early 1980s my approach strongly reflected the influence of my mentors, and their abiding influence is readily evident in this volume. During my first sabbatical leave (1987-88), I returned to Munich to study more closely the theology of my Doktorvater. The year marked an important milestone in my own thinking, as I discovered anew the importance of the pietist heritage in which I had been spiritually nurtured.

Since 1988, I have been seeking to integrate the rationalistic and pietistic dimensions of the Christian faith. In continuity with the training I received from my mentors, I acknowledge the crucial role of reason in the theological enterprise. At the same time, I am convinced that a personal faith commitment as nurtured in a community of faith—piety—is also significant in our attempt to understand and to pursue the constructive theological task. Thus, while theology may be an intellectual search for truth, this search must always be attached to the foundational, identity producing encounter with God in Christ. And it must issue forth in Christian living.

The book itself owes its impetus to an invitation in spring 1990 from David Dockery, then editor at Broadman Press, to write a one-volume text in systematic theology. Since then, David has returned to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, leaving the project in the capable hands of others at Broadman and Holman Publishers, especially John Landers and Steve Bond, to whom I express my gratitude. I am also indebted to Carey Theological College for providing an amiable context for my writing, as well as to the Carey support staff who have assisted me—Beverley Norgren, Heather Penner, and my teaching assistant, Jane Rowland. Finally, I thank the students and colleagues who have interacted with my ideas and challenged my thinking over the last thirteen years.

My hope is that this volume may provide a systematic context which will enhance the efforts of future students and colleagues in reflecting on our Christian faith, so that thereby the gospel may be served and, above all, that God may be glorified in the church. In short, I would hope that the following chapters might serve as a statement of theology for the community of God.

Stanley J. Grenz

Spring 1994

INTRODUCTION

The Nature and Task of Theology

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5

Every Christian is a theologian. Whether consciously or unconsciously, each person of faith embraces a belief system. And each believer, whether in a deliberate manner or merely implicitly, reflects on the content of these beliefs and their significance for Christian life.

The biblical documents themselves provide the foundation for this close connection between faith stance and theological reflection. The Scriptures encourage us to think through our beliefs in order to understand the extent to which they express our personal and corporate commitment (e.g., Matt. 22:37; 2 Cor. 10:5; 1 Pet. 3:15). When we move beyond mere haphazard reflection on faith and consciously seek to articulate our beliefs systematically, we step into the discipline called theology.

In this context the fundamental question arises: What exactly is theology? What task becomes ours when we begin to reflect systematically on faith and to seek to offer an ordered articulation of our beliefs?

The Theological Task

Basically, systematic theology is the reflection on and the ordered articulation of faith. Hence, the reality of faith itself—our commitment to the God revealed in Christ—calls forth theological reflection. Because we are a people of faith, we readily engage in theology. The theological enterprise, therefore, functions within the life of discipleship; theology can be a spiritual activity. Before engaging in this task, however, we must look more closely at the intellectual discipline itself.

The Historical Development of Theology

We begin our attempt to understand theology historically, by noting how theologians at various stages in history have viewed their task. The ways in which Christian thinkers have understood both the term and the nature of the theological enterprise have changed over the centuries of Christian history.

Developments in the Meaning of the Term The word theology does not appear in the biblical documents. Rather, ancient Greece formed the seedbed for its use. The word itself is formed from two other Greek terms, theos (God) and logos (word, teaching, study). Hence, etymologically theology means the teaching concerning God or the study of God. The Greeks used the word to refer to the sayings of the philosophers and poets about divine matters, especially when viewed within the framework of knowledge of humankind and nature.¹

Christian thinkers imported the central aspects of the Greek theological concern. Its presence is evident in Paul’s encounter with the philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:16ff.). Already in the first century Christian thinkers were theologizing in accordance with the Greek style. Even as late as the Middle Ages the Greek understanding of the theological enterprise remained influential among the theologians of the church. The early medieval thinkers understood theology as referring to the doctrine of God, which they regarded as one topic within the broader study of dogmatics or sacred doctrine (sacra doctrina).²

During the 1100s and 1200s, theology underwent a change in meaning. No longer simply the discourse concerning God, it now became the rational explication of divine revelation.³ And with the rise of the universities, the enterprise was destined to become an academic, as well as an ecclesiastical discipline.⁴ The term came to refer to a single, unified science focusing on knowledge of God. But it nevertheless remained practical (linked with Christian living), for theology retained its older character of wisdom.⁵

In eighteenth-century Germany the understanding of theology shifted again. Christian thinkers replaced the concept of a unified, practical science with the multiplicity of the theological sciences⁶ often divided into the now familiar scheme of biblical, systematic, historical, and practical theology.⁷ Thereby theology was transformed into an all-inclusive word referring to the various aspects of the study of the Bible and the church. Friedrich Schleiermacher accepted the challenge of bringing the various theological disciplines into a unity.⁸ He reorganized the several academic pursuits into a threefold curriculum division: biblical (the doctrine espoused by the various biblical authors and books), historical and systematic (the development of doctrine and the understandings of the contemporary church), and practical (the application of doctrine to church life).⁹

During this time, Christians were becoming increasingly aware that humans followed a number of separate religious traditions, each with its own belief system. Consequently, the term theology came to refer as well to the account of God in the various religions.¹⁰

Today Christians generally use theology either in the inclusive sense or in a slightly narrower manner, often interchangeable with what earlier thinkers termed dogmatics. In North America the preferred designation for the latter is systematic theology, or perhaps constructive or doctrinal theology, although these terms may not be totally interchangeable.¹¹ Whatever the term used, the theological task encompasses the intellectual reflection on faith. Theology is primarily the articulation of a specific religious belief system itself (doctrine). But it also includes reflection on the nature of believing, as well as declarations concerning the integration of commitment with personal and community life.

The Christian theologian seeks to set forth a coherent presentation of the themes of the Christian faith. Traditionally these include God (theology), humankind and the created universe (anthropology), the identity of Jesus as the Christ and the salvation he brought (Christology), the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work both in the individual and in the world (pneumatology), the church as the corporate expression of Christian faith (ecclesiology), and the consummation of God’s program for creation (eschatology).

The Need for Theology in the Church Theology as we know it developed over the centuries. Christians engage in theological reflection in response to the presence in the church of certain perceived needs, including what we may designate as polemics, catechetics, and biblical summarization.¹² These needs span the centuries. They appeared already in the early church; in one form or another they have remained important throughout history; and they continue to command attention today.

(1) Theologians carry out their work because of the need to define the Christian belief system in the context of alternatives (polemics). This intention was prominent in the early Christian centuries, as the church faced doctrinal controversies. Thinkers employed theological formulations to differentiate orthodoxy from heresy.

The polemical factor was again of special importance during the Reformation. Christians who differed over questions of faith marked out their theological positions in order to define their own particular understanding of Christianity.

In the modern era, the importance of polemics has not abated, even though its context has shifted. We are now called to delineate our faith in the midst of many competing world views and religions. In order to understand how Christian commitment can be applied to the grave problems and needs of our world, we must become clear as to the content of our message and how it differs from contemporary alternatives.

(2) The theological enterprise is also an outworking of the need to offer instruction to the people of God (catechetics). The task of teaching the faith to converts is especially important, for new believers must be instructed in the fundamentals of Christianity in order to become mature (Eph. 4:11-14).

From the beginning Christian leaders have acknowledged the importance of theology in the task of instruction. As early as the second century, the church devised elaborate summaries of doctrine as tools in teaching the many converts coming from pagan backgrounds. Since then the people of God have continually looked to theologians to assist them in fulfilling the pedagogical mandate to make disciples of all nations … teaching them ….

(3) The third impetus for the theological task arises from the need Christians have always sensed to bring the basic themes taught in the Bible into summary form (biblical summarization). In fact, this summarizing tendency is present already in the Scriptures. In the Old Testament era, the Hebrew people readily capsulized their understanding of the divine nature arising from their experience of, or encounter with, the God who addressed them (Deut. 6:4-5; 26:5-9). The New Testament likewise contains summary theological statements, especially concerning the nature of salvation and the person of Christ (1 Cor. 15:3-8; Phil. 2:6-11; 1 Tim. 3:16). Taking their cue from these biblical texts, systematic theologians have traditionally attempted to bring together in systematic fashion the major biblical themes that focus on God’s being and gracious salvation.

The understanding of theology as the summarization of biblical doctrine sports an impeccable pedigree within the history of the church. Yet since the Reformation many conservative theologians have treated this aspect as theology’s central, if not sole, function. And they have coupled the focus on biblical summarization with modern concepts of the nature of science. Just as the natural world is amenable to the scientists’ probing, they assert, so also the teaching of Scripture is objectively understandable. As a consequence of this assumption, systematic theology becomes primarily the organizing of the facts of Scripture, just as the natural sciences are the systematizing of the facts of nature. We may call this the concordance or propositionalist approach.

Contemporary proponents of the concordance understanding of theology claim the heritage of the great Protestant scholastics¹³ and the Princeton theologians of the 1800s. Following their forebears, they understand truth as propositional (consisting in a body of correct assertions) and unchanging. Consequently, propositionalists seek to emancipate theology from any one cultural context in order to produce a statement of truth that is timeless and culture-free.¹⁴ For them, the correct theology is the one which best crystallizes biblical truth into a set of universally true and applicable propositions.¹⁵

Despite its ongoing popularity among conservative thinkers, the concordance model has been vigorously challenged. Neo-orthodox thinkers were especially relentless in asserting that revelation does not disclose supernatural knowledge; it is not the unveiling of a body of propositions about God. Rather, in revelation God encounters the human person.¹⁶ In response to the neo-orthodox critique, conservatives rightly refuse to acknowledge a radical disjunction between propositional and personal revelation.¹⁷ In so doing they emphasize a fundamental insight encapsuled by propositionalism: Our faith is tied to a divine revelation that has been objectively disclosed. God has communicated truth—himself—to us.

Despite its positive contributions, the concordance understanding of theology has one decisive flaw. It does not give adequate attention to the contextual nature of theology. Theological reflection always occurs within and for a specific historical context. Consequently, all theological assertions are historically conditioned. In contrast to the assumption of propositionalists, by its very nature theology is a contextual discipline.¹⁸

The contextual nature of theology renders the concordance model incomplete. But what comprises a fuller conception of theology?

The Task of Theology and the Church The contemporary interest in narrative offers one helpful insight that points toward a more adequate understanding of theology.¹⁹ Narrative thinkers remind us that we must view theology in terms of its relationship to the story of God’s action in history. This seminal assertion carries important implications.

One ramification is that we can pursue the theological task only from within—only from the vantage point of the faith community in which we stand. But why is this the case? Why is theology by nature a discipline of the church? The connection between theology and the faith community arises from a specific understanding of how Christian identity is formed.

Narrative theologians rightly point out that the revealed truth of God, which comes to us fundamentally in the narrative of God’s actions in the world, forms the basic grammar that creates Christian identity. Truth establishes who we are—Christians, God’s children. Rather than merely being a product of our experience, as certain strands of liberalism tend to argue, in an important sense this truth of God, this retold narrative, creates our experience.²⁰ The identity-creative experience, however, is not ours as individuals in isolation. Instead our identity arises within a community—within the fellowship of God’s people in the church.

For this insight narrative theologians are indebted to recent voices within the human sciences. Thinkers in a wide variety of disciplines have attempted to move beyond the focus on the autonomous individual characteristic of the modern mentality in order to develop a more profound understanding of epistemology and identity formation. They theorize that the process of knowing and to some extent even experience of the world can only occur within a conceptual framework mediated by the social community in which a person participates. In the same way, personal identity is formed within social structures. We understand not only the world but also ourselves by means of an intricate web of traditions and beliefs. To the degree that it provides the categories or language in which we frame our questions and answers, this inherited web—this belief structure—shapes our lives. The web of belief is transmitted to us by the social group within which the ongoing process of identity formation occurs.²¹

The contemporary focus on community ties directly into the religious view of life. As Christians we assert that religious experience—an encounter with the divine—is foundational to our self-identity. According to the biblical tradition, the goal of the human-divine encounter is the establishment of a community of people who stand in covenant with God. We enter that community through our faith response to the proclamation of the salvific action of God in Christ, symbolized by baptism. Hence, the experience of encountering God together with the conceptual framework which facilitates it are mediated to us by a religious community—the church—through its symbols, narratives, and sacred documents.

The importance of the Christian community to the faith and identity of believers has important implications for our understanding of the nature of theology. Theology fulfills a role in the life of the people of God. Its purpose is ultimately practical; it is related to Christian life and practice.²² The biblical narrative forms the foundation for a conceptual framework by means of which we view ourselves and our experience of the world. Theologians function within the context of the Christian community by articulating the conceptual framework and belief structure we share.²³

Theology, then, is the task of the faith community; it is a community act. Theology is the Christian community reflecting on and articulating the faith of the people who have encountered God in God’s activity as focused in the history of Jesus of Nazareth and who therefore seek to live as the people of God in the contemporary world. Ultimately, then, the propositions of systematic theology find their source and aim in the identity and life of the community it serves. In fact, we need no other rationale to engage in the discipline than our participation in the church. And as Theodore Jennings rightly notes, theological reflection is reflection on behalf of—on behalf of a community, a tradition, a world.²⁴

The Relationship of Theology to Other Concepts

Christian theology is the reflection on and the articulation of the belief structure that gives identity to the Christian people. As an intellectual enterprise it is an academic discipline pursued within the faith community. But this raises the question concerning how theology differs from certain other activities included within the broader realm in which it is embedded. More specifically, what is its connection to the act of faith, which is foundational to Christian life, to the academic field of religious studies with which theology shares certain affinities, and to the several other intellectual disciplines which also attempt to speak about reality as a whole?

Theology and Faith If theology is reflection on faith, theology and personal faith are closely connected. Nevertheless, we must not confuse the two, for they differ in one important way.

Faith is by nature immediate. It arises out of the human encounter with the person of God in Christ, mediated by the community’s testimony to the divine revelation in Jesus. Personal faith, therefore, is our response to the call of God, which involves participation in the believing community.

Personal faith extends to all aspects of our psyche. It includes our intellect. In the faith-response we accept as true certain assertions concerning reality, and as a result we view the world in a specific way. Faith includes our will. It entails the volitional commitment of ourselves to Another—to the God revealed in Jesus Christ—and consequently we enter into a fellowship of commitment with the disciples of Jesus. And faith includes the emotions, for it is the heartfelt love for the one who saves us, which translates into affection for others.

Faith is also the focus of the theologians’ inquiry. But their questions are not the existential queries concerning the presence of faith in a believer’s heart readily asked by the church. Rather, they are the more academic questions concerning the nature and object of the believer’s commitment: What doctrines do we espouse—what assertions do we accept as helpful reflections of the nature of reality? What is the nature of personal commitment—what does it mean to commit oneself? To whom are we committing ourselves—what statements express the nature of the God who is the author and object of our faith?

In this manner, the focus of theology rests on the intellectual dimension of the faith of the believing community. Theologians view faith as a subject for discussion and reflection. Insofar as their discipline entails verbal expression, they seek to isolate the specifically intellectual aspect of faith and then to illumine, clarify, and articulate it.

The distinction between faith and theology indicates that theology is a second order endeavor²⁵ over which faith takes primacy. Theology is called forth by faith; it arises as we seek to reflect on the reality of our faith and articulate its content.

This distinction likewise reminds us that professional theologians are not necessarily persons of greater faith than other Christians. Rather, they are those whom the church (often in conjunction with the academic community) has called to employ their powers of thought in service to faith.²⁶ They are to utilize their intellectual capabilities in order to understand the nature and content of faith and the application of Christian commitment to life. Professional theologians, therefore, are vocationally servants of the church, devoting their lives to assist in the task of speaking about the faith of the people of God. Nevertheless, to the extent that all Christians share in theological reflection, all participate in the theological task.

Theology and Religious Studies The relation between theology and faith suggests that we ought not confuse theology with a related intellectual discipline—religious studies—even though both fields of inquiry focus on belief structures. Students of religion attempt to engage in a scientific observation of systems of belief. In approaching their topic, they emphasize objective and detached work. As far as possible, they seek to labor from the outside, apart from personal adherence to the belief system under observation.

While not totally devoid of such aspects of scientific study as detached work and objective observation, the theologian approaches faith within the context of the believing community. Theology presupposes a faith stance and participation in the faith community on the part of the practitioner. Consequently, theologians speak about the nature and content of faith from the perspective of personal commitment. In contrast to students of religion, theologians do not seek to free themselves totally from their own faith commitment nor from their participation in the faith community in order to engage in their discipline. Rather, they carry out their work with a sympathetic attitude toward the tradition in which they stand.

Faith, then, marks the central difference between theology and religious studies. Theoretically, anyone could engage in the study of religion, whereas the theological task is limited to participants of the tradition under scrutiny. The academic study of Christianity is not limited to adherents of that tradition, but no one can claim to be a Christian theologian without being a practicing Christian.

Theology and the Sciences The overarching task of Christian theology is to present a specifically Christian understanding of reality, one which views the world through the eyes of faith in the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. This conclusion indicates that theology has some affinity with the natural and social sciences, insofar as scholars in both disciplines formulate understandings of reality. Theologians share with scientists a common area of exploration—the universe and especially the human person. And they employ the findings of science in their work.

Despite their common subject matter, the sciences and theology part ways in intent and method. Scientists test hypotheses and draw conclusions concerning the objects of their study by means of empirical observation of the universe. Theologians, in contrast, are not limited in their task to observation of the world, for theological knowledge also moves from the acknowledgment of divine revelation. In addition, theologians go beyond scientists in that ultimately their subject is God and God’s relationship to creation. Theologians, therefore, are concerned about humankind and the cosmos—the objects of the scientists’ probing—not as mere natural phenomena, but specifically as participants in creation, that is, as related to the Creator.

Insofar as they speak of God and the totality of reality, the theologians’ endeavors overlap with those of philosophers concerned about metaphysics (the study of reality beyond the realm of the physical or of empirical observation). In fact, theologians often employ philosophical categories as a context for their assertions. But theologians differ from metaphysicians in that they address their subject matter from a vantage point within the believing community. In contrast to the philosopher, the theologian seeks to present a specifically Christian understanding of reality which views the world through the eyes of faith in the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.

Theology and Truth While theologians pull into their purview reality as a whole and seek to describe it from the viewpoint of faith, no theological system encompasses reality in its fullness. The topics the theologian studies—God, the human person, and the world as a whole—lie ultimately beyond the ability of the human intellect to grasp fully. Therefore, every theological system will have limitations. Nevertheless, the human mind can grasp something concerning reality, and therefore a theological system can to some extent represent truth.

In the task of setting forth truth, the theologian is facilitated by the use of what theorists of knowledge call models. Important to a proper understanding of the role of models in the theological enterprise is the differentiation set forth in contemporary philosophy of science between replica models and analogue models. Whereas replica models strive to reproduce the modeled reality on a smaller, more easily visualized scale, analogue models attempt to simulate the structural relationships of the reality modeled.

The model constructed by theology is of the latter type rather than the former.²⁷ Theological systems do not provide a replica, a scale model of reality. Their propositions are not univocal. Hence, no one system can claim to be an exact verbal reproduction of the nature of God or of the human person and the world in relation to God. Rather, the theologian seeks to invoke an understanding of reality by setting forth through an analogous model realities which may be mysterious, even ineffable. In this process of understanding, a systematic theology can be helpful, insofar as it is an appropriate analogue model able to assist us in grasping the profound mystery of reality. In this sense, a theological system is always a human construct.

Christian theologians focus on the significance of Jesus of Nazareth for our understanding of God, creation, and history. They seek to assist the Christian community in articulating the importance of Jesus Christ to the divine program and the significance of our faith commitment to Jesus for all human life. To this end they construct an analogue model of reality viewed from the perspective of God’s self-disclosure in Christ.

Here again we see that theology is a second-order enterprise, and its propositions are second-order statements. Theologians formulate in culturally sensitive language the world view of the community that is constituted by the human response to the story of the salvific act of God in the history of Jesus.

The second-order nature of theology does not mean that theological declarations make no ontological claims. By its very nature, the conceptual framework of a faith community contains an implicit claim to represent the truth about the world and the divine reality its members have come to know and experience. For this reason, theology necessarily entails the quest for truth. Theologians enter into conversation with other disciplines of human knowledge with the goal of setting forth a Christian world view which coheres with what we know about human experience and the world. They seek to understand the human person and the cosmos as existing in relation to the reality of God. In so doing they attempt to fashion a fuller vision of God and his purposes in the world.²⁸ However, the ontological claims implicit in theological declarations come as an outworking of the intent of the theologian to provide a model of reality.

The Ongoing Nature of the Theological Task

Theology is a contextual discipline. Theologians do not merely amplify, refine, defend, and deliver to the next generation a timeless, fixed orthodoxy. Rather, by speaking from within the community of faith, they seek to describe the act of faith, the God toward whom faith is directed, and the implications of our faith commitment in, for, and to a specific historical and cultural context.

The fundamental Christian faith commitment to the God revealed in Jesus is unchanging, of course. But the world into which we bring this confession is in flux. As a result, theologians function in a mediatorial manner. From the vantage point within the Christian tradition, they seek to assist the church in bringing the confession of faith in Jesus as the Christ into the contemporary context. They articulate this confession in the thought-forms of the culture they serve, and they seek to show the implications, relevance, and application of the Christian confession to life in that society and that historical context.

The contextual nature of the discipline, therefore, mandates the use of contemporary thought-forms in theological reflection. For this reason, the categories theologians employ are by necessity culturally and historically conditioned, and the theologian is both a child of the times and a communicator to the times. Because the context in which the church speaks the Word of God is in flux—changing through time and location—the task of theology in assisting the church in formulating and applying its confession amidst the varied and changing flow of human thought and life never comes to an end. Like the church and the societies which it serves, theology is always in via—on the way. And the theologian is a pilgrim thinker ministering on behalf of a pilgrim people.²⁹

Dangers in the Theological Enterprise

The understanding of theology charted above suggests several dangers which confront the Christian theologian. We must alert ourselves to three of these.

Substitution Among the most insidious dangers is the temptation of substitution. Theologians too readily allow personal theologizing to become a surrogate for genuine, personal faith. We dare not replace commitment to the triune God and the living Christ with our doctrines about God and Christ. And we must avoid placing confidence in our abilities to develop a theological system, rather than in the God in whose service we stand.

Substitution can also take the form of a subtle drift away from theology into religious studies. Theologians sometimes make such a thorough-going attempt at objectivity that they lose from view the faith commitment to the triune God around which their vocation centers. The end result is to reduce Christianity to the status of being one religion among others, merely an object for academic study.

Dogmatism As Christian theologians we are likewise faced with the temptation toward dogmatism. We run the risk of confusing one specific model of reality with reality itself or one theological system with truth itself, thereby canonizing a particular theological construct or a specific theologian. Because all systems are models of reality, we must maintain a stance of openness to other models, aware of the tentativeness and incompleteness of all systems. In the final analysis, theology is a human enterprise, helpful for the task of the church, to be sure, but a human construct nevertheless.

Intellectualism We must also caution ourselves against intellectualism. As Christian theologians we are tempted to see our task as ending with the construction of a theological system. In actuality, devising a system, however important this may be, is not the ultimate purpose toward which the theologian strives. Rather, we engage in reflection on faith in order that the life of the believer and of the faith community in the world might be served.

Theological reflection ought to make a difference in Christian living. Doctrinal expression is designed to help clarify the ways in which Christian commitment is to be lived. It likewise ought to motivate Christians to live in accordance with their commitment. In short, theology must overflow into ethics. Whenever our theological work stops short of this, we have failed to be obedient to our calling.

Theological Method

As theologian, the goal of our engagement in intellectual reflection on the faith commitment of the believing community is the construction of a model of reality that can foster a truly godly spirituality that translates into ethical living in the social-historical context in which we are to be the people of God. Our task is the conscious reflection—within the context in which we live and minister—on the faith commitment we share as Christians. But how exactly do we engage in this enterprise?

Crucial to the development of a helpful theology is the employment of proper sources for the theological construction and the selection of a valid and beneficial integrative motif around which we delineate our theological system. To these aspects of our theological method we must now turn.

The Sources for Theology

Theology does not arise sui generis. Nor do theologians engage in this task without the aid of resources. Rather, each theological system reflects the use of certain norms which function as the specific sources employed by the theologian in carrying out the theological mandate. There is sharp disagreement among theologians, however, as to exactly what sources lie at our disposal. We must set forth our position in this context of loss of unanimity.

The Reformation Debate Although present in the church from the early centuries of the Christian era, the dispute over theological method first became acute during the Reformation. At stake in discussions since the 1500s has been the role of the Bible vis-à-vis other theological resources.

In the Middle Ages one proposal became the standard view in Roman Catholic thinking. This method posited two wellsprings of correct doctrine. The first norm, of course, was the Bible—more specifically, the Bible as canonized by the church and interpreted by the magisterium, the church’s teaching office. The second norm was apostolic tradition as handed down through, and even augmented by, the church. These norms formed a twofold source of theological truth.

Foundational to the Protestant Reformation was a strong reaction against the medieval adherence to a twofold source of theology. Standing at the head of this shift in outlook, Martin Luther replaced the older view with a simpler, yet powerful approach focusing on sola scriptura (Scripture alone): The Scriptures are the sole primary source for theology. Later certain Calvinists, especially the English Puritans, refined Luther’s position. The Westminster Confession of Faith, which formed the apex of Puritan efforts to delineate a proper recounting of biblical doctrine, declares that the final authority in the church is the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures.³⁰

Contextualization and Experience The contextual nature of this discipline precludes any suggestion that theology is solely the construction or systematization of truth by appeal to the Bible alone. The process of contextualization requires a movement between at least two poles—the Bible as the source of the good news of God’s action in Christ and contemporary culture as the source of at least some of the categories through which the theologian expresses the biblical message. Even though Scripture must remain the primary norm for theological statements, contextualization demands that we take seriously the thought-forms and mindset of the culture in which our theologizing transpires. Only then can we explicate the biblical message in language understandable in our specific setting.

Perhaps the most erudite twentieth-century articulation of this modern two-norm approach is the well-known method of correlation proposed by Paul Tillich. His approach oscillates between the existential questions posed by philosophy and the revelatory answers set forth by theology. Through careful examination of human existence, theologians employ philosophy in order to raise the grave questions encountered by humans today. Then they draw on the symbols of divine revelation to formulate answers to the questions implied in human existence, which philosophy can discover but cannot answer. According to Tillich, the overall task of the theologian is to bring the questions and answers together in critical correlation.³¹ The answers theology presents must be derived from revelation, but they must be expressed in a form which will speak to the existential concerns of human beings. Consequently, the theologian’s goal is to articulate the answers of revelation in a manner that remains faithful to the original Christian message while being relevant to the questions asked by the modern, secular mindset.

An alternative to Tillich which has gained recognition in recent years is the so-called Wesleyan quadrilateral. Theology, its proponents assert, appeals to four sources:³² Scripture (the Bible as properly exegeted), reason (the findings of science and human reasoning), experience (individual and corporate encounters with life), and tradition (the teachings of the church throughout its history). Although seeing all four as valid, Wesleyans nevertheless tend to elevate one above the others, whether the Bible as the norming norm³³ or experience as the ultimate starting point for theological reflection.

The Wesleyan quadrilateral is not without problems. Perhaps its gravest difficulty lies in its appeal to experience as a theological norm separate from the other three. Tillich voiced a telling criticism of any method that elevates experience to normative status. Experience is not the source of theology, he argued, but the medium through which theology’s sources are received.³⁴

Rather than being its source, experience is in some sense the focus of the theological task. Theology is the reflection on faith, which as an act carrying implications for living is by its own nature experiential. Theologians utilize proper sources in order to construct an interpretive framework to assist in organizing and understanding our experience. Theology, then, is in some sense the critical reflection on Christian experience, for it seeks to account for and describe the encounter with God in accordance with specifically Christian categories.³⁵

Carrying this consideration a step farther, we could say that experience cannot form a separate source simply because we never receive experience uninterpreted. It is always filtered by an interpretive framework or world view. In fact, because there is no pure experience, the framework facilitates the reception of experiences. Hence, experience cannot serve as a source for theology separate from the world view which makes its reception possible.

Experience cannot be a proper source for theology, finally, because any appeal to an unreflective individual experience is by its own nature wholly subjective. It lacks any canon by means of which it can be judged, both as to whether it is real or imagined and as to whether it is positive or negative, good or evil. Experience also leaves open the question of universalizability: Is such an experience normative for all persons, or is it merely a private, individual phenomenon?

Because we dare not confuse our experience of God with our fellowship with God, the human encounter with God is not the only object of the theologian’s inquiry. Even though experience is not a separate norm for theology, it remains relevant to the theological enterprise.³⁶ Our experience is informative, for it helps us clarify the human relationship to God.

The Threefold Norm of Theology We conclude that, as the attempt to articulate in a specific historical-cultural context the unchanging faith commitment of the church to the God revealed in Jesus Christ, the theological task must be carried out with a view in three directions. The three sources or norms for theology are the biblical message, the theological heritage of the church, and the thought-forms of the historical-cultural context in which the contemporary people of God seek to speak, live, and act.³⁷

(1) Of primary importance to the theological task is the Bible as canonized by the church. More specifically, the primary norm for theology is the biblical message. As theologians we must look to the kergyma as inscripturated in the Bible. Because faith is our response to the God who encounters us in his historical self-disclosure, our theology must take seriously the good news as proclaimed within the context of the ancient cultures. We must look to the trajectory of the proclamation of the story of God’s salvific activity within the history of Israel, Jesus, and the infant church.

In complex prolegomena, some theologians preface their systematic-theological constructions with elaborate attempts to establish the resourcefulness of the Bible as the foundation for their dogmatic labors. To this end they argue for the divine nature of Scripture through a series of proofs, including appeals to externally verifiable miracles (such as fulfilled prophecies) and to the Bible’s own claims about itself.

All such attempts to establish the role of Scripture in theology, however, are ultimately unnecessary. In engaging in the theological task, we may simply assume the authority of the Bible on the basis of the integral relationship of theology to the faith community. Because the Bible is the universally acknowledged foundational document of the Christian church, its message functions as the central norm for the systematic articulation of the faith of that community.

Consequently, the demonstration of the divine authorship of Scripture or its status as revelation need not constitute the prolegomenon to our theology. Sufficient for launching the systematic-theological enterprise is the nature of theology itself as reflection on community faith. And sufficient for the employment of the Bible in this task is its status as the book of the community, the source of the kerygma—the gospel proclamation—in the early communities and consequently in the contemporary community.

The Bible functions in the church as the Spirit-produced document through which the Spirit continues to speak. Therefore, we will reserve for pneumatology the fuller development of our doctrine of Scripture and biblical authority. Here we need only offer several remarks concerning the conjunction between theology and revelation.

Theologians have always viewed their discipline as in some way connected to revelation. We may define revelation as the divine act of self-disclosure which makes known God’s essential nature. Ultimately, revelation stands at the eschaton, at the grand climax of human history. Nevertheless, the divine self-disclosure is a present reality, for it has appeared proleptically (in the manner of a foretaste) in human history.

Scripture is connected to God’s historical revelation. Throughout the biblical era, each succeeding generation of the people of God found themselves confronted anew with the God who discloses himself. The Bible encapsules the foundational witness to God’s self-revelation and the record of how the ancient faith communities responded to their awareness that God had acted to constitute them as his covenant people. In this way the biblical documents have functioned as the informing and forming canon for the people of God throughout the generations.

The Christian church, emerging as it did out of the older Hebrew community, was constituted by the events of the biblical narrative, especially the event of the coming of Jesus the Christ. In the New Testament documents the church preserved the memory of those grand foundational events together with the earliest responses to the revelation of God in Christ, which believers understood in the light and context of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The foundation of Christian theology lies in these paradigmatic events and their use in the community of faith as set forth in the Bible. The theologian’s task is to assist the contemporary community in its responsibility to be the believing people in the world in which they are called to proclaim and live out the message that God has appeared in Christ for the sake of the salvation of humankind. Theologians facilitate this enterprise by appeal to the faith of the early community as found in the Bible.

The narratives and assertions of the early community as inscripturated in the Bible enjoy what we may call a regulative function.³⁸ The ancient believing community provides a cultural and linguistic framework, a constellation of symbols and concepts, by means of which contemporary members understand their lives and within which they experience their world.³⁹ Theologians explore, order, and systematize these symbols and concepts into a unified whole—a conceptual framework—for the sake of the community of faith which they serve. By appeal to the biblical documents they investigate the central questions concerning faith in the contemporary world: What does it mean to be the community of those who confess faith in the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth? And how are we to verbalize and embody that confession in the contemporary context?

(2) Of secondary importance to the theological task is the flow of church history as it describes the conclusions of past theological discussions. The church has continually sought to express its faith in the God revealed in Jesus in the historical and cultural situations in which it found itself. This tradition remains significant for theologians today.

Past theological statements remain important insofar as they are instructive in our quest for a relevant theology. By reminding us of previous attempts to fulfill the theological mandate, they alert us to some of the pitfalls to avoid, and they point out some of the directions that might hold promise for our attempts to engage in the theological calling in the present.

Certain past formulations carry special significance, in that they have withstood the test of time. As classic statements of theological truth—milestones in the history of the theology of the church—these expressions have a special relevance for every age. We engage in the second-order task known as theology as members of a community of faith that spans the centuries. Because we desire to participate in the one church of Jesus Christ—that is, to retain continuity with the entire body of the people of God—we must take seriously what has become the doctrine of the church throughout the ages. This doctrine is expressed in those formulations that have gained broad acknowledgment among Christians of many generations. It is likewise couched in the great theological literature of the centuries, which we therefore can read with profit in the contemporary situation.

Of course, past creeds and confessions of faith are not binding in and of themselves.⁴⁰ They must be tested by the Scriptures and by their applicability to our cultural situation. Nevertheless, the doctrinal statements that have withstood the test of time provide insight into the content of the beliefs of the church. They are valuable, however, only as we understand them within their historical and philosophical contexts. The intent of a creed, not its specific wording, is significant for contemporary theology. As Richard Muller notes,

The history of Christian doctrine … ought not to be reduced to a list of formulae to be memorized for the sake of avoiding heresy. The issue in studying the formulae is to understand their interpretive relationship to the Christian message and the way in which they have served in particular historical contexts to convey that message and, in addition, to preserve it into the future.⁴¹

(3) Theology’s tertiary source lies in the thought-forms of contemporary culture. Theologians have repeatedly looked to the categories of society for the concepts in which to express their understanding of the Christian faith commitment.⁴² This task continues today.

Theology entails reflecting on Christian faith commitment in the world in which the church is called to live as the people of God. To fulfill this mandate—to speak in a manner understandable to contemporary society—theologians have an ongoing task of listening to culture.⁴³ Only by so doing are we able to construct theologies which can assist the church in expressing its world view in current thought-forms and in addressing current problems and outlooks. Likewise, if theology is to be truly systematic and meaningful, theologians must take into consideration the discoveries and insights of the various disciplines of human learning and seek to show the relevance of Christian faith for the human quest for truth.

Above all, however, the historical-cultural context of the faith community performs a crucial function for theology, especially in the matter that lies at the heart of theological reflection, identity formation.⁴⁴ The social community in which the people of God participate contains its own cognitive tools—language, symbols, myths, and outlooks toward the world—that facilitate identity formation and the experience of reality. The message of the action of God in Christ is concerned with the creation of a new identity, namely, the redeemed person participating in the reconciled society, enjoying fellowship with all creation and with the Creator.

In order to facilitate the church in addressing this gospel message to the perceived aspirations of people, theologians must understand the identity-forming and experience-facilitating concepts of contemporary society. We must pay attention to the forces that shape identity in culture. We must listen intently to the ways in which our culture seeks to express the human drive toward identity-in-community. Thereby we can more capably reflect on the Christian faith commitment in order to sharpen its relevancy for the contemporary setting.

In summary, then, enroute toward the fulfillment of our mandate we must keep in proper balance the norms of kerygma, heritage, and culture. Although we can discuss them in isolation from each other, within the context of the theological enterprise the three are interrelated. As theologians we express the faith of the people of God by looking to the kerygma, the heritage of the church, and the contemporary cultural situation of the faith community. Our task is to articulate the biblical faith in continuity with the theological heritage of the church and through various cultural or philosophic forms in such a way that the message of the Bible and the faith of the one people of God comes to understanding in the present.

The Integrative Motif of Theology

In addition to working from specific sources, systematic theologians often order their presentation of the Christian faith around what we may call an integrative motif. This concept serves as a systematic theology’s central organizational feature, the theme around which it is structured. Such a motif is integrative in that it focuses the issues discussed and illumines the formulations of the responses to these issues. In short, the integrative motif is the central idea that provides the thematic perspective in light of which all other theological concepts are understood and given their relative meaning or value.⁴⁵

Representative Alternatives Theological history has witnessed the devising of many integrative motifs. The great systematizer of the medieval church, Thomas Aquinas, for example, constructed his theology around the concept of the vision of God as the telos of the human person. Martin Luther’s thinking revolved around justification by faith: The fundamental human quest for right standing before God finds its answer in the divine declaration of righteousness bestowed by grace on the sinner who receives God’s provision by faith. The other great seminal theologian of the Reformation, John Calvin, focused his theological work on the glory of God: All of history and even our future eternity itself are the outworking of the decision God made before the creation of the world which in turn directs all events to the glorification of God. We could cite additional examples. John Wesley was captivated by the idea of responsible grace.⁴⁶ Friedrich Schleiermacher reflected on human religious experience. And Karl Barth centered on the nature of revelation, the self-disclosure of the triune God to the human person.

In the 1900s, thinkers proposed several possibilities. Certain fundamentalists and evangelicals looked to the dispensations of salvation history⁴⁷ or to the doctrine of Scripture as their unifying theological theme.⁴⁸ In mainline theological circles, the idea of process as derived from the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead became highly influential.⁴⁹ Among the most widely employed themes in the 1970s and 1980s was that of liberation. Originally sounded within black theology in the United States⁵⁰ and in Latin American liberation theology,⁵¹ its use quickly spread to thinkers in other groups. A related movement, feminist theology, utilizes the experience of women as the organizing principle for theological reflection.⁵² More recently, narrative theology, which emphasizes personal histories and the Bible as story, has gained attention even among conservatives.⁵³

The Kingdom of God No theme has been as widely employed since the 1800s, however, as the concept of the kingdom of God.⁵⁴ Its broad acceptance is understandable, because the concept is readily visible in theology’s foundational sources. The kingdom of God is a central theme in the synoptic Gospels, which characterize Jesus’ ministry as arising out of the expectations that developed during the Old Testament era of a coming divine reign. Throughout its history the church has employed the kingdom concept to express its understanding of the significance of Christian faith. And the theme has been used widely in contemporary theology,⁵⁵ for it offers important points of contact with the hopes of modernity.

Although a full delineation of the concept must wait until the ecclesiology section, a short definition is helpful here. The kingdom of God is that order of perfect peace, righteousness, justice, and love that God gives to the world. This gift is eschatological, for it comes in an ultimate way only at the renewal of the world consummated at Jesus’ return. But the power of the kingdom is already at work, for it breaks into the present from the future. Therefore, we can experience the kingdom in a partial yet vital manner en route to the great future day.

The most important contribution of kingdom theology is its orientation toward the future.⁵⁶ The concept of the kingdom of God reminds us that ultimately we engage in the theological task—we address theological questions—from the vantage point of the consummation of God’s activity in establishing his will and program for the world. In the chapters that follow we will seek to explore theology from this eschatological perspective. In our theological reflection, we will employ the concept of the eschatological kingdom, understood as God’s ultimate goal for creation which is both the future of the world and is partially present now.

The Community of God Despite the appropriateness of the kingdom concept, alone it is insufficient to provide the integrative motif for theology. The focus on the kingdom raises a foundational question which it cannot answer: What is the divine reign that is coming and is already present among us? What is the world like when it is transformed by the in-breaking of the kingdom? Because the concept does not embody a complete and satisfactory answer to these questions, contemporary kingdom theologies have readily been seduced by the radical individualism of the modern era.

The modern Western fascination with individualism, however, is waning, especially within the human sciences. Many thinkers are realizing that our understanding of the human phenomenon must reflect a more adequate balance between its individual and social dimensions.⁵⁷ This awareness has led to the development of a new model of the relationship between the individual and society called communalism, communitarianism, or culturalism.⁵⁸

Communalists emphasize the importance of the social unit—the community—for crucial aspects of human living. Community is integral to epistemology, for example. Central to the knowing process is a cognitive framework mediated to the individual by the community in which one participates. Similarly, community is crucial to identity formation. Our sense of personal identity develops through the telling of a personal narrative, which, communalists declare, is always embedded in the story of the communities in which we live.⁵⁹

Traditions mediated by communities, and not individuals, they argue, are the carriers of rationality. The community mediates to us the transcending story by means of which our personal narrative makes sense.

The larger community story also transmits traditions of virtue, common good, and ultimate meaning.⁶⁰ In this way, the community is crucial to the sustaining of character, virtue, and values. And it provides the necessary foundation for involvement in public discourse concerning matters of world view. Thereby the community of meaning contributes to the well-being of the broader society.

Community is important as an integrative motif for theology not only because it fits with contemporary thinking, but more importantly because it is central to the message of the Bible. From the narratives of the primordial garden which open the curtain on the biblical story to the vision of white-robed multitudes inhabiting the new earth with which it concludes, the drama of the Scriptures speaks of community. Taken as a whole the Bible asserts that God’s program is directed to the bringing into being of community in the highest sense—a reconciled people, living within a renewed creation, and enjoying the presence of their Redeemer.

The Eschatological Community In the following chapters we will add to the older motif of the kingdom of God the newer concern for community. Putting these two themes together yields as the integrative motif for our systematic theology the concept of the eschatological community.

The kingdom dimension reminds us of the biblical assumption that history is meaningful. History is directed toward a goal—the kingdom of God or the presence of the will of God throughout the earth (Matt. 6:10). The concept of community fills the idea of the kingdom of God with its proper content. When God’s rule is present—when God’s will is done—community emerges. Or viewed from the opposite direction, in the emergence of community, God’s rule is present and God’s will is accomplished. We will explore this dialectic of kingdom and community as brought together by the concept of the eschatological community of God. This concept—the eschatological community—will function as the organizing principle governing our outline of Christian theology.

The Structure of the Theological System

In keeping with the classical confessional statements such as the Apostles’ Creed, our systematic theology will follow a trinitarian structure. This approach is appropriate. As we have noted, because theology presupposes the presence of faith the theological enterprise develops from within the context of belief and the believing community. The faith presupposed by Christian theology is inherently trinitarian.

Our discussion, therefore, opens with the central doctrine of the Christian faith—God as the Trinity (theology proper). Here we explore the nature of the God whose goal is the establishment of the eschatological community. Standing in relationship with the sovereign, community-building God are God’s moral creatures. The discussion of who we are as those God has designed and destined for community forms the subject of the second part (anthropology).

Part 3 focuses on the second person of the Trinity, Jesus the Christ (Christology). In this section we reflect on what it means to confess that this man Jesus is the eternal Son whose earthly vocation was to initiate community between God and sinful humans.

In part 4 (pneumatology) the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, comes into our purview. We explore the person of the Spirit followed by his work in Scripture and his role in effecting personal salvation understood in terms of community with God and others. Parts 5 (ecclesiology) and 6 (eschatology) view the Spirit’s corporate and consummative work. In these chapters, we explore the