1: Danger! Theologian at Work: What These Chapters Are Meant to Do
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DANGER!
THEOLOGIAN AT WORK
What These Chapters Are Meant to Do
A favorite picture book for three-year-olds, I Am a Bunny, looks at life from a rabbit’s point of view. On that basis, this book could well be called I Am a Theologian. Such a title would sound conceited, elitist, and stuffy to the last degree. Like a lead balloon, it would sink the book and its author straight into oblivion. Yet, as a declaration of commitment rather than a claim to competence, it would not be wholly unfit. My goal is to pinpoint some problems that a theologian cannot help but see and to fulfill in relation to them, as best I can, the theologian’s proper and distinctive role.
What is that? Well, what is theology? (Always begin at the beginning!) Theology is one of those terms (there are not too many of them) whose meaning is clear from its derivation. Theology comes from two Greek words, theos (God) and logos (discourse, speech, line of argument), and means simply God-talk or, more fully, thoughts about God expressed in statements about God. God-thoughts are only right when they square with God’s own thoughts about himself; theology becomes good only when we let God’s revealed truth—that is, Bible teaching— penetrate our minds. So theology is an exercise of listening before it is one of talking. It is the attempt to hear what the Westminster Confession I.x calls “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” and then to apply what Scripture says to correct and direct our lives. We bring our doubts and questions to the Bible’s teaching for resolution, and we allow God in and through that same teaching to question us about the way we think and live. The name of theologian is given to those who help with this process.
There is a sense in which every Christian is a theologian. Simply by speaking of God, whatever you say, you become a theologian, just as by hitting the keys you become a pianist, whatever it sounds like. (My twenty-three-month-old grandson was fulfilling the role of pianist even as I wrote the first draft.) The question then is whether you are good or bad at what you are doing. But as in secular speech the word pianist is normally kept for competent performers, so in Christian speech the word theologian is kept for those who in some sense specialize in the study of God’s truth.
What use are such people? Is there a particular job that we should look to them to do for us? Yes, there is. By the lake in a resort I know stands a building grandly labeled Environmental Control Center. It is the sewage plant, there to ensure that nothing fouls the water; its staff is comprised of water engineers and sewage specialists. Think of theologians as the church’s sewage specialists. Their role is to detect and eliminate intellectual pollution and to ensure, so far as man can, that God’s life-giving truth flows pure and unpoisoned into Christian hearts.
Their calling obliges them to act as the church’s water engineers, seeking by their preaching, teaching, and biblical exposition to make the flow of truth strong and steady; but it is particularly as disposers of spiritual sewage that I want to portray them. They are to test the water and filter out anything that confuses minds, corrupts judgments, and distorts the way that Christians view their own lives. If they see Christians astray, they must haul them back on track; if they see them dithering, they must give them certainty; if they find them confused, they must straighten them out. That is why this book might be called I Am a Theologian, for this is precisely what I am attempting to do.
The chapters that follow deal with some crucial questions about which Christians often feel hesitant and uncertain. These questions all have a directly personal twist. What is God up to in his world, bewildering and agonizing as it so often proves to be? Who is entitled to claim his acquaintance? What will holiness require of me? How will God guide me? Will he guide me at all? Is there such a thing as divine healing? What should I expect from God when I am sick or when I feel broken into little pieces? How should I react to my own reactions to things, and to the present condition of the church? These are some of the questions on which I add my mite to the treasury of Christian discussion. They are important questions that often receive wrong answers, and I want to say what I can about them.
MAP MAKING
What should a theologian do when facing questions of this sort? Picture it thus: He should make a map of each problematical life situation, with all the human factors involved, and then superimpose all the relevant biblical teachings and Bible-based considerations. The scale of the map will need to be fairly large. The map is to be used when walking cross-country, so correctness of detail is important.
The Christian life is cross-country travel all the way, with hedges and ditches, ups and downs, rough places and smooth places, deserts and swamps. There are storms and fogs periodically punctuating the sunshine. The purpose of the map is to enable the walker to find his way at all times, whatever the terrain and whatever the weather. With a good map he will recognize the terrain around him, relate the features he observes to the larger landscape, and see at each stage where he should go. Theology’s proper goal is to equip the disciples of Jesus Christ for obedience. The maps theologians draw are meant, not simply to be possessed as so much intellectual wealth, but rather to be used for the believer’s route-finding in his personal pilgrimage of following his Lord.
Technicalities (sometimes unavoidable in theology, as in any field of scientific study) will be pursued only for the sake of simplicity. Simplicity of principle, once it is achieved, makes for straightforwardness of practice. The best theological maps are clear and have seven basic qualities.
First, they are accurate in their presentation of material, both human and biblical. Nothing can compensate for failure here.
Second, they are God-centered, recognizing divine sovereignty at the heart of everything and showing God’s control of problematical events, both actual and imaginable.
Third, they are doxological, giving God glory for his glorious achievements in creation, providence, and grace, and encouraging a spirit of joyous, trustful worship and adoration in all circumstances.
Fourth, they are future-oriented, for Christianity is a religion of hope. Often the only sense theology can make of present trends, conditions, and behavior patterns, as they both mark society and touch individuals, is to diagnose them as fruits of sin and hold forth the promise that God will one day wipe them out and unveil something better.
Fifth, they are Christ-related in two ways. On the one hand, they proclaim the centrality of Jesus our mediator, prophet, priest, and king, in all God’s present dealings with, and future plans for, the human race. On the other hand, they reformulate our notional perplexities by turning them into practical issues of faithfully following the Savior whom we love along the path of self-denial and cross-bearing, according to his own explicit call (see Luke 9:23). They show us how to walk patiently with him through experiences that defeat our minds and feel like death, into the experienced reality of personal internal resurrection. This is the biblical way to live the Christian life, and good theological maps lead us right into it.
Sixth, such maps are church-centered. The New Testament presents the church as central in God’s plan. Christians are not meant to journey through life in isolation but in company with fellow believers, supporting them and being supported by them.
Seventh, good theological maps are freedom-focused. They are tuned in to the decision-making processes of authentically Christian men and women—that is, people who know themselves to be free from the law as a system of salvation, yet desire to live by it, first, out of love for their Lord who wills this; second, out of love for the law itself, which now delights them with its vision of righteousness; and third, out of self-love, since they know that there is no real happiness for them either here or hereafter without holiness. Freedom from what restricts and enslaves is the negative aspect of freedom for the fulfillment and contentment that constitute true happiness, and it is this positive reality of holy, happy freedom in Christ that theology must always seek to promote.
Good theology constantly calls for deliberate, responsible decisions about how we are going to live, and it never forgets that Christian decisions are commitments to action on principle (not out of mindless conformity), undertaken in freedom (not from external pressure or bullying), and motivated primarily by love of God and of justice (not by fear). Good theology thus molds Christian character, neither demeaning nor diminishing us but rather enhancing our God-given dignity.
Is theology dangerous, as my title for this chapter might seem to suggest? Not in itself, unless it is done on false principles—but dangers certainly exist for those who take theology seriously, though the dangers are greater for those who don’t. Neglect theology, and sooner or later, however well-intentioned you are, you will make big practical blunders that you may never recognize as blunders. The outcome will be sad, perhaps the saddest imaginable.
Attend to theology, however, and you will find yourself lured toward the Pharisaic downfall of the arrogant know-all who tells others what to do while forgetting that he needs to do the same himself. Those who work hard theologizing, whether as professionals or from general interest, have to battle these twin temptations. The first is to see themselves as superior Christians because they know more than others, and the second is to exempt themselves from obligations that bind others, as if their expertise puts them in a class by themselves to which ordinary rules do not apply.
Every member of our fallen race is tempted to indulge pride in some form, for pride is of the essence of our heritage of original sin; and this is the recurring form in which would-be theologians, clergy and layfolk, academics and pastors alike, have to encounter that temptation. God’s ideal for us, however, is that we should always think and speak and live in the manner shown in the previous paragraphs, and humble honesty in seeking to conform to that ideal is the only godly way for any of us to go. Theological discussion of questions involved in knowing God’s plans for us must always seek to point us along that road.
There is no denying that many theological treatments of problem areas fail to measure up to these criteria. Authoritarianism within the church, secularism from outside, and a restless Athenian cast of mind in universities and seminaries have constantly combined to contaminate theology, both past and present. But that need not concern us now. I have written this chapter only so that you will know the standards to which I am trying to work. I may well fail; you shall be the judge of that. But if I do, please remember that, like the pianist whom the wild Westerners in a certain famous cartoon planned to shoot, I am doing my best.
The foregoing paragraphs were drafted in 1987, and it is now 2001. I am often asked whether over the years I have changed my mind about anything in Christianity. The answer is no, at least not consciously; if there is a difference, it is in the way I respond to positions that deviate from my own. The Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, when asked how aging had affected his playing, replied: “The fingers grow wiser.” I hope something like that might be said of the items in this book, carefully reviewed and sometimes enlarged, that have appeared before.
Now let us move on.