Several years ago, I attended a local conference on "What is Evangelicalism?" When the chairman of the major evangelical organization in the country rose to give his plenary address, he began by saying, "I am not a theologian. I am just a simple lay person." He then went on for an hour expounding on what is evangelicalism. I recognize, of course, what he meant was that he was not a 'theologian' by profession. His use of the term, however, highlights for me how deeply theology—what it is, what it does, and why it is important—is so critically misunderstood by the majority of Christians. So, what exactly is theology? And can any Christian afford to be "un-theological"?
Theology, simply put, is the meditation on and the study of God. The word comes from theo 'God', and logos 'word'. Its concern is the knowledge of God, and its aim to know God and to know as clearly as possible about God and the yearnings of His heart for us. As such theology is the quintessential activity of all who think about God, and the substance of what is said about Him. The word 'theology,'' it is true, does not appear in the Bible. It would be foolish, however, for anyone to say that the Bible has no theology. Psm 119 is, in fact, a powerful encomium on theology. Unfortunately, theology has, nowadays, gotten so 'academized' and made so 'cerebral' that we—the common people in the church, for whom theology is to bring such benefits—have forgotten that one of the simplest and, simultaneously, the most powerful theological statements anyone can make is "God is love."
This being so no Christian can, therefore, speak of being "not theological" whenever he or she says something that touches on God. It is only possible for what he/she says about God to be either theologically "bad" or to be theologically "sound" and "balanced." Sound theology leads to a deeper love for God and, therefore, to worship, because sound theology gives us a deeper understanding of who God is and what He has done for us. As J. I. Packer is fond of reminding his students, theology that does not lead to worship is fraudulent because it has not done what it is supposed to do.1
Theology that does not lead
to worship is fraudulent.
Properly done, theology enables us to live secure and confidently with God, to obey Him, and, therefore, to live securely and confidently with ourselves, righteously with our neighbours (this includes, of course, the sharing of the gospel with them), productively in our society, and harmoniously with nature. It prepares us for a life in heaven and, in between, leads us on steadily and deeper into praise and worship of God.
Theology that does not lead to worship is fraudulent.
Royal Albert Hall, London.
Theology deepens our understanding of Scripture and, therefore, of God, humans, sin, the world, and life. Thus equipped, theology guides and controls our thinking and the way we live out the vision of a godly life. Thus equipped, theology also helps us to communicate with the world by helping us to see things clearly. A Christian without a sound grasp of theology is like a tourist in a new city without a map in hand, lost and fumbling. A Christian with a clearly-thought-through theology is like a Sherpa mountain guide; he knows and understands the ways of the mountain no GPS can match.
Any theology that does not do these things for us is fraudulent; those who think and teach such theology have no understanding of the subject and object of their study, or they are frivolous or flawed in their approach to the subject. Such theology squanders the resources of those who teach it and, worse, wastes the time and trust of those who give it their attention.
Theology properly done
nurtures mind, soul and heart
in the same act.
Any Christian who has been a disciple for a while would be acquainted of persons who goes off for theological studies only to end up in un-belief and leaving the faith and church. This, however, should not turn us away from pursuing theological excellence. There are many reasons why people lose their passion and fall away from the faith; their pursuing a theological education may be only a coincidence. Nevertheless, it is easy to be sucked into a pursuit of intellectual-academic satisfaction without it engaging the rest of our being. Students in Bible colleges and seminaries know how easy it is to spend hours poring over the Bible in order to complete an assignment on time but for it not to nourish and nurse the soul at all. It is vital, however, to remember that this only reflects a flaw in the institution—in the way the curriculum and approach are designed and in what competencies the institution or faculty emphasizes, not a weakness in theology itself. Theology properly done nurtures mind, soul and heart in the same act.
One often hears in the modern church that charge that "theology divides, love unites." The thrust of this proclamation is to suggest that it is more important to live in love and unity, that theological differences should be left aside in consideration of our fellowship.
At first sight, such a view seems magnanimous. Who would want to be the cause of disunity among the brethren? Further reflection, however, raises serious questions about such a stance.
One of the earliest movements in unity, from the biblical perspective, was the movement to build the Tower of Babel.
"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
Genesis 11:1-4
Their unity, however, was a rebellious unity. Now, Christian may come together, with other Christians—or non-believers as well—for any number of reasons. The key word in 'Christian fellowship,' however, is the adjective 'Christian.' What makes a Christian fellowship 'Christian'? Here, only sound theology can answer that question. Surely Gerald Bray is right on the mark when he says:
The present mood in the churches is fed by the spirit of ecumenism which deplores the divisions of the past and looks for a new unity transcending ancient (and therefore old-fashioned!) barriers. It is impossible not to welcome a spirit of charity in place of strife, and it is undoubtedly true that past divisions have often provoked a quite un-Christian bitterness over petty issues which should never have stood in the way of fellowship between true believers. But having said that, there is still a core of truth which cannot be surrendered if the credibility of the gospel is to be maintained. We cannot allow a spirit of charity to become a tolerance rooted in indifference. The Church is not a society of men of good will but a fellowship of the redeemed, who worship Christ as Saviour and Lord. This vital truth is in danger of being lost in today's tolerant climate, which is eroding the knife-edge of the Christian spirituality and blunting the witness to Christ which the Church exists to maintain.2
The point here is not an insistence that all Christians share an identical theology. The very thought of such a thing is ludicrous. The point we emphasize here is that such a seemingly well-intentioned declaration has the potential to nourish a shallow disregard for good theology that will eventually erode the uniqueness of the faith that makes Christian fellowship authentic and possible. The Ethical Movement of the latter part of the 19th Cent is a good example. Peddling the slogan 'Need no Creed,' Felix Adler founded the New York Society for Ethical Culture with the aim of asserting "the supreme importance of the ethical factor in all relations of life—personal, social, national and international, apart from theological considerations"—a more sluggish rephrasing of the "Theology Divides, Love Unites" slogan. There was no way for the movement to end up except as a humanistic club with little bite, which, of course, it did. Glib and shallow slogans cannot replace deep and clear thinking.
So, how then do we do theology? How should we do theology?
More important than how to do Christian theology is how it should be done. Puritan theologian J. I. Packer rigorously reminds his students that the first task in doing theology is to listen: to listen to what the Word of God says and to what others say. To be able to accomplish this with any measure of authenticity, doing theology requires humility—when we still our own cleverness and arguments—and prayers, when we ask only to be led by the Holy Spirit into the truth. Only then are we able to listen sufficiently well to know God trully.
This listening requires us to consult every relevant passage of Scripture that has anything to say about the topic of our concern. With each passage we ask what those words would have meant to the original audience; how did they understand it in light of the circumstances that brought about the exchange, in the light of their particular cultural-historical context. Only then may we begin to ask what then does this passage mean to us in our own peculiar cultural-historical context. Only then is it likely that we have made the right conclusions regarding the principle or demand that it asserts.
Then there is the need to test what we have thought and concluded as we listen to what the Word of God says and to what others say. So, while theologizing is very much an individual activity, it is also a communal affair as we subject our thinking and conclusions to the counsel of the community of faith—both of the past and present—to see if our understanding indeed accords with the clear assertion of Scripture and the wisdom of sound reasoning. Good theologians, therefore, always have a clear grasp of history—of what questions have already been asked, what solutions have been proffered, and how those proposals have been received and responded to. The reason for this is not difficult to find. Most of what we can say has probably already been said, and most of what we think should be done had most likely already been done. History can show us how they had said and done it and what consequences ensued. History helps us test what we have to say, challenging the often-unconscious presuppositions and bias we bring to our reading of Scriptures, correcting the weaknesses in our thoughts and augmenting the strengths of our insights. George Santayana's famous words—"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"—may have become a cliché but it speaks wisdom that we ignore to our loss and possible peril.
Finally, there is the need to preserve and to transmit the fruit of our theologizing to others so that it can do its nourishing transforming work. To this task, we who are preachers and teachers are the honoured agents; remember this, as you meditate on the Bible in your study, grapple with its claims and promises, struggle to distil it into words that are as precise as possible yet clear and simple enough for your congregation to understand, and relevant enough to challenge them to true repentance, renewed hope and impassioned purpose for God. Ultimately, theology that cannot be preached and, more importantly, that cannot be lived in a way that praises God, is flawed or fraudulent.
All these things, we repeat, can only be accomplished in humility. God and the knowledge of Him is too incomparable for any one person to grasp in its entirely. Neither is truth established by shouting down at those who disagree with us; it is established by the humble listening together with others in the community of faith to what Scripture says and what others—whether they are fellow-believers or not—say.
In addition to humility—or, perhaps, as an extension to it—doing Christian theology requires a sense of trepidation, something that has, tragically, been neglected too often. To speak of God is to aim for ultimate truths, and all truths carry consequences. In the case of theology, they have eternal consequences. In doing theology, we are handling Greek fire. Nothing illustrates this better than the heinous proclamation once put out by someone in the ancient church that "Jews killed Jesus." Millions of Jews have lost their lives, and countless more have had their lives made wretched, as a result.
I once watched a movie—I think it was The Man of All Season, but I can't be sure—whose central character was Sir Thomas More. There was this scene in the movie when he had been jailed for refusing to sign assent to the Act of Supremacy which had made his king, Henry VIII, supreme head of the church and clergy. More was an old friend, and sometime mentor, of the king. He had already been put in a difficult position as Henry's Chancellor, when Henry divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne Boleyn. As a devote Catholic, More was against divorce. But he saw the divorce as the king's personal affairs. The Act of Supremacy was a different kettle of fish altogether; only God can make a decision about England's church. There More could not, with a clear conscience, walk with Henry though, he promised, he would not speak about it. Henry valued More as a friend, and yearned for his consent; More was a famous and influential man and his actions, even in silence, impacted the affairs of the nation. In a last-ditch effort to secure it, Henry visited More in prison (the king had a nasty habit of putting people who disagree with him in prison, even if they were his friends). More was adamant; he asked Henry (and here I paraphrase, ok), "If I were to sign my consent and, on the day of reckoning, God sends me to hell, can you go to hell for me?" "No," the king answered, correctly. "Then neither can I give you what you want," replied More, knowing that beheading now awaits him.
Suppose, now, we were to teach a particular piece of doctrine. Jen, trusting us as a teacher, lives faithfully by that doctrine but, when he comes before God on the great day of reckoning, is told by God that he had lived wrong, and must now be consigned to hell, can we go to hell on his behalf? Will we, then, step forward and say to God, "Lord, Jen lived following what I taught. It is not his fault but mine. Let me go to hell in his place"? Of course, God will not do that, but supposing. This supposing is important, because this is what is implied in being a teacher. This is the weight of responsibility we should remember lies upon our shoulders. Greek fire of eternally burning flame. Humility and trepidation.
And finally, grace. An enormously large dose of grace indeed is needed to do theology and, especially, to do it right. Without grace we have no hope of overcoming the weight of trepidation and responsibility that comes with doing theology. Without grace we can never hope of finding the depth of humility needed to pursue, and to properly apprehend, the truth that our natural self-righteousness sideswipes every step of our way.
All these, put together, means that prayer, and thanksgiving, must be central to our theologizing enterprise. Theology should always, therefore, be done with at least one knee constantly on the floor.
As John Stott came to the end of his preface to his book, The Cross of Christ, he said:
In daring to write (and read) a book about the cross, there is of course a great danger of presumption. This is partly because what actually happened when 'God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ' is a mystery whose depths we shall spend eternity plumbing; and partly because it would be most unseemly to feign a cool detachment as we contemplate Christ's cross. For willy-nilly we are involved. Our sins put him there. So, far from offering us flattery, the cross undermines our self-righteousness. We can stand before it only with a bowed head and a broken spirit. And there we remain until the Lord Jesus speaks to our hearts his word of pardon and acceptance, and we, gripped by his love and brimful of thanksgiving, go out into the world to live our lives in his service.
Any other attitude we adopt in doing theology than that exemplified by John Stott—with the head well-hearted and heart well-headed—falls short of being Christian.
Like all human endeavours, theology can become an obstacle to faith, but only if it is done badly. There are at least four ways in which this can happen.
1. When, in our theologizing, we shrink God by putting Him into our petty intellectual and rational boxes and forget that He is the Sovereign Lord of all Life and Reality. One good warning sign of this happening when we find ourselves thinking "surely God cannot . . ."
2. When we depersonalizes God, and thinking of Him as only a object to be studied and over which we stand. This happens when we do not begin—and conclude—our theologizing without prayer, praise and worship.
3. When we lean on other than Scriptures as the sole authority of our theologizing, and begin to trust our human categories as better than Scriptures, as happened repeatedly in liberal theologies.
4. When we rather prefer sophistication and complications to simplicity, for then it is our pride and arrogance rather than the love of God that is driving what we do.
But, as we said, these are the marks and beginning of bad theology. Like all foods we consume, it is bad theology that kills true spirituality.
One major issue that puts Christians off serious theological reflection is the jargon-filled explanations one often find in theological writings. The truth is that good theology needs no jargon; the Gospel of John is proof of this. At the same time, however, remember that jargon is a fact of every living, from such simple things as fishing to investing in the stock market to using our smartphone. After all, what is a jargon but a shorthand way to save the hassle of having to explain something complex. Imagine having to say "the technology that allows two or more electronic devices to communicate with one another reliably without the devices being connected by wires," when you can say Wifi (wi for wireless, fi, for fidelity). Theological jargons simply do the same thing.
So, what then do we do with such jargon? Like everything else new in life; take them in stride. Some jargons are important; every Christian should all have a clear idea of what is "justification" or "atonement." Some, like "Sibellianism" and "Amyraldism," we can safety leave alone in the dictionary (or our glossary) until we really need them, which is almost never unless you are in academia. Whatever it is that we do with them, we should work as hard as we can to avoid them in our teaching and preaching; a farmer may need to know what is the auxiliary hydraulic activator on his tractor, his wife does not (though, of course, she may be interested enough to learn about it). Let us confine ourselves here to those terms with the word 'theology' in them, such as "biblical theology," "systematic theology," "Old Testament theology," "New Testament theology," "a theology of work," "pastoral theology," "Asian theology," and so on.
These labels are really different ways of specifying different aspects of theology.
Let us begin with 'biblical theology' and 'systematic theology.' While theology, as we have explained it above, should be 'biblical,' i.e., it should be rooted in the teachings of Scripture, the term 'biblical theology' is used to refer to the knowledge of God as it is found in any particular book or segments of books of the Bible. In this sense, "Old Testament theology" and "New Testament theology" are subsets of "biblical theology." "Systematic theology," on the other hand, refers to the teachings of Scriptures regarding God arranged systematically under topics such as 'God,' 'Jesus,' 'the Church,' 'the End Times,' and so on.3 Perhaps an analogy may help here. Think of the Bible and its teachings as plants. 'Biblical theology' may then be liken to studying the plants as they are found in a forest or meadows, and 'systematic theology' as studying the plants as they are organized in a botanical garden where, for example, 'climbing plants' will be found under one pavilion, 'aquatic plants' in another, and so on. The categories may be artificial, man-made, but such an organization of the plants can be quite useful. So it is with 'systematic theology' where, for example, we find all (or as much as we are able to garner) the knowledge of God in his relation to the church—what He thinks of the church, how He thinks the church should be about and conduct itself, and so on—under a 'theology of the Church.'
On the other hand, an Asian Christian, for example, will see different aspects of the truth in the same Bible simply because of her unique cultural background and sensitivities and social perspectives. God will, for her, be appreciated and worshipped in ways different from a Nigerian or an Romanian disciple. This leads naturally to an "Asian theology," ways of understanding who He is and how He deals with her and her compatriots in terms Asians can understand and identify with.
But, of course, we also want to think about how God relates to our work, to the environment, even to our food (do we live to eat or eat to live, what does God think? what does the Bible suggest?). Reflecting on the nature of God, how He had dealt with the human race as seen in the pages of Scriptures, and while informed (and disturbed, perhaps) by what is happening in the world around us, we may develop a 'theology of work,' 'an environmental theology,' or a 'theology of race-relations' (perhaps, even a 'theology of race-relation in the Malaysian context') and so on.
The word 'doctrine' is used with different meanings in different contexts. The word 'doctor,' from Latin docere for 'teach,' originally meant 'teacher,' and doctrina was 'what was taught.' Though etymology is no sure guide to meaning, this, nonetheless, suggests that a doctrine has to do with teaching. Thus, doctrine is sometimes used to mean "what the Bible teaches us today about some particular topic." More narrowly, the word 'doctrine,' refers to what a church tradition teaches, and expects its members to hold, as authoritative and binding. In that sense, the word 'dogma' is an appropriate synonym for 'doctrine.' The difference between theology and doctrine then lies in their relative expanse; they overlap in meaning but doctrine is more clearly circumscribed.
Carl Trueman, "Theology and the Church: Divorce or Remarriage. The John Wenham Lecture 2002," Themelios 28.3 (Summer 2003): 19-31.
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