Historical Theology as a Resource for Systematic Theology
Historical Theology: Its Purpose and Place
Historical theology is the branch of theological inquiry that aims to explore the historical development of Christian doctrines and to identify the factors that were influential in their formulation and adoption. In particular, it aims to help us understand how theology was done in the past and how this was shaped by its historical context. So often misunderstood simply as the study of the history of theology, historical theology is also about grasping how theology has been done in a specific historical context. How does this context shape the questions that are asked and the answers that are given? For example, most western medieval theologians did not have access to the original Greek text of the New Testament. How did this affect their theological reflections? What were the theological implications of Erasmus publishing the first reliable edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516? Was it an accident that this coincided with the origins of the movement we call “the Reformation?”
Historical theology therefore has direct and close links with the disciplines of church history and systematic theology, despite differing from them both. The relationship may be clarified as follows:
Theology has a history. This insight is too easily overlooked, especially by those of a more philosophical inclination. Christian theology can be regarded as an attempt to make sense of the foundational resources of faith in the light of what each day and age regards as appropriate and reasonable methods of reasoning and norms of judgment. This means that local circumstances have a major impact upon theological formulations. Christian theology regards itself as universal, in that it is concerned with the application of God’s saving action toward every period in history. Yet it is also characterized by its particularity as an experience of God’s saving work in particular cultures and is shaped by the insights and limitations of persons who were themselves seeking to live the gospel within a particular context. The universality of Christianity is thus complemented with – rather than contradicted by – its particular application.
The Development of Historical Theology
The origins of the subdiscipline of historical theology are generally agreed to lie in the sixteenth century. The Reformation witnessed an intense debate over Christian authenticity, in which the continuity between both the Protestant and Catholic reformations and the early church came to be seen as critically important. As a result, writers on both sides of the debate found that they had to become familiar with both patristic theology and the modification of these ideas in the Middle Ages. Although this study was undertaken primarily for polemical reasons, it led to the production of a large number of works of reference in this field, including editions of the works of leading patristic writers such as Augustine of Hippo. Erasmus of Rotterdam, for example, produced a highly influential edition of the writings of Jerome, an important early Christian biblical translator and theologian.
A perhaps more important development took place during the eighteenth century, with the rise of the movement known as “the history of dogma,” usually known in its German form, Dogmengeschichte. The basic assumption of this movement was that the doctrinal formulations of the church (“dogmas”), especially during the early Christian period, were heavily conditioned by the social and cultural conditions of the era. This conditioning, which could be uncovered and subjected to critical scrutiny and evaluation by historical methods, made such doctrinal formulations inappropriate for the modern church, which was obliged to develop restatements of these doctrines appropriate to the modern period. Historical research thus led to the “deconstruction” of such doctrines, allowing them to be reformulated in terms more suitable to the modern age.
This program can be seen in the writings of G. S. Steinbart (1738–1809), who argued that the Augustinian doctrine of original sin – foundational to traditional understandings of baptism and the work of Christ – was basically little more than a hangover from Augustine’s Manichaean period. It represented the intrusion of pagan ideas into Christianity and had no place in a proper Christian theology. Steinbart’s analysis, which extended to include Anselm of Canterbury’s doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ, represents a classic instance of the criticism of dogma by a critical study of its origins.
This program, extended by writers such as F. C. Baur (1792–1860) and A. B. Ritschl (1822–1889), reached its climax in the work of Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930). In his History of Dogma (which takes up seven volumes in English translation), Harnack argued that dogma was not itself a Christian notion. Rather, it arose through the expansion of Christianity from its original Palestinian background to a Hellenistic context, especially in the Greek-speaking city of Alexandria. As a result, Christian writers absorbed the Hellenistic tendency to conceptualize and used a metaphysical framework to articulate the gospel. Harnack saw the doctrine of the incarnation as perhaps the most obvious instance of the influence of Hellenism upon Christianity and argued that historical analysis opened the way for its elimination. For Harnack, the gospel was about Jesus himself and the impact that he had upon people. The shift from soteriology to the abstract metaphysical speculation of Christology is, for Harnack, an unhelpful yet reversible theological development. Harnack singled out Martin Luther as someone who attempted to eliminate metaphysics from theology and commended him as an example to posterity.
Although Harnack’s thesis of the “Hellenization” of the gospel is now regarded as somewhat overstated, the general principles that he developed are still regarded as valid. The historian of dogma can still discern areas of Christian theology in which some assumptions appear to derive from Greek metaphysics. The modern debate about whether God can suffer (which we shall explore further below) has highlighted how the classical notion of the apatheia of God seems to have become entangled in some cases with the assumptions of Greek metaphysics, rather than the Old and New Testament witness to the acts of God in history.
Harnack’s particular interest in historical theology rested on his belief that history provided a means for the correction or elimination of dogma. This “critical” function of historical theology remains important and we shall explore it in more detail presently. Yet Harnack’s massive amount of writing in this field also caused growing interest in the field of historical theology as a subject worthy of interest in its own right.
Historical Theology as a Pedagogic Tool
Many students of church history neglect the role of ideas, in order to focus on the sociological, economic, and institutional aspects of this fascinating subject. Yet we can never hope to understand some of the most important episodes in that history without at least some understanding of the ideas that so influenced the course of church history. Just as a historian of the Russian Revolution cannot ignore the ideas of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V. I. Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, so the church historian needs to understand the ideas of Athanasius, Augustine, and Luther – to name just three writers whose ideas shaped the course of church history. Historical theology acts as a major resource to those studying church history, allowing them to understand the specific nature of the ideas that affected the church at critical periods in that history.
Historical theology does not, however, merely help us to understand the past; it is a resource for theology in the present. Some theologians offer what we might call a “presentist flattening of the past,” in which the past is seen as having little importance for the present. Many critics of modernist theologians have argued that these behave as if they were the first to deal with the issue in question properly, so that all previous attempts to wrestle with the issue could be disregarded completely. Yet it is virtually impossible to do theology as if it had never been done before. There is always an element of looking over one’s shoulder, to see how things were done in the past and what answers were then given. Part of the notion of “tradition” is a willingness to take seriously the theological heritage of the past. The Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) argues that theology necessarily involves a dialogue with the past:
We cannot be in the church without taking as much responsibility for the theology of the past as for the theology of the present. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher and all the rest are not dead but living. They still speak and demand a hearing as living voices, as surely as we know that they and we belong together in the church.
It is therefore of importance to become familiar with the rich legacy of the Christian past, which provides vital reference points for the modern debate.
Historical theology thus provides an essential pedagogical resource for the contemporary statement of theology. The following points are of especial importance in this respect:
In these ways and others, historical theology acts as an important pedagogical resource for systematic theology.
Historical Theology as a Critical Tool
The study of the history of Christianity provides a powerful corrective to static views of theology. It allows us to see:
A specific example will illustrate the importance of this point and help to identify some of the factors that impact on the development of theology. Can God be said to suffer? Writers of the first major era of Christian history (often referred to as the “patristic period”) tended to answer this question in the negative. The answer that has tended to become the “new orthodoxy” since about 1945 has, however, been affirmative. So how is this difference to be explained?
The study of the history of theology suggests that Christianity can sometimes unconsciously absorb ideas and values from its cultural backdrop. Certain ideas that have often been regarded as distinctively Christian sometimes turn out to be borrowed from a secular context. The idea that God cannot suffer, or that suffering is a sign of imperfection, was well established in Greek philosophical circles. Early Christian theologians, anxious to gain respect and credibility in such networks, did not always challenge this idea rigorously. As a result, a commitment to divine impassibility became deeply embedded in the some sections of the Christian theological tradition.
The early Christian discussion of this question was deeply influenced by the idea that God is perfect. According to contemporary classical philosophy, to be perfect is to be unchanging and self-sufficient. It is therefore impossible for a perfect being to be affected or changed by anything outside itself. Furthermore, perfection was understood in very static terms within classical philosophy. If God is perfect, change in any direction is an impossibility. If God changes, it is either a move away from perfection (in which case God is no longer perfect) or toward perfection (in which case, God was not perfect in the past). Aristotle, echoing such ideas, declared that “change would be change for the worse,” and thus excluded his divine being from change and suffering.
This understanding passed into Christian theology at an early stage. Philo, a Hellenistic Jew whose writings were much admired by early Christian writers, wrote a treatise entitled Quod Deus immutabilis sit, “That God is unchangeable,” which vigorously defended the impassibility of God. Biblical passages that seemed to speak of God suffering were, he argued, to be treated as metaphors and not to be allowed their full literal weight. To allow that God changes was to deny the divine perfection. “What greater impiety could there be than to suppose that the Unchangeable changes?” asked Philo. It seemed to be an unanswerable question. For Philo, God could not be allowed to suffer or undergo anything that could be spoken of as “passion.” Anselm of Canterbury, influenced by this idea, argued that God was compassionate in terms of our experience, but not in terms of the divine being itself. The language of love and compassion is treated as purely figurative when used in relation to God.
However, this consensus has been challenged in the modern period. In part, the challenge results from a realization of the extent to which patristic thinking on this question has been influenced by Greek philosophical notions; in part, it also results from a realization that the Old Testament appears to speak of the suffering of God more than was appreciated. There are thus solid theological foundations to this tendency to affirm that God is able to suffer. But it must be appreciated that there are other factors at work, helping to dispose Christian theologians to giving a positive answer to that question: Does God suffer?
One pressure is cultural and relates directly to the new cultural awareness of suffering in the world. The sheer horror of the First World War made a deep impact upon western theological reflection. The suffering of the period led to a widespread perception that liberal Protestantism was fatally compromised by its optimistic views of human nature. It is no accident that dialectical theology, a movement that was vigorously critical of liberal Protestantism, arose in the aftermath of this trauma. Another significant response was the movement known as Protest Atheism, which raised a serious moral protest against belief in God. How could anyone believe in a God who was above such suffering and pain in the world?
Traces of such ideas can be found in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s nineteenth-century novel The Brothers Karamazov. The ideas were developed more fully in the twentieth century, often using Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov as a model. Karamazov’s rebellion against God (or, perhaps more accurately, against the idea of God) has its origins in his refusal to accept that the suffering of an innocent child could ever be justified. Albert Camus developed such ideas in The Rebel, which expressed Karamazov’s protest in terms of a “metaphysical rebellion.” This intensely moral form of atheism seemed to many theologians to demand a credible theological response – a theology of a suffering God.
A second pressure arises from a shifting understanding of a central idea – in this case, the idea of “love.” Theologians rooted in the classical tradition – such as Anselm and Aquinas – defined love in terms of expressions and demonstrations of care and goodwill towards others. It is thus perfectly possible to speak of God “loving impassibly” – that is, loving someone without being emotionally affected by that person’s situation. Yet the new interest in the psychology of human emotions has raised questions over this notion of love. Can one really speak of “love” unless there is some mutual sharing of suffering and feelings? Surely “love” implies the lover’s intense awareness of the suffering of the beloved, and thus some form of sharing in its distress? Such considerations have undermined the intuitive plausibility (yet not, interestingly, the intellectual credibility) of an impassible God.
This very brief analysis shows how theology can be influenced by philosophical trends, cultural shifts, and changes in psychology. Theological reflection always takes place against a complex background and – whether this is appreciated or not! – incorporates aspects of that background into that reflection. Early Christian reflection on whether God could suffer was significantly influenced by the prevailing philosophical consensus that a perfect being could not change or be affected by outside influences. Modern discussion of that same question is influenced by a cultural pressure to respond to the human experience of suffering and a growing sympathy for the philosophical idea of God as a “fellow-sufferer” (Alfred North Whitehead). Whatever the “right” answer to this question may be – and that debate continues in modern theology – it is essential to appreciate the factors that exercise a significant (and sometimes unacknowledged) influence over theology.
Historical theology both documents the answers given to the great questions of Christian theology and attempts also to account for the factors that have been significant in formulating those answers – whether those factors were noticed or evaluated by those formulating the answers or not. The study of historical theology is thus subversive, as it indicates how easily theologians are led astray by the “self-images of the age” (Alasdair MacIntyre). Nor is this something that is restricted to the past! Too often, modern trends in theology are little more than knee-jerk reactions to short-term cultural trends. The study of history makes us alert to both the mistakes of the past and the alarming way in which they are repeated in the present. “History repeats itself. It has to. Nobody listens the first time round” (Woody Allen).
It is for such reasons that the present volume aims to provide its readers with the maximum amount of historical background to theological debates, within the limits of the space available. All too often, theological issues are conducted as if the debate began yesterday. An understanding of how we got to be where we are is essential to an informed debate of such issues.
Historical Theology as a Resource for Systematic Theology
Finally, it is important to appreciate that systematic theology has much to learn from a detailed engagement with the history of the Christian tradition. As the more recent writings of Karl Barth and Karl Rahner make clear, some of the best contemporary theology can be thought of as critical reappropriation – in other words, retrieving the wisdom of the past and drawing on this in present theological debates. The resurgence of interest in the writings of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas in recent decades is a telling sign of the growing realization of the theological richness of the Christian tradition.
Historical theology gives us new ways of seeing things. It allows us to see debates and issues from other perspectives, helping us formulate our own approaches. The English literary critic C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) perhaps helps us understand how it opens our eyes, offering us new perspectives for evaluation and reflection.
My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. … In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.
Reading great literature, for Lewis, enables us “to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as our own.” The same is true of theological classics, such as Athanasius On the Incarnation, Augustine’s Confessions, Aquinas’ Summa contra Gentiles, or John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. They offer us ways of seeing the theological task and its outcomes that help us to develop our own.
At times, this can go wrong – most notably, through a serious misreading of the past. For example, the British theologian Colin Gunton (1941–2003) developed an approach to Trinitarian theology that was severely critical of the approach of Augustine of Hippo, especially concerning the relationship between the doctrines of creation and redemption. Gunton constructed an alternative approach that he believed avoided Augustine’s mistakes. Yet Gunton’s historical analysis of Augustine’s position is unfortunately somewhat unreliable, showing an apparent misunderstanding of some of his ideas. All of these misapprehensions have been corrected by recent scholarship. Gunton’s misreading of Augustine is an important reminder that good systematic theology depends on a good understanding of historical theology.
However, we have spent enough time introducing our subject. It is time to plunge into the complex world of patristic theology, as we begin to explore the emergence of the Christian theological tradition.