Gregory of Nyssa in one of his treatises on the Trinity complains that since the young men of his generation are neither interested in nor capable of writing a theological treatise on the definition of the Godhead, he in default of this, must, as an old man, undertake the task himself. As an old man he must do what the young men should be able to do.1 His problem has been the problem of the church in many ages and in different forms. One remembers the plaint of Hebrews 5. The readers should have been teachers of the uninitiated, but they themselves needed to be instructed again in the elementary truths of the faith—such things as repentance and baptism, which they ought to have mastered long since and so have been ready for more ambitious thinking as to the meaning of their faith in Jesus Christ. So our problem is no new one, but an old one, an old one that constantly recurs in many different ways. Sometimes the legitimacy of the theologian's lifework is questioned, sometimes a particular segment of the church raises its voice in support of obscurantism in religious thought, little realizing that in so doing it is demanding lessened vitality in its religious life and a diminishing of the freshness and light that should characterize its pulpit.
Preaching is a theological task. Let us make no mistake about that. To communicate, at any level, what the faith means rests upon the assumption that the faith is understood. To communicate week in and week out the meaning of the Christian faith obviously requires much more attention in reference to theology than the sporadic witness of an ,occasional affirmation of one's belief. So a plea for a serious theology and a serious attempt to make one's theology conscious to oneself would seem to be appropriate.
But one meets with an objection immediately. At the outset it will be asked: Does not the theologian, be he competent or otherwise, by the very attempt at theologizing, to that extent distort the simple faith of the Christian? Would not theology mean the end of the fervor of the simple, and thus tend to detract from, rather than to assist in, the work of the church? While I believe this to be a serious misapprehension of the work of the theologian, I shall devote some attention to answering this objection since it may be made the means of clarifying what the theologian's task is, its revelation to the witness of the church and to the belief of the simple believer. Is the theologian's task legitimate or does he wrap up the simplicity of the believer in technicalities and unnecessary complications, using terms that are quite foreign to the expression of the faith in Jesus as Christ? Why engage in the theological quest when faith can flourish without such an endeavor?
Let me point out at this juncture that everyone who is a Christian has a Christian theology whether he realizes it or not. But even this statement needs some qualification. It might be better to say that every Christian has a theology whether he realizes it or not. If he does not realize it, how can he know that it is a Christian theology and that he has not allowed some heterodox elements to enter into it? But more of this later. The point here is that everyone who confesses Jesus as Lord has a theology whether he realizes it or not. Here the words of the English New Testament scholar Alan Richardson are appropriate:
We can hardly decide whether we will hold a New Testament theology; we can decide only whether it is to be one which has been carefully pondered and criticized or one which we have acquired more or less uncritically and subconsciously and which is now kept in the ideological lumber-room of our minds which we never visit.2
While we are not endorsing Richardson's approach to the problem of New Testament theology, the issue he mentions is certainly apropos. As Christians we do not choose whether we shall have a theology—our interest in this article is with reference to systematic theology—the very fact that we are confessing Christians commits us to a theology.
This will be clear if we consider what theology is. It is faith seeking to understand itself. Faith can flourish (to an extent) without understanding itself, without drawing out its implications in the world of thought. It should be quite clear that an appeal for serious theological work is not an appeal for a kind of secret, elite knowledge that becomes the possession of the intellectually superior and thus divides the church into the theological and the nontheological. Such an attraction with such consequences the Gnostics have made at every period of the history of the church at which they have appeared, with disastrous consequences for the Christian who was attracted by the intellectual appeal and the desire to be on the inner ring.
The reason for theological seriousness is that the faith may be understood and thus communicated most effectively. Thus the pulpit must be always before the theological scholar's mind as he takes his seat at the study desk to interpret the faith. Only as theology keeps in touch with the life of the church in faith and witness is there any guarantee of its significance and contribution to the on-going mission of the church. That is to say, the theologian must be a Christian before he can write Christian theology. Moreover, he must recognize the importance of his task for the work of the church in its communication of the meaning of the Christ-event. The theologian must thus recognize certain norms that are to guide him in his task. Then his work will be relevant to the life of the church rather than being engaged about nonessentials or becoming a purely academic exercise, depending solely on intellectual acumen. "The theologian's task is not to divert the ears with chatter, but to strengthen consciences by teaching things true, sure and profitable." s
The theologian is thus a servant of the church, and he serves the church by bringing the Bible "to life in the midst of human life as it is actually lived." Otherwise it is not true theology. And if it is not true theology it needs modification, correction, rejection. But more needs to be said about the task of the theologian. Since the church bears its witness in a world that is shaped by historical forces to be the particular kind of world it is at any period, the theologian must speak to the world in which he lives. Thus the twentieth-century theologian must speak his interpretative message so that it may be understood by the man who lives in the twentieth century. This means that we cannot be content with, for example, fourth- and fifth-century expressions as to the miracle of incarnation; for the church and the world has lived through fifteen centuries since then and has learned much in that time. Christian theology must be relevant; it must talk to the church and to the world in the historic situation in which it finds itself.
An illustration of this is found in the experience of a leading contemporary theologian who, finding his theology, carefully learned from college days, inadequate to meet the needs of the preacher, searched afresh for the meaning of the Scripture and its relevance for twentieth-century Switzerland:
I myself know what it means year in year out to mount the steps of the pulpit, conscious of the responsibility to understand and to interpret, and longing to fulfil it; and yet, utterly incapable, because at the University I had never been brought beyond that well-known "Awe in the presence of History." . . . It was this miserable situation that compelled me as a pastor to undertake a more precise understanding and interpretation of the Bible.5
Theology is faith seeking to understand itself. As a Christian I affirm that "God was in Christ" (2 Cor. 5:19). A Christian theology tries to understand the meaning of this affirmation and thus is led to face such questions as, What sort of God does Jesus reveal? What is revelation? How can
I say that this Jesus of Nazareth is God and man? What implications does this have for ethical endeavor? What connection does it have with my consciousness of guilt, and how does it have any such connection? What relation does this event of history have to the course of history as a whole? And to the telos of history? What relation does my faith in Jesus as the revelation of God have to that of others who have believed in him, e.g., the apostles or others who now believe in Him, to any responsibility this knowledge forces upon me? So we could go on. All these questions are directly related to the central affirmation that "God was in Christ." What the systematic theologian does is to set them forth in a systematic, scientific way, and thus uses some frame of reference that he feels may do best justice to them, in order to make them meaningful for the church and the world in which the church has to bear its witness. Thus, basic to all theological work is the experience of God on the part of the theologian.
It appears that there are basically only two reasons why objections to theological work would be made, and both of these really rest on a radical misunderstanding of the Christian faith. Either the decisively Christian experience is not present, and then obviously there can be no perception of the relevance of the theological task, or the obvious necessity for thinking beings to reason about their faith is not admitted; or, as a variant of this latter, a willingness to try to understand at any depth the Christian experience is absent.
Theology thus rests upon God's activity, being the attempt to clarify to the understanding the revelation of God as apprehended in the experience of the believer, in terms that are comprehensible in the believer's contemporary world. Thus, on this definition there is no separate discipline of apologetics. By commending the faith to himself the believing thinker is also performing the task of commending the faith to others. In the words of William Temple, the theologian says, "I am not asking what Jones will swallow: I am Jones asking what there is to eat." e In this process the theologian rejects inadequate and distorted meaningless and misleading ways of expressing the meaning of the faith.
Let it be quite clear that a plea for theological seriousness does not entail a cutting loose from any and all foundations. We are Christian preachers, after all. We start with our faith in Christ and judge all our interpretation in the light of the knowledge which this faith gives or allows. Only so can we be and remain Christian preachers and thinkers. To the extent that we depart from this center, our perspective is distorted.
But is there not a risk that we start from the wrong point, or that starting from the right point we shall not continue as we started and that therefore distortion will occur? Of course. But let us be self-conscious about our risks. In Christian thinking and preaching let us be in no doubt that there are bound to be risks. Whenever we put our brains into theological gear or open our homiletic mouths, we are taking a risk. A risk that perhaps we ought to take is the more serious one of evaluating at depth the theology that our sermons evince over a period of time.
(To be continued)
Notes:
1 Gregory of Nyssa, "On 'Not Three Gods,' " The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1954), vol. V, p. 331.
2 Alan Richardson, An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament (London, S.G.M. Press, 1958), p. 10.
3 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, xiv, 4.
4 Paul L. Lehmann, "The Changing Course of a Corrective Theology," Theology Today, Oct. 1956, p. 333.
5 Karl Barth, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London: S.C.M. Press, 1957), p. 9.
6 Quoted in Arthur Michael Ramsey, From Gore to Temple (London: Longmans, 1961), p, 7.
