1 Mere theology: the landscape of faith (1)
Mere theology: the landscape of faith (1)
Faith is fundamentally a relational matter; it is about trusting God. Yet part of the inner dynamic of the life of faith is a desire to understand more about who and what we trust. Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033−1109) famously remarked that theology is basically ‘faith seeking understanding’. The great Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo (354−430) was also clear that there is a genuine intellectual excitement to wrestling with God. Theology is a passion of the mind, a longing to understand more about God’s nature and ways, and the transformative impact that this has on life. Our faith can be deepened and our personal lives enriched through theological reflection. So how do we set about developing this passion of the mind?
We cannot explore the relevance of theology, however, without first noting how bad a reputation it has developed within the churches in the last few decades. For some Christian leaders, theology is irrelevant to real life. It is about retreating into ivory towers when there are more pressing things to worry about. Yet rightly understood, theology is about enabling informed Christian action. It makes us want to do things, and do them in a Christian way. It helps us make judgements about how best to act; it encourages us to engage with the real world.
Other Christian leaders express anxiety concerning the tendency of theology to create division and conflict within the Church. J. I. Packer, one of evangelicalism’s most influential and wise voices, has written of the problem of ‘entrenched intellectualists’ – ‘rigid, argumentative, critical Christians, champions of God’s truth for whom orthodoxy is all’. I think we all know people who seem to have an obsession with what Packer calls ‘winning the battle for mental correctness’ and little interest in any other aspect of the Christian faith. They may love God, but they seem to have problems loving other people – especially when they disagree with them. It’s not always easy to discern how this fixation on theological correctness links up with the Gospel accounts of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Surely the better way is to pursue a generous orthodoxy, seeing disagreements in the context of the greater agreements which bind us together?
The heartbeat of the Christian faith lies in the sheer intellectual delight and excitement caused by the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Here is someone who the Church finds to be intellectually luminous, spiritually persuasive and infinitely satisfying, both communally and individually. While Christians express this delight and wonder in their creeds, they do so more especially in their worship and adoration. Centuries ago, Augustine of Hippo reflected on the way in which communities were unified by the objects of their love. The surest way of enhancing the identity, coherence and cohesion of a community is to help it see what it loves more clearly, and thence to love it more dearly.
That is why worship is so important for Christian identity. It focuses our attention on what really matters, and proclaims that the Christian faith has the power to capture the imagination – not merely to persuade the mind – by throwing open the depths of the human soul to the realities of the gospel. It sustains a great passion for Jesus Christ, which nourishes the theological task, even as it calls into question its capacity to live up to the brilliance of its ultimate object.
Yet while the appeal of the Christian vision of Jesus of Nazareth to the baptized imagination and emotions must never be neglected or understated, we need to appreciate that there remains an intellectual core to the Christian faith. We cannot love God without wanting to understand more about him. We are called upon to love God with our minds, as well as our hearts and souls (Matthew 22.37). We cannot allow Christ to reign in our hearts if he does not also guide our thinking. The discipleship of the mind is just as important as any other part of the process by which we grow in our faith and commitment.
The defence of the intellectual credibility of Christianity has become increasingly important in recent years, not least on account of the rise of the new atheism. We must see ourselves as standard-bearers for the spiritual, ethical, imaginative and intellectual vitality of the Christian faith, working out why we believe that certain things are true, and what difference they make to the way we live our lives and engage with the world around us. Above all, we must expand our vision of the Christian gospel. For some, realizing how much more there is to know about our faith can seem intimidating. But it can also be exciting to anticipate the discoveries that lie ahead, as the rich landscape of the Christian faith unfolds before our eyes.
Let us explore this image of the ‘landscape of faith’ a little further. Imagine that you are standing on a mountain ridge. Below you, spread out like a tapestry, is a beautiful landscape, stretching into the far distance. Woods, streams, fields, villages are all lit by the gentle radiance of a late afternoon sun. It’s the sort of thing that made Romantics like William Wordsworth want to rush off and write poetry. So how would you describe such a stunning vista to a friend back home?
It’s actually quite hard to do this, except in the most superficial way, because words are just not good enough to express our experience of reality. You could tell your friend that you saw a wood – but that little word ‘wood’ is never going to convey your vibrant memory of a green mass of trees, their dappled leaves shimmering in the sunlight, and your emotional reaction to such beauty.
You could draw a map of the landscape, which helps you see how its elements related to each other – woods, mountains, streams and villages. But it was not a map that moved you to wonder and delight, but the landscape itself – the beautiful view, the cool wind, the fragrance of flowers and resin, the distant tinkling of cowbells as the herds wander around, seeking the best pastures.
It may be helpful to think of theology as a map, and the gospel as a landscape. This helps us grasp that theology tries to describe in words what we encounter through faith. When we understand theology properly, it helps us articulate, deepen and communicate the Christian vision of God in all its fullness and wonder. On the other hand, when theology becomes preoccupied with the relation of ideas, it loses sight of the vision of God, which gives vitality to the life of faith. The worshipping community is the crucible in which much of the best theology is forged, even though it may be refined by academic reflection.
We will remain with the image of the landscape for a moment longer, as there is another point we need to consider. As we try to take in our vast, rich and beautiful panorama, most of us will find ourselves concentrating on one part of the view that we especially like or are particularly struck by, filtering out the rest. This ‘selective attention’ or ‘cognitive bias’ is helpful in some ways. It allows us to focus on what we think really matters. Yet all too often, it means that we miss out on other things. We fail to see other features of the landscape, or appreciate their importance.
Now imagine that you are joined by a group of friends, all looking at the same panorama. In one sense, all of you will see the same view. Yet the observational dynamic is quite different. As you start talking to each other, it soon becomes clear that others have noticed things that you missed – a fork in a stream, a small lake, or some cattle finding shade from the hot afternoon sun under a tree. A corporate view of the landscape emerges, which is far more comprehensive and reliable than any individual account of it. Not only will a group see more than any single individual; a group may also correct an individual’s account of the landscape of faith. What one person thought was a stream running through a wood might actually turn out to be a trail.
The significance of this point is that we need theology to give a comprehensive, critical account of faith, rather than being limited to one individual’s often very subjective perception of things. A number of theologians – such as Cyril of Jerusalem (313–86) and Vladimir Lossky (1903–58) – have emphasized the ‘catholicity’ of Christian theology. Their point is that the theologian is not a lone maverick, but someone who works collaboratively within the Body of Christ to build up a fully orbed understanding of the gospel.
We can take this a stage further. Theology values the perspectives and insights of those who have mapped and travelled the road of faith in the past, and have now arrived at their journey’s end. Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74), Martin Luther (1493–1546) and Karl Barth (1886–1968) are all dead. But they are widely recognized in theological reflection and debate today as authoritative, living voices, who have the capacity to enrich, stimulate and challenge us as we think through issues for ourselves. One of the senses of the theological term ‘tradition’ is learning to respect those who have reflected on the great questions of theology before us. What many call ‘the great tradition’ is both a resource and challenge to us: it puts at our disposal theological treasures that we may value and make use of today, but it also questions whether our theological generation understands and communicates the gospel as well as our forebears.
This naturally leads us to reflect on the sources of theology. Christians have quite distinct ideas about who God is and what God is like. But where do they get these ideas from? It is generally accepted that there are three major sources for theology: the Bible, reason and tradition. Each merits further discussion.
The Bible
There is widespread agreement within Christianity that the Bible has a place of especial importance in theological debate and personal devotion. All the major Protestant confessions of faith stress the centrality of the Bible. More recently, the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) reaffirmed its importance for Catholic theology and preaching. The authority of the Bible is linked with the idea of ‘inspiration’ – in other words, that in some way the words of the Bible convey the words of God, which all Christians regard as being of immense importance to matters of faith. Christian theology can be seen both as the process of reflecting on the Bible and weaving together its ideas and themes, and as the result of this process of reflection on certain ideas.
We must ensure that we weave all the Bible’s themes into our thinking, not merely those we find easy to understand or which we happen to like – even if this sometimes leads us to conclusions which seem deeply counterintuitive.
We can see this process of weaving a rich theological tapestry from biblical threads in the Christian understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. All the evidence we possess suggests that those who witnessed Jesus in action initially tried to interpret him in terms of existing models and categories – for example, as a healer or prophet. It was entirely natural to do so. After all, the Old Testament contained many references to God’s ways of acting in the world. Why not regard Jesus as a new Elijah, a prophet who was able to heal the sick, and declare God’s will? But though Jesus is clearly presented in the New Testament as a human being who wept, became hungry and thirsty, suffered and died, there was obviously more to him than this. He is referred to as ‘Saviour’, a term laden with theological significance. Israel was absolutely clear that only God could save. To address Jesus in this way suggests he did something that only the Lord God of Israel could do. After a long process of exploring all the options, the Christian Church concluded that the identity and significance of Jesus Christ could only be safeguarded and properly understood by insisting that he was truly God and truly human. There was simply no other way of doing justice to the biblical witness to Jesus Christ.
A further example of this process of weaving is to be found in the doctrine of the Trinity. The best way of understanding this doctrine is to see it as the outcome of a process of sustained and critical reflection by Christians on the pattern of divine activity revealed in Scripture, and continued in Christian experience. This is not to say that Scripture contains a doctrine of the Trinity; rather, Scripture bears witness to a God who demands to be understood in a Trinitarian manner. An implicit Trinitarian logic can be discerned within the New Testament, especially in its statements concerning the works of God.
The Christian Bible witnesses to the nature and actions of one God, who Christians refer to as the ‘God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’. But Christianity’s vision of God is rich and complex and extremely difficult to put into words. Down the ages, Christian theologians have realized that they have two basic options. They could set out a very simple concept of God, which is easily grasped but fails to do justice to the profound and multifaceted witness to God found initially in the Bible, and subsequently in Christian worship and experience. Or they could do their best to remain faithful to this witness to God – even though the end result turned out to be difficult to understand. Orthodox Christian theology has more or less always adopted the second of these two courses.
Reason
These musings on the doctrine of the Trinity also help us to begin to explore the place of reason in theology. At least on the face of it, the doctrine of the Trinity seems not to make much sense. One of my more vivid childhood memories is going to a church service in the countryside in Northern Ireland, back in the late 1950s. For reasons that I cannot entirely recall, we said the Athanasian Creed, using the traditional language of the Book of Common Prayer (1662). As we recited its rather ponderous statements, we came to affirming our belief in ‘the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible’. I can still recall the loud voice of a slightly deaf local farmer, standing by my side, booming out. ‘The whole damn thing’s incomprehensible.’ The congregation, having paused for breath at that particular point, had no difficulty in hearing this piece of theological wisdom with disconcerting clarity.
Traditionally, Christian theology has seen reason as operating in a subservient role to revelation. Thomas Aquinas argued that supernatural truths needed to be revealed to us. Human reason, on its own, could not hope to gain access to divine mysteries. It could, however, reflect on them, once they had been revealed. The doctrine of the Trinity knits together into a coherent whole the Christian doctrines of creation, redemption and sanctification. By doing so, it sets before us a vision of a God who created the world, and whose glory can be seen reflected in the wonders of the natural order; a God who redeemed the world, whose love can be seen in the tender face of Christ; and a God who is present now in the lives of believers. In this sense, the doctrine can be said to preserve the mystery of God, by ensuring that the Christian understanding of God is not impoverished through reductionism or rationalism.
Reason and mystery
Yet however important and helpful reason may be in theology, we have to acknowledge its limits in making sense of things. If we can’t make sense of something, it may simply be wrong. But it might also be so profound and complex that we simply cannot comprehend it. Patristic writers regularly compared understanding God with looking directly into the sun. In much the same way as the human eye cannot cope with the brilliance of the sun, so the human mind cannot cope with the glory of God.
A conversation between the Roman emperor Hadrian and the Jewish rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah (d. 131) makes this point well. Hadrian, dismissive of Jewish theology, demanded to be shown Joshua’s god. The rabbi replied that this was impossible, an answer which failed to satisfy the emperor Hadrian. Joshua therefore took the emperor outside and asked him to stare at the midday Palestinian summer sun. ‘That is impossible!’ replied the emperor. ‘If you cannot look at the sun,’ replied the rabbi, ‘how much less can you behold the glory of God, who created it?’
The idea of ‘mystery’ is helpful here. Unfortunately, it is a word that is easily misunderstood. The language of theology sometimes seems to have little connection with the words we use in everyday life. Our definition of ‘hope’, for example, might be ‘Something I would very much like to be true.’ The deeper theological meaning of the word as ‘a sure and confident expectation’ is lost. We find the same problem with a word that occurs in Paul’s exultant declaration that ‘the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations … has now been revealed to his saints’ (Colossians 1.26). What do we mean by ‘mystery’?
When I first began to study theology, the meaning of the word seemed obvious. I was an avid fan of detective fiction back in those days, and regularly pored over the second-hand book stalls in Oxford’s covered market, searching for Earl Stanley Gardner novels to add to my collection. Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse series began to appear around this time, adding considerably to my delight, not least because it was actually set in Oxford. My theological understanding of mystery was based largely on reading crime fiction. A mystery was a puzzling series of events, which could be explained by some sharp detective work.
Eventually, I realized that my understanding of mystery was inadequate, and did not really correspond to what the New Testament meant by the term. As I began to wrestle with writers such as Gregory of Nyssa (335–94), it became clear to me that there was another way of understanding the idea, which made a lot more sense. Both the New Testament and Christian spiritual writers use the term ‘mystery’ to refer to the hidden depths of the Christian faith which stretch beyond the reach of reason. To speak of God as a mystery is not to lapse into some kind of obscurantism or woolly and muddled way of thinking. It is simply to admit the limits placed upon our human reason and the hold it can obtain on the living God. We are predisposed to reduce God to what we can cope with, to bring God down to our own level, to dilute God, to scale God down. Yet we ought to allow God to open our minds and enlarge our apprehension of the divine reality and glory.
We have a natural and entirely healthy instinct to resist anything that seems irrational. Yet there are some aspects of the world that human reason finds very difficult to comprehend. In his Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), the famous psychologist William James (1842–1910) notes that religious experience ‘defies expression’, and cannot be described adequately in words. ‘Its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others.’ Now an experience may be difficult, even impossible, to describe; but that does not make it irrational or absurd.
The Christian faith, as writers such as Thomas Aquinas remind us, does not contradict reason, but transcends it. It is a principled recognition of the limits of our capacity to cope with immensity, often alluded to by Augustine of Hippo’s words: ‘If you can comprehend it, it’s not God.’ Our reason is unable to take in the vastness of the intellectual landscape of the divine, just as our words are unable fully to express what we encounter. In one sense, the doctrine of the Trinity is our admission that, as created, finite, fallen and flawed beings, we simply cannot fully grasp or express all that God is. We have to do the best we can, and accept its limitations.
Tradition
We now need to come back to the idea of tradition, which we introduced earlier. The English word ‘tradition’ comes from the Latin term traditio which means ‘handing over’, ‘handing down’, or ‘handing on’. It is a thoroughly biblical idea. Thus we find Paul reminding his readers that he was handing on to them core teachings of the Christian faith which he had himself received from other people (1 Corinthians 15.1–4). The term can refer to both the action of passing teachings on to others – something which Paul insists must be done within the church – and to the body of teachings which are handed on in this manner.
The Pastoral Epistles in particular (three later New Testament letters that are especially concerned with questions of church structure, and the passing on of Christian teaching – 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus) stress the importance of ‘guarding the good deposit which was entrusted to you’ (2 Timothy 1.14). The New Testament also uses the notion of ‘tradition’ in a negative sense, meaning something like ‘human ideas and practices which are not divinely authorized’. Thus Jesus Christ was openly critical of certain human traditions within contemporary Judaism (for example, see Matthew 15.1–6; Mark 7.13).
The importance of the idea of tradition first became obvious during the second century with the arising of the Gnostic controversy. This centred on a number of questions, including how salvation was to be achieved. (The word ‘Gnostic’ derives from the Greek word gnosis, ‘knowledge’, and refers to the movement’s belief in certain secret ideas that had to be known in order to secure salvation.) Christian writers found themselves having to deal with some highly unusual and creative interpretations of the Bible. How were they to respond to these? Was every interpretation of the Bible to be regarded as of equal value?
Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–c. 200), one of the early Church’s greatest theologians, did not think so. The question of how the Bible was to be interpreted was of the greatest importance. Heretics, he argued, interpreted the Bible according to their own taste. Orthodox believers, in contrast, interpreted the Bible in ways that their apostolic authors would have approved. What had been handed down from the apostles through the Church was not merely the biblical texts themselves, but a certain way of reading and understanding those texts.
Irenaeus’ point was that a continuous stream of Christian teaching, life and interpretation could be traced from the time of the apostles to his own period. The Church was able to point to those who had maintained the teaching of the Church, and to certain public standard creeds which set out the main lines of Christian belief. Tradition was thus the guarantor of faithfulness to the original apostolic teaching, a safeguard against the innovations and misrepresentations of biblical texts on the part of the Gnostics.
But for those of us living in the twenty-first century, tradition is more than that: it is about having access to the treasure chest of 2,000 years of Christian reflection on what it means to be a believer, on how best to understand and communicate the faith, and how to live out the Christian life. To use Sir Isaac Newton’s famous phrase, we are able to see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Contemporary Western culture is dominated by an ideology of the ephemeral, based upon philosophies and values which are not expected to endure more than a decade or so. To take the ‘great tradition’ seriously is to anchor oneself to a community of reflection, to overhear their conversations and meditations, and thus to be enriched, nourished, and above all given stability.
In the next chapter we will look further at how theology enriches faith, and reflect on the role of the theologian.