Post by Soulfyre on Jan 28, 2005 17:25:34 GMT -5
The serious study of God and His works--the doing of "theology"--is an activity seriously underrepresented among much of the church today, especially, I fear, among the average pew-warming Evangelicals. For some reason this undertaking is often effectively divorced in our minds from the process of Bible study. This should not be. If Holy Scripture provides for us a seamless whole, and is "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God man be thouroughly equipped for every good work," (II Timothy 3:16), then we cannot avoid drawing conclusions concerning God and His works from its pages. Whether one approaches the knowledge of the Holy from Catophatic theology, in which an effort is made to think sytematically about who and what God is, or from Anaphatic theology, which circumscribes our thinking about God by clearly delineating who and what God is not, it is the knowledge of the Holy for which a Christian yearns. Indeed, for a Christian, such knowledge is not merely an accumulation of facts, as though by definition we might in some sense control the Immortal Divine; rather it is a desire for intimacy and relationship with God the Creator, given to us in creation, and fulfilled at the Wedding of the Lamb in which we are not guests, but the Bride made spotless by the work of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, our Holy Bridegroom.
On this board I hope to discuss the nature of this process, and how Theology, the Queen of the Sciences, should lie at our heart's door. From "source-based theology" to "open-source theology", we should be familiar with the eddying currents of post-modernism and its effects, both positive and negative, on the way in which we approach learning about and speaking about God. In all this I believe we must show great care, for their is always a great temptation, in the nearly anarchic philosophic environment which surrounds us, to cast off heedlessly structures of thought prevalent in the history of Christian thought to attempt to rebuild the "wheel" of theology from scratch. And while we may disagree with certain conclusions of various Christian leaders or communities over the history of the church, we must not suffer the error of arrogantly assuming that we have a greater knowledge than they simply based on time and technology (a problem redolent in the evolutionary mindset that so defines our humanistic culture).
Central to our discussion will undoubtedly be a topic which addresses the issue of authority. Addressing both our understanding of the church (ecclesiology) and the Bible (bibliology), we must wrestle with the issue of authority. While it is customary within Reform theology to proclaim "Sola Scriptura", which rgrove set forth exceedingly well, we must realize that this does not assume that our understanding of the teachings of Holy Scripture, or even the determination of the canon of Scripture, somehow dropped out of heaven bound and tied to individual Christians. Rather, much of which we believe has been intermediated to us through the church, to whom was given the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, and that Holy Scripture was of no private interpretation. The Holy Spirit that fell upon the prophets indwells the church. To what extent, then, is the church authoritative in establishing both the corpus of the oracles of God, and defining their substance?
This is a topic with which I am struggling. Certainly, the Bible does not indicate that the church as an institution is infallible. Nevertheless, we conventionally ascribe authority to the decisions of the early church concerning the substance of the canon and accept their conclusions on such foundational issues as the Trinity and the nature of the Hypostatic Union in Jesus Christ. Although it may be argued that these conclusions are necessarily supported in the Bible (and indeed theologians of the day were careful to argue from scripture), such issues as canonicity are not so easily set aside. To say that it was given to the church to "recognize" God's Holy Scripture does not adequately address the genuine conflicts among early Christian leaders concerning what should and should not be included in the Bible. How then did they frame their arguments and come to their conclusions? And is it, in fact, given to the church to make such authoritative decisions?
I do not bring these issues up to weaken anyone's faith, but rather to strengthem it. When we give others an answer as to the hope within us, we must give a clear sound, not muddled. And doing theology is our starting point.
God bless and keep you all,
Matthew (soulfyre)
On this board I hope to discuss the nature of this process, and how Theology, the Queen of the Sciences, should lie at our heart's door. From "source-based theology" to "open-source theology", we should be familiar with the eddying currents of post-modernism and its effects, both positive and negative, on the way in which we approach learning about and speaking about God. In all this I believe we must show great care, for their is always a great temptation, in the nearly anarchic philosophic environment which surrounds us, to cast off heedlessly structures of thought prevalent in the history of Christian thought to attempt to rebuild the "wheel" of theology from scratch. And while we may disagree with certain conclusions of various Christian leaders or communities over the history of the church, we must not suffer the error of arrogantly assuming that we have a greater knowledge than they simply based on time and technology (a problem redolent in the evolutionary mindset that so defines our humanistic culture).
Central to our discussion will undoubtedly be a topic which addresses the issue of authority. Addressing both our understanding of the church (ecclesiology) and the Bible (bibliology), we must wrestle with the issue of authority. While it is customary within Reform theology to proclaim "Sola Scriptura", which rgrove set forth exceedingly well, we must realize that this does not assume that our understanding of the teachings of Holy Scripture, or even the determination of the canon of Scripture, somehow dropped out of heaven bound and tied to individual Christians. Rather, much of which we believe has been intermediated to us through the church, to whom was given the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, and that Holy Scripture was of no private interpretation. The Holy Spirit that fell upon the prophets indwells the church. To what extent, then, is the church authoritative in establishing both the corpus of the oracles of God, and defining their substance?
This is a topic with which I am struggling. Certainly, the Bible does not indicate that the church as an institution is infallible. Nevertheless, we conventionally ascribe authority to the decisions of the early church concerning the substance of the canon and accept their conclusions on such foundational issues as the Trinity and the nature of the Hypostatic Union in Jesus Christ. Although it may be argued that these conclusions are necessarily supported in the Bible (and indeed theologians of the day were careful to argue from scripture), such issues as canonicity are not so easily set aside. To say that it was given to the church to "recognize" God's Holy Scripture does not adequately address the genuine conflicts among early Christian leaders concerning what should and should not be included in the Bible. How then did they frame their arguments and come to their conclusions? And is it, in fact, given to the church to make such authoritative decisions?
I do not bring these issues up to weaken anyone's faith, but rather to strengthem it. When we give others an answer as to the hope within us, we must give a clear sound, not muddled. And doing theology is our starting point.
God bless and keep you all,
Matthew (soulfyre)
